Timeri N. Murari

on the reading

The arrangements of love

Review

Synopsis

Shalini Modi playing Sushima

The Reading at the British Council, October 29, 2004.

Cast: Yog Japee (also director), Anshuman Rudra, Karthik Narayan, Shalini Modi, Rashmi Devadasan, Amrita Shetty, Sruti. Lights: Vani.

Timeri N. Murari’s new book, ‘THE ARRANGEMENTS OF LOVE’, is all about India, complete with its idiosyncrasies and everyday surprises.

To TELL you the truth, the crocodile was rather bizarre. A hulking cardboard croc answering to the name Renee, she lounged in an imaginary bathtub all through the play, only popping out at intervals to flash a toothy grin at the audience, and wryly comment on the action. But, eventually, she too -blended in.

After all, Timeri Murari's “Arrangements of Love," released recently at the British Council Library with a dramatised reading by Theatre Y, is about India, complete with its idiosyncrasies and every day surprises. Including errant Crocodiles in hotel bathtubs.

"Most people ask me why I’ve a crocodile," said Murari, after the reading. "Even my editor asked me to remove it." However, he kept her in because, "In India, you must expect the unexpected. I wanted Nikhil (the story's protagonist) to meet the unexpected, not just a snake in the bathtub, or an elephant on the road. Eventually the crocodile became a central, symbolic part of what I was trying to tell people, about my own discovery of India."

The story weaves through lives of four characters, using Nikhil Figgis, a young writer-playwright from New York travels to Chennai in search of his father, as the central character. Nikhil, bewildered by India in a typically 'firang' way, was the main thread in Theatre Y's performance in which a variety of Murari's characters came alive from Nikhil's crusty, anti-social father, barricaded away from the rest of the world after his arranged marriage went sour, "When you fall in love, you pray that the other person will love you with the same ferocity. She never did”, to a PCO operator and his brother who memorise the entire telephone directory to prove their genius.

"So are the characters purely fictional, or are they snippets of people we know?" asked a member of the audience, amid a spate of giggles. (Prominent Chennai personalities featured over the course of the reading, proving that part of the story, at least, was rooted in real, contemporary Chennai.)

"Well, Graham Greene says that everyone he knows enters his novels. I suppose there are bits and pieces of people I know in the novel," said Murari.

The situations aren't completely fictional either. In the reading, an exhausted Nikhil walks into his hotel bathroom to find Renee lolling in his tub. His hotel firmly tells him he can't keep pets, so he carts her to the Crocodile Bank only to be told that he needs a permit to return her, because she's Indian. (Apparently, you can do anything you like with an American crocodile here. Even make a handbag.) He then finds that the permit takes four months, leaving him with a crocodile date for dinner, for the next four months, at least.

The real life parallel? “There's a building site next to my house, and one day, I saw a Black Buck tied there," said Murari. "So, I rang up the conservator of forests and soon, five jeeps showed up, followed by three more." Then, apparently, a mob of excited policemen jumped out, got into a row with the owner of the Black Buck and dragged him away.

When Murari went to find out why they arrested the owner, he was told a government permit was required to own a Black Buck. "When I asked him how to get it, he said 'Ah, you need to go to Delhi for that.' Then I said, 'So, you can get a permit?' and he said, 'Oh no sir, we never give permits!' So, it's an essentially Indian story. And it's set in Madras because this is my hometown. No one writes on Madras! Why are all the well-known Indian authors North Indians?"

Though Murari has written more than a dozen books in fiction and non-fiction, "Arrangements of Love" is his first novel to be published in India. Is it aimed at the Indian-English audience this time? "I write in English because it is the only language I know how to write in," said Murari, adding that it is targeted at "anyone who can read English. Anyone who can enjoy a good story." THE HINDU.

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