Lost in exotica

Too much exotica clutters Widows, which could have gripped with its mix of myth, tradition and the modern society.

The Village of the Widows
Ravi Shankar Etteth
Penguin Books India
2004
Fiction
Pages: 368
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 0143031759
Paperback

Ravi Shankar Etteth, India Today's deputy editor, cartoonist, graphic artist, a sorcerer, returns with a tale of murder, drugs and prostitution, all swirling behind a fog of mystique and mystery, in his second novel, The Village of Widows.

HT Image

He returns, once again, as in Tiger by the River, to his land, Kerala, in a book populated with page three people - artists, diplomats, socialites, publicity seekers.

There is Jay Samorin, the cartoonist, Kalaripayattu expert, whose job is to find evil and reach the throbbing node of its intricate, devious roots. Like Samorin says: He sits back and closes his eyes and tries to dissect the crime like analysing a painting - trying to push away the dark curtains to see the method in the painting.

Samorin quite reminds one of Sherlock Holmes with his deft, cool and unusual methods in tracking down the criminal. Samorin of the dark black hair with one silver lock. Stylish, intriguing. His has a pet fosa, a Malagasy carnivore as huge and as dangerous as a leopard.

But his placid exterior hides in its folds dark secrets, which return to unnerve and rattle him, as he moves in a Kalaripayuttu manoeuvre with the high strung and brilliant painter, Dhiren Das, who has trailed him since Samorin was a child.

And there is Anna Khan. A tough lady cop whose psyche is marred by the horrifying death her husband suffered at the hands of Kashmiri Mujahideens.

The story begins with the mysterious murder of a diplomat at the Madagascan embassy in Delhi.The ambassador calls upon his old friend Jay Samorin to help find the killer.

Together Jay Samorin and Anna Khan, the gifted amateur and the jaded professional start to untangle a shocking web of corruption, prostitution and callous medical malpractice, and come upon a trail leading back through the darkest recesses of their own lives to that elusive, haunted place known as the Village of Widows.

Too much exotica clutters the book, which could have gripped with its mix of myth, tradition, the modern society, a drug racket and an artist's fantastic vision, all hidden behind a fog, a veil of mystery which Etteth builds up engagingly. The characters seem like caricatures. Their responses cliched and trite, almost like those in the popular Mills and Boons romances.

The saving grace is Etteth's stylized prose, which shines brilliantly. Just one instance to close with:

"Was there fog that morning? What did Father see as he walked to his death?

Higher, trying to leap higher: as a boy digging the balls of his feet into the earth as the momentof lifting came, the tightening of calves, the curling of thigh tendons, the gathering speed withinhim clenching and pumping down at the moment fo final impact: trying to leap higher thanFather's death..."