Story Description:
Doubleday
Canada|December 19, 2011|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-0-385-66699-2
“The only statement of revolt the poor could
make was to put an end to their own misery.
It happened all the time – men lay themselves on train tracks, hanged
themselves from trees, consumed rat poison, and women set their kerosene-soaked
bodies alight in front of their husbands.
These were blazing ends to insignificant journeys. But in all this, there was always one man
who, in that final gush of blood, in that final breaking of neck and bone, set
things in motion.”
Zairos Irani, a
young man of inherited leisure, is meandering through his family’s lush chickoo
orchards near Mumbai when he comes across a distressing sight: Hanging from one of the fruit trees is the
lifeless body of Ganpat, a worker from the indigenous Warli tribe. Ganpat’s ancestors once owned the land,
before his father’s alcohol debts caused the deed to be transferred to Zairos’s
grandfather, Shapur. The two family
destinies have been entwined ever since ancient grudges once again awoke by
Ganpat’s final desperate act.
Zairos feels
obliged to notify Ganpat’s family before the authorities come to ask needless
questions and extract bribes. A tractor
bearing Ganpat’s sister and anguished daughter, Kusum soon trundles into the
orchard, and when Kusum alights, Zairos’s curiosity is piqued. As a landowner, he knows that he is well
above her station, and yet her dignity and beauty lead him to cast aside taboos
and risk the wagging tongues of neighbourhood gossips. Though wary at first, the grieving Kusum
comes to return his affection, asking only that he assist her in achieving what
her dead father could not – by putting an end to the violence she has endured
at the hands of a drunken husband.
Zairos cannot get
advice from his father, Aspi, whose clownishness masks thinly-veiled
nihilism. Nor can he confide in his
beloved grandfather, Shapur, whose massive hands planted the chickoo trees that
he adores as much as his own sons.
Shapur built the family empire from a desperate start as an orphaned
refugee, and any act that might threaten the delicate legacy spawned by his
sacrifices would only provoke rage in the old man, who increasingly dwells in
memories. So Zairos whiles away his time
at Anna’s, the local haunt for the male leisure class, dreaming of a future
with Kusum. There, with the support of
some equally underemployed sidekicks, Zairos hatches a scheme to scare Kusum’s
husband into releasing her, while keeping his own moral integrity intact. But alas, Zairos’s scheme will not unfold as
planned, and along the way he will unwittingly expose family secrets that may
well be better left buried…
With brilliant
gusto, Irani has built his Dahanu Road
upon the pathways forged by authors of tragicomic romance spanning centuries
and continents, from the Persian classic Layla and Majnun, to Romeo and Juliet
or Wuthering Heights. Dahanu Road is a suspense-filled family
saga, sprawling romantic epic in which the delineations between the oppressor
and the oppressed, or between love and hate, are demonstrated to be maddeningly
deceptive.
My Review:
Try as I might on
three separate occasions, I just couldn’t get into this book at all. Perhaps the synopsis above will entice some
of you to give it a try.
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