“The sky was a single blue from edge to edge, and as soon as I stepped onto the balcony my forehead prickled with sweat. There was the honking of traffic and somewhere someone hammering on metal. In the squatter colony beneath me several women crouched before their huts, cooking breakfast on kerosene stoves. Two men in shorts and rubber slippers stood next to a hand pump, soaping their bodies. On the roof of a nearby building, a woman was bathing her daughter with a tin bucket and a bowl. The naked girl, perhaps seven or eight years old, kept slipping out of her mother’s grasp and running about. The mother dropped the bowl and slapped her. My heart jumped. I felt slapped also. The child became very still. “More?” the mother threatened. Only then did the little girl burst into tears.”
So begins the 2022 revised edition of Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father, originally published in 2002. I don’t think Sharma is capable of writing a less-than-excellent book. But of all his work, and I think I’ve read all of it, my least favorite is the original edition of this novel. It’s been a long time since I read it and I don’t remember the details well. As I recall, I found it hard to follow and long. Although much of it was fantastic, I was glad to finish it and move on to a new book.
I’m always excited when Sharma comes out with something new. So when I read an article about his decision to revise the book, I ordered the new version.
The novel is set in New Delhi in the early 1980s. The main character, Ram Karam, is a despicable person, as he himself well knows. “I’m such a sad, bad man,” he says to his 8-year-old granddaughter, Asha. There is little to like about him. A corrupt government official living in New Delhi in the 1980s, he raped his own daughter, Bandani, when she was 12 and years later inappropriately touches Asha (and likely would have done more if Bandani hadn’t caught him). On top of that, his job consists of taking bribes and exhorting money, and he’s not even good at it.
And yet, reprehensible as Ram is, Sharma creates in him a sympathetic character. As I read about his evil acts, crimes, groveling, and unvarnished self-interest, I more often than not identified with him. His fearfulness, failure to connect with others and resulting crippling loneliness, inability to overcome his “nature,” and self-berating mixed with magical thinking all feel familiar, and will to others who are introspective and honest with themselves.
Ram is also emotional, and while his self-pity often makes him seem even more repulsive than he otherwise is, he also sometimes performs altruistic acts that go unnoticed. When a starving child tries to steal ice cream from an event Ram attends and a patrolman hits the boy with a staff, injuring him, Ram later finds the boy and gives him money. In another instance, shortly after the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi, which results in anti-Sikh riots in the city during which thousands or Sikhs are murdered, Ram orders a rickshaw driver to take a Sikh woman and her children to safety, saving their lives. (Later, when the woman’s husband thanks him and calls him a hero, Ram laments that there is no way for him to use his act of kindness and bravery to benefit himself—that’s his nature).
The book is mostly about Ram, Bandani, and Asha, but interwoven in this family story is a connected story about the political situation in India at that time. I found this part of the story a bit confusing, mostly because I know next to nothing about India’s politics or how its government works (or, apparently, doesn’t). A little googling on the topic helped. But during conversations about politics I often felt I was missing something. Knowing so little about what they are discussing, I couldn’t evaluate whether what is being said has merit or how it reflects on the person speaking. Nevertheless, I got the gist of it. And I have to think that is enough, since Sharma must have considered that Western readers (whom I imagine make up most of his readers, although I’m not certain of this) wouldn’t know all that much about India’s political system or situation.
The new version gives more of a voice to Bandani, which adds richness to the story, as does an unexpected but perfect shift in point view to Bandani’s sister, who lives in the United States and plays only a minor role in the story until this point.
When I imagine Sharma rewriting this book, I envision him sifting patiently through a huge pile of rectangular white tiles, each with a word embossed on it in crisp black type. The tiles are so glossy they look wet. He carefully selects each word and throws them back until he finds the perfect one, then repeats the process for each word in the book. The result sends the reader sliding through the words as if through smoothly flowing crystalline water. You notice the perfection of each word, and the absence of a single unnecessary one, only if you take the time to pause and savor. Otherwise, the prose seems effortless, belying the 2 years it took Sharma to revise a book he wrote 20 years ago and make it into another Sharma masterpiece.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2022
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2014
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2013
Top reviews from other countries
OTJ
A great book that will cause discomfort
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2019
Anthony William Greig
this will resonate as a sad and tragically accurate account of Indian culture
Reviewed in Australia on September 10, 2014
