Kalpish Ratna is the near anagram of the first names of two writers, Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed used for their collaborative writing. This pair of surgeons and writers is fairly prolific and we come across their articles regularly in different publications. Their latest work of fiction The Quarantine Papers has echoes of a non fiction book they had published earlier- Uncertain Life And Sure Death: Medicine And Mahamaari In Maritime Bombay.
Right Spirit
There is no doubting the fact that the duo has their heart in the right place. They give enough indications in the book to tell us their politics is secular and liberal as it ought to be. It's also difficult to find fault with their writing style. The narrative is crisp and pithy. But despite all these inherent advantages the book turns out to be a tedious read. For it tries too hard to camouflage the earnestness of the writing by affecting an aesthetics that bogs down the narrative rather than uplift it. Clearly ambition is at play here. Either the two writers or their publishers don't want to settle for an ordinary thriller. They want their book to be taken seriously by the literary establishment. And ambition as we all know needs to be tempered by good old common sense. It's not as if The Quarantine Papers is a bad book. It just tries too hard to be a great book that it clearly is not.
In its quest for glory, the book attempts too much of experimentation that not only distracts from its essence but also annoys the reader. Just think of a good old Bimal Roy film being retold by a hand held camera with jerky movements. It can only work if the characters are reworked to suit the new narrative. The Quarantine Papers has a classical plot that could have been the back bone of a worthy endeavour, provided the story telling was uncluttered and lucid. Instead all kinds of gimmicks are resorted to. Each section starts with a photograph that doesn't add anything. Sometimes even the changing of the font has pretentious undertones. At one point in the book, the mayhem following the destruction of Babri Masjid claims a signboard announcing Bismillah Laundry that is repainted as Brajmohan Laundry. The poignancy is lost because suddenly a different font in block letters crops up to depict this moving moment. If they had left it alone, allowing the reader to get into the layered leitmotif of the story telling, it would have showed rather than the “telling” it resorts to through the changed font.
The protagonist Ratan Ramratan Oak is also curiously short changed by the author(s). His unrelenting nobility is a little hard to digest. Apparently there are ten more Oak novels in the pipeline and if we see them in print it would be nice to see our hallucinating hero acquire many more complexities than he is currently vested with. A touch of meanness would go a long way in redeeming him from being a victim to a flesh and blood character we can empathise with. Also many parts of the book read like research that ought to precede the writing of a novel like this rather than be a part of the novel itself. Hopefully, the series would have a smoother flow.
There is a moral for the publishers too in all this. They ought to leave alone some books the good old fashioned way. We have the graphic novel today to cater to our taste for writing that needs to be embellished with visuals. Sure, Dickens had his illustrator too but those illustrations added rather than detracted. Let the narrative take care of the showing. And if possible re-launch this book without all the calligraphy, the illustrations and change in font unless it is absolutely essential.
The proof of the pudding, as they say, lies in its eating.
The Quarantine Papers, Kalpish Ratna, Harper Collins, Rs.499
