Deaf Heaven by Pinki Virani

Title: Deaf Heaven

Author: Pinki Virani
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 283
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 10

After reading such remarkable non-fiction work by Pinki Virani - ‘Aruna’s story’ and ‘Bitter Chocolate’, her first attempt at fiction looked promising. Usually a 280-page novel is not a big deal for me, but completing this book was particularly taxing.

‘Deaf Heaven’ is a typical roman a clef where in a novel describes real life and real life instances, behind the guise of fiction. The book acts like an unorganized and a poor compilation of numerous unrelated characters and myriad issues together.

Saraswati, a librarian with cleft lip, is the narrator of this bizarre story where completely unconnected characters are brought together through her. She is lying dead in a library and till the time her body is discovered, her spirit is free to move around and eavesdrop into the lives of people. I could not find any relevance of Saraswati’s character to the story. All the pages which go on to build this character seem as irrelevant as the rest of the book. There are too many characters, their conversations banal and their stories commonplace. The book is just an anthology of everyday facts, popular newspaper stories which we already know. There is no new wisdom.

I also had a problem with the language. It has too much of colloquialism, under the pretext of keeping the essence alive. This is exactly the reason why I steer clear of dime-a-dozen novels in the market written by just about anybody. It is beyond my comprehension why spoken language, even what I call sms language with short-forms like ‘princi’ for principal and ‘hols’ for holiday, has come to be accepted in mainstream writing and publishing. For me, a book is worth my time only if it makes a difference, to my thought process, to my vocabulary or atleast inspires introspection. Literature is worthwhile when it makes you fall in love with the language and its expression.

I struggled with the book throughout, failing to understand the objective of this book. It just keeps jumping from one issue to another without structure or relevance. So from bollywood’s scoop section to 26^th July Mumbai floods, from Bhopal gas tragedy to tribal conversions for political mileage, from ecological disturbances to Mumbai train blasts; it has every particular contemporary issue of today, juxtaposed to make no sense at all. Sometimes, the narration just runs into pages like a never-ending essay, and that too largely is opinion rather than any story-telling.  

My words of caution: please do yourself a favour – avoid it. 

(Image source: flipkart.com)

Aruna’s Story by Pinki Virani

I picked this up because I picked up “Bitter Chocolate”, and do not regret it. This is yet another remarkable book by Pinki Virani, based on the true story of Aruna Shanbaug. I had vaguely heard about this case. This case received much media glare due to its relevance in the legal debates on “mercy killing” or “euthanasia”.


Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM hospital, Mumbai, is accosted by one of the hospital sweepers, raped and strangled by a dog chain in the basements of KEM. The sweeper had been reprimanded by Aruna a couple of times for not doing his job properly, not feeding the dogs, etc. This person was on temporary duty in the hospital. Aruna, who was supposed to go on leave from December to prepare for her marriage to Doctor Sundeep from the same hospital, falls prey to sweeper Sohanlal in November. That one day changed the course of her entire life. This story dates back to November 1973. Due to strangling, the oxygen supply to her brain had cut off and she lost power of expression and speech, and even eyesight. In just one twist of fate, her seemingly envious life, turned into an utter waste.


Surprisingly, Sohanlal had to serve only a 7 year term in jail for assault and robbery, and never for sexual molestation, rape of ‘unnatural offence’. There’s not much of his perspective in the book. It is said at the end of the book that after he served in jail, he was working in some hospital in Delhi.


You don’t know what to feel when you read her tormentor got away with just 7 years of imprisonment and on the other hand Aruna Shanbaug lay in vegetative state for the rest of her life. Due to the kindness of the staff of KEM Hospital, she is taken care of by them, but her own family abandons her. It seems that they leave Aruna to her state because they were not well-off and did not want an extra burden when they were already struggling to make their ends meet.


This book is yet another marvelous work from Pinki Virani. What stood out in this book, as also in her other book called ‘Bitter Chocolate’ is the insufficiency of Laws to frame the criminals. The way she has converted an incident into a full-fledged novel is commendable, creating fictitious conversations and handling the sensitive issue with utmost care, she never falters from her focus – telling Aruna’s story!


Read more in the following links:
The Hindu
Outlook
Indian Express


(Image source: Infibeam)

Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani

Two weeks back, I went to Crossword to pick some books. I spent about an hour or so but could not find anything good. Then suddenly I chanced upon this book called “Bitter Chocolate” by Pinki Virani. The book was about “Child Sexual Abuse in India”. I skimmed through the book, and it came across as an interesting book that dwelt on the horrors of Child Sexual Abuse, while discussing the myriad of cases which have been registered and the relevant laws, the revamping of regulations required and so on.



Perhaps it happened for the first time that I bought the book and immediately started reading it, and finished it in 3 days. It was a well-written but deeply disturbing experience. There are about hundred cases which get discussed and one is worse than the other.


There are few observations about the book.


• The book deals with a controversial topic, but not even once does it become sleazy. It only evokes hatred for the people who do it. Pinki Virani, who has been a journalist for several years, has handled the topic very sensitively.


• It is shocking to know that Sexual Abuse has happened to children as young as 3 months also, and it has nothing to do with gender of the child as well. In fact, it has been reported that sexual abuse of little boys has been on the rise and apparently, Goa, Kovalam and Mumbai are hotspots for foreign tourists for this trade.


• It is also shocking to know how wide-spread this crime is in the society, regardless of the social strata the kids belong to, their gender or their age.


• It wakes you up to the fact the child today is definitely not safe anywhere. You need to keep your eyes and ears open all the time to the tell-tale signs, trust your child and invoke trust in her / him so that they open up to you for whatever they are going through


• It is also disturbing to note that even parents don’t pay much heed to this and feel that kids will not remember this when they grow up or think about the impact it can have on their stable / perfect lives. But the child going through any kind of abuse is scarred for life, and it definitely shows up in any form in their lives. In fact, it has been pointed out that several abusers have themselves been abused as a child. But that of course, is not justification for such heinous act.


• Pinki Virani also points out the legal angle to this. What the child goes through when he / she does come forward to give a statement – our courts are unfriendly to the child, the kid can be intimidated by the abusers and his slew of lawyers, the kid is made to repeat the details of his abuse over and over again


• The book has captured a beautiful yet touching poem by a 12 year old victim:


I asked you for help, and you told me you would


If I told you the things he did to me.


You asked me to trust you, and you made me


Repeat them to fourteen different strangers


I asked you for help and you gave me


A doctor with cold hands


Who spread my legs and stared at me


Just like my father.


I asked you for protection


And you gave me a social worker.


Do you know what it is like


I have more social workers than friends?


I asked you for help


And you forced my mother to choose between us.


She chose him, of course.


She was scared, she had a lot to lose.


I had a lot to lose too.


The difference is, you never told me how much.


I asked you to put an end to the abuse


You put an end to my whole family.


You took away my nights of hell


And gave me days of hell instead.


You have changed my private nightmare


Into a very public one.


This book is for everyone, and most importantly for a parent. We cannot close our eyes to what is happening all around us, no matter how disturbing. I did not know there was a play too on this.