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September 12, 2004
REVIEW: Meetings in Casa Mira
“ANURADHA Majumdar creates a gentle creative search for a personal spirituality: the whole narrative is remarkable in intensity.” These comments of The Telegraph are incontrovertible, as the intensity of expression seems to cast a magic spell on the reader. The book has a tinge of mysticism, a touch of philosophical subtleties and lucid nuances of metamorphism and reincarnation.
The story is masterfully interwoven around the characters in the backdrop of London. The characterization of the novel is unquestionably forceful. The characters who emerge from distinctive backgrounds, dramatically meet and identify with each other. They interact with each other in Casa Mira, an apartment owned and let out by Brenda to tenants who are like her children.
Jonathon, the dominant character of this story, is obsessed with the idea of writing a film story about Williamson and Casper, the two victims of a plane crash in a sequestered woodland. The story has been “caught inside his brain in an excruciating knot of anxiety. He is in his own torture chamber”.
Krishangopal, a minstrel and a spiritual guru, 150 years of age, captures the minds of the readers from the very outset when Jonathon meets him in Bhutan during his childhood. The guru appears sporadically throughout in the story and has an inexplicably unique rapport with most of the characters. The story takes a dramatically interesting twist when a visitor Christopher Rose comes to Casa Mira. He is notoriously secretive prompting the question, “Is he shy or paranoid, Brenda? Or is he a ghost?”
Anjali another inmate of Casa Mira is a television journalist who wants to write a feature on Rose but his elusiveness is mind-boggling. He turns out to be Brenda’s cousin and his real name is Sidharath. The reader seems to share the excitement of Jonathon who discovers that Rose is none other than Sidharath Casper the co-pilot of Williamson. He is one of the two characters Jonathon wants to portray in his film.
The reader is certainly going to receive emotional jolts to discover the intricacies of the relationship the characters have with each other. The profundity of suspense and mystery, however, should not be marred by revealing too much of the story. It is for the reader to unravel and relish the sequence of events that the author unfolds with the masterful strokes of her pen.
The book is a vivid yet esoteric depiction of myriad inter-connected journeys — the journeys of discovery that refugees from paradise seem to undertake in quest of self-fulfilment. The reader travels with Anjali and Jonathon to Delhi, Kolkata, Severidge tea estates and Kandali where the annual fair of the minstrels is held with due zeal and involvement.
Along with the dominant characters, some relatively less conspicuous characters also make a deep impact upon the readers. Patel runs a restaurant, ‘Cuisine and Curry’, and is conversant with all the routine happenings in Casa Mira. Rahim seems inconsolably grieved over the demolition of the Babri Mosque and is painfully conscious of his identity as a Muslim and his beard, after the 9/11 incident. All these characters contribute to the intensity of the story and seem virtually indispensable.
The best thing about the book is that the interest of the reader does not sag even momentarily. It is unlike most of the currently published novels that are based on the passions of love, rivalry, hatred and violence. The far-fetched philosophical details can prove irritating to some readers. But most of them will find the experience of believing the unbelievable and the lure of mystic interpretations irresistible. Even the writings on the notice board in Casa Mira seem to enthrall the reader, as for instance, “They also serve who only stand and wait” or “Is there an extraordinary device to extricate pain.”
The novel is readable, as it is spicy and interesting in an altogether different way.
Refugees from Paradise
By Anuradha Majumdar
Penguin India. For more info log onto www.penguinbooksindia.com
ISBN 0-14-303130-9
283pp. Indian Rs295
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