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The Strike

Anand Mahadevan

The Strike casts the reader into 1980s India, where 12-year old Hari must make sense of a world in which borders between languages, classes, and religions are still part of everyday reality. The narrative opens with a moment of transgression and tragedy when Hari, who's a Brahmin and a vegetarian, eats forbidden fish and inadvertently causes the death of his grandmother. This propels Hari to question the arbitrary rules and divisions that govern his life and the rest of Indian society.

For the most part, Toronto author Mahadevan effectively uses his child narrator to survey and critique the hypocrisy and viciousness of his birth country's economic, social, and political structures. While the adults take most of these things for granted, Hari wants reasoned logic where so often there is none. Hari's desire for truth unmasks societal lies in a convincing way, although his constant demands that his elders explain their actions and assumptions are a little heavy-handed. Hari takes on more complexity as a character when the loss of his innocence leads to a much more ambivalent and fraught understanding of both personal and societal conflict.

The novel thus charts the turmoil within both the nation and Hari himself. The plot is straightforward but compelling, especially in the railway scenes, in which Hari finds himself in the centre of a tumultuous political strike. There, in the heightened atmosphere of the train, Hari must confront his unknowing complicity in the violence and corruption that accompany his privilege. The changes within Hari take on an urgency through the careful use of language that gives not only the sensory aspects of his journey, but also the emotional ones.

In the end, resolution eludes Hari. Instead, he must leave the societal tangles as they are and strike out on a new path for himself.

- Tara Lee

A delicate portrait of a boy's inner world

Hari is a naughty boy. He has secretly slipped out of a family wedding ceremony to take a pee in the nearby railyard. He'll be missed soon, but he can't resist a further boyish transgression: "Once the rivulet of yellow disappeared into the gravel bed, he pulled down his pants and sat on a rail.... Hari liked the feel of the cold smooth iron against his skin. As his body warmed a section of the track, Hari inched forward so he could yet again feel the cold of metal." Soon he's embroiled in conversation with a gruff train engineer — and imagining escape in his big iron beast.

The first pages of Toronto writer Anand Mahadevan's debut novel bristle with thematic teasers: ambition, family, sensuality, shame and guilt, danger — all seen through the eyes of a straying child getting soot on his wedding suit.

It's all about innocence hoping to escape its dull, regimented prison.

Hari escapes decisively in the next chapter. In the kitchen of a family friend he eats some fried fish, defying an arcane religious stricture. The act momentarily frees him, then a disastrous mix of consequences and bad luck binds him with more guilt. His grandmother's accidental death seems Hari's fault, but we're steered away from that dark place. Hari's father tells him he must never feel guilt for the accident. It's a tip off; this novel is less about family dysfunction than the hypocrisies of a whole society.

Hari can't help thinking his way around the absurdities of Brahmin religious rituals. As the family arrives by train in predawn Benaras with grandmother's ashes, their first impulse is to head to the Ganges for ritual bathing. Later, in the light of morning, Hari sees sewage pouring into the river from a huge pipe just upstream from the bathing ghats. He's appalled and draws his devout great-grandad into debate — quickly stifled by the old man's dogma. The holy Ganges, he says, cleans away every stain: "Even the dirt becomes holy and good."

Skip ahead five years and Hari's in Madras, at his maternal grandparents' house. Catching a family servant, Vishu, in the act of theft, he's shoved by the young man onto a bed and has his testicles squeezed as a warning. The violation scares Hari, but stirs something much deeper. "Look at you," sneers Vishu, "aroused by a man's touch."

It's not till a third of the way into the book that we see this first hint that Hari may grow up queer, but it reads true — we recall that opening interplay of warm bum and cool railway track from a new angle. Later at the cinema with his best friend, Mohan, a brothel scene triggers some boyish grappling, which ends with Mohan's palm resting on Hari's thigh. "He squirmed in his seat and the hand moved higher until it touched the hem of his shorts." The chapter ends with escalating hand play — a homoerotic cliffhanger.

The next section, titled "Pacam (Attachment)," suggests a growing affection. But Mohan is now conspicuous by his absence. Instead we join Hari and his mother on another train to Madras. Whatever queer desire might be churning inside our pubescent hero is quickly subverted by a crossdressing hijra — a ritually castrated eunuch who is said to hold powers that can either grace men with sons or curse them with impotence. Sashaying through the railway cars, she's extorting money from gullible men with threats of emasculation.

Then a railway strike brought on by a political crisis strands the train. Along with some dramatic scuffles between strikers and irate passengers, we're treated to a touchingly described solo masturbation session in the first-class toilet. It's Hari's first-ever orgasm. A sensitively observed mix of the rapturous and the yucky, the scene is both comical and faintly sad.

This book opens with great richness and promise, offering arresting character work and vivid pictures of a fraught society. As a coming-of-age story, it's a delicate portrait of a boy's inner world — his core of innocence — besieged by the seething world around him.

The disappointment is in the extended and chaotic climax and hasty resolution. Disparate events jockey for narrative prominence. A man is burned alive in the street, "writhing and screaming," then a page later an auntie is asking, "Shall I make some dosais for breakfast?"

Hari's charming wank session in the washroom is closely followed by his implication in the horrendous crushing of three men beneath a train engine. Life does take these abrasive turns, but Mahadevan doesn't alter his structure or the gentle pitch of his storytelling to accommodate the suddenly chafing parts. Hari, a delightfully realized character, finally becomes lost in his author's narrative maze.

- Jim Bartley

Sitting at the TSAR Publications book launch, I was transported into the carriage of a train, swaying to the clanking of the engine, my nostrils invaded by the spiced sweat of passengers. Anand Mahadevan was reading from his debut novel, The Strike. I had to read it.

The Strike follows the journey of Hari, a young boy discovering the intricacies of the world he inhabits. Set in southern India circa 1980, The Strike explores Tamil politics and religious and social hierarchies through the boyhood dilemmas of a growing (and somewhat confused) Hari. Mahadevan’s strength lies in his character description, rich and tinted with a hint of irony. His account of Radha, the eunuch, is a prime example,

“Here was a man more feminine than masculine, more dark than fair, more comely than muscular, and despite all this, he found her rather pretty.”

Some characters are stronger than the others, like the eunuch and Vishu, the servant’s son. Mahadevan has a clear insight on family dynamics, depicting a neurotic mother and an awkward pre-teen boy with intense accuracy. Another powerful character sketch is Mukund, the Bollywood star wannabe,

“His jet black hair was glossy and wavy. He had a pleasant cleanshaven face, with rugged features sharper than the soft boyish faces of the pretty Bollywood stars.”

The novel is divided into titled sections, from Acai (desire) to Paruttal (ripening), each symbolizing the loose theme or central situation of a collection of chapters. The narrative is playful and lighthearted, but scratch beneath the surface, and there is gravity that cannot be ignored. Mahadevan keeps this gravity at a safe distance, reminding the reader that the narrative is through the mind of a child.

Mahadevan’s language often enters the realm of the poetic, allowing the reader to taste the slick oil of sizzling puris and the salted rust of trains,

“As Hari lifted a piece of puri to his mouth, he could smell the train--- its peculiar combination of rust, iron, and dirt that made his hands smell like blood and taste like salt.”

One disappointment with The Strike is that it ends too soon. The book could have continued for another 100 pages, and Mahadevan has the talent and the right words to make it even more enjoyable. When it ended, I felt like I had eaten a spoonful of chillies and was left without a glass of water. Perhaps his next novel will quench my thirst.

— Sheniz Janmohamed

_ _ _

For 12-year-old Hari, life in 1987 Nagpur, Central India, is a relatively happy one. He lives a carefree existence with his closest friends, and holidays are spent happily taking the train—Hari’s passion—to visit family near Madras. Life would continue to be so effortless except that the typical mysteries and confusions of adolescence in a turbulent adult world creep into Hari’s life. It is not until a complex matter of national concern occurs that Hari’s childhood is quickly snatched away from him in Anand Mahadevan’s impressive debut novel, The Strike.

Hari is a nice Brahmin boy who is both curious and helpful. Unfortunately, the combination of these qualities with the awkwardness and ignorance of adolescence creates some noteworthy circumstances that propel Hari into the spotlight within and without his family. His desire to learn what fish tastes like strangely leads to his grandmother’s accidental death. His innocent use of Hindi rather than Tamil when visiting his Madras relatives leads to insults against the family. His desire to explore during a train trip oddly results in the theft of his mother’s wedding necklace. In short, Hari seems to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing or saying the wrong thing, yet it is never with malicious intent.

The most extraordinary event involving Hari occurs on Christmas Eve while traveling from Nagpur to Madras. His train, stopped by political protesters who lie across the tracks, becomes the centerpiece of a strike to mourn the death of their chief minister and film hero, MGR. Oblivious to the implications of the strike, Hari lives his dream and is allowed to visit the cab of the engine. The dream, though, is shattered too soon. When the protesters try to overtake the engine and the driver fights to keep them out, Hari’s attempts to be helpful produce devastating, tragic results.

With The Strike, Mahadevan has cleverly written a book about an adolescent without targeting younger readers. Clearly, while this is a piece of fiction that rings true in the portrayal of its main character, it is written for a more mature audience that should recall the emotions, uncertainties, and turmoil of that stage of life.

Less sensational episodes than those previously mentioned happen to Hari along the way, and each is handled with tenderness and care. From innocent questions met with inadequate responses to learning about the unrefined side of life from a film hero wannabe and a hijra on the train to dealing with changes within one’s own body, the author has rendered Hari’s story with kindness and compassion. He has shaped a tale that is layered with four generations of family love and sprinkled with the uncomfortable-yet-exhilarating feelings of sexual discovery. In The Strike, the complicated business of maneuvering through the adult world of explosive politics, misunderstood cultural variances, and ambiguous messages is Hari’s principal task, and that task is beautifully written and presented. Hari’s world of 1987 may not parallel a pre-teen’s world of today, but his growing pains are universal and unfolded in such a way that the reader cannot judge Hari alone. We all have shared those pains in one way or another.

— Jeanne E. Fredriksen

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