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Fallout
Fallout is about love - the kind of unquestioning love that has no rhyme or reason, no word or symbol, but just is can any good come of such love? is it even moral? the mood is edgy, sometimes feverish, but enlivened by kaveris mordant tongue and underscored by the authors vivid observation of acts of human frailty and human strength
- GenresFiction
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 18, 2019
What a treat it was. However, recommended only for regular readers.
March 18, 2015
Fallout begins with the finality of death and ends with the latency of hope. Quite contrary to the journey of life. And in this odyssey one navigates the chiaroscuro of love, longing, lust and loathing before the inevitable sting in the tail.
All fiction is a fiction of relationships, well most of it in any case. Usha takes the canvas of the extended family, always a mother lode with a rich seam of characters with their follies and foibles at the best of times. So for example there is the raddled patriarch - Balumama, his brother the finical Rajumama, the effete husband Arya and the precise, self-made, loving pater. This setting has been used to good advantage as an evocative stage and not just in contemporary Indian fiction. A cauldron of potentialities - growing up, differences in capabilities that separate the coevals, effect of lady luck on outcomes and above all secrets and revenants that must be hidden. But secrets that surface like gleet from time to time. There is a collective schizophrenia of a group of people bound by genealogy and maybe little else. ‘Years later she understood that it wasn’t the fear of the outside getting in but the inside leaking out.’ This is the story of Kaveri and her needs and desires. Her attempt to fill the emptiness that surrounds her, vicariously at first and in reality subsequently, and in the process it shakes the foundations of who she thinks she is.
Within the precept of the matryoshka doll, a reference to a book within the book and with a third joined at the hip, there is authenticity. Of language, of location, of descriptions. As a construct, the author mixes up the timelines and there is the stream of consciousness approach. Is it her training as an architect that brings with it the ability to change perspectives plus the constant references to mathematics? And from her other avatar as a copywriter there is a tautness of phrases, not the wordsmithing of beguiling, languid prose for her but the sharpness and angularity, purposefulness of making each word count, a stippling effect. Absence of quotation marks every now and then allows her to segue between what’s in the mind to what’s on Kaveri’s lips. But even so there is lyricism – 'the sky is like whey and the clouds like greasy rags. The stupor has clipped the wings of the sparrows and hushed the bickering of the crows.' Switching in and out of the first person narrative, Ma is Meenakshi and Pa becomes Mani from one sentence to the next – a filial relationship but also reflecting a desire to be an equal without giving up the comforting shadow of her parents? From shades of grey to black and white, clash of opposites – ‘There is night and day to all of us. An inside and an outside. A lie and a truth.’
Memory is a strange beast, its very existence denotes the absence of reality. It can envelop you like the warmth of a blanket and be sulphurously corrosive in another instance. Immured in it one is etiolated. For Kaveri as for everyone, there is the ongoing tussle, which memories to hold on to, which ones to let go and which ones to create in the now and here. But can one really ever let go of any?
On the back cover there is a doubt about unquestioning love – is it good, moral? But the question ought to be is there any other kind? In putting any modifier before ‘love’ you take it away from its prelapsarian roots. And for Kaveri there is the silhouette of love at the end.
Quibbles, yes there are some inevitably. Some of the characters, Uma, Tara and even Ramu for example are not fleshed out adequately, Arya coming into Kaveri’s life remains a question mark – just seems improbable that the two could have ever come together even in the naiveté of youth, Pulin the editor is the cackhanded North Indian at first and is more savvy later, Arya's 'client' is an enigma at best. And there is some repetitiveness but one would lay that at the door of the editorial support. Not being familiar with the author’s oeuvre it is difficult to place this book in a context of the development of her thought, texture and style. But suffice it to say that it stands well on its own.
All fiction is a fiction of relationships, well most of it in any case. Usha takes the canvas of the extended family, always a mother lode with a rich seam of characters with their follies and foibles at the best of times. So for example there is the raddled patriarch - Balumama, his brother the finical Rajumama, the effete husband Arya and the precise, self-made, loving pater. This setting has been used to good advantage as an evocative stage and not just in contemporary Indian fiction. A cauldron of potentialities - growing up, differences in capabilities that separate the coevals, effect of lady luck on outcomes and above all secrets and revenants that must be hidden. But secrets that surface like gleet from time to time. There is a collective schizophrenia of a group of people bound by genealogy and maybe little else. ‘Years later she understood that it wasn’t the fear of the outside getting in but the inside leaking out.’ This is the story of Kaveri and her needs and desires. Her attempt to fill the emptiness that surrounds her, vicariously at first and in reality subsequently, and in the process it shakes the foundations of who she thinks she is.
Within the precept of the matryoshka doll, a reference to a book within the book and with a third joined at the hip, there is authenticity. Of language, of location, of descriptions. As a construct, the author mixes up the timelines and there is the stream of consciousness approach. Is it her training as an architect that brings with it the ability to change perspectives plus the constant references to mathematics? And from her other avatar as a copywriter there is a tautness of phrases, not the wordsmithing of beguiling, languid prose for her but the sharpness and angularity, purposefulness of making each word count, a stippling effect. Absence of quotation marks every now and then allows her to segue between what’s in the mind to what’s on Kaveri’s lips. But even so there is lyricism – 'the sky is like whey and the clouds like greasy rags. The stupor has clipped the wings of the sparrows and hushed the bickering of the crows.' Switching in and out of the first person narrative, Ma is Meenakshi and Pa becomes Mani from one sentence to the next – a filial relationship but also reflecting a desire to be an equal without giving up the comforting shadow of her parents? From shades of grey to black and white, clash of opposites – ‘There is night and day to all of us. An inside and an outside. A lie and a truth.’
Memory is a strange beast, its very existence denotes the absence of reality. It can envelop you like the warmth of a blanket and be sulphurously corrosive in another instance. Immured in it one is etiolated. For Kaveri as for everyone, there is the ongoing tussle, which memories to hold on to, which ones to let go and which ones to create in the now and here. But can one really ever let go of any?
On the back cover there is a doubt about unquestioning love – is it good, moral? But the question ought to be is there any other kind? In putting any modifier before ‘love’ you take it away from its prelapsarian roots. And for Kaveri there is the silhouette of love at the end.
Quibbles, yes there are some inevitably. Some of the characters, Uma, Tara and even Ramu for example are not fleshed out adequately, Arya coming into Kaveri’s life remains a question mark – just seems improbable that the two could have ever come together even in the naiveté of youth, Pulin the editor is the cackhanded North Indian at first and is more savvy later, Arya's 'client' is an enigma at best. And there is some repetitiveness but one would lay that at the door of the editorial support. Not being familiar with the author’s oeuvre it is difficult to place this book in a context of the development of her thought, texture and style. But suffice it to say that it stands well on its own.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews