The Age of Shiva
by Manil Suri
Bloomsbury, HK$247
Manil Suri's debut novel, The Death of Vishnu, was such a resounding success that he decided to do deities and write a trilogy based on the Indian holy trinity of Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma. It must have been easy to sell to the publisher, but the assumption that the deity was central to the book's success is naive - as the work itself illustrates.
In The Age of Shiva, Suri's second novel, he borrows a couple of myths from the story of Shiva to form the narrative backbone. Shiva's children, Ganesha (the popular Hindu elephant god) and Andhaka (a less popular blind demon) are central characters in an ancient Hindu story of the Oedipal complex - one that supposedly predates the Greek myth and that forms the crux of the novel.
Ganesha was created by Shiva's wife, Parvati, and beheaded by an irate Shiva. Andhaka lusted after his mother and was also killed by Shiva. Suri uses the subtext of these myths to explore the obsessive love of a mother for her son.
The concept of 'holy mother' has been done to death in Indian cinema, and Suri is clever to upend it with his Oedipal undercurrent.