Book Review: The Last Song of Dusk

Ive been meaning to write about this book for a few days now, because it has awoken some painful realisations in me, which may have evoked some angry reactions against the book itself, but nevertheless. I decided that today is as good a day as any to take on this daunting task, and set about looking for a cover illustration to accompany this review, as I like to do. The one below is the edition I read, by Penguin Books India. Fairly straightforward as you can see, with a warm orange the colour of sunset, with a panther where one would expect some sort of bird to be, heralding dusk, and a background textile print, which you would roll your eyes at but cant help expecting since the story involves *sigh* Indian women (now that i come to it, this could also be the colour of sandstone... signifying.... but I digress).



Naturally, in my hunt for the image on google, I came across other cover illustrations, that reminds me of the excellent Sepia Mutiny article on exoticism on book covers by Indian authors. This one below, for instance, was on sale on Amazon's German website, among others, featurin a woman wearing a sari with a peacock feather border holding a panther.



The ones below are on a number of differnet websites, in the UK, Europe, USand Australia. So my little hypothesis about different covers catering to different countries gets messed up, unless they change the cover for editions (for example a hardbound versus apaperback, or if a second edition came up.) To their credit, all of them do feature aspects of the book, though this one immediately below isa bit tacky in my opinion.


This one is vaguely reminiscent of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.



This one below just looks too psychedelic for anything.



THIS is the cover of a French edition. Notice a naked body, and the title not being a direct translation. This particular title translates to: The girl who walked on water, who is not even supposed to be the major character of the book.



Anyway, on to the story. My cousin, who had read it first, told me that it was just so sad. That it was about an old couple who loves each other so mch and they suffer so much but they just dont talk to each other. That certainly piqued my curiosity, because I was in my tearful phase over Asha Bhonsle's video of Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo. Then one of my other friends, from hwom I borrowed the novel, told me she hated it, and that piqued my curiousity even more.

So here I am, curiosity satisfied, at a point where I am able to acknowledge both people's point of view, and also to go beyond that.

I personally found the first paragraph a little clumsy, though it more than made up for it immediately after with its smooth lovely and mythic tone, with its unconventional similes and metaphors, with its woven picture of a timeless world... almost as though one were looking through fog and cobwebs into a past that doesnt necessarily belong to India in the 1920's, but to some archetype of marriage and love and loss and grief and guilt and pain...

More than love, I find the book to be about all the above auxiliary emotions that supplement, augment, and even in many cases, constitute, love. And on the threshold of marriage, I find love to be painful, one requiring endurance and strength of character, both of which I'm daring myself to possess at this stage. And mercy. Life abounds with both no mercy, as the protagonist's mother tells her, and with infinite tiny mercies, as the protagonist realises at the end.

Basically it is about your typical arranged marriage, consisting of well-matched, idyllic couple, their honeymoon phase, the joint family home, the evil mother-in-law, the grief caused by the loss of a baby son, the horrific accusations, the separation between the couple, the reconciliation in a dream home, the addition of new family members and their supplemental stories, all thrown together and constructed through a magical realism kaleidoscope.

Anuradha Patwardhan from Udaipur and Vardhamaan Gandharva from Bombay - singer, graduate, homemaker, and doctor, musical enthusiast and loving, confused husband, regal, romantic and tragic. Guilt and grief-ridden, both from the loss of a blessed son, one from the loss of a mother. The silence in spite of the music both separates and unites them as time passes, and their lives get gradually filled in their new home, cursed with the longing for love of a dead Englishman, with Nandini, a wild orphaned cousin, hiding beneath her tough exterior a past of witnessing and experiencing multiple physical and mental torture, who looks to love and yet escape from the brutalising power of love, both physical, in the form of the panther, social, in the form of Percival Worthington, possibly true, in the form of Sherman Miller, and ideal, in the form of reclusive widower-artist, Khalil Muratta, and sexual/friendly, in the form of Libya Dass. We pass through a scandal-filled art and fashion scene, comprising tight-lipped Englishmen, sensual Western-educated socialite Indians, homosexuals, the mini sari, even Gandhiji and Virginia Woolf. Yet, resilience of the human survivor's spirit prevails, even though many lives are shattered like the brittle conversation of the glitterati.

Shloka, Anuradha and Vardhmaan's son, symbolises the silence of the house, the love simmering under the surface between all the characters who are important in his life, till one day he starts talking and it only grieves him and the others around him. Anuradha and Vardhmaan hardly converse anymore, and learn, painstakingly to find comfort in the invisibility of their daily routine and their few friends. And music, which helps them sustain their hope and their hungry souls. Souls that they dont allow to quench because they dont see any way how to.

In terms of critique, I think that even though Shanghvi writes sensitively, gently, beautifully, sometimes he says too much. You know like how sometimes when Im feeling pensive and trying to say something profound and I use these 2-3 word sentences? And then use too many of those for two long and spoiling the terseness, the conciseness that sometimes saying little and leaving the rest implied, rather than spelling out EVERYTHING? (Like Im doing now). His soliloquys sometimes leave muc to be desired - rather than being situated in a particular time in history or a particular form of dialect, he seems to be spouting his own philosophies, in what I felt to be very stilted and forced. I feel that about Nandini's blaseness and flamboyance a lot of the time. I got a bit fed up by the end honestly, and wished the book would just end. He dragged on the bit about Shloka's leaving for two long, and I didnt appreciate the metaphor for the las song of dusk even though it's a really pretty title and it has to do with music and art that forms such an important part of the protagonists' lives.

But inspite of all that, he does say some pretty profound (though commonsensical things in hindsight), that resonate with the spirit - and maybe you will find other parts moving or identifiable. Ive only excerpted some parts from teh latter part of the book because I forgot to mark them earlier.

"Perhaps all art is nothing but a road from lovelessness. A means to manage the void. Because love, in its ripeness, annihilates the impulse to create simply because it is creation. The lived experience seeks no outward expression; private and secure in its own self, it just is. " (241).

"For the first time the girl understands that there is only so much you can give of yourself to desire before it takes you all in. Opens its seductive mouth and gulps you without a trace." (271).

"In the early days, she would sit.... and imagine that she would meet age in the friendship of this man, Vardhmaan. That she would anticipate his return in the evening, and her waiting gaze would mitigate the fatigue of his day. Her dream was neither too romantic nor too optimistic; this had been the life of her mother and grandmother..." (282)

"... they would contiue staring at each other in the knowledge that the endurers of a common fate have an association that outlives calamity and joy, strengthens over time, and deepens into a clarity that allows them to accept that love was nothing but the fragile excuse that enjoined them in thd first place, and that after its cessation , after the haunting emptiness of its passing, this silence they were now sharing was, in fact, nothing short of divine eloquence." (283).

I think I discovered so much in this book that is already present in me as a human, as a girl, as a life partner... I dont know. The inherent sorrow of life - it's weird, what Mahavir and Buddha said has now become a load of pop-culture bullshit, but its true. Beyond the surreal sheen over parts of it, it is just a story about different people in differnet situations, trying to deal with life's blows as best they can. Maybe it's by fighting back, maybe its by spitting it in the face, maybe it's about the 5 stages of grief, facing life you know - denial, anger, bargaining, depression/resignation, acceptance. Life gives you obstacle after obstacle, I dont know why, to build character or some shit, to keep true the adage what doesnt kill you makes you stronger, - Shanghvi talks about karma and the consequence of action and thinking of ourselves as little drops in a pond, and thinking about that makes me dizzy but also makes me realise how true it is, at least for a single lifetime even if you dont believe in reincarnation - about how sometimes you make choices and sometimes its chance, but at the end of the day life is bloody ironic. It just is. Sometimes the prize isnt worth the sacrifice, a lot of times you learn to go without. You learn to accept your decision and make new ones, but never question your choices. That's the way to survive.

Conclusion: Worth reading if you like beauty. Be open to and forgiving of the dialogues, and stick through to the end. For a first novel, filled with the same promise of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, but far more at peace with itself.