The Other Side Of Light

Shortlisted for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize, Mishi Saran’s The Other Side Of Light, is written beautifully – although one expects more from this gifted writer.

Review by Anjana Basu

Mishi Saran created quite an impression with her travel book Chasing The Monk’s Shadow, a blend of poetical language, history and autobiography that blended beautifully to make an unforgettable impression on the reader. It was obvious that she would go on to fiction and The Other Side Of Light is her much awaited debut novel.

The problem is that certain achievements are hard to follow, especially a book like Chasing The Monk’s Shadow. The Other Side Of Light tends to be uneven in places, despite the lyricism that is Saran’s forte.

The novel tells the story of Asha who is gifted an old camera by a friend’s mother and who discovers with the gift the art of looking at life differently. So much so that she leaves her girlfriends, Nishita, Meethi and Melana; who are described as being like ‘a blessing of unicorns’, Kabir whom she met at college and gradually fell in love with, and her parents, for life in Switzerland where she studies photography under an eccentric teacher, Jean.

The trip to Switzerland while it divides her life, also divides India’s past and present. The country is swept by the Emergency, the Khalistan movement and the riots in Bombay in 1984. Asha encounters these experiences partly in her growing years through her activist mother and partly as a photographer after her return.

The four friends with different growing pains, the activist lover with a poet father – these have a sense of the expected about them, and on occasion it feels as though separate writings were strung together on the thread of Asha’s life. However, parts of the novel certainly seem to be autobiographical and as if to confirm that, the cover photograph is taken by Saran. The “other side of light” is in fact a term used to describe certain photographic processes.

Saran’s experiences in Switzerland and her camera training in a quaint chalet come across vividly. So does her growing closeness to Akash whom she meets on the heels of the Bombay blasts after she loses Kabir, suddenly and shockingly. In fact the second half of the book post Switzerland is a smoother read, though one might wonder why so many girl friends were necessary, especially since their experiences have to be sketched in; not to mention the detail of Asha being born with a harelip, which adds very little to the narrative barring a small buzz of imperfection that niggles at Asha’s consciousness.

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Given the vast terrain that she actually covers, Saran’s coming of age tale is a slim one. While her lyricism cannot be faulted, The Other Side Of Light seems to ask for the generous time and space that she gave Xuanxang in her previous book.

Publishers: Harper Collins.

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