Different truths

A book can never suffer from too much wit. Too many wisecracks can, however, work against it. In Manu Joseph’s The Illicit Happiness Of Other People, besides interfering with an otherwise smooth narrative, they make you suspicious of the author’s intentions; you can’t help but feel that his need to make “smart” observations often overpowers his need to tell a story. That’s a pity because Joseph does have a story to tell. And when it’s not being used as a medium to deride, it is deeply evocative of the human condition, if there is such a thing.

Set in the late eighties in Madras, this is a story about a Malayalee Catholic family living on the respectable Balaji Lane where “Men are managers, mothers are housewives. And all bras are white.” Ousep Chacko, the father, is trying to make sense of his son’s suicide. A drunk and a journalist, his sole purpose in life is to understand why his 17-year-old cartoonist son, Unni Chacko, decided to jump off the building for no apparent reason. His wife Mariamma doesn’t have the luxury of making her son’s death a full-time obsession — she has her own demons to fight, with a wall for solace, besides attending to her younger son Thoma. Caught between a drunk father and a nutty mother is the 12-year-old Thoma who knows only two interesting facts — the full form of KGB and Pele’s real name. Surely not enough in a world where every boy’s goal is to crack the Joint Entrance Exam.

It is Ousep and his relentless pursuit of the truth behind Unni’s suicide that drive the plot. His quest leads him to an oddball mix of characters that include, among others, Unni’s friends from school, a nun sworn to silence, cartoonists who go by the name of Alpha and Beta and a neuropsychiatrist.

Joseph peoples his book with finely-etched characters. And you get a sense that he knows their “type” — at least the men. However, the problem with fleshing out characters from real life is that they rarely escape the author’s judgement to evolve as individuals. In The Illicit... the men mostly remain prisoners of the author’s insight and opinion, which are mostly scathing. So, there are men who conform and are fated to mediocrity, those whose lives are defined by multiple-choice questions, clearing the IIT, getting a job in America and so on. Then, there are those who see the futility of it all, only to be condemned to resign into their own worlds.

It is the central female character, Mariamma, who evolves most organically. She isn’t burdened with too much assessment. She just is. And that somehow makes her more complete.

Suicide is never an easy matter to deal with. Some writers can make it seem ordinary. Others can imbue it with glamour, even heroism. But in The Illicit... it is treated more as a philosophical problem.

The mystery of Unni’s death is shrouded in questions.

Did Unni kill himself because he wasn’t “good at MCP (Maths-Physics-Chemistry)”? Was he too close to knowing something he shouldn’t have bothered with in the first place? Was he trying to grapple with a world he did not understand?

Even as Ousep searches for an answer, the subplot always revolves around the futility, even peril, of seeking the truth. After all, Unni himself had once told his mother in one of his “biblical” moods that: “Truth is not consistent. It changes from brain to brain. The truth of every neurological system is unique and it cannot be transmitted. It cannot be told, it cannot be conveyed, it cannot be searched for and found.”

A review, like any critical piece, must take an opinion, good or bad, and then leaven it with suitable evidence. But does literature, like life, conform to such certainties? Purists would deride this sentiment claiming that it is important, even critical, for a book to be judged on its literary merits. On that count, The Illicit... scores, albeit unevenly. But at another level, it is a more sure-footed triumph, because it accommodates doubt. What you really take away from the book is the pointlessness of being certain, which ironically makes the act of reviewing itself seem a little silly.

THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE
Manu Joseph
Fourth Estate
343 pages; Rs 499