Wounds, when associated with the living, are a reminder of our body’s ability to heal itself. But they can also be bodily maps of our life’s traumas. Literature has looked to physical wounds for their metaphysical meanings. Philoctetes, one of the heroes of Greek mythology, was famously abandoned on Lemnos after being wounded on his foot. His wound temporarily becomes a symbol of his bruised male pride and sets the stage for his redemption.
Vikram Paralkar, an oncologist and researcher with the University of Pennsylvania who specialises in studying hematopoiesis, seems particularly well-suited for navigating wounds, physically and philosophically. The Wounds of the Dead is equal parts speculative fiction, medical drama, and a philosophical treatise on death.
Dreary afterlife
Our initially contemptuous protagonist is a surgeon. He runs a small government clinic in rural Maharashtra, managing despite bureaucratic malfeasance to provide quality care to his patients. At the end of a particular evening he is accosted by a family of three — a schoolteacher, his pregnant wife and their eight-year-old son — with a request to perform surgery and fix their wounds. Their injuries are grotesque, with knife wounds having penetrated and exposed the insides of their ribs, abdomen and throat, injuries no human would have survived.
As it turns out, they didn’t. Attacked by bandits after a fair, the three were left to die by the roadside. After an indeterminable period of time in the afterlife, an angel sent them back, allowing them to regain possession of their dead bodies. At sunrise, however, their bodies will fill with blood again, giving the surgeon a narrow time period to heal their wounds and prevent them from returning to the dead.
In its early going, The Wounds of the Dead can be a little frustrating. The characters, none of whom go by names, can seem lifeless. The surgeon is an archetypical jerk with a heart of gold. The ennobling references to the surgeon is off-putting at times. As the story progresses, however, Paralkar’s skill becomes more evident as the characters reveal themselves in believably low-key ways.
House like polyps
However, it’s when the details of the afterlife come in sharper focus that the novel really crackles. According to the teacher, the afterlife is a dreary place without a moment of repose. What’s worse is that the afterlife seemingly operates like an inefficient bureaucracy where the chain of command never ends. God is as inaccessible to the dead as to the living.
What if the afterlife is the pointless peregrination that leads back straight to life? If so, isn’t the family’s attempt to stave off their return to it quite futile? Further revelations upend the power dynamics in the doctor’s choices. Could this be a divine chess game between man and a godlike being?
While The Wounds of the Dead occasionally features some eerie imagery — “The village at the base of the hillock was perfectly still, its house like polyps erupting from the soil” — it is a minimalist novel, sparse with its settings. The surgeries in the novel are entertainingly detailed. A stomach-churning childbirth sequence feels straight out of body horror flicks like Aliens . “Mother and child would both start screaming, one head above, another below — a two-headed howling monster washed with fountains of blood.”
Paralkar has a way of conjuring up this twilight zone set at the clinic but his aim seems to be to stimulate the mind rather than let this turn into a spooky yarn. It’s the kind of book whose philosophical ruminations and dark humour seem well-suited for the stage. David Mamet’s listening?
As the novel moves towards its conclusion, it becomes perceptive and absurdly humorous in ways I hadn’t expected. By the time I reached its smashing final line, I was hoping Paralkar would resurrect the dead for a sequel.
The reviewer is a writer and editor based in Chennai. He is the winner of the Likho Award for Excellence in Media, 2017.
The Wounds of the Dead; Vikram Paralkar, HarperCollins, ₹499
