A surreal mix of poison and plot
Animal’s People, By Indra Sinha, Simon & Schuster, 384 pp., $25
An aborted fetus seeking something resembling restitution. A former nun who, after the night of the "accident," jabbers away in her childhood French and awaits the apocalypse. A lead character who walks on all fours and declares, "I used to be human once." Welcome to Indra Sinha's "Animal's People" the strangest, most surreal novel you will read this year.
Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, "Animal's People" tells the story of a saucy, sharp-tongued 19-year-old boy, Animal, whose spine has been twisted so badly as the result of an industrial accident that he is reduced to walking on all fours. But despite the fact that Animal - who wears his nickname as a badge of honor - can only see up to most people's navels, the boy sees and understands more than the people around him.
The novel uses as its inspiration the horrific industrial accident that occurred in 1984 in Bhopal, India, when the American-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked poisonous gases that killed thousands of sleeping people in a single night. Countless thousands more suffered long-term injuries such as blindness, kidney and liver failure, cancer, and birth defects. The novel also deals with the fact that the residents of Bhopal have never had their day in court and that no company executive has ever stood trial for one of the world's worst industrial accidents.
The central conceit of the novel is that, Animal, one of the victims of that dreaded night, tired of Western "jarnalis" coming to the fictional town of Khaufpur to hear about the catastrophe, agrees to talk on one condition: that he be allowed to relate his story directly into a tape recorder left by a sympathetic journalist. It is a literary device that gives the novel its power because Animal's is an irrepressible, if foul-mouthed, presence that brings the novel alive.
Animal is an unsentimental hustler, a trickster brimming with mischief and cunning. For instance, he is not above poisoning the saintly Zafar, who has given up a comfortable existence to toil on behalf of Khaufpur's citizens, simply because he sees Zafar as a romantic rival. Never mind the fact that Nisha, the woman he loves, never sees him as anything other than an insolent, funny brotherly figure whose misshapen form arouses her pity, not love.
And therein lies the heart-breaking dilemma of Animal - despite being the least sentimental of characters, he succumbs to an almost irrational hope of walking upright and taking his place among men in order to woo Nisha. Betrayed by a body in which almost nothing works except his libido, Animal sees his hope lying with Elli, the mysterious Amrikan doctor who has opened a medical clinic in Khaufpur. Zafar and the other activists assume that Elli is a spy for the Kampani that has caused them such grief, but blinded by lust and hope, Animal befriends Elli.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around the Khaufpur residents, who have boycotted Elli's clinic, trying to figure out who the mystery woman is, while awaiting a court order that would allow the government to seize the Kampani's assets. In the meantime, we are offered descriptions of the harrowing conditions in which Animal and his impoverished brethren live under the shadows of the chemical plant, which still leaks its poisons into the soil and water.
The resolution of those plot complications feels a little trivial and forced. But that could be because the characterization of the obscene, conniving, street-smart, orphaned Animal is so dazzling that it overshadows everything else. Sadly, it also overshadows some of the other characters like Zafar, who, disappointingly, turns out to be every bit as saintly and pure as we are led to believe he is. Nisha feels particularly one-dimensional. Sinha does better with his salty, earthy characters such as Elli and Animal. And he is at his best when he blurs the boundaries between his human and non-human characters like Animal's friend Jara, a dog, and Kha-in-the-Jar, the fetus aborted by a mother who was poisoned by the chemicals released by the Kampani.
Despite its frenetic pace, the novel sags a little toward the end as it moves away from Animal's antics and spins toward its a-little-too-easy conclusion. But the last few lines of the novel are haunting and remind the reader of the essential outrage and integrity that gives this novel its bleak power: "All things pass, but the poor remain," Animal reminds us. "We are the people of the Apokalis. Tomorrow there will be more of us."
Thrity Umrigar is the author of the novels "The Space Between Us" and "If Today Be Sweet." Her memoir, "First Darling of the Morning," will be published in November. She lives in Ohio.
