Title: China Room
Author:
Sunjeev Sahota
Publisher:
Penguin Random House India
Genre:
Literary Fiction
Pages:
256
“Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband.”
Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room, begins with this enthralling sentence. Whatever title suggests, it has nothing to do with China at all. In exact terms, China room is a windowless dark chamber in the house, shared by three newly wedded brides. The room is named for the old willow-pattern plates that lean on a high stone shelf, a set of six that arrived with Mai (their Mother-in-law) years ago as part of her wedding dowry.
Basically, the story of ‘China Room’ is set up in rural Punjab, Year is 1929. The main protagonist, Mehar has just got engaged without any brief knowledge of her groom. Once she shifted to her husband’s home, she gets to know about these two other girls - Harbans and Gurleen - already present there into the same situation.
“None of them knew which man she was married to ….because they had to remain veiled the whole time. There was no electricity. It was in the middle of nowhere on a rural farmstead and they didn’t know who was the husband, so the story goes.”
Three girls, married to three brothers. They don’t have any right to ask about their respective partner. They spend their days doing house-work, and wait for nights to get a nod from their strict mother-in-law, the matriarch Mai, who summons one of them and sends the selected one to China room, precisely to meet her husband. This whole set up is aligned, what for? To produce a strong heir to Sikh family.
Shortly, Mehar - not-so-obedient bride - finds out her husband, after few verbal interactions and sexual meetings, a twist comes into the story and her world gets trembled down.
Although, China Room has such interesting plot but I do prefer to say it is character driven novel, along with many interlaced stories. In a while, we get introduced to second unnamed protagonist, great-grandson of Mehar, who visits India, just to get rid of his drug addiction. He comes back to Punjab to her aunt, and how he transferred into a Village – an abandoned farm, specifically that very China room, that whole scene is an event itself. Rest of the story unfolds from there only. Many revelations come into the readers’ sight then.
‘There was one photo that I’d focus on, a small picture in a dark-wood frame. It was of my great grandmother, an old white haired woman who’d travelled all the way to England just so they she might hold me’
What I loved most about Sahota’s work is his prose. Writing is so elegant and absorbing that I read and reread many parts just to savour the reflections and behavior of characters ‘Night came all at once, like a cupboard door shutting, and I heaved out a charpoy, its frame cracked and loose and showing signs of woodworm, its weave so slack that it was more hammock than bed.’
It is hard to believe that a simple story of family life could be so enriching. It is not only a family drama but there are many layers as well. Through his flawed characters, Sahota talks about sense of belonging and alienation, desire for identity and struggle amidst loneliness. There is loss wrapped into the blanket of nostalgia.
At the end, Sahota has shared a photograph of an old lady cradling a baby. It might be a hint that somewhere his novel, China Room stood on his own family history. Maybe few elements of his real life helped him to construct this superlative piece of (he)art. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will surely recommend to others.
You can buy this book via Amazon (Link is here)
About the Author
Sunjeev
Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the
Runaways, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the
International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of
the Year Award, and won the Encore Prize, the European Union Prize for
Literature, and the South Bank Sky Arts Award. He was chosen as one of Granta's
Best Young British Novelists in 2013. He lives in Sheffield.
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