This book was an unusual one for me in a few respects, which is one of the reasons I struggled more with reviewing it than usual. AP Firdaus’s Remember, Mr Sharma, a magical realism novel, seems geared towards the pre-teen age group exploring some dark themes in India’s political and communal history.
It follows the adventures of a 12-year-old whom we know as Adi – unexpectedly short for Adi Shankara – Sharma, as he navigates not only generational trauma and familial conflict but also the seventh standard, an ongoing trial that is punctuated by a talking time-traveling bureaucrat vulture. Vultures seem to have been chosen not so much for their winning personalities as for the sake of a deft little dig about the human race and the messes we leave behind for others to clean up. Also included is a quick digression about the Indian vulture crisis, particularly contemporary in this case, because Remember, Mr Sharma, is set in the year 1997 – the 50th year of India’s independence.
That comes up a lot because of the parallel Firdaus sets up between the independence and its ensuing fallout for the country at large from the British Empire and the independence and ensuing fallout for Adi and his mother from his nasty father, a character that is written off as being beyond redemption fairly early. One could argue that this is a function of the sole narrator being a 12-year-old boy, although the fact that Adi is – in spite of who he is raised by and what he is exposed to – extremely and implausibly unproblematic in pretty much every possible way indicates to me that he’s most likely a mouthpiece for Firdaus’s own political views, which he hopes you’ve noticed are very respectable. Actually, every sympathetic character gets a turn on the soapbox. The soapbox is very accommodating.
In an otherwise quite skilfully executed novel, this felt, to me, like a missed opportunity. I do not believe that Firdaus is actually incapable of more subtle storytelling, because he does pull it off in other respects of the book; nor is he necessarily bad at creating believable, compelling characters. Where does the urge towards didacticism come from in so much contemporary political fiction? I’m not sure whether it’s a symptom of the writer’s lack of faith in themselves to convey or in the reader to comprehend.
Then again, I may be using an unfair yardstick in this case – this particular book is probably for a younger audience and perhaps it was believed (mistakenly, in my opinion), that said audience would need more hand-holding.
Adi is a sensitive, genuine character, and the experience of interacting with the world through his eyes as an adult myself was very interesting. He isn’t cloying or twee, none of the child characters are – actually, what I liked most about being in his head was that he really does make sense, but in a 12-year-old way, not an affected wise-beyond-his-years one. Firdausi has not forgotten what it was like being a child, even though his own adulthood drives much of the ways the adults in Adi’s life talk and act; at times the reader sees or understands things implied by them that go over his head. (This obvious talent is exactly what pushed my disappointment, as I said before, in the few flaws I did feel.)
The world Firdaus puts us in is extremely believable; he has an eye and ear for India that is rarer than you might think among Indian writers in English. Adi is 14 years older than me, but the India he lives in feels authentic and recognisable, and its depiction doesn’t fall into the trap of nostalgia. Also authentic and recognisable is the vulture, whom we know only as the AJS-cum-DDJ of the DHA, which was established under the Historical Adjustment (Hindsight) Act, or the HAHA (“It is no laughing matter, Mr Sharma.”). Ladies and gentlemen, cards on the table, this vulture is a delight. It is grumpy and bossy and worships red tape and brings to mind the clerk at the RTO who delayed your drivers’ license by three to six weeks. It is very much a caricature, but by design; just because the novel is about the atrocities committed during Partition doesn’t mean it feels a need to take itself seriously all the time.
That said, it doesn’t hold back about the actual atrocities – Firdaus is careful never to be so explicit as to jade the reader (the best example of this, in my opinion, is a female infanticide in the second half that made me pause to take a breath), nor does he rely purely on the element of surprise or shock value. As its title tells us, a big part of what Remember, Mr Sharma is trying to explore is the idea of generational trauma, and also generational cruelty? Aside from Adi, a lot of the characters are products of their times and their families, and the personal tragedies therein, and the book reminds us mercilessly that this cannot be without consequence. And also that whether they are your fault or not, those consequences become your responsibility to contend with.
Adi’s tasks, and the events from the past he gets to witness, are all very linear and aimed at one specific goal, which does mean that we miss out on some material that would have added to that theme – a more detailed look at the relationship between Tamanna Sharma and her mother, for example, which is only ever hinted at but which was clearly a complex, tragic affair, one of many things that she can’t seem to move on from. Adi is spared a similar fate because the vulture, like many therapists, gives him self-actualizing assignments to complete, and like fewer therapists, rewards them with tangible results via acts of magic – but his family is such a mess that it gets a long-awaited promotion for engineering their projected bitter end into a bittersweet one. There is no question of an all-out happy ending, but about this Firdaus is unapologetic. (An exemplifying quote from somewhere in Act III: “You made Ma happy, you say. Then why are you looking like your buffalo has gone in the water?…of course, Mr Sharma, you cannot expect to keep her happy through seven lifetimes. Even your great gods cannot do such a thing. Making someone happy even for one moment is a great achievement.”)
This A-plot as well as the various B-plots are all coming-of-age stories; actually this book, now that I think about it, is kind of like if Imtiaz Ali wrote Train to Pakistan. If I hadn’t spent over a hundred words up there complaining about overly explicit political messages I might have had something to say about how relevant that makes it.
Remember, Mr Sharma, AP Firdaus, Sceptre.