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PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.

IT’S FOR REAL Amandeep Sandhu: ‘In literature, madness is beyond the pale, even exotic. But for me it was my mother.’

This, the novel suggests, is not only a matter of the metaphysical realm. A broken home can lead one to a more sensitive understanding of the world that surrounds us here and now too.

The novel chronicles a boy’s growing up years with a schizophrenic mother and a dysfunctional family. Moving back and forth between the narrator’s boyhood years in the industrial town of Rourkela and his present home in Bangalore, “Sepia Leaves” breaks stereotypes about “normal” and “mad”. It makes one wonder what really defines a happy family or happiness itself.

Amandeep candidly admits that the novel is intensely autobiographical and writing it was a cathartic experience. “In fact it should be read as the account of a care-giver of a mentally ill person. Maybe I have not yet become a novelist.”

If “Sepia Leaves” insists on maintaining a placid tone even in the most intensely emotional moments, to the point of sounding too staid, it is because equanimity at all times is the necessary state of mind a care-giver has to achieve. He or she has to be at once distant and close. “In literature, madness is beyond the pale, even exotic. But for me it was my mother,” says Amandeep. The biggest lesson he leant in the course of tending to his schizophrenic mother was that all human beings are extremely vulnerable. “There is no saying when someone slips off the sanctioned code of behaviour. We are all different. There is no centre called normal.”

Amandeep started writing the novel the night his father passed away because “only writing can bring a person closest to an emotion”. Not schooled in the technique of writing, what kept him going was “raw energy and lots of confusion”. Questions of editing and adopting a technique arose only when he had to cut the 600-page novel to about 200 pages. His next novel, “Roll of Honour”, is also based on his personal experiences. It is set in a military school in Punjab at the height of militancy in the state. “I am not done with dishing out what has happened to me!” laughs Amandeep.

In one of his blog entries, Amandeep says that he writes to understand himself and his world, “and to sleep peacefully”, suggesting that writing is a survival technique.

“Sepia Leaves” too could be read as a tale of several survivals against terrible odds. The mother in the novel insists on walking the path defined by none but herself despite (one could even say because of ) her mental condition. The father survives the drudgery of workplace and the trauma of home with an equanimity that seems almost mystical. The Oriya tribal woman who works in the household is a victim of abuse and rape. Yet, she has the resilience to carve out a new life for herself.

Quite contrary to the stereotypes of children from broken homes becoming junkies and criminals, the narrator of the novel emerges strong and sensitive. Says Amandeep: “My father used to tell me that if you are true to yourself, you can survive anything. That, I guess, is the only way to deal with the big bad world!”

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