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HT reviewer Sonali Mujumdar picks her favourite read of 2022
Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat is a nuanced, exquisitely crafted delicious read
Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat is a nuanced, exquisitely crafted delicious read. Her audaciously composed world meshes multiple themes into a fine tapestry, not a skein out of place. It sweeps across centuries, taking the reader along on multiple journeys, as her characters both fictitious and true-life luminaries, go wide and deep on individual quests. It is through these intrepid travellers and their experiences that the writer proffers metaphysical debates on art, philosophy and science, tradition and progress, the old and the new way of life, or ideas on emancipation, the position of women and how indigenous communities thrive. Her narrative comes to life through lush descriptions of people and places; the portrayal of light bringing in the distinctness of each era while playing the appropriate metaphor.
The narrative begins in the contemporary world of Shai, a young Indian girl at Delhi airport, on her way home to Shillong. Rudderless and unaware, she will shortly travel to lesser known places and make existential discoveries, while learning about rootedness and the essence of community and language. In the next section, Evelyn Adelia Alexander in Edwardian England, armed with education and a maverick spirit, embarks on a mission to mysterious jungles in a remote corner of distant India. Nestling between these two narratives are two other wildly differing voyages, of Johann Goethe in 18th century Italy and that of botanist-taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in Lapland half a century before him. For reference, Pariat relied on works like Goethe’s own Flight to Italy and Linnaeus’ Tour in Lapland, amidst other copious research. Even while the stories of the characters across their individual sections play out in a seemingly unconnected manner, they are bound by a common instinct to go beyond known realms, challenge existing notions. Barring Linnaeus, their attempt is to defy labels or any sort of fixity. The unifying force is their connect to the natural world, which plays a vivid fifth protagonist. The novel is nuanced, and rich in detail, design, themes and language. One comes away with a sense of awe and the realisation that in the nonconformist manner of examining botany lies an interrogation of the ways we perceive the world, and how fixity and categorising can be stultifying whether it is in plants or in the world as we know it.
Sonali Mujumdar is an independent journalist. She lives in Mumbai.
