THE SPOILED HEART

By Sanjeev Sahota

Hamish Hamilton, Rs 599

If to love and be loved is the meaning of our lives, to love and lose is perhaps its measure. Tender, heartbreaking and electrifying, The Spoiled Heart explores the natures of our “unattended hearts” with an uncanny alertness. The novel is a deep, unforgettable, and often unforgiving testimony to how brutally we deal with those whom we seem to love and, how, the carnage of these brutalities bruise each other’s fragile hearts.

Nayan Olak is in his early forties. Over 24 years ago, he lost his mother and toddler son in a terrible accident when their house caught fire in the middle of the night. Sahota reports the heartbreaking event in prose that is heavy with pain: “Everyone thinks [smoke] does the lungs in, which is true. But it spoils the heart so mercilessly.”

The tragedy wreaks havoc on the marriage of Nayan and Deepti which unravels gradually and silently — they are unable to help each other recover from this loss. Twenty-four years later, Nayan is captivated by Helen Fletcher’s “willingness to court disapproval” when he encounters her repeatedly during his morning runs. Even though Helen is imperious and reserved — due to her troubled past as we find out — Nayan finds in his shrivelled heart to give love another chance. From here, the novel explores Nayan’s relationship with his past vis-à-vis the promise of a future with Helen and her teenage son, Brandon.

Nayan is also campaigning for a leadership position in a workers’ union. His reputation is unmatched, but his competitor levels controversial accusations and trades in unkind jibes to corrupt public opinion against him. The heated personal exchanges and the public-political debates between these characters are riveting to read.

Through this subplot in a deeply personal novel, Sahota ably weaves in the socio-political. Sahota also derives two substantial subplots from the superficial cancel culture that operates on “manipulative omission”. When two of the protagonists are (individually) cancelled because of unfounded accusations, the novel exposes the atrophied contemporary public discourse festered by polemics.

Interspersed within the narrative are some remarkable sentences that reveal how keenly Sahota observes the world around him. “In the morning, light slanted in, too weak to do anything other than slide off the duvet in waxen stripes.” This sentence, with its smart phrasing and crisp imagery, also speaks of the feeling of fatigue at the novel’s core. The final lines of the book somehow reveal the antidote to the spoiled heart: “I was always just trying to connect, and connect despite what must remain unresolved… Yes, I mustn't know everything, but must strive to; this much felt true…”