Book Summary- A River Sutra by Gita Mehta

A River Sutra

                                      by Gita Mehta

Viking – Penguin Books India, 1993 282 pp,  Rs. 299/-

          This is an interesting book made up of stories either experienced or told on the banks of the River Narmada.  There is a narrator (Sutra-dhar), an ex-civil servant, who takes up the job of the Manager of the Narmada Rest House, a Mughal vintage building deep inside the forest on the banks of the Narmada, as if only to symbolise his entering the Vanaprastha stage of life.  One finds vivid descriptions of the building and its neighbourhood but the thread (Sutra) that runs the book is the River Goddess herself.

          The first story is that of a Jain Monk, who renounces the world after having his fill of worldly pleasures.  The dual standards that parents have for their son (‘flirt around with whomsoever or how many as you may like, but get married to a girl of our choice’), or those that businessmen employ (‘I don’t mind if people die while extracting diamonds, but I believe in non-violence, so I am a trader’) and in the ‘ritual’ of renunciation (which cost sixty two million rupees, and also witnesses a stampede for money thrown in the air as a distribution of largesse) are well brought out.

          The next is the story of a struggling music teacher, Master Mohan, and his pupil, Imrat.  Master Mohan hopes to live his dream of recording a music album through his pupil, Imrat, of whom he is the temporary custodian as well.  Since he is poor, his family is at daggers drawn with him, for having foisted Imrat, but the divine voice of the child causes the fulfilment of the dream.  This story demonstrates how greed and jealousy can take lives and kill dreams, with the connecting link being the unfulfilled wish of paying a musical homage at the tomb of Amir Rumi on the death anniversary of the great Sufi saint, situated on the banks of the Narmada.

          The next story is of an epicurean executive who is said to be a victim of black magic.  The playboyish and adulterous lifestyles of the rich and powerful are illustrated in this story.  Needless to say, by worshipping the Narmada in the tribal style, he is cured of the spell of black magic cast deep inside a tea estate.  The contradiction in the importance the rich place on facial appearance in contrast to their having no objection to going to bed with a person having a good body is alluded to in this story.

          The next story is that of the abduction of a sophisticated virgin courtesan by a dreaded criminal, who lives on the banks of the Narmada, and whose intuition tells him that she was his wife during many previous births.  The decency of the dacoit is in stark contrast with the licentious behaviour of the rich and powerful, whose stories are heard before this one.  The girl eventually accepts the dacoit as her husband but their happiness is short-lived – he is killed when she is in an advanced stage of her first pregnancy, and the grief the girl goes through kills her child.  This is not the end, though.  When she meets her mother, her hideout is found out by the villagers, and she, fearing discrimination for being the criminal’s wife, drowns herself in the holy waters of the Narmada.

          The penultimate story is of an ugly daughter of a famous musician, a Veena player.  The likening of Veena with Goddess Parvati, the different interpretations of Om (three worlds, three fires and the three Gods, three separate actions of the body (opening lips for ‘A’ – the manifest world, the sound of waking consciousness and the sound of gross experience, release of breath for the sound ‘U’ – the unmanifest world, the sound of dreaming consciousness and of subtle experience, and closure of lips for silence, the sound of unmanifest world, the ultimate world and the incomparable target)) is uplifting.  Identifying music in emotion and in the gases in the ether reflect the brilliance of the author.  The reader is introduced to the seven notes of Indian (sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni) & Western (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, te) music.  The details of half notes and micronotes in bird’s chirping, the single note of the bird’s settling down on trees at sunset make the reader connect to the ethereal. The musician’s comparison of bird and animal cries with the seven notes of the scale –

          Cry of the Peacock – sa

          Calf calling its mother – re

          Goat’s bleating – ga

          Cry of the Heron – ma

          Song of the Nightingale – pa

          Neighing of the Horse – dha

          Elephant’s trumpet – ni

          - and his efforts to teach ragas with one of the notes dominating, will make anyone take to music.  And this effort will be sustained by the statement that each raga was related to a particular season, a time of the day and an emotion – with emotion unlocking being the key to the raga’s soul. The relationship of the Navarasas (nine moods) of dance with ragas are stated in passing.  The reader’s knowledge of music is enhanced by the brief explanation of the relationship between ragas and raginis.  Further the relationship between raga, the emotion, and a work of art can be understood by the choice of colours -

          Black          -        Sa

          Tawny        -        Re

          Gold           -        ga

          White         -        ma

          Yellow        -        pa

          Indigo         -        dha

          Green          -        ni

          and the theme of their paintings.

          That the raga is composed of silence between the notes and it, without grace notes, was like a night without moonlight, a river without water, etc….. take the reader to a different world. The importance of music over melody is explained as that of the better over the pleasant.  The musical melody goes on until the boy who learnt music from the musician on the condition of being his son-in-law, fails to keep his promise; and the connection with the river is that the father desires the daughter to do a penance on her banks to detach herself from the thoughts of that boy.

          The last story is that of a Naga Baba or a martial ascetic who survives the winter in the Himalayas, the heat of the desert and overcome other limitations.  On one occasion, nine days before the night of Siva or Sivaratri, the ascetic walks up to a crematorium and meditates without food or water.  On the night of Sivaratri, the fast is broken by begging food from the unclean (the one who tends to corpses), the untouchable (a sweeper) or the profane (a person of ill-repute).  The story takes a twist when the Baba rescues a child from a house of ill-repute and takes her to Amarkantak.  En route, the girl learns that the water was pure where water snakes swam, that the ash of dried cow dung acted as an anti-septic and a mosquito repellent, and that animals ignored other species unthreatening to themselves.  The girl is christened Uma or peace at night and is declared as the daughter of the Narmada; she is a minstrel who goes from place to place singing songs in praise of the river Narmada.  The real twist in the story is the revelation that the Naga Baba re-enters this world as an archaeologist, though there is a hint of his erudition when the character is being introduced.  The reader is also told that the Baba had completed the eighty four thousand births that the soul had to travel before the reentering as a man.  The story (and the novel) ends indicating the journey of the river, and of the minstrel, towards the ocean.

          Despite starting off on the Sringara rasa, this book veers towards bhakti (devotion) and has strong philosophical undertones.  A compelling read.

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