Book name- SARASWATI: A NOVEL
Author- Gurnaik Johal
Published by- Serpent’s Tail, Price- Rs 699
Saraswati is Gurnaik Johal’s debut novel. Johal is a young Punjabi writer, raised in Britain, who rose to quick popularity with his collection of short stories, We Move, published a few years ago. Saraswati is a novel of mammoth girth: the narrative sprawls across time and space like a giant expanse. Like Johal, his characters too are diasporic Punjabis, scattered all over the world but connected with one another through an unexpected link. Some readers may impose Douglas Coupland’s term, ‘translit’, on Saraswati but there are so many layers, cross-sections and patterns connecting countries, centuries, reality and myth in the novel that the term seems tragically inadequate for it.
The first multi-layered concept resides in the novel’s very title. It begins with the resurgence of the ancient river, Saraswati, that was said to have run its course in the Ghaggar-Hakra river system. If it existed at all, the Saraswati dried up hundreds of years ago. Therefore, its sudden appearance at the bottom of a well that had been empty for decades in a Hakra farm naturally sparks national and, soon, international interest. The farm has been inherited by Satnam Hakra from his grandmother. He had come to Punjab from England with his parents to sell the farm and close the chapter before they returned to their English familiarity. However, the sight of the farm, the water buffalo, and the little well changes something in Satnam. He refuses to sell it. For a while, he gets caught up in the politicised religious hype surrounding the return of the river but he soon manages to extract himself and is the first link in a series that forms an intricately connected pattern that binds the narrative together.
Saraswati could be fit into a number of genres. It has touches of diaspora literature, historical fiction, and ecocriticism. From Satnam’s discovery of seven Phulkari dupattas in his grandmother’s trunk, along with a mysterious square of red cloth, begins the connected tales of the descendants of Sejal and Juggad, the lovers who defied the confines of caste
and stepped across boundaries in the eighteenth century to start
their life together anew. But the burden of guilt for their ‘misdemeanour’ hung over their heads and Sejal’s aunt’s curse, “Those who turn from their parents are cursed to see their own children turn from them”, seemed to be the resonating truth in their lives. Sejal and Juggad have seven children, their “own Sapta Sindhu”, and following the name they give their eldest, Sutlej, they name the rest of their children after rivers. The last, a daughter, is borne by Sejal at a late age and at a time when their finances are at a steady decline. She is named Saraswati by the village elder, after the mythical river, “Bigger even than Indus”.
Sejal had two great talents: embroidering Phulkari patterns, her work displaying her growing confidence over the years, and telling “qisses”, stories of love from far-off lands. The curse indeed drove their children away from them and, at the moment of departure, Sejal handed each child a square of red cloth that she made them promise to bring back to Hakra. The “Sapta Sindu” of Sejal and Juggad move across the world and decades, even centuries later, their descendants come together to form the current chain of events in the story. An ingenious app that connects relatives through DNA information helps Sejal’s descendants connect with one another. They are all in diverse professions and each of their individual situations involves water and somehow links them to the Saraswati river. When they meet, they manage to align their pasts and their stories and trace their roots back to Sejal’s Phulkari and “qisse”. Almost all the embroidered dupattas, sold and auctioned to various corners of the world, are brought together and a fine line, in gold thread — Sejal’s signature — is discovered as running through each design, spilling over into the next. While the world falls apart in quarrel over religion, politics and environment, Sejal’s family reunite, completing the circle that had broken when her children left her, each carrying a square of red cloth.
Johal’s novel, shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, displays remarkable maturity and deftness of expression despite the young age of the author. It is difficult to stitch together a tale that ranges from political criticism to environmental concerns through mythological and religious implications but Johal manages to do so effortlessly. His language is smooth and free-flowing, alternating poignancy with sophisticated humour. Saraswati is worth a glance over as a novel that fits well into the situations we find ourselves in today.