Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal is as much a political satire and as it is a paean for rivers

Indian Express

12 hours ago

Delhi-NCR Residents bathing in the toxic foamy Yamuna water is a common sight, come Chhath Puja. Similar visual reminders of polluted water bodies being revered have inspired British-Indian writer Gurnaik Johal's first full-length novel, Saraswati. Johal wondered what would happen if the titular 'ancient holy river was brought back today?' And thus, the foundation was laid for the book that is as much a political satire as it is a paean to rivers, the life source around which civilisations thrives.
Johal creates a complex fictional universe wherein Saraswati becomes the centre of all kinds of political and religious discourses. There is the inter-caste marriage of Sejal and Jugaad, who eloped in the wake of their relationship not being accepted. The narrative is divided into seven parts, each named after a river — Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab, Jhelum, Indus and Saraswati — and focusing on the perspective of each of the seven descendants of Sejal and Jugaad. Johal weaves in the couple's romance alongside retellings of epic tragic sagas of the Punjabi-Sindh region, including Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnu, MirzaSahiban, Sohni-Mahiwal and Pooran Bhagat.
The author shares that he was specifically interested in the qissa and the 'origin myth' forms of storytelling, both of which structure his narrative. He says, 'I liked the idea of blending the two and indeed, within the book, I counterfeit my own qissa (Sejal and Jugaad), which is based on two 'real' characters who fall in love. It is the descendants of their children who make up the
main cast of characters. I thought, in a way, many of our origins can be traced back, in some part, to a love story of two people choosing one another.'
It is, however, not only the human characters who are in charge of plot development in the novel. In the age of the Anthropocene, human beings have become geological agents given the ongoing climate crisis. In Saraswati, which may be read as a novel examining ecocriticism, focus is also drawn to species such as the spruce beetle or the yellow crazy ants that are shown to be biological agents capable of reshaping human history. 'I became interested in how invasive species can change new environments and found this a charged and changing metaphor for both colonialism and immigration,' Johal says.
The novel, as a whole, spans generations with each of the characters emanating from the original qissa of Sejal and Jugaad. This genre of interconnected narratives is something that characterises Johal's journey as an author. His first book We Move (2022), which won the 2023 Somerset Maugham Award, was a collection of17 loosely linked short stories with recurring characters, mostly centred around the residents ofSouthall in West London, particularly its Punjabi migrant population. About his preference for this mode of narration, Johal says, 'I'm slightly wary of singular narratives that follow one character arc.
In real life, all our lives are inextricably linked and I think a function of me trying to write realist fiction is writing stories which connect characters.' Immigrant life in Britain, particularly for the Punjabi diaspora, was a major overarching thematic concern in We Move, which came to be expressed through stories that displayed the migrant character of the English language itself. This is because of the intentional aesthetic choice Johal makes where he refuses to provide
context or explain away any Punjabi references and phrases. These are not even italicised in the text.
In Saraswati, the Galley Beggar Press short story prize awardee takes the foregrounding of contemporary discourses around immigration a step further. He visibilises the connected histo-
ries of the Empire which have historically shaped and continue to shape migratory flows from the post-colonial nations of the Global South.
From British Columbia and Nairobi to Singapore, the temporal and spatial scale of Johal's narrative is ambitious. A second-generation immigrant of colour himself, Johal's poetics continue to address migration in the form of interconnected fiction as well as the way he uses English as a language embodying deterritorialisation.
What makes Saraswati relevant today is how, with the climate crisis, rivers are being used in diplomacy and power plays in international geopolitics.The rising populist rhetoric surrounding religion, historical facts and geographical entities alike is expressed through tangential
characters such as the political powerhouse Indra, whose journey from a chief minister to prime minister is charted through the book, and who 'had been sworn in, drinking water from the newly surfaced Saraswati river during his inaugural speech'.
At one point, the character of Nathu, an archaeologist, claims that 'all history was historical fiction', which Johal, though he is 'wary of aphorisms', feels may be befitting to 'the current political climate'.
Bhasin is a Delhi-based independent writer