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Book Name:The Shining Hero Author:Sara Banerji Publisher: Harper Collins India Price: Rs. 395/

SIBLING RIVALRY WITH EPIC UNDERCURRENTS

What first strikes an Indian reader is the spelling of Koonty. Why that spelling, you wonder as you flip through the pages looking for a rich Mahabharata clone. It is a little irritating when everything else seems to be spelled as it should be in this novel, surprising in one written by a non-Indian. Sara Banerji’s novel tells the story of a poor young Indian boy who fights like a tiger to achieve fame and fortune. A young man who obviously has to be called Karna since he is born as the result of a chance encounter with an actor who plays the role of the sun god in a film version of the Mahabharata.

Koonty, who seems to be remarkably ignorant of the facts of life, gives birth beside the river without knowing it, thinking that her agony is the result of a fish allergy. Horrified, she places the baby onto a piece of floating debris, which happens to be the hand of the goddess Durga fixes her own necklace around his neck and pushes the baby downriver, convinced that he is a girl. Several miles downstream in Calcutta, the baby is discovered by Dolly, a young married woman desperate for a child. She takes him home and brings him up as her own son, calling him Karna.

Koonty, in the meantime, manages to conceal her lack of virginity and marries Pandu the zamindar of Hatipur and gives birth to a son called Arjun, so that the two heroic parallels are set, ready for their encounter, the parameters of which are dictated by the Mahabharata. Between Karna and Arjun there can only be rivalry, both striving to outdo the other.

However, Banerji’s adaptation of the Mahabharata story is only restricted to the rivalry between the two half brothers. There are none of the other nuances of the story – even though Dolly, Karna’s foster mother is married to Adhiratha, a driver who has an affliction of the eye. Dolly dies, leaving Karna out on the streets and forcing him to seek out Koonty.

While Banerji’s depiction of life on the streets is deft, her description of Koonti’s life in the big house at Hatipur tends to be a little sketchy. We are told in detail of Pandu’s cow keeping and of the Kathiawari pony that his son learns to ride, but little else. In fact it seems that Banerji’s main interest is Karna and his Oliver Twistlike life as the leader of a gang of car part thieves, with the added fact that he wants to be a Bollywood star.

Arjun, on the other hand, in the middle of his privileged life loses his father so, it seems that there are no untidy sub plots to the story of his rivalry with Karna. And then, equally quickly loses his mother in a balanced fateful death during a Durga puja immersion so that her end merges with the beginning of Karna’s life.

As a substitute for the missing mother figure is Koonty’s politician sister who experiences the violence of the Naxalite movement and tries to find in politics a satisfaction missing in her personal life. Sivarani is dark and tall, quite the opposite of her pretty petite sister. Her life is defined by her darkness because she cannot fit into the ways of polite society. She tries to look after her nephews but can only try to order things from a distance, like Karna’s acting lessons and martial arts lessons. Sivarani’s boyfriend is called Bhima, a heroic man who does not fill the role prescribed for him in the Mahabharata but who adds his own epic dimension to the book. My feeling again is that the name Bhima conjures up the connotations of strength and brotherhood that belong to Vyasa’s epic, though he is not related to Karna and Arjun at all expect through their aunt whom he ultimately marries.

Perhaps in the end it is the combination of the matter of fact and the epic that make this book different from the other books about India. The author’s telling of the story is very focussed – she has a concept in her mind and she deviates from it very rarely. Sadly so because a little mystery and magic would have raised the book to quite another plane

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