The Seventh Horse of the Sun

To quote Maanik Mulla, 'A writer who worries about technique is one who has no clue what to write.' And yet, as I read Dharamveer Bharti's 'Suraj ka Saatva Ghoda' and watched Shyam Benegal's sublime rendition of it on celluloid, I found myself applauding both the technique and the content of Bharti.

About the technique first - this is the only attempt I have read/seen of writing a full-length novel piecemeal in the form of quite separate short stories! Yeah, each short story can stand by itself although when you look at the consolidated whole the novel emerges delicately, almost subtly. In Maanik Mulla, Bharti creates a narrator par excellence who links these short stories almost imperceptibly - by himself, just like beads of a necklace are linked by the thread running through them.

And the theme? Why it's love itself! Maanik Mulla would like you to think it's about how economic constraints dictate to love. But more appropriately, the story deals with what is not love. Or what love should not be. The love of Jamuna and Tanna? Jamuna and Maanik? Jamuna and her elderly husband? Jamuna and Ramdhan? Moving away from Jamuna, what about the love between Lily and Maanik? And what indeed about Satti and Maanik?

As he exposes how these characters react to love or what they think is love, Bharti takes time to expose his characters to us. Each character emerges with a depth and dimension that is thought-provoking. Case in points - the raw, earthy, heart-stopping sincerity of Satti who fights for her honour and is hurt not by rape but by betrayal........the pitiable selfishness and restlessness of the apparently promiscuous Jamuna in the wake of her failure in love...the bibliophile Lily whose love begins and ends in literature and whose pride yields her a child at the cost of a husband...the sensitive friend of Maanik in whose mind Maanik's stories create visions that make an author of him....Tanna, who jerks pity from your heart for the lamb-like helplessness of his succumbing nature.....Chaman Thakur, who only took pity on an Afghani orphan girl so he could sell her off when she grew up......

All these characters are actually part of the same full-length novel. But Bharti divides their stories into separate ones - each story overlapping the other - each story hinting at the other - each story looking at the others from a new angle...until finally at the end the kaleidoscope merges to show one pattern...

Shyam Benegal's take on the book is so honest and so beautiful it makes you want to pinch yourself so you'll know it's no dream. The transition from book to movie is so effortless that I could make out no difference in the tenor. Especially the camera effects in the motion picture bring out the inherent linkages between the stories more poignant, more outlined. Several scenes and dialogues are repeated albeit from different camera angles. Scenes missing from one story are suddenly found in the middle of another. The actors act awesomely. The music becomes the motion picture and could well have been the part of the book itself. And the climax is something the book could have appended to itself.

Bus....that is about all I reveal of this mesmerizing piece of literature. Saying a word more will spoil the fun.