Hue and Cry

Another novel seeks out Bhopal and the aftermath of brutality

The Red Book,
Meaghan Delahunt,
Granta, 10.99 pounds
Another novel seeks out Bhopal and the aftermath of brutality

Imagine if you could hear colours and see sounds. Then realise that it is not a figment of your imagination but a scientific phenomenon called synaesthesia. Employ it to your craft as a photographer. Hear turquoise when the camera clicks, because it is your favourite resonance. And you begin to understand Francoise, the protagonist in Meaghan Delahunt’s The Red Book. “All people, objects and places have a special sound and texture. India, for example, is red,” she says, possibly explaining the title of the novel.

But if red is the colour of her life, coincidences form her destiny — right from the time she lands in New Delhi and finds her way to the Singhs’ residence where she is a guest. Naga or Sonam, a Tibetan refugee who is now a monk, was once a domestic in their home. And Arkay, an alcoholic Scot whom she later falls in love with, had also stayed there. She meets them again in Bhopal — on the twentieth anniversary of the Union Carbide gas tragedy. And then again on her travels through India — right from Agra to Dharamsala. Soon you realise that perhaps there is no such thing as a twist of fate — these three souls are bound by destiny, almost.

Francoise is there to photograph Bhopal — where Naga lost his family on the fateful night of the poisonous leak. Arkay was there to be with the Buddhist monk. The city forms the core of the book in many ways. Delahunt invokes the most famous image of the gas tragedy again and again — the photograph taken by Raghu Rai of an infant covered in dust, its milky white eyes signalling its death, the helpless hand of an adult on its forehead.

You are introduced to the aftermath of brutality and helplessness through Naga’s sister Dawa who is dying of uterine cancer. Francoise captures it all. And so does Delahunt through her. She aptly defines the Indian attitude of indifference when

Mr Singh chides Francoise for the western obsession with disasters. But she equally presents the reality of the horror that still exists. Naga’s last thoughts on Warren Anderson are so powerful and poignant that they take your breath away.

Of course, there are the expected flaws. Specially when a “foreigner” attempts to “understand” India. There are the unavoidable clichés. The too-contrived coincidences. The inevitable Mysticism 101. And the Indian as an eccentric who can never speak proper English. But somehow all of them are left on the wayside because of the honesty that

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Delahunt employs. This is such a heartfelt book that the naivety is almost the reason for the read. It doesn’t come in its way. Instead, it forces you to look inside yourself to try and connect with that simplicity. To perhaps rediscover your humanity too.