Karma by Cathy Ostlere

"Racism isn't always hatred. Sometimes it's just confusion fear. It's their own hearts they're not sure about."

The novel opens on October 28, 1984 as fifteen-year-old Jiva and her father Amar (Bapu) Singh fly to India with the ashes of her mother, Leela.

On the plane writing in her journal, Jiva recalls how her parents met years ago  at a wedding in India. For Leela, a Brahman Hindu and Amar, a Sikh, marriage was forbidden. Leela wasn't allowed to leave the house for two months unaccompanied, while her Amar's mother didn't speak to him for six weeks.  Amar's father lectured him about how marrying a Brahman girl would destroy him spiritually and that he would be tied to the "Wheel of Existences".  

However neither Leela nor Amar would relent, believing that their families were offering opposition to their marriage to save face. And so three months later they wed. Their Hindu and Sikh families celebrated and accepted the union since the couple were emigrating to Canada. But while Amar's father advised him to insist Leela become Sikh, Leela's family disowned her.

Jiva's parents settled in Elsinore, Manitoba, a small town of "one thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two Christian-like souls" and three pagans: Jiva and her parents.  Her family rented an old farmhouse near the cemetery and her father worked as a mechanic, running Jack's Mechanic Shop, renting to own. Jiva was born on July 20, 1969, the exact moment that man walked on the moon. However, Leela and Amar disagreed over a name for their daughter: Leela wanted to name her Neil after the astronaut, but Amar insisted on Jiva. This name upset Leela who does not want her daughter to be named after Amar's father. Leela decided she will call her Maya, but this angered Amar who now feels he should have insisted she become Sikh or never married her.

Jiva means "soul" in Sanskrit while Maya means "illusion" or "change" also in Sanskrit. When Jiva was a young girl, her mother whom she calls Mata began to teach her the Hindu faith. However, this angers her father  Amar, whom Jiva calls Bapu. These arguments confused and frightened Jiva. 

On October 29-30, 1984, Jiva and her father arrive in New Delhi, a crowded, noisy, smelly city. Jiva is overwhelmed by the sights and sounds: a one-armed woman beggar, a shrivelled rickshaw driver, a boy selling chai tea. Her father ignores the beggars and tells Jiva to ignore them because they can't help them. In India, Bapu takes Jiva shopping because she has packed only t-shirts and jeans, having tore up all her saris after Mata died. Jiva remembers what it was like back in Elsinore: her mother wore a sari rather than pants and she remembers Mata shopping at Reena's Sari shop in Winnipeg. 

Jiva remembers how life is Elsinore was very difficult for her mother. After nine years in Elsinore, Leela finds the people unfriendly as no one will talk to her. Amar is not empathetic, telling her to wear Canadian clothes which Leela finds ugly, or just stay inside. Leela begs Amar to take her back to India but he refuses, telling her there is no money to do so. Jiva's parents' relationship begins to unravel as their different values and perspective on life begin to show in daily life.

Eventually Bapu promised they would visit India when Jiva is sixteen. But as they watched events from Elsinore, Manitoba, India fell into turmoil: Punjab became a place of "turmoil and violence"...with "Sikhs demanding a homeland called Khalistan." Bapu believed that Prime Minister Indira Ghandi would never allow Punjab to separate because it borders Pakistan and Mata began to realize that her dream of visiting India was vanishing. "How will we go home now, Amar?  Sikhs and Hindus being driven apart? Where does that leave us?"

In their hotel room in Delhi, on October 31 to November 1 1984, Bapu returns frantic, telling Jiva that there are mobs of Hindu men raging through the streets hurting Sikh men, women and children.  On Halloween, Indira Ghandi, prime minister of India has been shot thirty-two times, assassinated by her two Sikh guards. Terrified that because he is a Sikh he will be murdered, Bapu removes his turban, cuts his hair, trims his beard, and tells Jiva to wait in the hotel room while he goes to his friend Kiran Sharma who lives in the Mangolpuri District to help them leave Delhi. But before he leaves, Bapu reveals to Jiva that he brought her to India to marry her to an Indian man, as Mata requested.  Jiva is horrified and while she waits she remembers how she found Mata hanging from a ceiling fan in their house. She also remembers how her friend Helen, wearing a sari she lent her, betrays her with Michael, the boy she likes.

Jiva is brought back to the present when the hotel is set on fire and the Sikh men are forced out into the street so they can be murdered. Jiva strips off her sari, dresses in her t-shhirt and jeans, cuts off her braid, and realizing she cannot go out the front door, flees out a kitchen window at the back of the hotel. She manages to exchange their train tickets for a train to Jodhpur. On the train Jiva witnesses an unspeakable attack on a Sikh man whom she tries to save but who is burned alive. At the train station in Jodhpur, Jiva collapses and is taken to a hospital where Dr. Parvati Patel treats her. In shock and deeply traumatized, Jiva remains silent, telling Dr. Patel nothing other than the name her mother wanted for her, Maya.

At this point in the novel, the narrative switches to a new character, seventeen-year-old Sandeep on November 13, 1994. Sandeep is the brother of Parvati, the doctor treating Jiva. Sandeep is adopted, an orphan whose parents are dead and who was found under a goat in the desert. Parvati has Sandeep keep a diary to chronicle his efforts to help the mute girl who was dropped off at the Widows Home in Jodhpur. Parvati believes she is a foreigner who fled the rioting and that Sandeep can help. At the insistence of Parvati, her parents, Amma and Barindra take in Maya (Jiva) in the hopes that they can help her heal. However, at the Patel home, Maya remains mute and seems to slip deeper into distress. Their neighbours are convinced she is either a witch or a prostitute. 

As the villagers begin to harrass and threaten the Patel family, Amma insists that Barindra take Maya away. Barindra makes a deal with his friend, Farooq to take Maya to his village of Alamar where she will likely end up married to one of his grandsons. Maya continues to remain mute but it is her journey through the desert that forces her to make the decision to live...and to do that she must speak. 

Discussion

Karma is a historical fiction novel that explores the immigrant experience in Canada, against the backdrop of the volatile events in India of 1984. It covers the time period from October 28 to December 17, 1984.

Following India's independence from colonial rule by Britain in 1947, the Punjab region in northern India began to agitate for a separate Punjabi-speaking state. In 1966, the Punjab stat was divided on the basis of language into the mainly Punjabi-speaking state of Punjab and the mainly Hindi-speaking state of Haryana. The majority of people in Punjab state adhere to Sikhism, a religion that believes everyone is equal before God. Sikhs believe in reincarnation, and that only through perfect devotion to God (through good works and living well) they can break the cycle of rebirth. In Hinduism, the dominant religion in Harvana, it is believed the soul is reborn repeatedly until perfection and there are many gods and goddesses.

Through the years following the creation of these two states and into the early 1980s, increasingly militant Sikh activism led to the demand of independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan. By 1981 there was ongoing violence between Sikh and Hindus, with the desecration of Hindu temples by Sikhs. As tensions continued to escalate in Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi through the early 1980s by 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi decided she had to act. The Indian military attacked the Sikh Golden Temple killing the Sikh extremist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. This ultimately led to the assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. leading to violent rioting. Mobs attacked Sikhs in Delhi, killing thousands and injuring many thousands more. These events provide the setting for the novel.

Karma begins with the voice of Jiva who along with her father Bapu arrive in India with her mother Leela's ashes. Jiva is reflecting on the events that led up to her mother's suicide: her struggles as an immigrant in a country where her culture and beliefs are in sharp contrast to those of Christianity. This leads a lack of community, resulting in isolation and depression.  Jiva's parent also begin to experience  struggles in their marriage as they argue about a name for their daughter and what to teach Jiva/Maya to believe. Their struggles are a metaphor for the religious strife that is tearing apart their homeland of India. 

In the poem, "Mata is crying day and night", the struggles Jiva's mother Mata (Leela) experiences are brought into focus: missing the familiar landscape of home, the lack of connection and community. Leela asks Amar,

"Don't you miss your homeland, Amar? The broad plains? The fields of wheat? Our Punjab of the five rivers"" 

Amar tells her that in Canada she  has religious freedom whereas if they were to return to India his father's intolerance for Hinduism would force her to convert to Sikhism. But that is small comfort to Leela,
"But I have no one to pray with, but a daughter who won't dress Indian unless it's Halloween! I have religious freedom

but no community."

Amar tells her that hatred is as form of isolation and that in Canada there's "No blood in the soil to stain our lives. No families to tell us how to be."  This is a reference to the ongoing strife in India between Hindus and Sikhs, a foreshadowing of what Jiva and Bapu will experience themselves in the future.

Unfortunately, Jiva and Bapu arrive in India at the height of violence between Hindus and Sikhs. The overwhelming poverty in India is a shock to Jiva as is her father's indifference to it. In New Delhi, she is overwhelmed at the sight of the beggars and the street people. Her father's response is given in the poem, "Who Are You?"

"What would you have me do, Jiva?

Feed all the starving?

Buy them artificial limbs?

Buy their children?

No. Of course not, I shout back.

Just see them.

See their pain.

Acknowledge their suffering.

I am tired of pain, he says...

And besides, there's nothing we can do, Jiva. Perhaps they'll do better in their next life.

But I think he means they should have done better in their last.

Karma.

To Jiva, her father is blaming the poor and the beggars, essentially saying that they are beggars now in this life because they did something terrible in their previous life. His attitude puzzles Jiva because at home in Elsinore he notices everyone and is deferential, but in India, he is proud and confident.  However, as Jiva remembers the past, she remembers her father being unsympathetic towards the suffering of Mata who felt increasingly isolated and who begged to be taken back to India. 

As the violence escalates following the assassination of Indira Ghandi, Jiva learns that her father has taken her to India not just to bring Mata's ashes but also to force her into marriage. Left alone at their hotel, Jiva flees to escape the violence but on the train to Jodhpur witnesses unspeakable cruelty towards Sikhs as told in a poem titled "Mirage"

"They come across the yellow fields
running with dark faces and teeth bared
through ribbons of heated air
a mirage of false water.

The train slows as if waiting for them to catch up.

What's happening here?
Why are we stopping here?
Is it wolves?

But they are not wolves

(we should have prayed for wolves)

but men instead
four-limbed and angry
carrying iron rods and knives
hands gripping gasoline cans
voices shouting into the hot dry air
their fury stirring the dust like a wind.

(we should have prayed for wolves)..."

Jiva is accused by the passengers on the train of unlocking the train door. Jiva did not unlock the door and attempted to save a Sikh man who is taken and burned alive in a field. This trauma leads her to question her actions in the poem title "Guilt", as she questions whether she did enough.

"I know I'm not the one who unwrapped the turban, bound the legs, poured the gasoline, and struck the match

But I listened to the screams for mercy and was frozen

Could I have smothered the fire with my body?

Should I have died with him? Fire on my hands?

Is my silence unfounded too?"

Because she feels she didn't act, - a fifteen-year-old girl in a strange country- Jiva believes she doesn't deserve to be found by her father or loved. Her trauma leads Jiva unable to speak and tell the doctor who she is. 

At this point the novel seems to lose the storyline. Instead of the focus remaining on Jiva and her thoughts at this time, the story switches to a narrative by a new character, Sandeep Patel, adopted brother of Dr. Parvati Patel.  Jiva who has told the doctor her name is Maya, is taken in by Doctor Parvati Patel's family, although Dr. Patel never visits to see how Maya is doing. As Jiva is mute, the narration is taken over by Sandeep who is asked to keep a diary by his sister. This method to move the story forward feels awkward and not realistic as boys generally do not journal. Eventually, the Patel family's neighbours begin to harrass and threaten them about the presence of the strange girl in their home. However, they never reach out to their physician daughter for help in finding another family to take in Maya. Instead, Barindra and a stranger - Akbar take Maya on a journey across the Thar Desert. It is revealed that she will stay with Akbar's family and likely be forced to marry him. During the trip the connection between Sandeep and Akbar is revealed. When a desert storm threatens, Maya who has runaway from Sandeep, Akbar and Barhindra, must make the decision to live, and starts to speak again.

Four weeks after the riots, Jiva returns to Delhi with Sandeep to find her father. Jiva is still struggling to come to terms with the mob violence she has witnessed. She is shocked by the indifference and forgetfulness of the people in Delhi.

"The city is shrouded with amnesia.

A tattered veil of forgetfulness...

Yet four weeks later what is different? Fewer turbans? But who is noticing?

On the streets of New Delhi, who is concerned? Who even remembers?

I question the face of every man I walk by?

Was it you? Were you a part of this?

Did you take a man's life? His breath? His dreams?

Or did you stand by and do nothing?"

In the poem, "The shame", Jiva struggles to understand the Indian mindset towards what has happened,

"I don't understand, Sandeep.

Where is the shame for what happened on these streets?

Why is the city not on its knees?

The masses asking for forgiveness?

Crowding to temples with offerings in their mouths?"

Eventually Jiva is reunited with Bapu (Amar) through the determined efforts of Sandeep. After Bapu explains what happened to him, Jiva tells him that she wanted to die in the desert. In the poem titled "Life" she tells her father,

"It's not easy to die, Bapu,...

In the desert I thought I wanted death to find me. But life is an enormous force. It doesn't let go easily....

I also learned that our lives are not just our own. Everyone and everything is connected. Like a wide net of fine thread..."

Despite what has happened, their separation and the trauma of the riots, things are not right between Jiva and her father. Although her father wants to follow through on the arranged marriage, Jiva refuses, telling him she is in love with Sandeep Patel. He also confesses to her that two months before Mata hanged herself, he had bought plane tickets to Delhi but kept it a secret because he wanted her gratitude. He didn't ease her suffering when he could have, giving her something to look forward to and this fills him with remorse.

Ostlere offers a fitting conclusion to her story:  Jiva, Bapu and his friend Kiran who rescued Mata's urn from the abandoned hotel room, pour Mata's ashes into the Yamuna River. And Jiva and Sandeep, whose real name is Miraj (he learns this from his brother Akbar) briefly reunite by the Yamuna River and promise to find one another in the future.

Karma is a good effort to portray the horrific events surrounding the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi through the eyes of two young people: an Indian-Canadian girl and a Hindu boy. What begins as a novel about a struggling immigrant family in Canada, and a violent historical event in India ends as a love story. The novel is very long at over 500 pages, and some readers may find the middle section of the novel slow and lose interest. Parts of the storyline feel very contrived: the use of a diary by Sandeep, Maya/Jiva's sudden decision to speak again, the meeting of Pavarti on the train which saves Sandeep and Jiva, and the finding of Jiva's father by Sandeep. Sandeep Patel's narrative does contain some sexual content that could have been omitted. Better editing would have made this story more focused on the themes of the immigrant struggle and racism which Bapu and Jiva encounter both in Canada and in India. The novel's title is a reference to the concept of "karma" that events happen to a person based on their previous actions: good actions lead to good things and bad actions to suffering or problems. 

Book Details:

Karma by Cathy Ostlere
Puffin Canada 2011
517 pp.