A saga that charms & haunts

Ancestral Affairs
by Keki Daruwalla.
Harper Collins.
Pages 243.
Rs 499 

Reviewed by Aradhika Sharma

Ancestral Affairs is aptly named, based as it is on the incidents of the author’s childhood. The time is the Partition of the country. The setting is Junagarh, (where the author spent four years) a princely state on the brink of secession poised to go either to India or Pakistan (But more inclined to secede and go to Pakistan). Retold in adult years by the adroit storyteller, Daruwalla, the incidents echo the politics of today and thus the story becomes even more significant and although one does not read a novel for its political commentary, one cannot but appreciate the resonance that history of that divisive period can have in the present times.

‘Sovereign, democratic republic, is it? So we get marginalised, pushed to the sidewalks; and we sleep on the pavements’, Abdul Kadir, the diwan of the prince of Junagarh says, while talking about Pakistan opting to be a Muslim state and India to have a Constituent Assembly.

Daruwalla’s first-hand experience lends veracity to the book, which has many other reasons to read it. ‘My father was the tutor and guardian of the prince as I have mentioned in the book. Childhood memories are good; they get imprinted on the brain.’ So he creates the protagonist, Saam Bharucha, a Parsi legal eagle who is sent to Junagarh as ‘law member’ to the erratic nawab. And when Daruwalla is scathing about the lassitude and apathy of the Indian princes towards their duties as administrators, one is convinced.

However, although the novel encompasses the national and local vistas but it is the story, nay, saga, of a family. The turbulence in the country is echoed in the life of the protagonist. While in Junagarh, waiting for audiences from the nawab that are few and far between, he meets the British couple Sydney and Claire Barnes. The sudden death of Sydney catapults the grieving widow and the young lawyer into an ardent affair that rings the death knell on Bharucha’s marriage with Zarine, who is more spiritually inclined and drawn to religion. It also distances him from his son, Rohinton who, because of the political unrest, had to return from his school in Muree and come to Bombay.

In the newly independent India, Rohinton’s life is pretty dramatic as well. He goes to Medical College in Kanpur, falls in love with the feisty Feroza, gets expelled because of a drinking brawl and later is defendant in a defamation suit by his editor. The book is told in two distinct voices — and the chapters are divided accordingly, alternating between the headings of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’. Finally, however, the lives of both generations of Bharuchas — Saam and Rohinton — quieten down and there’s reconciliation with life, relatives and history.

Abounding in the novel is a plethora of Parsee relatives — grandmothers and grandaunts and a villainous, venomous cousin or two. The Parsee-ness is charming, (references to the tower of silence, where vultures can devour the dead bodies in peace, to ceremonies like aghanis and besnas) the philosophy evocative. ‘Son, ancestors belong to the kingdom of the dead…..who are we to sit in judgment, we who have inherited their genes, their temper, their epilepsies, even their sugary, diabetic blood?’ asks Rohinton’s grandaunt.

Seeped in history, peppered with interesting incident and characters, Daruwalla’s work is perceptive, funny and droll and his use of the language is absolutely masterly. He obviously likes his characters but is not overawed by them. Finally, the author is respectful enough of the readers to serve them excellent prose.