“To find a great demon like Bakasura, we have to avoid making a noise. We need to be guided. God does not scream into our ears, Bencho. See how these trees grow. See how the fish live. They do so in silence. The sun, moon and stars are silent. No matter how you argue with them, they will respond with silence. When you are young they are silent, and when you are about to die they will be silent. And after our factories have drunk the rivers and burnt the trees and we have poisoned the fish, there will still be silence. And in that desolation, it will speak to us. That is God. To find Bakasura, Bencho, we need to listen very carefully.”

It is often true that most artists have one unremitting principle that both sums up and animates all their work, a matter that is quite separate from the diverse forms or themes chosen for the purposes of each individual work, whether these themes or forms are picked at whim or with the deliberation of decades. It is this deep cell memory of sorts, this part-ideology, part-methodology, that provides the true signature to an artist’s process.

In acclaimed photographer-film maker Ryan Lobo’s case, one suspects this abiding principle lurks somewhere in the conclusion of his TED talk on compassionate story-telling:

“Sometimes focussing on what’s heroic, beautiful and dignified, regardless of the context, can help magnify the intangibles in three ways: in the protagonist of the story, in the audience, and also in the storyteller. That’s the power of storytelling. Focus on what is dignified, courageous and beautiful, and it grows.”

So it follows that in his debut novel, Mr Iyer Goes to War, Lobo sets out to enquire upon this “heroic, beautiful and dignified” while simultaneously confessing to the impossibilities that assail such a venture today, when the post-modern artist, condemned to a certain self-awareness by prevailing cultural norms would question the very premises of heroism, beauty and dignity as absolutes of any kind.

To anchor this self-reflexivity, Lobo chooses to reinterpret one of the greatest novels of all-time, Miguel de Cervantes’ Spanish classic The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, transposing it to contemporary India, in the process creating a memorable Tam-Brahm Don Quixote, Lalgudi Iyer, to portray this impossible quest.

You certainly cannot fault the author on ambition.

From Kashi to Prayaag: the geographical trajectory of the novel

Lalgudi Iyer has been consigned by his elder brother to spend his remaining days at a home for the dying in Varanasi, a city “almost as old as time, some say”. He rooms with a decorated Major, reads excessively, and mentors a neighbourhood dom, Bencho. Bencho spends his days handling corpses much as his ancestors had, but he aspires to learn English and become a politician one of these days. Iyer’s inflicted mentorship soothes him.

Iyer and Bencho are surrounded by a motley cast of characters in Kashi, the first audiences who are to be transformed by Iyer’s “heroism, dignity and courage”: Dr Krishna, physician, once of Ohio; Khanolkar, proprietor of the home for dying, canny businessman given to doctoring books, caring towards his charges after a fashion; and the half-beautiful Damayanti, a widow who bears acid scars from her past and is the luminous light of Iyer’s secret inner life.

When a chance accident reveals to Iyer his past as the second Pandava, Bhīma, suddenly the tenor of his unhurried life changes. He charges out of the home for dying, and then out of Kashi altogether, to locate and destroy his arch nemesis Bakasura, stringing along with himself the practical, ever-loyal Bencho, as reliable a side-kick as the peasant Sancho Panza was, and as devoid of imagination of the lofty variety. Each mythic victory he secures is dedicated to the mysterious Panchakanya, whom Iyer purports to love.

As they wander about in Bencho’s weather-beaten boat, bizarre adventures ensue. While Iyer’s stony idealism propels them in this direction or that – invariably towards problems – Bencho must bear the brunt of the consequences. Small-scale eddies of violence surround the duo as they encounter the criminal “The Lover”, the truck driver Aurangzeb, the corrupt MLA Jayachandra and his artful wife Ranjana. Finally, everyone must reach the Kumbha Mela in Prayaag where the climax may or may not involve a smuggling ring. You might also get the fleeting feeling that Iyer as Bhima is being played by Rajnikanth.

Wit and prose

Ryan Lobo’s talent is his prose. It can be gently witty. Sample this:

“If one were to examine the median of this species that is the Tamil Brahmin, they would find that this species exhibits qualities that, while having allowed them to thrive, have also helped ensure their exile from the state of Tamil Nadu. Shrewd and frugal, the Tamil Brahmin is a lover of anonymity: he works behind the scenes and never gets too close to the big man, because when the barbarians leap over the fort walls and the next batch of heads roll, there will always be a market for good accountants.”

It can be poetic, meticulously observed (‘watching a flock of rain quail rising out of the reeds like a burst of applause’). It can rise, when required, to the quivering heights and bathetic depths of mythic quests:

“‘I searched for him all over the cosmos, in pestilential swamps and venomous forests, in fiery planets and in the frozen caves of forgotten moons. I transcended death to visit those shadowy realms where even the dead fear to visit lest they dissipate into the void. The beast knew I was hunting him, and since I was the only one who dared, we were connected in ways your simple human mind cannot understand. He left signs for me to follow, like poisoned rivers, noxious vapours, polythene bags and tribes with the practices of cannibalism and sophisticated rhetoric. Destiny bonded us.’

‘Destiny? How were you bonded to...’

‘Madam! Listen! Please!’ Iyer says forcefully. ‘After millennia of searching, I finally found him – more by accident than design – crouched like a ghoul over a whole civilisation that had reached an essential part of its existence: the beginning of its own annihilation.’

‘When was this?’ the girl asks.

‘In 1565. In a swamp near Bijapur. I attacked without ceremony, trying to cripple him as quickly as possible, but his skin was covered in scales that deflected my celestial sword. Then began the greatest battle of my life. And what a battle it was! What a battle it was.’ Iyer closes his eyes tight in recollection.”

It can convey the cyclical nature of the Indian view of time drawing from the dharmic vocabulary that Iyer’s kind has used freely for centuries, without its weight unsettling the rest of the narrative.

However, the prose is not enough to detract us from the fatal flaw at the heart of the novel…

…Which is…?

It must be understood that the nature of this sort of fiction is to highlight the gap between art and life, precisely that gap which traditional fiction attempts to hide. And unfortunately, in spite of Lobo’s fine prose, it is here that his brave experiment stumbles.

The more distancing is wrought through the mindlessness of the violence within the capers of Iyer and Bencho and the staggering worlds of myth and malice that alternately provide the context – that is, the greater the gap between life and art – the less it becomes possible to empathise with the characters. It is almost like viewing the action through a glass wall – which arrests one’s emotional entanglement with the characters. Thus, paradoxically, the author’s deep affection for Iyer, suggesting a different vehicle for that story altogether, the novel gets trapped within its own form.

It will only be a valiant reader who will dare to free it from its cages and bring it alive again, only to wonder at the end if the wisdom and pleasure derived is not too obtuse after all.

Mr Iyer Goes to War, Ryan Lobo, Bloomsbury.