It’s 1885. Off the coast of Africa, where the slave ships ply , lies the island of Arlinda. Here a black baby boy and a white baby girl are being raised by a mute nurse, as par of an experiment in race studies. Arlinda is an interesting setting : Islands lend themselves well to powerful denouements or at the least to idyllic romances, as anyone who has read Goldings ‘The Lord of the Flies’ or seen ‘The Blue Lagoon’ will testify. Add to this the extra dimension of genetic theory , and you could with artful plot and perspective have a provocative piece of ‘Frankenstein’ meets ‘Never Let Me Go’.
Management Professor Basu has written earlier about 'The Opium Clerk' and then 'The Miniaturist' a court painter in Akbar's Court. The two warring scientists in this, his third novel, book certainly add depth to this varied repertoire. Bates , the Englishman collects skulls, in an office referred to appropriately enough as the Madhouse. According to him the White race is superior to the Black and skull measurements confirm this hypothesis. Belacroix, the Frenchman is less defined. He is subject to a basketful of weird skin conditions, but mostly he takes notes and he also engages Bates in pages and pages of pseudo scientific argument. His thesis remains that the races are different but doomed to hate each other. The Arlinda experiment is the statistically half baked consequence of this disagreement. The White girl will emerge as superior , says Bates. They will fight and one will kill the other says Belacroix. It’s a macabre menage-a-trois, Bates and his assistant Quartley, antagonist Belacroix , and the two ‘savage’ children with their dumb nurse. They circle each other , like gladiators in a ring, for most of the book, which sounds suspenseful, except that nothing happens. It’s all dependably dull. Bates, Belacroix , Norah and specially the children never come to life. The denouement isn’t overly dramatic either, but it comes as a relief all the same.
This review appeared in India Today June 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment