Under the Night Jasmine

-When the ink bleeds into blood-Review of Under the night jasmine by Manav kaul and Vaibhav Sharma ( translated by latter from Hindi)Kaul and Sharma together bring a tale loosely tied together in knots of self doubt, lost love, memories running amok, darkness invading mind, fickle times and shades of magical realism. It’s a hard book to write and translate and also to read provided you are the one who likes to pop every word into your mouth to chew it carefully until it breaks under your teeth and dissolves to bring the taste (you desired) to your reading palate. If I were to pick a line that represents the story, it would be this-‘Can you solve the problems of your life in your own stories? Writing is like an apology to those who we know will never forgive us.’Under the night jasmine takes you back to the chaotic, cruel, what-do-I-do world of COVID lockdown. Rohit is a script consultant and a poet with two poetry books to his credit. Now trapped in his home because of COVID lockdown, his entire world has come to a standstill. And he is slowly losing himself, his sanity being distilled repeatedly by the time and trauma into something hard and gritty, a stone left in a shoe or maybe a cruel word or an unkind memory being too vagabond by crossing the time barriers.A novel of few characters but ample thoughts, Kaul folds his fictional people into many layers- the person that they are and what they become when touched upon by memories and stirred by time. Rohit, in his daily walks in the apartment complex he lives, meets Pawan who accosts him daily but Rohit doesn’t want to indulge him. That’s the dilemma of an introvert- if you say hi to someone once, you are obliged to do that every day so better to avoid and turn your head away. But Pawan is persistent in his approach and Rohit in his avoidance. Then there’s Antima. The enigmatic girl who has a past with Rohit. She’s now seeing someone else (a guy from Delhi, tells the author) but the repeated encounters between the two hints at the residue of love that still lingers and floats to the surface from time to time.It is difficult to ascertain whether the lockdown pulled the fibers of insanity from Rohit or it was always there, embers waiting to be fanned into a flame. It’s not wrong to call Under the night jasmine a psychological thriller but it’s not just that. It’s a peek into what you become when you nurse a trauma so deep in your stomach that when it bubbles out of your being, it threatens to overtake your sanity and soul. And Rohit has many.Rohit lost his home early in the childhood. His parents fled from Kashmir and settled in a safer place. His father comments that since Kashmir is heaven, the entire country will have to suffer as they made Kashmir suffer.Rohit wants to write poetry but during the process he ends up writing a story, a story of his own life. He wants to write the stuff that’s ‘simple straight and normal’. A character duly warns him- 'Then write fairy tales. If you decide to write about the sunflower, you will have to record its death as well.'The problem arises when ink starts to bleed into blood. What’s real and what’s imagined? Rohit can’t decide. His life begins to blur into corners that invade into his story or is the story pushing into his life and mind? He is unable to ascertain if an incident was going to happen in his real life or in the story that he was writing. Sometimes he’s unable to decide if he really met a person last night or if he met them in the story he’s writing. The book sometimes induces anxiety and it’s better read in parts than at one go.Magical realism makes up for a nice little angel wing for the story, tucked neatly at the back but rearing its head now and then. Rohit spotting a deer at the places where you absolutely can’t brings a smile to your face and a flutter of anxiety in your heart, thereby achieving the dual purpose of magical realism. And I have never come across equating kissing someone with picking the petals that appear on their lips. Kudos for making kiss even more glamorous, Mr Kaul. Read some of it here or maybe skip it if you want to experience it organically in the story-‘He saw yellow and orange flowers floating around on his lips.He came close to the petals and slowly started to pick them with his lips. He could feel the softness of each and every petal. The petals dissolved in his mouth like lumps of sugar the moment they touched his lips. The more petals he touched, the more flowers he could see emerging from Dushyant's mouth. The colours and the fragrance of these flowers were so intoxicating, his eyes were closing.’The book asks many questions, some of them hint at the difficult time Rohit is getting through. He feels himself teetering on an edge almost all the times- ‘In my tiring everyday life, I could feel something was about to unfold.’One of my favourite quotes from the book is- ‘The people who get attracted to you are like you and not like the person you want.’The book has many poems, the protagonist being a poet. One of my favourites is here-I'm taken aback, I don't know it anymore It's a deer now, clad in a saree, with a deep navel I want to touch itThe nearer I go, the more it changes I feel myself soaking throughAnd in between all the changes, I see life I try my best to touch it, When suddenly glass shatters all around me.Under the night jasmine also brings back the memories of lockdown. The characters are afraid to hug and touch each other. One characters warns the other to not touch even a single person because you never know with how many he has been in contact. Manav writes - ‘The moment they hugged, my mind was filled with the virus and ways to avoid it.’The story deals with many themes- searching for and finding your sexuality is one of those. The love stories that run through the book are little problematic because altogether the protagonist is a minor, the objects of his affection not so much. Kaul has tried to take the edge of this glaring age gap by suffusing the story with anecdotes of rooftop hopping and chai drinking and dismissing it as a flutter of adolescence.The story earns the major twist at the end. It’s natural and a fitting conclusion. The story further fans Rohit’s delirium, giving him a new piece to bite into, to lose himself some more.Last but not the least, let’s finish with a note on translation. Vaibhav Sharma’s achievement in translating this book is that it doesn’t feel like a translation. That’s the hardest thing about being a translator- if your work is invisible, it’s deemed the best. Sharma has smoothly tamed the beast, successfully domesticating it for the reader’s benefit while preserving and petting its soul. It feels as if the book were written in English and not Hindi.

Never read a novel with so much meta, magical realism, and the perfect portrayal of the protagonist’s slow decent into madness. Need some time before I can move on to next novel. Cheers to Manavl Kaul sir 🎉

at 20 something age, this book was my choice to pick and read - I am thankful for doing so.no words man, I am lost but found at right emotion this time.