When a book is endorsed by someone like the late Khushwant Singh, one is naturally curious. The book in question opens with a body on a railway line, and a journalist and a policeman sniffing round the scene. But, as we turn the pages, the book turns out to be more than a ‘whodunit’.
Bhaichand Patel’s Mothers Lovers and Other Strangers is Ravi’s story. We meet Ravi as a successful music composer in Bollywood living in Pali Hill and seemingly having everything going for him, including a rich and beautiful fiancée and connexions in the right places. But it was not always so. The reader is told of his past, of how his rustic and idyllic childhood ended cruelly when he watched his mother climb into a truck in the early hours of the morning, the devastating poverty that his father and he endure in the subsequent days, and his eventual escape to the magic of Mumbai. Success does not come on a platter; it’s an arduous and slow climb during which he has to give up many things including some memories. He moves from Dharavi to Juhu, and changes careers from the staffer at a restaurant to the student of a music maestro.
Ravi’s guru demands from him more than just the loyalty of a disciple, which Ravi has no scruples in giving. It earns him crucial advantages over the other disciples. It’s this attitude of ready compromise that takes him up the ladder. And it’s just not with Ravi, but many of the people we meet epitomise the compromise that’s life.
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Bhaichand Patel is no stranger to writing about Bollywood. He has three non-fiction books in his repertoire, one of which is about Bollywood superstars. He is also a known columnist, and perhaps it’s this way with words that strips
Patel’s prose is subtle, simple, and visual, with no embellishments; yet it makes us hold our breath with what seems unobtrusive detail.
See how he brings richness into a bleak milieu with no hope of opulence. ‘
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Patel’s character-sketches are deft, and stay with you. It’s this precision that affords the reader’s continued engagement with the array of protagonists that march through the various phases of Ravi’s life... Dolly, Sandhya, Radha, Kokilaben, and Sharmaji, Malik, Sethji. The pathos in Ravi’s life is not the sort where violins play soulful notes in the background, but a tragedy scene in a new wave film; it broods in a silence that grips your arm and asks ‘Why didn’t you help?’
The only jarring note was the epilogue, where the author wraps up the loose threads in the narration. It reminded one of those final scenes of a film, which comes after ‘seven years later’. The grand old man was right; this is indeed ‘a moving story, elegantly told’.
Mothers Lovers and Other Strangers;Bhaichand Patel, Pan Macmillan, Rs.299.