Book review: The House of Oracles by Chandini Santosh

In Chandini Santosh’s novel The House Of Oracles, the Manikoth House of the title assumes the mantle of  an important  character. The  ancestral house is a big brooding presence,  casting a dark shadow on the people living there.

The deaths that stalk them in various ways,  is considered a legacy of the house, yet  darkness does not ultimately triumph. Despite the upheavals  the various  inhabitants of the house go through, they are able to make good in the end.

Manikoth House is also called the House of Oracles because it has an ancient shrine in the compound where Theyyam rituals take place. The Theyyam ritual is an ancient  and popular form of worship in the North Malabar region of Kerala. The oracle who resides near the Manikoth House all year around and is dependent on the family’s largesse, dons the mantle of the Theyyam and is considered god for the period in which the ritual takes place.

The inhabitants of Manikoth House are an old woman Panchali, her son Shiva, his wife Yamuna, Shiva’s sister Urmila and her family comprising  her husband Venu and children Vishnu, Nanda, Kishore and Shyam.

The death  of Vishnu in a drowning incident at a quarry which is part of the house, sets the stage for the tumult that follows. Vishnu drowns trying to save Nanda and Kishore. Thereafter, Kishore is wracked by both ‘survivor guilt’ and feelings of responsibility for his brother’s death.

The death has  Urmila leaving Manikoth House to join her husband Venu at his workplace in New Delhi. The death casts a pall, and it does not help that Shyam is both prone to fits and mildly mentally challenged. Kishore is the first to jump ship, opting to go study medicine in Manipal as a way of leaving the house. Nanda exhorts him to leave but to carry his own  baggage. Soon she leaves too, eloping with a Bengali JNU student, Probin.

Peace, however, continues to elude the family. Venu gets Alzheimer`s and is unable to work any more. Soon the family shifts back to Manikoth House. Kishore with his tortured soul, slips into the world of drugs.His visits to Manikoth House are as a disinterested outsider. Nanda too, returns to the house  after a miscarriage  leads to a breakdown in communication between her and Probin.

Meanwhile Shiva, who  had inherited his father’s textile business, runs it into the ground. Even his importance in the temple committee recedes as the Devaswom Board takes over the running of all temples in the area,  bringing their officers in. Gradually he starts  selling off pieces  of his land to a Malayali Christian, Joseph Kurishinkel. Yamuna, Shiva`s  wife, is a strong character in contrast to the weak philandering man that he is.

She is haunted by her multiple miscarriages but still finds it within her to keep the wheels of the house running smoothly. She is the rope that binds the family together; she is able to convince Kishore of his non-culpability in Vishnu’s death; she advises Nanda  not to let  the chasm between her and Probin become an unbridgeable  gulf; she is there as friend and supporter to Urmila,  burdened as the latter  is with  multiple troubles.

It is through Shiva and the oracle’s second son Kannan that Santosh, interestingly, sheds light on the changing social scenario in Kerala. Social changes  like land reform and the rise of Naxalism change Shiva’s circumstances. He is reduced to selling off bits of his land to stay out of debt. He soon sees the temple he built dwarfed by  Kurishinkel’s  oil factory and a church going up. Soon, he is shorn of wealth and importance and yet there is a dichotomy within him.

Though he knows he “cannot act like  the emperor of all he surveys”, Yamuna perceives the  turmoil this creates with him when she notices the crumbling inside her husband who cannot live down his landlord image. The world around Shiva changes even as he struggles to keep up and accept it. Kannan also reflects the changes in social mores in his life.

He grows up aware that his father is dependent on Shiva and that his mother works as a housemaid in Manikoth House. Yet, swept up by changing circumstances,  he goes against Shiva by joining a trade union agitating at the textile mill. He then deliberately  goes to work for Kurishinkel. Even when he accepts money from Yamuna, it is grudgingly. In the end,  when Kannan dons the mantle of the new oracle at Manikoth House, he does it on his own terms; unlike his father, he is not dependent on the house financially.

Two deaths bookend the story: Vishnu’s in the beginning and Shyam’s suicide at the end. Shyam’s death, however, acts like a catalyst in the story. Soon Kishore, nudged by Nanda, finds his calling as a  doctor treating the locals. Probin and Nanda reunite. All financial matters are resolved satisfactorily.

Most importantly, Manikoth House  and its sacred shrine remain with the family. Manikoth House  comes alive majestically in Santosh’s various descriptions: the 41 steps leading to it, the wide courtyard, the small patio that opens to an atrium, the shrine, the seven-layered stone lamp in front. Family members who were former inhabitants of the house sometimes consider it cursed. But as Urmila muses, many of those who left, as well as those who remain, make good.

The book holds, at its core, a very interesting story but is unfortunately let down by poor editing. At times, it transitions abruptly from past to present without clarity.