Imagine an old, dusty, murky and decaying library which nobody visits anymore. If you step inside you'll find an old man in his late 70s, lost in his own memories, keeping watch of the library as if keeping a vigil. Who is this old man? A yellow window of a house opposite is seen from the library's window, and it floods back memories of the old man's lost love. One day, a boy visits the library, and forms an inexplicable bond with the old man, but the two men cannot understand each other, nor do they care. The yellow window charms both of them, and with different reasons. But, we are outsiders in their life. We'll soon know their world, which has lights and shadows, tragedies and hopes, tensions and a glimmer of love to cling to.
Boy is at the cusp of difficult relationship
with his father, an imaginary love affair, and a mystic attraction for an impervious
love. He is searching for love, a highly paid job and wants to prove to his
father, that he was right and his father was wrong the whole time. A tension
between two generations – an expectant father and a self-assured son – intersperse
the story. Boy is living the present. In contrast, the old man, Basar Mal is at
the crossover of memory of long lost love, threat of land mafias, old age and
weakening strength to keep going. Still, he is searching for some hope, taking
pleasure in rekindling the memories – that which gives him both pain and
pleasure. Basar Mal is virtually living in the past. We find a perfect
characterization of the old man and the boy. Intensity and the voice are just right.
We know what they stand for – the contrast between two people at the two ends
of life.
The story takes us to Larkana,
Pakistan where Basar promises Jaam that they would run away together. But then
the India-Pakistan partition not only divides the land and people, but also
these two loving souls. After a long struggle as a refugee to get an identity, Basar
Mal settles in Mumbai, gets a job and opens a library where he finds his solace
and a resting place for his overwhelming memories of Sindh – his land and
people, and his love. But, it is also as if trying to hide a wound for your
life, because it is there.
Here, the Sindhu Library is a
place of melancholic escape, a dignity, for a slumber to the comfort of dreams,
a ruin of life that doesn't know how to dissipate and why to fail, a poetic
gesture of unbridled love for the land, language, people and heritage. You'll
never forget the old man for the rest of your life. You'll search for him in
the hidden corners of the library.
This is a story of aftermath of partition,
story of a man from the Sindh, in part a story of refugees and people
displaced, but more than all of this, it is a love story, a tragedy – of people
left alone and the forgotten histories just like the old neglected library. There
is an underlying philosophy around memory and how it shapes our present, and
what we are, and what we become at every moment. Sad end of old realities
haunting the present, as if a man cast away in the past, has come as a revenant;
has come to the present to die. As we read the novel, we see a mirror building
at the back of our consciousness and things appear there – a gigantic
revelation, a discomfort, and a weight of the past. In non-existent guava smell,
the unheard laughter, the yellow frame of the window, and loose fading pages
and disintegrating covers of the library books, we find the scattered sensibilities,
and without a single reality to hold onto, yet they are the only consolation.
There
is nothing more personal than memory. Nothing more manipulated than it. The struggle
of memory with memory, struggle of memory with oblivion, struggle of memory
with imagination, struggle of memory with truth, and struggle of memory with
beliefs and suppositions – at how many levels this goes on, and in how many
worlds simultaneously – that someone said, the human is a memorial to the
multiple worlds of the human in oblivion.
The story alternates between the
stories of Basar Mal, the boy, books, and few characters surrounding them in the
past and the present. Each time, we progress to something more subtle than
before, and if we take a moment to reflect, they project to something universal
and ethereal of this land and of the susceptibilities left alone, ridden on the
voice of soul. Detailing has been kept to a minimum, but things happen
elsewhere, on other realms, where you'll immediately find your other self. We
will find poetic pieces, as if they are stations or branches where authors
wants to stay a while, but then he moves on.
The silences in the novel are
moments of brewing up agonies, or of dreams what can keep you awake. The
passing of time and wait seems like an eternal futility but is also a core of
love that drives us, that makes us blind and shows us the other way inside. Memories
are treacherous, invincible – they can come back in smells, in laughter, in
resonating images – but what should we make of them, where should we keep them,
how long can we ignore them, where will it take us? We see a mild vertigo, and
a restlessness in the story, which perfectly capture the moods of the characters. But who has the mantra to open the portal to a quantum of solace, to a peace of mind, and to a happy endings to our love? Perhaps none has, but... After finishing the novel, when I reflected in peace, suddenly everything
became universal! It was moment of delight.
When you are just beginning to
make sense of the world other than love, you cannot understand the war, the
purpose of hatred, and the entitlements after killing. The background set at
the verge of partition has given the story a chance to revisit the tragedy of
the pasts and the following parting, struggle, blood and death. When the cover
of the book speaks, we find the reverence for the books, as if a hymn by the
author, as if he is finding place to speak with us more personally and share
his love for the literature and books and at places, he purposefully animates
the books. The emoticons : - ) do their job, and at other times, the left end,
the incompleteness completes with sentimental richness.
I
am a book. Touch me. Kiss me. Read me. From start to finish. I am the
beginning. I am the end. You don't need to try very hard. If you've felt me
with your fingers, then you've kissed me with your eyes. And, if you've pressed
your lips against my skin, then you've reposed me in your heart. A sincere
touch or a heartfelt kiss is enough to open me up.
Simsim is a humane story! We know
what forms the characters and their fate, their world, their recluse and their
solitude, their will and their passion to continue. The story is of all those
and that is left after a storm, and you cling to them for dear life.
Thank you Geet for the story, and
Anita for this wonderful translation sticking to the originality of the language,
which feels as fresh as the memories of guava smell. : - )
Original Text: Hindi
Translator: Anita Gopalan
Publisher: Penguin India https://penguin.co.in
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