It took me about two weeks to process my thoughts on Shastri Akella’s debut novel, The Sea Elephants. The last two-thirds of the book had left me feeling joyful—light-hearted, free of constraint, enthusiastic about life and all it has to offer, good, bad, and all. The first third, however, had been so heavy that the book had felt like a burden in my hands. If I had not been compelled to finish reading it for this review, I might have given up on it entirely by the 100th page—a thought that now fills me with horror because had I actually done that, I would have missed one of the very rare books of the last few years that provides not just a little hope for humanity, but lots of it.
The Sea Elephants
Penguin/Viking
Pages: 384
Price: Rs.599
The Sea Elephants is about Shagun Mathur, a teenage boy who meets his father for the first time in his memory six months after his younger sisters drowned in the Bay of Bengal. The father’s return from London, where he has been working as a contractor, shakes up Shagun’s life just as much as the loss of his sisters has already done. That is because the man of the house has distinct ideas of what masculinity should be, and Shagun is just as distinctly gay.
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This is the 1990s. India’s mind is closed to the idea of queerness. Not only does Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalise homosexuality, but much of the population of the country, due to either ignorance or bigotry, believes the very concept of queerness to be unnatural. But Shagun, who has grown up reading the myths recounted in the first volume of a series called The Dravidian Book of Seas and Stargazing, knows that India had once not only acknowledged queerness but also accepted it. So even though his mother seems to side with his father, even though his father sneers at the fact that the second volume of The Dravidian Book is unavailable because the myths took queerness too far and the book had to be withdrawn, even though he is bullied by his classmates, even though he suffers sexual assaults at his boarding school, Shagun knows his sexuality cannot be denied.
Shagun runs away
His father will not give up, however, and sends the head of a conversion centre to the school to instil the fear of homosexuality in the boy. Terrified by the prospect of violence ahead of him, Shagun runs away from school and joins a travelling street theatre troupe in the hope that his father will never be able to find him. And this is the point in the book where both the story and the tone of the novel open up, turning the heavy burden of being different that Shagun carries on his shoulders into a much lighter satchel of joy.
Cover of The Sea Elephants. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement
In Shagun’s new world, queerness is a part of everyday life. Oh, it still must be hidden, but it need not be entirely concealed. Constantly on the road, Shagun finds acceptance from his fellow actors, shares with them his dream of marrying a man and raising children in a happy home, falls in love with Marc Singer, an American Jew brought up in India, becomes a drama teacher, and meets several people who, he realises, are just as much outcasts as he himself is because they do not allow so-called tradition to hold them back.
It is not all untrammelled happiness, of course. Shagun’s role in his sisters’ drowning is revealed when he realises that as much as he loves Marc, he cannot physically show his affection beyond a point; a deeply prejudiced policeman terrifies Shagun even as the young man reads news reports every day of men being hauled off to conversion centres; and worst of all, as he attempts to understand the motivations of his now dead father, Shagun’s most frightening nightmare comes true.
But Shagun is a different person by the time this happens, and how he deals with events in this phase of his life is a testimony to the power of a self-acceptance that has been acquired against all odds.
Epic scope
Considering that it is only 384 pages long, The Sea Elephants is almost as wide ranging in its exploration of humanity as any epic anywhere in the world. Although Shagun, the central character, is gay and the novel necessarily focusses on his homosexuality against the backdrop of India’s patriarchal and heteronormative mindset, the novel is relevant to everyone made to feel out of place simply because they emerged from different moulds than most of the people around them. This perspective of life suffuses the book from the moment Shagun decides to join the theatre troupe and stays with the reader long after the story ends.
“The novel also makes much of the concept of generational trauma as depicted in the myth of the sea elephants. This concept is so relevant to most Indians that I nearly wept when I came across it here.”
The novel also makes much of the concept of generational trauma as depicted in the myth of the sea elephants. This concept is so relevant to most Indians that I nearly wept when I came across it here; it was the first time I had read a reference to it in a story rather than in a non-fiction tome.
Defying destinies
All this praise does not mean that The Sea Elephants is absolutely brilliant. The first third of it is not only heavy and predictable but also seems constrained as though Akella had been trying to use a voice acceptable to Western publishers of South Asian stories when he started writing. Fortunately, his own voice breaks through from the time Shagun runs away from school, and it is this voice—sincere and suffused with heart even if sometimes unpolished and naive—that brings the story alive.
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As time passes, I am sure my memories of The Sea Elephants will grow hazy. But one thing I will never forget is a line said by Nandi, the owner of the theatre troupe, to Shagun when Shagun becomes a permanent member of the group: “For embracing the destiny you were not born into, this gift is yours.”
I hope, like Shagun, millions of us defy the destinies we were born into.
Kushalrani Gulab is a Mumbai-based freelance editor.
