To write her book about six strangers who meet at a wedding, Gouri Dange retired for two months to the emerald hills of Mahabaleshwar.
“But, I left in six weeks, because it was wedding season there!” she laughs. “After countless calls to the Forest officials to complain, all through the bad ghazals , the lusty antanksharis and firecrackers set off in that fragile forest.”
People everywhere
And, thus was born the site of “The Counsel of Strangers” — six lives, strung together by circumstance. “Indian weddings are very demanding,” she says. “You have to look good, keep up appearances for days. And, your sense of alienation is sometimes heightened, even though you're surrounded by people. Many a time, you have people counting the seconds before they can leave.” So, the six tell each other their tales — besides, strangers are, perhaps, more non-judgemental, Gouri says.
Retd. Wing Commander Brahme has found love at 73, and his children want him to save them the embarrassment — but “I'd started to enjoy being her crossword puzzle, and she mine”; there's Kartik, who is being forgotten, paling in contrast to his wild elder brother; Anandi-Mohini has emerged battle-weary after the end of her 14-year-old marriage, and is now deemed “difficult”, “un-get-on-able-with”; nurse Sajani is fed up of the human body; “Gravity is always winning, pulling us, pulling us down, the shoulders, the muscles, the mind”; Professor Ambika is watching her Harvard-educated son increasingly charmed by Bollywood; and, Suhail, once the luminary of his news channel, has plummeted to Earth, weighed down by accusations of irresponsible reporting during the 26/11 Taj debacle.
Indrani Krishnaiyer and T.T. Srinath of Madras Players read from the novel, infusing the lines with life and wit. “When you're involved with all the chaos of post-publishing, you get separated from your characters,” Gouri told them afterwards. “Today, listening to you read, I was reintroduced to them.”
Being a practising family counsellor, she says she is always being asked if the book draws from stories she encountered in her work. “That's like asking a cashier if she takes money from the till at the end of the day,” she smiles. “Never. That would be a clear breach of ethics.”
But the post-script of the book, a section in which the six email each other a few months later, does borrow from her profession. “People I've counselled have sometimes written or called several years later — it's like you've helped someone through a tunnel, and once they're through, they're waving out to you from the other end.”
The most complex story to tell was Wing Commander Brahme's, but not because very complex things happen to him. “I felt he was a watercolour painting; I wouldn't be able to paint over it like I could do with oils. I had to etch him very, very carefully.”
Indelible memories
But Mahabaleshwar left indelible memories, some of which wove themselves into her story.
“Right across the bustling resort where I was staying lay a cemetery. I'd watch as a knot of grieving people arrive bearing a body, and they'd realise that a colossal wedding's going on. And, they'd hurry up the funeral, the rites, because ‘the bade saab-log ka (the big people's) wedding was going on'. I found it grotesque,” she remembers.
So, after lending her ear for nine years to the recesses of people's minds, is this her way of making herself heard? “Absolutely. It's the same place my characters found themselves in. That significant step of I-want-to-tell-you-something.”
