Seven Sixes Are Forty Three by Kiran Nagarkar
Seven sixes are forty three. No, this is not a typo.
It just means that sometimes in life things just don’t add up.
The book’s dark humor, volatile prose is considered a landmark in post-Independence Indian literature. It took a month of procrastination before I decide to draft up a brief review, as I was afraid not being able to do this book justice.
Seven Sixes Are Forty Three is a series of fragments of the life of Kushank Purandare, a writer living off the kindness of people in this big bad world. Disillusioned with the lack of certainty and empathy in a world that is largely incoherent and unsalvageable, Kushank drifts about wallowing in his past and doing bizzare jobs. The flow of the story is unconventional, literally unfolds randomly from any point, comforting at some points, and disgusting at others. The voice of the text is dark, the content is totally irreverent, sometimes crude, sometimes touching, but always with an undercurrent of humour.
In the story, there is the ex-flame Aroti, who is now another man’s wife and whom the protagonist refuses to pity; Mrs Reghla alias kaku who has gouged her eyes out; old Kathavte who lives in the above floor and beats his daughters; Raghu whom he accompanies to a famine-struck village where gangsters rule the roost. Through all of these characters, the author emphasize to us of the repetitive and omnipresent nature of suffering. And how such suffering, is not only the definition of being human, but also the prerequisite of happiness. It is through the suffering, death and shame bear on Kushank’s life that he sees the profound beauty around him.
When this book was first published in 1974, it earned Nagarkar the reputation of being the enfant terrible of writing in India. The readers not only struggled to piece the story together, but also had trouble reconciling its apparent nihilism with its underlying sense of optimism. The flow and emotions are mixed, narrative is not temporally linear; past, present, and future are all mixed together. However, I do believe this book is not to be enjoyed large gulps, but in small sips. Take the sweet time to read, and you will find the beauty in Nagarkar’s writing.
