Don’t let Him Know
Author : Sandip Roy
Publisher : Bloomsbury, Rs499
Sandip Roy writes this book in a way that it also becomes the story of a country that discovers different things about its personality by revisiting old secrets at different stages in one’s life, writes Gautam Chintamani
When it comes to literature there is something tantalisingly inviting about the combination of family and secrets. This is a terrain that has often been frequented by not just the greats but also the debutants and across both fiction as well as non-fiction. The familiarity of the genre often acts as a trapping for most readers, and on some occasions the writers too, and therefore coming across a first book that gets it right is an unparalleled treat, like in the case of Sandip Roy’s Don’t let Him Know. The universe that Roy creates is familiar along with its characters as well as the pivotal ‘secret’ around which much of the story revolves but the manner in which Roy tells the tale — almost like trying to reveal one’s own hidden secret to one’s own self — is what makes Don’t let Him Know a wonderful experience.
The story starts with Ramola Mitra being confronted by her son, Amit, about a part of a love letter that he finds in her address book. Ramola is visiting Amit in the US after the death of her husband Avinash and the letter suggests a failed romance between Ramola and Avinash’s friend, Sumit. Reading it changes the way Amit looks at his mother and believing that his mother sacrificed her love in order to marry the man her parents chose, Amit tells Ramola that he feels like he knows her better now. Although Ramola confesses to Amit about that ‘being a different time’ where one had to listen to parents, her confession is a lie and the secret about the letter triggers off a trip down memory lane.
With each chapter, Roy takes the reader on a journey at a different time and place in the lives of his three main characters — Ramola, Avinash and Amit — and layers their secrets to create a beautiful universe. Unknown to them some of their secrets are known to the other and yet, like the best secrets they choose to keep them hidden in plain view. Also, the non-linear structure that Roy employs works well along with the manner in which his characters and their worlds collide and the result is a multi-layered image that makes Roy’s writing all the more fascinating.
Don’t let Him Know is set across different eras where the same actions meant different things and by extension the repercussions of those actions also meant different things. Both Avinash and his son Amit study in the US and while Avinash returns after spending a few years, ostensibly because of Ramola’s inability to adjust, Amit not just continues living there but also marries an American woman, Jane. Roy presents the idea of two different Indias in the form of the father and son and interestingly pegs Ramola right in between them. To this writer, the three came across as the three stages of time and in that sense, a lot of the future — the manner in which Ramola would be from the point of the discovery of the letter — depended on how both Ramola and Amit viewed and confronted the past. The aura of mystery that Amit attaches to his mother allows him to open up to her in a way that he’d not have, had she not transformed into a ‘mysterious woman with an alluring past’ but Ramola nonetheless maintains a distance.
This might be a tale about seemingly conventional people set in a conventional world where an ageing elderly Indian granny lies about going to McDonald’s and then runs away embarrassed without collecting her beef burger as she’s isn’t able to comprehend the accent of her server or pestering relatives never give up on their quest to find out if a NRI son would take his widowed mother to US but nothing about them is bound to conventionality. Much like characters and the times that Roy writes, Don’t let Him Know in a way is also the story of a country that discovers different things about its personality by revisiting old secrets at different stages in one’s life.
For a novel, the non-linear structure, or even a host of narrators isn’t unique anymore but the way Roy uses them makes the narrative unfold more like a series of vignettes as opposed to a single thread. This does make the book appear like a series of different stories bundled together, and Roy does mention that some parts were published as stand-alone stories, but interestingly enough it makes for a better experience. That is the thing with memories and even secrets — they stand out like certain photos in a family album and what lies beneath each photo isn’t always connected seamlessly even if it’s about the same person.
It’s often said that the best of the tales become better when told simply and Roy displays a lyrical simplicity that makes Don’t let Him Know stand apart from other similar recent works, namely Jhumpa lahiri. This might seem familiar familial terrain but the freshness that Roy’s instills in Don’t let Him Know is far from hidden and not to be missed.
The reviewer is the author of the best-selling Dark Star: The loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna (HarperCollins, 2014) | Tweet him @gchintamani