Strength of Water

by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

A pair of college students, a boy and a girl, fantasize about trading places as a fascist regime comes to power in India.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

58 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2019

About the author

I read, I write, I play the bass guitar. Reality isn't and stories won't save you from what is. But still.

I live in Bangalore, India with my wife Yasmine and a hoard of feline masterminds as well as a handful of daft dogs.

Reviews

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Kindle edition of this book.
STRENGTH OF WATER is a poetic work of Science Fiction. It is dreamlike and yet, at crucial junctures, becomes specific in its detail. That the specific world being described is India as it is today, marching almost robotically toward fascism, makes the science-fiction elements seem utopian. Often science-fiction acts as a warning. (Arthur C. Clarke's, or at least, Kubrick's interpretation of his 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, is the go-to place for luddites like me. I look at a computer and see HAL dismantling my soul.) But Jayaprakash Satyamurthy's story of a college girl who wishes to inhabit the body of a boy she only knows by sight and a few moments of small talk partakes of mythology. In short, there is a cosmic side to this tale. The young woman and the young man at its heart are destined to confront contemporary horrors.
Both characters have something of gender dysphoria, and as the sheer force of history and the willingness to understand each other bring them closer, the only come out of themselves as they reach one another.
About two-thirds of the way through, the reader gets a tour of oppressive measures, atrocities and institutional dehumanization. STRENGTH OF WATER is not a morbid book, but it shows us a morbid society. Modi is for Jayaprakash Satyamurthy what Trump is to me. While this is about India, it refers to the "White Bloc." I have no need to Google that. If I'm not wrong, that's Russia/Trump and whatever Marine Le Pen and her ilk represent. The far-right is united worldwide. Modi is Putin/Trump and the others who want to tie us to little pegs in the ground.
This is not a dystopian work, however. Like Ray Bradbury's prose, STRENGTH OF WATER has buoyancy.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella flows like a ripple in the ocean, with sharp prose and lines of pure beauty. I’m leaving a small quote for y’all to see The Strength of Water.

“Their prayers are inaudible, if there was even a being that cared to hear or answer them, and afterwards, when it is all over, the crickets resume their song. The smell of charred flesh joins the odors of the night forest.”

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy is an extraordinary writer in the weird horror community. You need to read his work if you haven’t yet...

[Dan Sumption · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy's story starts with the streams of consciousness of a boy and a girl, both uncomfortable in their own bodies. Ideas tumble out, compelling and often rhyming, alliterating, a joy to read. The narrative shifts as the two come together, with unexpected results.

I really enjoyed this book, and have just ordered another of Satyamurthy's to read soon.

[Seb · Rating 5 out of 5]

J. Satyamurthy's novella "Strength Of Water" is a breath of fresh air in these dark times. Playing with the ancient hermaphrodite-Taoist myth (Yin and Yang, male principle in female, female principle in male), Satyamurthy masterfully weaves a tale of divine humanity reacting to a world filled with human demons. Racism, fascism, intolerance are our evil creations, which the two into one figures try to overcome in their peaceful ways. A story Ursula Le Guin would have loved, "Strength of Water" is yet another modern classic penned by one of the best "weird fiction" Indian writers around.

[L.D. Colter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book on many levels. Changes flow through it: prose to streams of thoughts and images to lists of individual words strung together like poetry. Change wished for by two characters, one male, one female, who become one but still individual; sometimes their duality is seen or felt, sometimes not. Change from current India to something darker and more frightening that any country can become. A novella that explores everything from mythology to politics to societal issues and the destruction and cruelty they engender to gender differences and LGBQT issues, to how similar we all are when we dig beneath those distinctions. I found the writing very reminiscent of the Michael Cisco books I've read. Highly recommended.

[Charlotta Liukas]

Dream like novella of an eerie, near future/parallel universe Bangalore where Hindu totalitarian development has cast a doomsday vibe over the whole country, and a group of people struggle to break free. A gender swap experience at the center of the story is head spinning - and apparently based on an old Taoist myth!

Having never read dystopian fiction set in India before, I liked that the elements of the fascist regime were specific to the cultural context. The book was published in mid-2019, and the developments in India since then have only made this a more distressing, poignant read.

Goodreads aptly classifies the book as “weird fiction”, and it’s definitely Ursula K. Le Guin - ish (my knowledge on speculative fiction doesn’t extend to better literary comparisons). The writing style is tentative, blurry and stream-of-consciousness, with lots of high and low cultural references, especially musical ones. The long sentences were quite tough for me to follow.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps More Human...

Strange story of what could very well be a formulation of four people becoming something of gestalt-sapiens almost like the ones from Theodore Sturgeon’s classic, More Than Human. Where they have a mind-meld, they went to isolated place to reconnoiter and share whatever information, empathy and so forth with each other until lightning struck and were frozen in time. They have thus discovered an alternate reality, and other beings, the behind-the-scenes stage managers, who could create any dire situations if they wished. What happens after that is anybody’s guess when the four, awoke frozen time, fled in a car into unknown regions. The story is well written, but the plot was so convoluted the reader would sort of have trouble figuring it out. This would try other readers’ patience. There are some interesting ideas but where do these lead up to? One can only shrug.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be honest: the stream of consciousness style of writing in this book was not a favorite of mine. The numerous references to Indian political and historical events and various world mythologies were also challenging.

But the overall theme was clear, more than valid especially in these times, and I think that readers more versed in mythologies and Indian events would not find any challenge in reading this book.

[Thomas Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two college students, one male and one female, separately seek to escape their bodies and lives, exhausted by their own familial troubles, problems exacerbated by an oppressive and uncaring society. Exploring horribly human traits such as racism, sexism, class inequality and religious persecution, to name a few, Satyamurthy's wonderfully poetic prose swept me away. I felt an immediate kinship with Sati and Satyan and immediately sympathetic for their plights. They somehow simultaneously discover a possible solution to their most pressing dilemma, of wishing to escape their bodies which, in turn, leads them on a quest to fight the system and right a very terrible wrong. Along the way, we take a quick detour behind the curtain where Sati/Satyan experience first-hand some of the worst that humanity has to offer, but which seems to be becoming ever more present in real life. The way Satyamurthy does this is very well done, taking a break from the narrative style of the rest of the story, but not in a jarring way. His writing is simply that beautiful that I couldn't help but be carried along. I love discovering new authors with their very own distinctive styles, and Satyamurthy does not disappoint.

[Chiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is a quick, nuanced, powerful reckoning w/the "resurgence" - or perhaps the conditions that prescribed that "resurgence", showing that "resurgence" to perhaps be more of an unmasking of something already there than an actual return of something thought long gone - of fascism in the last half decade or so, not by focusing on the more obvious, recent signifiers of that resurgence - the Modis, Trumps, & Dutertes of the world - but by portraying the world, the system for which those signifiers are, not unique, emergent phenomena, but perhaps reductive if summary manifestations. in fact, the astonishing thing, the unique, emergent thing that rises up above that world, that system that forms the context of STRENGTH OF WATER isn't the summation of that awfulness in a Trump or Modi or Duterte, but this delicate yet immense, powerful sense of love & hope - the Strength of Water.

&, significantly: the Strength of Water is gender fluid.