Not just a donkey and monkey!

It's been eight years. Since 2002, I’ve changed half a dozen jobs, worked in three cities and returned to my home, been in a few relationships, lost touch with old friends, made new... A long time!

Suddenly when I read last year about Yann Martel's next novel, my memory wound back to the November 2002 when I borrowed, though flicked should be the appropriate word now, the Life of Pi from a close friend's roommate.

He, a journalist based in Mumbai now, had got the copy as a birthday gift from a colleague, who signed the birthday wishes and instead of giving him the copy, took it for reading and gave him a week later. Intrigued by this act, I borrowed the book from him the day he brought it to his room.

And what a book it was! All the beautiful books I read since then just joined a list that started with 'Life of Pi'.

I got hold of a copy of Beatrice and Virgil on the eve of my birthday, and I ended up spending the early hours of the day with the donkey and the monkey.

Reading the book was like drinking with a long-lost friend.

An old friend with whom we had lost contact, but about whose whereabouts we would often wonder. One who never called up, making us think he might have forgotten us or has settled in some god-forsaken place. But always sure that we would meet once again!

Like the first few rounds of whisky that tickles and teases us, leaving us wanting more, the first part of the novel is beautiful, making us wonder where the author is taking us.

More importantly, since we see shades of Yann Martel in the main character, the book, like a friend apologizing for the vanishing act, goes on about a successful writer Henry, struggling with his second book.

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian . . .'

Reading these words, used to defend Henry’s flipbook on Holocaust, it is like the golden liquid has started showing its effect and an assurance that from here on it is going to be one memorable evening, the events of which we may not remember tomorrow, but its feel will stay on forever.

Then, Martel introduces several characters, some of whom, we wonder why they are there, except to remind us that the author's last book involved animals - certainly except the two main characters, a donkey and a howler monkey in a taxidermist shop in some city, which could be any city in Europe or America, or anywhere else!

Martel brings in a lot of things and interweaves them to the extent that reviewers say he owes many writers for the book, but ask me, it is not about what he has written, but how.

Take for instance, when he introduces Virgil the monkey and Beatrice the doneky, Virgil is seen describing to Beatrice a pear, which the latter had never seen. Comparing the looks of others fruits, Virgil creates in Beatrice an yearning for the fruit -- I would buy the book (Rs 450) just for the dialogue on pear alone, and be more than satisfied.

After this, it is typically like a drinking with an old friend, who after the initial exuberance, tries hard to recollect interesting anecdotes here and there.

There's nothing much in the story, and even if there is any, Martel seems to have not put them in the best way.

The dialogues between Virgil and Beatrice sparkle sometimes, but seem to be forcefully fed with symbolism. And soon it seems the dialogues have been forced on the animals, which takes away all the sheen -- and the word holocaust printed across the last few pages, as if the writer is running out of pages and energy and wants to finish the story immediately.

Now, has Martel disappointed me with the book? I would say no, but, only if we read it without any expectation for a good story and forgetting that he wrote Life of Pi and enjoy just the beauty.