A Window Lived in the Wall by Vinod Kumar Shukla: Magic in Mundane

A novel about the beauty of life with elements of magical realism by this year's Jnanpith Award winner.

The department head told the principal that an elephant had been abandoned in front of Raghuvar Prasad’s house.

‘Raghuvar Prasad just got freed from an abandoned bicycle,’ the department head said.

‘Had Raghuvar Prasad held on to the bicycle, he would’ve been freed from the elephant a lot sooner,’ the principal remarked.

Raghuvar Prasad is a young, middle-class lecturer who struggles daily to commute the eight-kilometer distance to his college. The jitneys are always crowded, leaving very little space for him to squeeze in. But the day his new wife comes home, he gets a ride back on an elephant, and she believes he regularly uses elephants for travel. Living in a meager one-room rented house, the newlyweds Raghuvar and Sonsi discover that beyond the window of their home is a wonderland, where there are streams, ponds, flowers, fruits, and an old woman who gives them tea, snacks, and sometimes, gold.

This year when I saw the news that Vinod Kumar Shukla is the winner of Jnanpith, the highest Indian literary award, I wanted to try his works. That's how I ended up reading 'A Window Living in the Wall,' an exploration of beauty in the mundane. The novel was originally published in Hindi as 'Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi' in 1997 and won the Sahitya Academy Award. It was translated to English by Satti Khanna in 2005. The novel explores the magic hidden in plain sight in our everyday life.

The writer is also an acclaimed poet, and every sentence in the novel corroborates it. There is an abundance of lyrical beauty and vivid imagery in the prose even when dealing with the utmost simple matters of everyday life. The writer uses a very descriptive style where he goes to far lengths to outline the ambience, actions of characters, and their psychology to the point that a casual reader may be puzzled at this approach. But the deep excavation of the familiar imbues a certain strangeness and a sense of wonder that helps the seamless blending of real with the magical realist elements.

The novel employs magical realism as a contrast to the mundane life of the protagonists and as their escape. It symbolizes the blissfulness of a regular life that seems rather dry when viewed from outside. While going out of their one-room house through the window, Raghuvar and his wife, Sonsa, encounter a magical wonderland where they can transcend their limitations and vitally nurture themselves with more energy to face reality. They don't keep it for themselves but share it with others also, who find the travel through the portal an experience they can't get enough of. It highlights how imagination plays a part in enriching ordinary lives.

Two other interesting characters in the novel are the elephant and the sadhu who offers Raghuvar a ride on it to his college. While extremely unnatural, the situation is depicted with enough heart and humor. While his family believes it's his common means of commute, Raghuvar considers the rides a luxury that he isn't deserving of. When they find the elephant abandoned at the doorsteps, the couple are conscious that it's someone else's belonging. There is a small-town tenderness that permeates the novel, which is the soul of it.

The novel has a subtle and understated style of humor, which sometimes gets ironic and even absurd. Most of it arises from the deep observation of everyday life. The visits of the parents of Raghuvar and their arrangements to accommodate all in a single room are a striking example of this. Another kind of humor can be observed on the borders where the magic and mundane meet. Interactions between Raghuvar and his department head are of such a kind where the absurd humor peaks. Most of the humor reflects the novel's use of fantasy as a contrast to human conditions.

'A Window Lived in the Wall' by Vinod Kumar Shukla is a brilliant novel that blends the beauty of everyday life with fantasy to reflect the aspirations and inhibitions of the Indian small-town middle-class population. The contemplative humor, magical realism, and the amusing depiction of everyday sensibilities make it a must-read, though the absence of a structured plot, the abundance of descriptions, and a narrative that flits in and out of reality may be difficult for a casual reader to appreciate.