Love in the time of war

Does a racy love triangle set against the backdrop of insurgency sound a bit filmy? It sort of is, by the author’s own admission

October 24, 2015 04:00 pm | Updated 04:00 pm IST

For Love and Honour; Anand Ranganathan, Bloomsbury, Rs.350.

For Love and Honour; Anand Ranganathan, Bloomsbury, Rs.350.

There’s a lot to be learnt from Anand Ranganathan’s latest novel, For Love and Honour — chiefly the Indian government’s unforgivable purging of the 1966 Aizawl bombings from our History textbooks.

The Northeast in Indian literature has traditionally been confined to serious journalistic works that tell tales of pain and injustice through interviews or the template of the travelogue. The book seeks to break free of all that with the premise of a racy love triangle set against the backdrop of insurgency. Sounds a bit filmy? It sort of is, according to the author’s own admission that his work is an “amalgam of film and literature”.

The story focuses on the lives of two paratroopers, Captain Akhil Mehra and Major Rahul Schimer, his commanding officer, who start out together on a secret mission in the dense jungles of Mizoram. It’s 1983 and Ranganathan begins his story with jawan s tuned into the radio; they’re more worried about what would happen to Kapil Dev’s men battling the West Indies in the final of the Cricket World Cup at Lord’s than their counter-insurgency operation. The stage has been set for what seems to be an exciting page-turner of historical fiction.

The mission is compromised with Mehra losing his right hand and Schimer, (unwittingly) a brother-like figure from the enemy’s side. Schimer is half-Mizo and grew up in Aizawl during the 1966 bombings; labelled as a ‘ bhaiyya ’ by natives who wanted him and his ilk out. Circumstances drag him into the Indian Army and finally, into battle with Mizo extremists. He takes some time off to battle his demons.

Meanwhile, Captain Mehra tries to start life afresh as a tea estate manager but finds himself battling something years of military training did not prepare him for: lust and love. He is drawn to both the daughters of the estate’s owner, a wealthy old Rai Bahadur, whose magnanimity is as big as his tea plantation acreage. The sisters are equally enigmatic but are constantly watched over by the old caretaker, Norden.

Chapters shift back and forth between the Major and the Captain; between an Aizawl recovering from its wounds and the lush, secluded Haflong estate; between a guilt-ridden Schimer trying to find some sort of closure and a confused Mehra flirting with two beautiful Bengali women.

Although it is Schimer’s story that deserves more attention, a good chunk of the book is devoted to Mehra — philosophising about love, discussing Austen and Zola with the sisters, and trying to deal with phantom pain.

Ranganathan deserves praise for his attempt to weave this tale of love into a serious subject like insurgency. His research is meticulous and perhaps the only niggling flaw one can point to is how jerkily the non-fictional part elbows into the melancholic narration (this happens when Schimer is revisiting Aizawl, silently taking in what remains of his hometown). All of a sudden the reader is to swallow names of French fighter jets, random helicopter unit squadrons as they wreak havoc, and witty rebukes at Indira Gandhi’s government from Assam Legislative Assembly speeches. This breathless description that starts from page 111 and ends at 114 is the heart of Ranganathan’s history lesson to us. If this book was made into a film (hopefully into the sort that wins accolades at international film fests), then this is the point where grainy footage of archived news reels would be interjected and do its bit before the film cuts back to technicolour.

The Mizo conflict by itself has not been employed just for the sake of a backdrop but plays a pivotal role towards the very end — a bittersweet end that would definitely tug at most readers’ hearts.

It is for this reason that For Love and Honour satisfactorily ticks both boxes of history and fiction, and therefore does justice to the combined genre. Here’s hoping we get more of them.

For Love and Honour; Anand Ranganathan, Bloomsbury, Rs.350.

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