(Book Review) #2 “The Covenant of Water” (2023) By Abraham Verghese

 

Book Review #2

“The Covenant of Water” (2023) By Abraham Verghese

 

“Covenant” means ‘a formal agreement or promise between two or more people’. The author has his own interpretation for this term as he surmises it through the character of Mariamma:

And now that the daughter is here, standing in the water that connects them all in time and space and always has. The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they are all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone. She stays there listening to the burbling mantra, the chant that never ceases, repeating its message that ‘all is one’. What she thought was her is all ‘maya’ an illusion, but it is one shared illusion. And what else can she do but go on.  (Verghese ‘The Covenant’ 706).

The Parambil family has a bizarre relationship with water. It nourishes their land and assures a bountiful supply of produce while endangering the lives of unsuspecting men and women on the grounds of consanguinity. The strange deaths is a closely guarded secret of the family that is handed down from generation to generation, a cross that a chosen member of every generation has to bear for the rest of their lives. The matriarch and the central figure of this family, Big Ammachi, is the only one who sustains the hope of reversing the curse that has been haunting their family for several generations. She strives incessantly in this direction even when deaths tragic and gruesome keep testing her resolve and rends her heart over and over again, scarring and opening up old wounds that she keeps from festering through her resilience. You end up seeking comfort in her presence in the pages as the narrative holds you in its grip and slowly begins to permeate your beingness, as if you were a mute spectator to the concatenation of events, helplessly watching them unfold, rendered without agency to pre-empt them.

The story borrows from the socio economic and political transitions that saw the emergence of an independent country and the birth of the state of Kerala, a banana shaped state towards the southernmost tip of India. Tribes robbed off their land, youngsters deprived of purpose in their lives, women who cannot inherit property, men who struggle to love, diseases that ostracise, penury induced betrayal of trust, all find mention in this saga of three generations. Abraham Verghese limns a splendorous landscape coloured in the green of the trees and the shimmer from the meandering rivers, lakes and lagoons that crisscross the terrain of blood red fecund laterite. The colour palette adds to the sombre tone of the account. There are no vacant or blank spaces. There are hues spilled across all episodes and the intervening time such that the reader almost lives through and experiences as one’s own, the entirety of time frame.

The canvass erected by the author is irrefutably ambitious and could have come across as unwieldy. But it is here that he flexes his dexterity as a writer, breaking down the immensity of the tale into small digestible episodes, doling out just enough information to make us want to turn the pages for more. He patiently introduces the reader to each character with their stories functioning as threads which when woven together forms the magnificent fabric of this narrative. His pointillist detailing justifies its voluminosity, which has been raised as an impediment to easy reading. In an interview given to The Hindu Magazine, the writer himself mentions that “… you cannot write entirely for the market forces or the current taste”. The immediacy in the multiple moments of anagnorisis becomes easily apparent owing to the urgency in the narration. It is also impressive how Verghese structured the entirety of this novel without ever chastising the oppressors, neither foreign nor indigenous even while revealing the reality of their harsh truths, and swerves clear of malice and spite in any and all forms. Although promises are broken and rules of love and intimacy are flouted, he doesn’t let the weight of judgement and morality to stain the purity of guileless desires and needs of the characters. Andrew Solomon in his review for The New York Times writes: “… The surfeit of grace sometimes feels unrealistic and even pretentious, as though the writer is affiliating himself with standards that ordinary humans cannot attain.” Koshy Saar, a mentor of sorts to Big Ammachi’s son Philipose, mentions that “fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives”. But the world surrounding Parambil as fashioned by the author is aspirational if not ideal. The people are quick to forgive and forget. They are contrite and ready to repent even for the most trivial of transgressions.

The metatextuality in this work is introduced as an efficient means to develop the character of Philipose who transcends his geographical limitations through the works of the foreign authors. Having said that, the novel per se also lays bare the motivations of those with power and privilege and provides an explanation for why certain actions are performed and why they are received and construed in a certain way by those in the lower strata of our society. Joppan refusing to be Philipose’s shadow the way his father was before him despite the latter’s generous offer is a case in point. Joppan’s words are not acrimonious, but it hurts without wounding. The budding indignation of the those who constitute the dregs of the society and the arrival of Communism as the ultimate panacea to all the social ills that keep them from climbing up the totem pole along with their eventual disillusionment all figure in the evolution of certain characters.

The women characters in the novel are very well written. From Big Ammachi, the matriarch of the Parambil family to Mariamma, her namesake and granddaughter, all the women characters have their own stories of love, loss and triumph to tell. Even within the confines of patriarchy, they display formidable strength of character and remarkable resourcefulness to survive in the face of adversity. They have an acute awareness about their menfolk and are privy to their weaknesses, unknown to them. When Elsie, Philipose’s wife draws a portrait of him, “A shiver runs through him – pride in her, but also a disquiet that he struggles to name. The sketch flatters him – strong lines for his jaw and delicate ones for lips that are full and sensuous. But whether she knows it or not, she’s captured his confusion, his secret fears. He, a flawed mortal – not Emperor Shah Jahan or a genie after all – is dwarfed by her talent; he’s no longer sure of himself, searching for the right way to be with her, to be worthy of her”.

 Without coming across as pedantic, the author has also dabbled in philosophy in bits and pieces throughout the work. They are ruminations that have organically surfaced from the unfolding events and not something forced upon the reader. During his ultimate act of bravery, Philipose’s final thoughts on life are especially poignant: “We are dying while we’re living, we are old even when we are young, we are clinging to life even as we resign ourselves to leaving it”. Such lessons in life and death abound in this work. Depending on what one is seeking, this work has the potential to satisfy your myriad needs and wants. Verghese makes you tear up just as easily as he plasters a smile on your face. All you have to do is let go of all prejudices and submit yourself to the bewitching words with a childlike credulity and willingness.