Exploring this novel is somewhat like opening a carefully preserved album of beautiful images and wondering if they’ll survive the harsh light of scrutiny. Any work of fiction that dares to toy with the historical past risks courting that danger. And the final days of the Raj, in particular — the subject of The Last Victory — has inspired so many memorable tomes that yet another novel, which gives it pride of place would, one imagines, invite more intense critical attention than most.
But Timeri N. Murari’s grand Raj production (for that is how this sequel to The Imperial Agent comes across) will probably get away unscathed. Its meticulously researched historical backdrop notwithstanding, the book adroitly escapes being judged by the criteria that would apply to a historical novel. The thoroughness of this research is evident as the author weaves his suspense-charged fictional episodes around real-life events — among them, World War I and the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre — and smoothly incorporates personalities like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru into his narrative, making them come alive in imagined sequences, even if there is a tendency towards stereotyping in the delineation of such characters as General Reginald Dyer of Jallianwallah Bagh notoriety who vows to “teach the bloody wogs a lesson they’ll never forget”.
Murari’s most inspired writing comes, however, from his portrait of another India, the one that happily accommodates demons and double agents, patriot-terrorists turned “ sanyasis ” and brigands who rule the Chambal’s ravines, island palaces and temples to the snake god, hired assassins lurking in the shadows and zamindars who conspire from their thrones of ivory “the colour of fading sunlight”, evil spells and local superstitions and, of course, those rare and wondrous beings, Bala and Bala, blind twins with the power to transform people and places through their magical songs so that they are never again the same. In other words, oodles of exotica that lend the story the innocent charm of a fairy tale, while playing quite unabashedly on the old Western fixation — perpetuated partly by Hollywood — with the Orient’s supposedly unfathomable mystique.
Appropriately enough, the hero is an “ Angrezi ” born, but Indian “by love and thought”. Resurrected by the author from Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s creation, Kimball O’Hara is “a friend of the world”, brave, honourable and compassionate, with an embarrassing resemblance to the yesteryear Hollywood heroes some of us had massive crushes on long, long ago and now condescend to remember with a self-deprecating smile. It’s inevitable that Murari’s Kim, who takes up from where he had left off in The Imperial Agent, should be required in this novel to elude assassins, battle dacoits, fight superstition, exorcise demons and stand up to his former mentor, Colonel Creighton, who swears by Rule Britannia and would, if necessary, betray his own protégé to safeguard the interests of the Empire.
It’s no surprise either that Kim’s love interest should be the beautiful Mohini/ Parvati, the original damsel in distress who can, when required, be bold enough to engage in anti-colonial activities, flee a brutal husband, love a man from another race (even if her romantic interludes with him are frustratingly chaste), bear him a child out of wedlock and ultimately carry out an act we wouldn’t have dreamed her capable of, so weepy and whisper-soft has her creator rendered her, the perfect prototype, it would seem, of the demure Oriental maiden with great hidden potential.
Add Murari’s rich gallery of cameos and red-hot action sequences interspersed with lyrical passages and you have a potent, if quaint, cocktail of entertainment.
It’s not difficult to understand why this author’s popularity has endured over the decades, despite changing literary tastes. Murari can remain secure in the knowledge that The Last Victory offers much, including some great celluloid moments that will lure us into a willing suspension of disbelief so that going with the flow follows naturally. Despite the faint whiff of mothballs, there’s much to be said, after all, for a reassuringly linear narrative, larger-than-life characters, a generous slice of realism, both magical and otherwise, high-voltage drama and an assured prose style that adapts itself easily to the demands of the context and is as invigorating as a breath of fresh air.
The Last Victory: The Imperial Agent II;Timeri N. Murari; Penguin Books; Rs.399
