Book Review: Garden of Solitude
Garden: A tended compendium of flowers, trees, and shrubs. It is the library of nature. The only thing that bothers me there is the word ‘tended’. Even if it means ‘to care’. It implies human intervention. After all, the garden is a human invention.
Don’t mistake me. I love gardens. But when it becomes a walled garden, then the ‘tending’ becomes ‘pretending’. There is no reality anymore. Everything is fake, every word is a lie.
Kashmir today is a walled garden. In a forest, there are no weeds. But in a walled garden, there are weeds, depending on who the gardener is. For the Indian Army, the militants are the weeds. For the Kashmir Muslims who sought freedom from India, the Pandits were the weeds.
A place that was proudly called the ‘Paradise on Earth’, is today a walled garden. Two gardeners compete — one in the name of religion and another in the name of history.
On a cold, snowless night in January 1990, things changed for Kashmiri Pandits. The sons of the soil who co-existed peacefully with their Muslim brethren, were suddenly aliens and misfits, despite their centuries-long presence. The plant became the weeds in the walled garden constructed overnight.
Plot:
Siddhartha Gigoo’s ‘Garden of Solitude’ traces the story of Sridar’s Kashmiri Pandit family. From generations of living in a tight-knit neighborhood, the three generations of his family struggle after being forced to vacate their posh house along the Nalla-e-Maer, just a stone throw’s from Jhelum. The story traces the events from normalcy to the migration of the family, along with many other Pandit families to migration camps in Jammu.
The book starts with a copious dose of normalcy — with Poshkuj, Sridhar’s great-grandmother’s death. The fables of Poshkuj, carried forward vividly and endearingly by her daughter-in-law Gowri, give a wonderful start to the book. The traces of that normalcy — a little neighborhood love, a stray dog chasing Sridar, create vivid imagery that the reader would yearn for to stay.
Mahanandju, Sridar’s grandfather is a well-respected practitioner of traditional medicine respected by both Muslim and Pandit communities. His relationship with Ali, his friend and neighbor, and Juma Saecz, the tailor, is a symbol of the symbiotic and peaceful relationship that prevailed till that fateful day. The brunt of the damage is faced by Sridar’s father, but the way it befalls each character of the family and their responses.
The ordinary Muslim accords a mixed reaction — some with clarity of brotherhood and bonhomie, some with cautious turpitude, stirred by the call for freedom. Nevertheless, the exodus begins. Lasa, Sridar’s father does not believe that the tumult will last, and like clouds, will go away. But slowly as tragedy hits close by, they leave — Lasa’s family first followed by him.
The story weaves the struggles of the characters in the migration camp. The scenes of the immigration camp depict a life soaked in despair and destitution. Right from sanitary conditions to mental depression, the Pandit families go through a painstaking change from shock to meek acceptance.
From this point, the story moves forward with the protagonist Sridhar, who becomes a writer and a poet, jumping from Delhi to Jammu. After his studies in Delhi, he travels to Ladakh where he meets a Llama. The conversation sows the seeds of turbulence in his mind, and despite having a cushy job in Chicago, Sridar returns to write the book about his ancestors, tracing the stories as he visits the migration camps and finally, his home and neighborhood at Nalla-e-Maer. The book ends with the launch of Sridar’s book ‘Book of Ancestors’.
My take:
Solitude: The word traveled with me as I read the story. First, the character arc of Sridar is fascinating — he loves solitude. He is an introvert and has a few friends. But he is also a conversationalist, as he engages in a conversation on different subjects — Pomposh, Almeira, Tulbul, Lenin, Nagaraj, Shahul, and so on. These characters pop in and out as if on cue to further Sridar’s journey, but they also change the character of Sridar’s solitude.
Likewise, Lasa is also a fascinating person — being the head of the family at the time of the exodus, the way he transforms from a reluctant, utopian mind that does not believe in the sudden onslaught on his world to the thriving, active father who supports his son as Sridar grows to be on his own.
If one reads Sridar’s poems, letters and conversations, he is a person who thrives in solitude. His ancestors, parents, his friends, and neighbors become his characters. He loves the glint of the sunshine in the uncleaned window glass and the purity in the single flake of snow. He smells, sees, and dips into nature. He is the observer and the observed in this story. The solitude does not change, even if the POV does; and that is the beauty of Gigoo’s writing.
Gigoo’s versatility is reflected as he goes from the narrator to philosopher, nature lover to the dystopian poet. It took me some time to figure out his style of writing. ‘Garden of Solitude’ is a good piece for those who love to read stories about Kashmir. More than that, if one is looking for a new author to read, Garden of Solitude unveils a gem.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2023
