A tale of past, present and their interlinkages

BOOK REVIEW | Malaysian novels in English with a definite local setting and theme are rare, too far and few in between. Even fewer are those that do not disappoint and give a good read.

One such book is ‘912 Batu Road’ (Clarity Publishing, 2021, 275 pages, RM39). Viji Krishnamoorthy’s debut novel is a different kind of historical tale because it not only concerns itself with the past but juxtaposes it against the contemporary, a difficult thing to do. The author accomplishes this well, keeping the interest up in both.

Another book by a Malaysian author that did that well was back in 1998 in Uma Mahendran’s ‘The Twice Born’ which flips back and forth from ancient history to the present when a psychiatrist, aided by an autistic boy, goes on a telepathic mind-journey into the past to 1,500BC.

I have read two other books by local authors with slightly similar themes, but they do not flip back to different time zones, both of which are good reads. The first is Preeta Samarasan’s 2008 book ‘Evening is the Whole Day’ about an Indian immigrant family in Ipoh and their shenanigans.

The second is Tan Twan Eng’s hauntingly beautiful book, the 2012 ‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ about the former Japanese emperor’s gardener in the mountains of Cameron Highlands. This book won the Man Asian Literary Prize.

The three books are valuable contributions to local literature in English and one hopes that ‘912 Batu Road’, named after the house that the author’s father was born in Kuala Lumpur, takes its rightful place on the shelves amongst the others.

Viji’s story does not go so far back as ‘The Twice Born’ but focuses some 80 years ago on the days leading up to the Japanese occupation of Malaya in 1941 up to their defeat in 1945. It is interesting to see how these reach into the lives of a Chinese boy and a Brahmin girl, childhood friends who become sweethearts in the present era.

Ken is an architect working in London while Geetha is a successful lawyer in Kuala Lumpur. Besides this couple, the other main protagonists are Rengaswamy Iyer, Geetha’s grandfather, and Tan Chin Nam, Ken’s grandfather. Others include their contemporaries Japanese photographer Bob Nakamura and Terlochan Singh a dresser at a government hospital in Penang.

The former has a few escapades with real-life war-time hero Gurchan Singh with whom he pastes posters illegally, a dangerous preoccupation which could have cost them unspeakable torture and loss of lives if they had been caught. The objective: keeping people informed of the progress of WWII.

When an apprehensive Geetha finally picks up courage and discloses her relationship with Ken, all hell breaks loose as she expected, despite the close links between the two families. Her father, Ramesh Iyer, and her mother Parvathi, as good Brahmins do, vehemently oppose the union.

An estranged Geetha moves into the house of Krishna Iyer, Ramesh’s younger brother, in whose dark past lay a liaison looked down upon by the family and community. He broke off the relationship and never married because of family and community opposition.

In Krishna, Geetha finds some solace as few understand her predicament but that is not enough. Despite Krishna’s representations to Ramesh to consider acceding to his daughter’s wishes and putting her happiness first, Geetha’s parents remain steadfast against her marriage to Ken.

Geetha’s mother’s heart attack sends Geetha back to her mother and into the household. Not prepared to put up with the guilt thrust upon her by her mother’s deteriorating health which everyone blamed on her, she decides to break up with Ken, although she remains deeply unhappy. Nevertheless, she pursues a possible arranged marriage like some of her relatives have.

Tortured by the Japanese

In the past meantime, Tan Chin Nam is tortured by the Japanese after Bob Nakamura the photographer becomes a turncoat and squeals about Chin Nam’s sympathies for China nationalists. He is tortured to the brink of death and then dumped unceremoniously at the doors of the Rengaswamy household which nurse him back to health.

One of Chin Nam’s sons, Kah Hoe, joins the communists while the other, Ken’s father Kah Sing, is like his own father a businessman. He too, with his parents, stays in the Rengaswamy household during the war years.

Eventually the fate of the couple in love is determined by a strange twist of events which arise from the past. To reveal this is to say too much about the book and spoil the pleasure for you, who should go out and buy a copy to support good writing.

While the basic plot is outlined here, the novel is much more than that of course and offers a look at life under Japanese occupation and the trials and tribulations of people then.

Beyond that, it is always welcome to have descriptions of places we are familiar with and in some cases visited in our own lives to compare with our own perceptions of these areas.

We get peeks into the lives of Brahmins and how they lived/live and impassioned arguments against their conservative aspects, especially with respect to marrying out of the caste, and in this case, going beyond that to outside the race.

The author most certainly has special insights on these, being the offspring of a Tamil (Brahmin) father and a Hokkien mother and she herself marrying out of the Brahmin community to a person who has Sikh/Chinese parentage.

Overall, this is a novel which cleverly juxtaposes the perennial issue of inter-racial relationships which often end in marriages (don’t we all have some of them in our own families!) against a background of history, people and places.

The result richly deserves a place on your bookshelf. - Mkini

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P GUNASEGARAM, a former editor at online and print news publications, and head of equity research, is an independent writer and analyst.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.