The Heavens We Chase: A Novel

Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind

Description

In 1920, eleven-year-old Satya, resident of the temple-town of Shanishingnapur commits the ultimate act of treachery – theft. The houses in his town have no doors or windows because they believe that the malefic planet Shani who watches over their town will punish thieves. When Satya cycles away to Bombay, the deity strikes but undeterred he strives to chase down his heaven – money, privilege and his life’s ambition of a turf club for racing horses that will avenge his ouster from a ‘Europeans Only’ club.
Twenty years later Satya has risen in ranks as the Educational Inspector of the Bombay Presidency. In line with the vision of Thomas Macaulay, he sets the curriculum – Pythagoras instead of Panini, Galileo instead of Aryabhatta, Aesop’s Fables instead of the Jataka Tales – to create more and more Brown Sahibs to serve the British Raj. It is in Lahore, where he is sent as an inspector of schools, that he meets Professor Ibrahim Hamid, who teaches his students the poetry of Baba Waris Shah and Kabir and represents a worldview of nationalistic movement that is working towards a free nation.
This is also the story of Saraswathi, Satya's daughter, who much against his wishes is a singer of patriotic songs in support of the nationalist movement and falls in love with Professor Hamid while in Lahore with her father. Even as she struggles for her identity and purpose, she is chasing her own heaven – a place where she will find love, acceptance and respite from her father’s cruelty.
Set in the colonial cities of Bombay and Lahore, the Heavens We Chase is the story of a dysfunctional family whose dreams contradict each other’s while being inescapably entangled.

Sujets

• Aryabhatta
• Thomas Macaulay
• Galileo Galilei
• Galileo (disambiguation)
• Presidencies and provinces of British India
• Golden rule (law)
• Freedom Movement
• Inspector
• Crown colony
• Aryabhata
• Jataka tales
• Presidency
• Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
• School
• Pythagoras
• Mumbai
• Aesop's Fables
• Sahib
• Colonisation
• Thomas Babington Macaulay
• Nawab
• India
• Colonization
• Panini
• Lahore
• Galilée
• Fiction
• Bombay
• Éducation

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 19 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788186939819
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

THE HEAVENS WE CHASE
Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind is the winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Special Prize (2011). Her short story, The Crystal Snuff Box and the Pappudum , was adapted for radio by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and was broadcast in all the Commonwealth countries. Other short pieces include Those You Cannot See that appeared in the Griffith Review, Australia, Blueprint that appeared in Blink, the year-end fiction edition of the Hindu Business Line and The Idiot s Guide to the Indian Arranged Marriage that appeared in an anthology of New Asian Short Stories being published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia.
Apart from a master s degree in Business, she holds a master s degree in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the City University of Hong Kong. She is currently pursuing her master s degree in Women s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai and is working on her second novel.
She lives in Mumbai with her banker husband Arvind Narayanan and their four-year-old son, Arjun Arvind.
 
OTHER INDIAINK TITLES Anjana Basu Black Tongue Anjana Basu Chinku and the Wolfboy Anjum Hasan Neti, Neti Anuradha Majumdar Infinity Paper: A mysterious quest, an unforgettable adventure A.N.D. Haksar Madhav & Kama: A Love Story from Ancient India Boman Desai Servant, Master, Mistress Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Shadowland Claudine Le Tourneur d lson Hira Mandi C.P. Surendran An Iron Harvest Haider Warraich The Auras of the Jinn I. Allan Sealy The Everest Hotel I. Allan Sealy Trotternama Indrajit Hazra The Garden of Earthly Delights Jaspreet Singh 17 Tomatoes: Tales from Kashmir Jawahara Saidullah The Burden of Foreknowledge John MacLithon Hindutva, Sex & Adventure Kalpana Swaminathan The Page 3 Murders Kalpana Swaminathan The Gardener s Song Kamalini Sengupta The Top of the Raintree Madhavan Kutty The Village Before Time Pankaj Mishra The Romantics Paro Anand Pure Sequence Rakesh Satyal Blue Boy Ranjit Lal Bambi Chops and Wags Ranjit Lal The Life &Times of Altu-Faltu Ranjit Lal The Small Tigers of Shergarh Ranjit Lal The Simians of South Block and Yumyum Piglets Raza Mir & Ali Husain Mir Anthems of Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu Poetry Sanjay Bahadur The Sound of Water Sanjay Bahadur Hul: Cry Rebel! Selina Sen A Mirror Greens in Spring Shandana Minhas Tunnel Vision Sharmistha Mohanty New Life Shree Ghatage Brahma s Dream Sudhir Thapliyal Crossing the Road Susan Visvanathan Nelycinda and Other Stories Susan Visvanathan The Visiting Moon Susan Visvanathan The Seine at Noon Tanushree Podder Escape from Harem
 
THE HEAVENS WE CHASE
A NOVEL
Lavanya Shanbhogue - Arvind

 
ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2016
First published in 2016 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone:++91 (011)40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-81-86939-81-9
All rights reserved.
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
 
For Patti, for kindness and care For my parents, for life, for love For Arvind & Arjun, for love, for laughter
 
The nearest Dream recedes - unrealized -
The Heaven we chase,
Like the June Bee-before the School Boy,
Invites the Race-
Stoops-to an easy Clover -
Dips-evades-teases-deploys-
Then-to the Royal Clouds
Lifts his light Pinnace -
Heedless of the Boy -
Staring - bewildered-at the mocking sky -
Homesick for steadfast Honey -
Ah, the Bee flies not
That brews that rare variety!
- Emily Dickinson
 
CONTENTS

Confetti, Chrysanthemum and Curses
The Thief of Wheels
The Pain in Vain
The Truth About Truth
Familiarity of the Madness
Things that Crawl and Scare
Confessions to a Friend
Many Bombay Evenings
To Speak to a Brother
Goodbye, For Now
The Fate of the Blue Lizards
The Price of Difference
The Songs of Bengal
Two Scandals and a Primrose
Happy and Unsettled
A Friend in Rage
The Shadows of Dreams
Maybe Love
What is in Store?
An Unlikely Union
The Beginning of Afterlife
A Sham by Any Other Name
This Pedestrian Life
Acknowledgements
 
CONFETTI, CHRYSANTHEMUM AND CURSES

I lost my virginity in Lahore. It was a detour from our travel itinerary. Pa and I were to return to Bombay from Karachi by the end of July 1942, after a well-spent two weeks in Sind; but Pa received an officiallooking letter; not the type Salaam sent Pa to check on our health and whereabouts or to complain about Gossiper and Rumourmonger, but a real letter with the emblem of the government and all that. It turned out that the letter was from Sir Gordon (the erstwhile Esquire Gordon, knighted in the July of 1936 after serving Her Majesty with fealty), Director of Public Instruction, Bombay Presidency. Pa was ordered to go to Lahore, Punjab. I understood from the look on Pa s face that these things were unusual but there was little choice. So we packed our trunks and left for Lahore.
What happened in Lahore was the stuff of karmic debts. Or so I thought. My religious beliefs were a mass of gooey, overlapping confusions. I was part-Catholic and part-Hindoo, part-British, part-Indian. And Salaam had told me that there were different heavens for different Gods: the pearly white Christian heaven with floating angels sporting yellow halos, flying about serenely, flapping their pristine feathery wings, and then there were the vibrant Hindoo heavens beautified in red and golden and yellow and purple silks, the gods and goddess wearing crowns and jewel-encrusted bodices. Apparently, planets orbited their divine heads as they wielded chakras that could decapitate erring men. Salaam had never described the heavens of Allah to me. But he, Salaam, had told me each time we rode the tonga together, that there was no place for immorality in their heaven. I was afraid of everything for Salaam told me that there were different hells too.
But since everything is so dark there you won t be able to see anything, he said, except for the screams. They are same in all the hells.
Because I had to, I gave myself to a man I loved. It had been the day Pa was away with the school managers, locked up behind important doors. Yet again, the Professor had been excluded by Pa. So, we had walked around the expansive grounds of the Lively Hearts School, under the shade of an endless row of drooping junipers whose leaves rustled and danced when the winds touched them. Far away over the treetops, black birds in a flock dispersed into the air, their dark bodies staining the white of the skies. As we walked towards the trees, mostly in silence, they rose higher and higher. The Professor was nineteen years older than me, a foot taller than I was and more handsome than I would ever be considered beautiful. I was four feet and eleven inches with a face mildly pimpled by stubborn adolescence; dark hair tumbled to my waist in frustrating rebellion and I was a brown being with blue eyes, an infallible mistake. Yet he loved me. I noticed his bleak eyes and cheerless expression and just as I began to ask him if something was wrong, he spoke in a soft, sad voice.
Show it to me, again, he said.
We stopped walking. I faced him and upon meeting his eyes I had seen both anger and pain. I rolled up the sleeves of my blouse and extended my right arm in a slow and tentative motion.
He ran a light forefinger across the length of my forearm, tracing the path of a deep white ridge, an ugly seam formed by mended skin. His finger touched my wrist and found its way into my palm. I clasped his finger, then his hand and led him away.

I vaguely remember that the walls had been painted a melange of obscure green and gloomy grey - an implausible combination of poverty and distaste. But, it had not mattered, for I loved him and he certainly loved me. There was a certain light in his eyes. And tell me, how can you feign a twinkle in the eye?
I was afraid of society, especially of Rumourmonger and Gossiper and the little evening parties of these ancient women, their ancient china, their hushed whispers that would spread like the panic of idiots, their wagging tongues that would scatter away whole reputations into little tads of gossip. Once, long ago Ma had warned me about them and my brother made it a matter of routine to avoid them.
I did have a reputation. I was known. I was respected. I was an A-grade staff artist at All India Radio and I had cleared seven vigorous rounds of audition by the jury. A-grade, mind you, so you can imagine the quality of the voice, the tonality and the sheer lilt and melody. Staff artist, mind you, not a casual artist. We are a pompous lot, we staff artists. The grading system ensures division. I would never eat lunch with the B-grade and C-grade singers. I could never be seen with the casuals. I also sang for Hindi films. It had all started when Pandit Durgadas Chaturvedi, music composer and maestro par excellence, zealously pursued my voice. Finally, I agreed and Tum Aur Main broke all records as the angels in white and the gods and goddesses in purple and yellow silks showered me with snow-white confetti and chrysanthemums. The only people A-grade artists looked up to were maestros from various gharanas, them with the voice of God. I was no less, me, the voice of the goddess. I