Love, As The Chairman Smiles

When a book like K.R. Meera바카라™s The Gospel of Yudas sits on your desk after being devoured, you think of love. The immortal lines of Shakespeare바카라™s Antony and Cleopatra, Virginia Woolf바카라™s innumerable letters, Freddie Mercury바카라™s Love Kills, even bad Bollywood바카라”the reader may get overwhelmed by flashes from one, or all, of these.

In Meera바카라™s novella, love reigns supreme. Like Prema, the protagonist, the reader is tormented by love that permeates each page. All this in a novel about the Emer­gency era, stating its horrors as if in a reportage! This is where the Malayalam writer bids fair to join the haloed league of Yeats, Marquez and Neruda. Despite the overt political content of their works, love rei­gns supreme.

Drawn by the terrible beauty of Naxalite ideology, the teenaged Prema con­vi­nces herself that deliverance lies in being loved by Yudas. She is almost sure that he was an ex-Naxalite tortured by her policeman father. In pursuing the elusive Yudas, she undertakes what Ami­tav Ghosh calls filling the gaps in history. Meera바카라™s Prema is a fearless journalist, minus the press card. Her chase for love leads her to the truths, half-truths, ex-tru­ths and falsehoods of one of the most troubled times in modern Indian history.

Meeting ex-Naxalites, the families of those who were tortured and killed, and a now gentle policeman, 바카라˜the Beast바카라™, Prema is able to understand that each syllable of her silent childhood chant, 바카라˜Naxalbari Zindabad바카라™, was drenched in blood. Living with a father whose brutality only changes form over time, Prema is no stranger to tales of violence. Yet, her love for Yudas brings her face to face with the viciousness of a violent political struggle.

Prema falls in love with a man who dre­dges dead bodies from lakes and rivers for a living. The symbolism is unmistakable. Corpses from the past need to be recove­red. The story of the Emergency years can only be complete when all the carcasses, in varying states of decay, resurface. It takes a man like Yudas to be unperturbed by the fish-eaten faces of drowned people, and it takes a Prema to fall in love with him.

At one level, the novella pretends to be about Prema바카라™s chase, her wait. However, it is also about Yudas바카라™s wait. Prema is eleme­ntal in Yudas바카라™s deliverance from guilt. Her love is like a poultice for the festering wound on his conscience. Meera바카라™s novella is also an act of catharsis.

Before the redemption, the protagonists have to unde­rgo torments ranging from purely physical to psychosomatic. Is this not what loving entails? Reams have been wri­­tten about the torment and violence in love. Here, violence is an omnipresent doppelganger of love. Love feasts menacingly not only on Prema바카라™s mind but also her body. In Yudas바카라™s case, love causes death and chains him to a Sisyphean cycle of bet­rayal and guilt.

A remarkable feature of Meera바카라™s work is how she employs the traditional tropes of romance to tell a sordid tale. Juliet바카라™s infatuation, Cleopatra바카라™s sublimated self-serving passion, Juno바카라™s competitiveness, Heath­cliff바카라™s brooding stance: all come together to present the reader with an unsettling gospel on love. The commandment is clear: thou shalt love only when the taste of blood is beknownst to thee.       

The cover has it written all over. The image of a drowning girl is an easy metaphor for falling dangerously in love, with a person or an ideology. But as per Zizek, and millions of others, love without falling cannot happen. We love, we pay for it. Rajesh Rajamohan바카라™s translation could very well do with an epig­raph from the Slovenian philosop­her바카라”바카라˜Love is a permanent emergency state.바카라™