Forbidden love at heart of a lively debut

FICTION: The Pleasure SeekersBy Tishani Doshi, Bloomsbury, 314pp. £16.99

FEW THINGS are as explosive as romance, and even fewer carry as many difficulties as cross-cultural love, particularly when one of the cultures involved is as traditional as that of India.

Poet Tishani Doshi takes forbidden, if resourceful, love as the central theme in her lively, instinctive debut,  . If the title is not exactly inspired, Doshi's energy, lightness of touch and feel for an image carry her story, spanning more than 30 years of life and living through a fast-moving 314 pages, in a family saga that reads more as a personal odyssey. It convinces, entertains and, at times, reminds the reader of how tough it is to be human.

There are no heroes; no villains, either. Her characters are real, a mixed bunch, divided into those who aspire to the impossible and those who actually attempt it. The feats in question are not enormous, but they are important, life changing. Babo is the adored eldest son who achieves the impossible when his father elects to let him leave home in Madras and travel to London to complete his education. It will prepare Babo for his career in the family paint business.

This novel, which comes complete with an endorsement from Salman Rushdie – which could discourage a reader, as, initially, it did me – begins confidently. Prem Kumar has many doubts about his son's trip to London. There is guilt because the family firm does stand to benefit. But as he lies in bed he feels he will have to pay for his selfish ambitions. He is also aware that his wife would never have agreed – had he discussed it with her. The son does go, and experiences crippling loneliness. There is another problem: "Babo despaired about the food. He couldn't understand how something that had been so irrelevant to him in the past could suddenly become such an obsession." Doshi knows how to make the most of comic potential. Above all, she never stretches a joke too far; she trusts her sure-footed instinct. There is an ease about this novel but also a subtle discipline. Any aspiring Indian writer must enter a field already dominated by fine writing; the best of contemporary Indian writing reads as a roll of honour that includes Amit Chaudhuri, Rohinton Mistry, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Ardashir Vakil, Manil Suri and Jaspreet Singh. Doshi's vividly descriptive prose never strains for lyricism, although she is a prize-winning poet. In style and wry humour she approaches Anita Rau Badami, author of Tamarind Mem(1996) and, among the most under-rated novels of recent years, The Hero's Walk(2000), and Doshi's nimble, quick-minded, unsentimental performance is superior to Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things(1997) and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss(2006), both of which won the Booker prize. While Doshi, neither idealising nor satirising her mixed-culture heritage, instead focusing on the human, pushes the sexual parameters of Indian society, she, unlike Rushdie, respects the religious dimension.

All goes well for Babo; he is popular and thrives, glad to break with a girl back home. Then he enters a minefield: he falls in love with Siân, a Welsh girl, and she with him; he discovers alcohol and meat. His parents are so distressed that to bring him home he is told of a bogus illness. He returns to India.

The lovers are united in their separation. Doshi makes effective use of the young couple; Babo is a dreamer with a wilful streak; he invariably responds to his imagination. Yet he is overwhelmed by the situation. In Siân, though, he has encountered a force of nature; she wants their relationship to work. It is she who fulfils the various specifications, including a long separation and then a period living with him in India. Babo’s mother is the stock matriarch, hysterical and fussy, yet is cleverly balanced by her mother-in-law, Ba, long widowed and wise to the world. The lovers triumph in that they get their own way and eventually set out to shape their life together.

Babo’s race is more or less won, and this is conveyed in a kindly way. Far more complex is Siân, who works at perfecting her dream. Each reacts to the other’s culture. Gestures are important; the narrative is exuberant but never gushing. The dialogue is sharp, almost too succinct. As the years pass Babo becomes complacent, and plump on ice cream. But a shock epiphany prompts him to action just as Siân has begun to retreat. Transformed from lover to husband and father, it is as a parent that he suffers the loss of his grown daughters when they prepare to leave home. But Doshi ensures we don’t forget that here is a man who once told his sisters that flamingos leave “pink footprints in the sky”. The daughters, Mayuri and Bean, are the products of two very different cultures; the family has lived within its own world. Mayuri chooses convention whereas wistful, wanton Bean pursues love, only to find a series of disasters. Life intervenes, as does death. Babo’s younger brother, Chotu, at first only a small boy resentful that his big brother has left home without him, grows into a man destined for romantic failure. This is handled with comic flourishes; his dying, however, is one of the strongest elements in the book. “Every evening, after all the daily reports and test results were in, he held the sheaf of papers in his hands, stroking them as though they were maps waiting to be deciphered.” An Indian family learns to include a Welsh daughter-in- law; a working-class Welsh family accepts the man from Madras and the grandchildren. Two cultures collide and intermingle. The love story of Babo and Siân is touching as well as terrifying, even oppressive; its impact on Bean is entirely destructive. All the while major events in India’s history take place.

Doshi has a story and tells it well, often with controlled set pieces that echo the best of early Rushdie. Love makes us, love breaks us and, in some cases, love helps glue us together. This big-hearted, engaging novel will appeal to as many readers as there are lovers; winners and losers; dreamers and survivors.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times