Why you must read Orhan Pamuk's new book

For which novel would one prefer to remember VS Naipaul, or for that matter Salman Rushdie?

It's generally the first few books of the author that come to one's mind. Maybe A House For Mr Biswas in the case of Sir Vidia, and probably Midnight's Children for Sir Salman.

Orhan Pamuk, in that sense, is a different writer. For, he may have already written a number of epic novels like My Name is Red and Snow, but every time he comes up with a new book a debate resumes whether it's the best work of the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

In this sense, he is much like our own Amitav Ghosh who, despite coming up with masterpieces like The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace, manages to surprise his readers each time he writes a new novel, the latest being his Ibis trilogy.

Two romances

Coming to Pamuk's latest novel, A Strangeness in My Mind, it appears to have a typical "Pamukian" plot wherein characters appear as mere props put in the novel to tell the story of the city the author regards as his home - Istanbul.

Yet, it's different, given the fact that very rarely has Pamuk written a novel which is so humorous even when there's melancholy - huzun, as Pamuk calls it - constantly lingering in the backdrop.

The book tells the story of Mevlut, a 12-year-old village boy who moves to Istanbul in 1969. During his four-decade-long stay in the city, he gets his hands into several small-time jobs - from selling yogurt on the street to being a junior inspector for an electric company - but it is as a "boza" seller that he truly savours his moment and even existence.

Boza is an obsolete Turkish drink, made from fermented wheat, which was extremely popular during the Ottoman times as it provided conservative Muslims, who would otherwise not touch liquor, a socially acceptable way to get drunk.

But in the post-Ataturk Turkey, when it was fashionable to be Western, boza went out of fashion. For, why go for the second-best drink when the best is there for grabs? Pamuk, in this way, uses boza as a metaphor to underline the conflict between the Western and the Eastern, the tradition and the modernity - a constant feature in most of his novels.

The book, however, isn't just about Mevlut's romance with Istanbul. It's also about his love for a girl he knew nothing about. In fact, he hadn't even seen the girl, except her eyes. Since it was unfathomable for a boy to openly talk to a girl in those days, Mevlut wrote her love letters, and managed to get them through to her with the help of his cousin, Suleyman.

Pamuk's subtle humour again comes to play when he lets Mevlut write letters talking only - and endlessly - how her "eyes are like ensorcelled arrows that pierce my heart and take me captive".

After three years of constant endeavour, the girl agreed to run away with Mevlut. But as things appeared to be going as per the plan, the author puts in a shocker. The girl who ran away with Mevlut wasn't the one he had written so many love letters. Suleyman tricked him to get Rayiha, who was the elder sister of Samiha, the girl he was actually in love with. As it turned out, Suleyman duped Mevlut because he wanted marry Samiha himself!

So, is it a tragic story? Far from it. Mevlut tells nothing to his wife. His perseverance pays and he finds true love born out of the deceit. What's interesting all through - and which makes Mevlut a special Pamukian character - is the overwhelming positivity oozing from him even when he is down and out. His attitude is never one of resignation, but of gratitude for whatever destiny provides him.

Faithless space

All this while, Pamuk never misses to comment about Istanbul. He bemoans at its rapidly changing character, from being a city of three million to 13 million Turks.

Writes Pamuk, "Some nights, the city seemed transformed into a more mysterious, menacing place, and Mevlut couldn't make out whether he felt this way because there was no one waiting for him at home or because these new streets had become imbued with signs and symbols he didn't recognise: his fears were exacerbated by the silence of the new concrete walls, the insistent presence of a multitude of strange and ever-changing posters, and the way a street could suddenly twist on and on just as he thought it might be ending, almost is if to mock him." A few lines later, the author adds, "The city was no longer an enormous, familiar home but a faithless space in which anyone who got a chance added more concrete, more streets, courtyards, walls, pavements and shops."

Best not yet

Notwithstanding the bemoan, the novel is overwhelmingly sweet, with a constant dose of humour and positivity sprinkled all across. In fact, if you are new to Pamuk, then it's advised you pick this book first, instead of other novels which have made the Turkish novelist what he is today. It will introduce you to the glorious aspects of the "Pamukian" style of novel, and prepare you better for his masterpieces like Snow and My Name is Red. You will appreciate them even better after reading A Strangeness in My Mind. And if you have already read Pamuk, then do read this one too. The master storyteller may still surprise you, and make you believe: that his best is yet to come. Amen!

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)