Review of Kaul’s The Ascension

‘A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead,’ Graham Greene reflected whilst beginning another brilliant tale. The nameless protagonist in Aashish Kaul’s The Ascension (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, India: 2008) betraying the linearity of narrative, the classic three act structure, weaves moments – phantasmagoric and plain – into a tale whose significance most importantly lies in its telling. The novel is as much about the unrelenting quest of its protagonist to seek absolute beauty, truth, and love as it is the author’s intent to celebrate the truths which words in their ‘economical yet labyrinthine’ pose may reveal. Not surprisingly, the protagonist is a writer of some significance; a narrative tactic which permits the author to explore and exhibit in fullest his moments of suffering, exhilaration, and divinity of being a writer and ordeals of writing books ‘worth preserving for posterity’. The author-protagonist can be held responsible for being too tedious, too intense, and at times almost lacking humour; but never for a moment callous towards the words that are chosen to convey emotions and ideas free of convolutions and trickery. It is indeed a seductive idea to consider this short novel an autobiographical rumination on literature, literary styles, and despair with its present state.

We follow the nameless protagonist through a quaint hill-station in North India, his cruises along the Seine, in London, and in Delhi, a ‘metropolis of great reserve and character’. There is no hurriedness in his sojourns, no purpose either; the sole intent being to revel in beauty. More than once, the author-protagonist halts a while, feels the beauty (compelling us to do so as well) – ‘Who says beauty is ephemeral, that it withers with the moment. Show me that person and I shall tell you that he is a deceiver, a conjurer of falsity. For it cries out its immortality from sunup to sundown amid these elevations where the air is clear and the time at rest.’ – before venturing out in his quest again. Through two characters, Tahiti and Jorge Gorbes, the author-protagonist diligently, though hesitantly, reveals himself almost uncertain of himself without them. In fact, Tahiti – an apparition who disappears as easily as she comes – christens him, gives him a form, as Marcel, ‘after Proust, of course’. This is Kaul’s – or is it the protagonist’s – tribute to those from whom he has acquired the tricks of the trade; and an ever-grateful, though not entirely humble, student he is: an admirer who would have made those who he imitates – attempts to transcends – proud. Tahiti is the embodiment of beauty, a metaphor, an aspiration celebrating the might of the worlds words can open; Jorge Gorbes, a librarian living in the labyrinth of untouched and untold stories, is a metaphysical conversation which the author-protagonist has evidently had, more than once, with the blind Argentine Borges. Proust as himself is a transference of the tribulations involved in becoming a writer posterity acknowledges. He does not forget it and compels the reader to remember it.

The Ascension is by no means an easy read, as it is not supposed to be. There is no mystery of the murderous kinds, no rumination on ‘The Secret’ which will make life bearable, and no make-believe happy endings.

The characters are slightly surreal, the exchanges between them affected, and settings at times lacking credibility. For those with a lack of imagination, or the desire, to transcend the real to embrace the absurd, the reading can be tiring; however, it is precisely in this transgression that Kaul’s brilliance shines. The punctum which lends this tale a realness, a grounded-ness, is a character who makes her appearance intermittently and even then her voice is muted: Asya. There are no literary allusions around her. She is as real as they come. The author-protagonist does real things with her: watches banal movies, has shallow conversations, scoops into sundaes, exchanges brief, yet impassioned, kisses, and suffers the pain of bereavement. The tediousness of this ‘real’ affair leaves the author-protagonist, starkly reminiscent of Prince Myshkin’s naivety yet intense perseverance, jilted and jolted. Henceforth it is the responsibility of the reader to take the tale where one desires. Kaul has allowed ample devices for it. London, Paris, Gorbes, and Tahiti can be as real as the romantic within the devourer of this tale allows it to be.

The majesty of Kaul’s skill as a writer – which the literary cautiousness can only delay but not deter – lies not in his intertwining rather cleverly the literary allusions and commentaries into the plot; some might even call it pompous and indulgent, and rightly so: Kaul has invested in reading, reading well at that, and does not shy from it. He is not apologetic. He does not patronize his readers. He demands as much from them as he gives. It is in the character of elusive Asya that Kaul exhibits his tenacity, might, and credibility as a writer and storyteller. Every character that a writer conjures up is in parts his imagination, his aspiration, and his projection of self. With Asya, Kaul does all of this and more; he retains objectivity, a distant melancholy, with his most cherished character. He knows it but does not allow a-not-so-discerning reader to stumble upon it casually. In Asya – a narrative injunction – in which he could have indulged most, he exercises surgical restraint without taking away from the density of the character. When towards the end, the author-protagonist’s journey vomits blood – signifying his literary, surreal, or even real ordeal – only to recall moments ago Asya as, ‘gazing pensively afar, while the ancient temple, the clear waters of the lake, the blue sky, and the mustard field celebrated her beauty’ one is compelled, at once, to detest her for tormenting the sensitive, even though pedantic, narrator and ponder over what it was in her – aspiring to be that – which could inspire a tale so divine. In the silent Asya who flirts through only a few pages – yet binds the tale – of this thin novel Kaul has announced his arrival as a writer who has more than less to offer to the literary indulgences.

The merit of the story Kaul tells is not in its ingenious plot, cathartic characters, or exotic locales; it lies solely in its telling. In short, this is a story which begs for living it, living with it, instead of ‘philosophizing’ about it. Through his slightly aggrieved protagonist, Kaul accomplishes the task he set about to do when he sat down to tell this tale, i.e., through literature ‘allow one a few glimpses of what is called ‘existence’ and no more’.

‘Just Looking’ is John Updike’s commentaries on artifacts in the New York Museum of Modern Art, his associations with those, and reflections on them. In a pensive moment he notes that ‘beauty was still left, beauty amid our ruins, a beauty curiously pure, a blank uncaused beauty that signified only itself.’ Aashish Kaul’s The Ascension, if anything, allows even so briefly touching beauty just for itself.

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Aashish received his bachelor of arts and laws in 2004, and presently practices before the Supreme Court of India at New Delhi. The Ascension is his first novel.

“The Ascension” has been declared the winner of the ‘Novella’ category of the Indie Book Awards 2009, organised by the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group, USA. The list of winners and finalists will be exhibited at the Book Expo America in New York later this month to thousands of attendees, including book buyers, publishers, and literary agencies. A complete list of winners and finalists is available at www.indiebookawards.com