posted by: Prasad Shetty Jun 16 2009 @ 11:49 am

The Strike

The Book “Strike” casts the reader into 1980s’ India, where 12-year old Hari must make sense of a world in which borders between languages, classes, and religion which are still part of everyday reality. The narrative opens with a moment of transgression and tragedy when Hari, who’s a Brahmin and a vegetarian, eats forbidden fish and it inadvertently causes the death of his grandmother.
For the most part, author Mahadevan effectively uses his child narrator to survey and critique the hypocrisy and viciousness of his birth country’s economic, social, and political structures. While the adults take most of these things for granted, Hari takes on more complexity as a character when the loss of his innocence leads to a much more ambivalent and fraught understanding of both personal and societal conflict.
The novel thus charts the turmoil within both the nation and Hari himself. The plot is straightforward but compelling, especially in the railway scenes, in which Hari finds him in the centre of a tumultuous political strike. The changes within Hari take on urgency through the careful use of language that gives not only the sensory aspects of his journey, but also the emotional ones.
In the end, resolution eludes Hari. Instead, he must leave the societal tangles as they are and strike out on a new path for himself.
While the portrayal of the history and culture of India were quite interesting, what particularly struck me about this book was that the country didn’t overwhelm the story. Rather, the setting serves (I think rightly) as a backdrop for a simpler story about a child discovering his own vulnerabilities and finding his place in an increasingly threatening and confusing world. I read this book some time ago and there are a few moments of self-discovery that are still totally vivid in my mind. The book’s sweetness, humor and honesty all make it very easy for me to recommend.

Book Author: Anand Mahadevan
Publisher: Penguin India
Price : 299