by Michael Chacko Daniels (MSJ68)
With illustrations by Krittika Ramanujan & Aaron Bass
Michael Chacko Daniels, in his inimitable way, paints a wild, sensuous, explosive, and yearning picture of the collision between ideals and base motives, whether played out on a human-relational level or in society at large, and what “experience” at the hands of people with base motives can do to innocence—and what the path to love and resolution may be.
Polarity reigns. There are unforgettable characters on both sides of the world, the racial divide.
There’s the brilliantly drawn Annama, who seeks to control her son from India even at a distance of thousands of miles, and who has visions in the latrine.
There’s the aged, dignified, honorable Mr. Scott, the book editor at Asian Transitions, happily married for sixty years until his wife’s death, who befriends Mathew and his ideals.
There is Huckleberry, streetwise and drug-friendly, who talks to Mathew of the Yoga of Laughter at a time when Mathew has abandoned his ideals in despair.
There is Y. K., the editor at Asian Transitions, who, when Mathew is up for review for the soon-available Editor position, unfairly gives Mathew a poor performance review.
And above all, there is Maria, who, with all her edginess, forms a bridge to Mathew’s past and country by writing secret letters to Annama about her love for Mathew, and locking them up, unsent, in a trunk. This is a testing relationship, not a smooth one. Too many opposites come up against each other: not only the “much darker than your father” of Mathew and the “fully white woman” of Maria, but also their acculturated ways, spirits, and attitudes.
And the language, frequently full of poetry and humor, frustration and transcendence, is a Daniels hallmark. Still, it is Mathew who holds the center for us; and in his ultimate salvation is our own.
