Editorial Carnatic Music Humour Short Story Taranum From Ground Zero Music & Arts Book Review Voice It Art of Living Prev Issue Next Issue

Dark Rooms : A Novel in Verse - Siddharth Katragadda Siddharth Katragadda was born in India. He came to America to pursue his masters degree in August 1995. He currently works as a Software Engineer for Qualcomm Inc, San Diego, California. His first book, "Dark Rooms: A Novel in Verse", was published recently (PublishAmerica, September 2002). His work has appeared in A Generation Defining Itself, Golden Thoughts, America at the Millennium and Sulekha. He is the winner of two Editor's Choice Awards awarded by the International Library of Poetry. His first Novel is awaiting publication, an excerpt of which was published in Writer's Monthly. Eventually, he intends to expand Dark Rooms and his first novel into two separate trilogies - a trilogy of verse collections and a trilogy of novels. He is currently finishing the second part of the Dark Rooms trilogy, expected to be out in 2003. He lives with his wife in San Diego, California.

Click on the image to enlarge it	Book Name:Dark Rooms : A Novel in Verse Publisher: Publish America Year: August 2002 ISBN: 1-59129-503-3 Purcahse info: Available at all leading bookstores including Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Walmart - USA For further information go to http://darkrooms.latest-info.com/
	Part I of a Trilogy of Lives The Author on the Book:

A man sits in a house full of dark rooms waiting for his lover to return to him. Gopal is the only one left in the Kachiguda house. In its dark rooms, once filled with a great family legacy, his legendary father’s intellectual whispers and the cries of six children, he looks back on a generation gone wrong. Where did they go wrong in their lives? Can a family’s decadence be explained in the little things left behind in those dark rooms – a picture of his father standing next to his Moris Minor, a broken gramophone, a deserted kitchen. Sleeping for hours under an old creaking fan, he looks back to his failed marriage to Kaveri, Kaveri who left him, remarried and moved to America. Dark rooms is also a saga of a man seen through the eyes of a nephew from the time when Gopal first meets Kaveri to when the news of Kaveri’s death comes to him, while he awaits her, sitting in one of those dark rooms...

When I started writing Dark Rooms, I wanted to write something more than a collection of verses. I wanted to write a story. And hence, Dark Rooms came out being a story - a story that unfolds the drama of family struggling to stay afloat in the early post-independence era of India.

Dark Rooms takes a period of time long dead, and attempts to immortalize it in the reader’s mind. The book looks back on a family of six children born into a famous literary family, examining the reason for them failing in life, and why they could not living up to the reputation of their esteemed father, who dies when they are still very young, leaving them fatherless. It observes how each one of them slips further away from the greatness of their father, getting sucked into the mundane lives of survival, in a country that was yet altering its course after independence and re-mapping its future. Was each one of those dark rooms in which they grew up in to blame for the outcome?

In the end, we are left with questions. Did the family fail or was it inevitable fate that could not be avoided? Could the family have avoided their decadence had it not lived off the pride of their famous father? Was their father to blame for instilling this confusing emotion in his childrens´ minds that eventually led to their failure?

The book focuses on Gopal, one of the siblings and the biggest failure of all, whose wife Kaveri leaves him and moves to America, and who turns into a Devdas-like poet thereafter. In his poems, sleeping for hours under an old creaking fan, he reminisces the shallow joys of his life, burnt into deep agonies.

Other characters enter and leave. Yadagiri, a dancer. And Surya, an artist who draws cartoons for local periodicals. All artists who, like Gopal, feel they are waste products of society. Then, comes my own character, Gopal’s nephew, I am the second and the more neutral eye of the book, exploring and interrogating each one of those six children.

Later in life, when I am in a dilemma of whether to go to America for his higher studies, it is Gopal, though a person rooted in his ground and who detests the fact that Kaveri left him to go to America, who influences me to go. I go to America but do not find true happiness there. Part of the book deals with this immigrant syndrome.

The book is split into three parts - the Birth of Kaveri, the Monsoon of Kaveri and the Death of Kaveri. These individual parts describe respectively the marriage of Gopal and Kaveri, the inevitable separation, and finally the arrival of the news of the death of Kaveri as Gopal awaits her return, sitting in those very dark rooms. There is a hidden metaphor of Kaveri to the river.
Here, I quote from the book: …Kaveri is the name of a river in south India that dries up in summer but runs free and full after the monsoon rains have come and left the air smelling of earth…
Then when Kaveri decides to leave Gopal, she tells him: …I am a river. I need to flow. If you try to stop a river, it kills the people around it…

When the news of Kaveri’s death comes to Gopal, he thinks that Kaveri, the river, always dried up in summer. She would swell again when the monsoons came. This is the central power in the story - how hope and can suspend a person in the fine equilibrium between living and lasting.

It was Arundhati Roy whose book God of Small Things won a Bookers Award influenced me into the use of metaphors and you will see them throughout the book.
Another example from Dark Rooms: …the descent of his landlord’s voice, words heaped in abuse, intermittent between sprinkles like mango-showers in mid-April…

Of course, my religion has a large part to play in this style. I was born a Hindu, I was a staunch believer in God till I was around fifteen and then I grew out of it. Now, I would like to think of myself as a detached atheist. But religion is not just about God. Religion is a combination of godly beliefs and traditions. What Hinduism has given me is a truly unique culture and tradition, it has created a microcosm of values, traditions and festivals that have not only given me the discipline to remain focused on my writing but has also made my writing very colorful. Hinduism is a very colorful religion. The gods themselves are very colorful and imaginative. What else can you say of a religion that has a god with an elephant and lion-heads and human bodies.

Here’s another example from Dark Rooms: …Each room needed to be turned inside out, Like Lord Narasimha, the half-lion, half-man did by splitting his foe in half with his bare hands. I am a shrink, neither a man nor animal. I tried to invert this house, will all its dark rooms….

The trilogy is an examination of three lives. Dark Rooms is the first book of a trilogy. The second book is expected to be out in 2003.There is a progression in each part. The first part is about Gopal. The second is about Leela, the oldest sister. And the last is about Ram, the oldest brother. This kind of progression is a vital part of writing. As Manil Suri, a mathematician and the famous author of "Death of Vishnu" said, "each line in a book should be like a math equation. If you use the wrong word, the entire sentence and hence the entire book would fail in reaching a correct answer. Similarly, it is important for not only lines and characters to be like math equations, but a writing career should be planned ahead of time just like an equation.

My first novel, yet unpublished, is also a part of a trilogy. This first attempt at fiction is about my own life. The next books in the series will each step back a generation and explore the ironies of Indian life in that generation. In other words, it is the drama of three generations played backward. So there is a progression even there.

The central quality of the book Dark Rooms that would most appeal to readers is the mood. The most important thing that a writer must put down, right on the first page, is the mood. In the very beginning of the book, the author sets the mood - one of lost grandeur and one that can only be understood standing in the dark rooms of a house that was once rich and famous, full of children running around. Gopal's role in setting the mood is also important. Here is a man who does nothing but sit in a house full of dark rooms, reminiscing his lost love and their family's failures. His character makes people wonder whether such a life is possible in today's fast paced world.

The name Dark Rooms is the literal translation of “Cheekati Gadilu” a novel written in Telugu by my grandfather, Tripuraneni Gopichand. Awarded the Sahitya Academy Award, one of India’s highest literary awards, he was renowned as one of the pillars of Telugu literature, famous for writing the first psychological book ever in the language. My great-grandfather, Tripuraneni Ramaswamy Chowdhury, was a famous revolutionary poet whose postal stamp was released by the Indian government. So, the writing heritage has always been there in my family. Somehow, during the lost generation mentioned in the book, there were no writers. Today, I have been chosen as the humble bearer of their name and I am honored. I’ve named the book after my grandfather’s great novel because I perceive my writing as a continuation of his spark.

Here, is the first poem of the book Click on the image to enlarge it

Dark Rooms In the study, now dark and deserted The rusted gramophone tip Lay stuck to the last track Of the record, the drum to the side, Like the head of its proud master, When death came to him, One of those clear-blue summer Afternoons in Hyderabad. The music still echoed in the air, Though it had been years Since the voice of Shamshad Begum Played in that room, Lingering like a ghost that Was determined to finish that song. An invisible hand reached to crank the Dead machine to life but slipped past. The ghost of my grandfather, Trying to pick up his pen, The raven-colored India Ink in which Had dried decades ago, Tried to finish his unfinished book. How painful it must be to die And leave his characters unredeemed. They were the ones who must have Cried the most at his funeral. They were the ones who must have Called in pleading voices for his resurrection, Pledges that must have Trapped him between worlds. After all is said and done, You stand and look at the walls, The limestone-painted rooms, The beds, with their large teak headboards, The empty closets that a herd of lizards Had made their home, watching The drama of a family unfold, Where spiders tumble On thin strings of silver saliva, Where roaches scurry out at the Sounds of the doors opening, You try to tell yourself, like a confident shrink, There has to be a reason. If there has to be a cause for Everything in this world then this is it. These dark rooms are to blame. This is probably where my grandfather Hit the shivering head of his youngest son For failing in math. Red marks were forbidden. A place on the wall where the blue plaster Had started to peel, revealing the fading white Primer coat, and where still remained, A silent reminder, a shallow dent In the shape of a forehead. In the middle room, full of clothe hangers Without any clothes, Like skeletons without bodies, This was where my mother must have run To get away from the wrath of her father When his face became a marble effigy of contempt, And his expression bordered on mockery, His mouth straightened into a hard line, When she earned less than full marks in Telugu class. Her father’s voice carrying over that of the mullah’s, Who screamed from the nearby Mosque, Now where will she hide? Does she need to hide? The object of her fright has turned into a ghost Along with her secret hiding places. Then, in the kitchen, where must have sat My grandmother, her wicker rice sieve Going “Shush! Shush!” as she prepared dinner, The smell of cardamom and cloves in the air, Fanning my grandfather, While he voraciously swallowed his Meals of oily, ghee-filled pomfret curry, Feeding his brain that his stomach Where his hungry characters Could start playing out their parts. Curry that was one day bound towards his heart Like a pirate ship sailing to port. From the kitchen opened the courtyard, where My grandfather must have stood and listened To the descent of his landlord’s voice, Words heaped in abuse, Intermittent between sprinkles of saliva Showering down like mango-showers in mid-April, About how much excess water had been used by them, How many months’ rent had not been paid, The words entering his veins, reaching his heart. Fear, neglect and insult written in every corner, On every wall. And pride, the worst of them, Full of half promises, written everywhere. On the front wall was a picture of grandfather, Faded brown with age, sepia, Standing proudly by his silver-gray Moris Minor, One hand on the shiny hood, The chrome glinting through his fingers, His broad-carved face twisted in a proud smile, And, if it had not been a photo, One could have seen a muscle flicking pompously in his jaw. His firm mouth curled as if always on the edge of laughter His crooked nose giving him a kind of rugged geniality, His hair, a cobweb of silver, light against his sun-whacked skin. His expression darkened with an unreadable emotion, Like a hunter who’d just skinned a man-eater alive. Dressed in a silk shirt and khaki pantaloons, a sahib. He had done his bar-at-law at Oxford. Was the pride on his face bound to trickle down, Percolate into the minds of his young children? Children, who, after he died, worshipped that picture As they did the many god pictures in the puja room. Did it make them believe that pride alone Would run their lives. Like the Moris Minor that ran on Petrol alone for many a year. Chugging along, the wind in its domed windshield, Kicking dust up in a swirl as it rattled past Dusty village roads on the way to Gandipet Lake. The lake lay smoother than snakeskin in the sun. The sun's disc bisecting the horizon. Dew-drenched grass glittering. Past fields silver and green with ripening rice, Six chattering kids sitting in the back, fighting over Who sat near the windows, and who in the middle So he or she could croon over their mother’s head In the front seat, and play with her sari gold-laced pallu. And who sat on the father’s lap and held the wheel. Each piece needed to be examined, Like the innards of a mind. Weighed for guilt. Each room needed to be turned inside out, Like Lord Narasimha, the half-lion, half-man, did By splitting his enemy in half with his bare hands. I stood at the doorstep, neither indoors nor outdoors, It was dusk, neither day nor night, I am a shrink, neither a man nor animal. I tried to invert this house, with all its dark rooms. The failure of a life, or lives or a family Or an entire generation Lay in the environment that gave rise to it. These dark rooms. ?

Siddharth Katragadda answers a few questions from his readers on the next page

Next

View and Post comment on this article