Missed opportunity

The book relates a sad tale of an archetypical Indian family steeped in its own world of pettiness, with family members wasting their entire lifetime keeping that narrow-minded world alive, says S Nanda Kumar

Sinking, not Swimming; Nalini Rajan
Penguin, 2010, pp 255, Rs 299 

Sinking, not Swimming starts promisingly enough, with flavours of old Madras and Mylapore, and a typical extended Tamil family. It is a sad tale of an archetypal Indian family steeped in its own world of pettiness, with family members wasting entire lifetimes keeping that narrow-minded world alive. And before they realise it, life has gone by in a flash.There is a lesson here on taking the broad view of life, and realising that life is too short to be spent nursing petty animosities. The author seems to have also understood the futile suffering of the families of cancer patients.

If it loses momentum, it is simply because there are far too many characters and voices in this book. There is no main protagonist, although the titular head of the family, Suri, begins the tale in his own voice. And just about the time when one is making a connection with him, the chapter ends. Rajan has used one voice per chapter — this means by the time we are introduced to all the main players in their own voices, and their points-of-view, one is already halfway through the book. By this time, one should have become familiar with the names of the entire family — but for me personally, the family tree right at the beginning of the book proved to be a boon as well as a curse — a boon, because I could keep flipping back to find out who each character was in relation to the others; a curse, because one needed to keep checking on who the various people who pop up are —it took away from the flow of the book.

Full review here Deccan Herald