Book: FOLLOWING A PRAYER: A NOVEL
Author: Sundar Sarukkai
Published by: Tranquebar
Price: ₹599
Endings, as Frank Kermode suggests in his seminal 1967 work, The Sense of an Ending, should come “as expected, but not in the manner expected.” The formula for successful fictional denouements lies in its unpredictability, a deliberate “falsification of one’s expectation of the end” to “reach the discovery or recognition by an unexpected… route.” To begin a review by commenting on a book’s conclusion may be unusual; yet it is strangely appropriate when the piece in question is Sundar Sarukkai’s Following a Prayer, a hauntingly intense philosophical reflection on language and the pursuit of meaning that keeps on extending itself in a sort of Derridean freeplay to end with a stunningly unforeseen climax.
Is language a lie? Where do prayers go? Can silence speak or be heard? Do sounds exist apart from meaning? Is the brain more powerful than god? Despite the inherent gravity of such questions, the author imparts charming humour and playfulness to his debut novel by unfolding it through the perspective of three curious young children from a quaint rural hamlet in Karnataka, their innocent and precocious queries tracing the contours of profound metaphysical enquiries that have intrigued mankind since the beginning of time. This delicate balance between levity and seriousness comes easily to Sarukkai who is also the founder of the Barefoot Philosophers initiative that aims to free philosophy from academic stranglehold and make it accessible and meaningful to children and the general public.
Sarukkai harnesses the power of persuasive storytelling to weave a narrative that begins one gloomy monsoon Monday, when twelve-year-old Kalpana, instead of going to school, sets out on a quest to find where her ajji’s prayers go. Contrary to everyone’s fears that she might have been kidnapped or harmed, she emerges relatively unscathed from the adjoining gigantic forest three days later; yet strangely, she has fallen silent. Over time, she communicates with her family through scribbles, doodles and facial gestures but all efforts to make her speak go in vain. Soon, it becomes clear that her voluntary decision to stop speaking stems from her harrowing experience within the dark forest depths when she wandered lost and afraid, betrayed by “the gods behind whom she ran, full of trust” and who “vanished, just like words, when she most needed them.” Her solitary sojourn further schooled her in “the complete futility of language when she spent three days with millions of creatures who did not speak like she did.” Kalpana’s doubts about the falsity of language soon affect her younger sister, Deeksha, and the latter’s best friend, Kumari, and the trio embark on a journey of meaning, making do with a little help from Upadhya, their Kannada teacher, and Gangamma, the village singer, who belongs to a family of wandering minstrels. Gangamma introduces the three children to a vast unexplored and magical world of pure musical sounds — “the clouds tickling each other, the rubbing sounds of the wind brushing against the trees, the swish of the tired wings of birds and the constant grumbling of the mountains” — leading them closer to reconciling the elemental binaries of language and referentiality, speech and silence, belief and reason.
Yet, just after building up expectation that Kalpana will resume speaking on the day after Deepavali, the novel neatly comes full circle when Deeksha and Kumari retrace Kalpana’s earlier quest as they both go inside the dense forest in search of “a single, clear voice that called out to them like a steady lamp in a world of darkness.” However, similar structural patterns may not always guarantee identical narrative outcomes and Sarukkai exploits this to brilliant effect to create a startling ending that lingers long after the last page is turned.
