An
Indian apartment building. A bunch of gossipy old women. An ailing
drunk who sleeps on the stairwell and causes a lot of concern for
the occupants of the apartments. A mismatched duo of lovers and the
mother of one trying desperately to break them apart after having
once given them a blessing. These are just a few of the myriad
characters who work their lives around THE DEATH OF VISHNU, the
celebrated debut effort from novelist Manil Suri.India could be New York for all we care as we read about the
traumas of these folks living together under the same roof. Mrs.
Asrani, one of the Hindu housewives, cries, "If we can't all live
in harmony in this building, what hope is there for the nation?"
Her mood changes often between embracing the unique individuals who
share her living quarters and shunning them for insecure and
picayune reasons. Suri, to his credit, manages to give everybody
good and bad days and thus offer this three-floored microcosm of
urban India an emotional resonance that many readers will happily
relate to --- especially those of us who have spent time living in
urban America in apartment buildings where your neighbors are way
too close for comfort.Their concerns are not large --- gray hair and memorizing all
the lines in a movie for a Guinness Book of World Records mention
are more important than the harmony of the nation. And yet, as the
ailing drunk Vishnu becomes more and more decrepit, he wanders from
floor to floor revisiting moments of his life through delirious
remembrances of loves and horrors. Although the neighbors are not
always interested in sharing his memories with him, he moves from
landing to landing as if descending into a private hell, taking
their abuse or kindness in whatever amount they wish to hand it
over.

Suri
does not offer us cliche characters --- none of the women are
particularly warm and friendly, but their confidence and wills are
strong, and they don't take things lightly. It is the men who sit
around pondering the spiritual fate of themselves and their nation
--- they are living for the hereafter while the women are living
for the present. Suri gives us an elegantly stated perspective on
the state of the relationships between men and women, on religious
pursuit and the daily grind, on the reality of death amidst the
gold-tinged dreams of Bollywood, that will knock a reader for a
loop with its grace and wisdom. THE DEATH OF VISHNU is a strong and
powerful first work, an obvious indicator of what will surely be a
long and successful writing career.