Nitisha Kaul’s first novel, Residue offers stunning sensitivity, delightful intrigues, interesting technical innovations as well as a sizable helping of minor annoyances. Overall: well worth a read. A book review by Monidipa Mondal.
When I meet the author and fellow Kindle columnist Nitasha Kaul in London, one of the first things she mentions to me is her reluctance to classify Residue as a ‘Kashmiri novel’. Her protagonists – Leon Ali and Keya Raina – are Kashmiri by origin but neither of them has lived in Kashmir. They meet each other in Berlin and are pulled together in the pursuit of a mystery. No event in the novel takes place in Kashmir, apart from brief lapses into memory or anecdote. Kaul herself is of Kashmiri origin, though she now lives largely in London. Are parts of the book autobiographical? That is another question that bothers her, she admits. If a character is too similar to the author’s background, it is quickly assumed to be autobiographical; if a character is too different, accusations of inauthenticity arise. ‘Because I am a Kashmiri Pandit, can I not write a character who’s a Kashmiri Muslim?’ asks Kaul, and her primary protagonist – the first-person voice in the novel – is indeed a Kashmiri Muslim. There are others in the novel from vastly different, and differently complicated, backgrounds.
I bring all these speculations into my reading of Residue, because a book review, at best, is a tentative dance between several subjectivities. Many of us are readers, writers and reviewers in turn, in different capacities; and perspectives that are entirely closed, entirely hostile, entirely blind to the other person’s craft are hard to come across these days. At the same time, not every reviewer has read the same books, nor has every reader, and each person’s background and life experiences ensure that different parts of a story may come alive to different readers, and other parts may fall flat and seem inauthentic. For a novel as wide in the range of space and time as this one, with characters so diverse, the scope of such difference is especially large. But I will start with just the few facts that are instantly recognized in book reviews. Residue was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009, one of the last novels to receive this honour before the award closed its doors to unpublished manuscripts. Kaul has been trained as an economist; taught economics, politics and creative writing in the UK and Bhutan; she has travelled extensively and often writes about international politics, society and identity. She is open-minded, humane and sensitive in conversation. Residue is her first novel.
The most striking quality I take away from Residue is the sense of understanding that I had encountered in its author in person. Kaul seems to have achieved a deep position of sympathy for all her characters. Her insight into their thoughts and personal journeys is both revelatory and poignant in parts, making the novel a great pleasure to read. Even Abhilash, the dour, uptight husband who destroys the life of his sentimental wife, and Maya, the anxious girlfriend who drives her emotionally troubled boyfriend to extremes –characters who aren’t given a direct perspective in the novel – are vulnerable and unwitting in their follies, rather than being indifferent plot devices. Every character is a tip of an iceberg, and a great many of them simply pass through the novel – childhood friends, college acquaintances, relatives, neighbours, servants, interviewees for Keya’s post-doctoral research, strangers on flights, in the streets, on the tube. They are interesting enough characters, lovingly and observantly portrayed, but characters who seem not to add much to the novel besides obscuring the linear progression of the plot. The core of the plot contains two elements – the search for a man who disappeared in a foreign country two decades ago, and a tentative love affair between two strangers who are never sure if they will meet the next time. While both these mysteries need to be drawn out to the end in order to sustain the story, I am not sure that the introduction of multiple red herrings into the main plot was a satisfying way of doing so.
Still, I cannot deny that I enjoyed much in the red herrings. They make Residue more than just one story or even just several stories. In parts, it is also a chronicle of growing up in Delhi in the 1980s and ’90s; an insight on the life and work of a post-doctoral researcher in the UK; a street tour guide to Berlin, London, Bristol and other places; and a fascinating parade of clothes and appearances. I am intrigued by the unpredictable narrative devices Kaul occasionally introduces– irregular alphabets and graphemes to denote swans and waves; onomatopoeic replication of various accents; tube maps and struck-through letters. The novel also builds up an irregularity of narrative mode. Leon speaks in the first person, except when he turns into a third-person ‘Nobody’ at a period of emotional turmoil. Keya is written in a third-person subjective voice. Leon and Keya switch randomly through chapters, creating an occasional (and perhaps intended) confusion in perspective. Shula Farid, a character from the past, interjects chapters from her ‘unwritten autobiography’ into the story, which only becomes a physical diary towards the very end of the novel. When all of them are put together, the plot of the novel becomes an endless play on verisimilitude.
Unfortunately, reading the novel is also accompanied by recurring knee-jerk reactions to less than ideal copy editing. Having trained as a copy editor myself, I accept that my sensitivity to the vagaries of grammar should not be considered standard for the non-editing reader, but in certain instances – such as when the renowned Bengali poet passes under the radar as ‘Jibananda Das’, the quality of copy editing does potentially reflect on the reception of the novel. Overall, Residue is a novel whose story and essence themselves shine through in several ways. These alone make it worth reading and deeply enjoying. I only wish they weren’t so often distracted by these minor deficiencies of form.
