The path to perfection and ideological faith could well lead to dystopia. Journalist and novelist Tarun Tejpal probes the pathology of indoctrination of a brotherhood of men in pursuit of a higher ideal. Tejpal warns early on, “That more than anything else men must fear the quest for perfection.” It is a novel in which allegory, irony and pristine prose work to send a message that is at once powerful and disturbing about the pursuit of ideological warfare and the lonely and chilling trek of young men and women indoctrinated into a warring fold. Their credo: “The pure were a mere handful; the world they had to change was a massive sprawl.”
Tejpal’s novel is set apart from other contemporary works on the subject of renegade soldiers, armies and guerrilla groups in the hinterland of India by its chilling tone and by evoking a sense of eeriness and mystery and even a hint of dementia. It is a psychological catechism of the follower: of how indoctrination and Spartan ethics turn him into a faithful soldier in pursuit of a vision of higher freedoms by dehumanising the self. The story is a mirror to the intuitive impulses, the philosophical and intellectual discourses within the mind and the dangerous egotistical self-realisation through methods that inflate the ego and test it. Tejpal seems to question the very seed of protest and liberation across many parts of the world and various battles and ragtag armies in pursuit of a perfect society. Their goal of a promised land of freedom remains unattained and unfulfilled since its pursuit stirs the mind and heart to deadly deeds, unspoken and unimagined. Not surprising that Tejpal admitted the kernel for the story sprang from a published image of a group of followers wearing masks of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi following the months of the election campaign in 2007. The idea of allegiance to an order that does not permit dissent but blind faith is both sinister and dangerous, and Tejpal seeks to touch the impregnable core of a convert blinded by adherence and loyalty.
Ennobling as the pursuit of this war is, Tejpal does not miss the irony of the rigidness in indoctrination and rigour called upon flesh and mind in the name of allegiance to create an army of soldier-saints. Hence the warriors remain faceless, known by numbers and names of birds and animals. The characters who remain humane are the ones with names, like the domesticated warmth of Parvati or Ali and Aliya, a couple whose commitment to conquer the horrid and the terrible in acts of self-effacement is relegated to the mythological stories to awaken the brotherhood of men.
And thus it is in The Valley of Masks that the members shed their original faces and leave them for documentation in a secret chamber and wear masks that make each face similar and unrecognisable from its own self. They are a faithful brood of wafadars who kill, maim, and wage battle and war against enemies in their pursuit of a perfect ideal, of a liberation into a world of perfection and beauty. This would be achieved by ruthless neglect of the imperfect, the broken and quelling seeds of doubts with only blind adherence to a cause. The leaders are nameless and cold creatures who inspire awe and blind allegiance with life and limb like Aum, great Helmsmen, the Gentle Father, or those with sinister bird names like Serpent eagle, great Hornbill and Tragopan and madonnas. They remain more spectre than human, beings whose qualities of opaque oneness make them fit to inhabit and prowl through a valley of shadows, circled by icicle capped mountains. It is a cult of pursuing a perfect order and of perpetuating it through generations. The characters and their actions stem from a nameless order but their practices and rituals make them seem familiar with many a dreaded cult or rebel outfit around the many angry parts of the globe.
The narrator is Karna Bharna, who sheds his name to be hailed by a preferred name — the alpha number X470. He is on his last legs, awaiting a ruthless and brutal sentence to his betrayal. The last wait at the dead of night for death to visit also throws his mind back on the path he has traversed thus far. His journey as an 18-year-old lad, his early initiation in the lower orders to serve his masters, his rise up the ranks of nameless warriors, deadly in combat and allegiance, his wresting with flesh and his conquest of it are recounted in detail. He emerges from his years of dedication — an unwavering, meditative ascetic warrior whose body becomes an unthinking weapon in itself.
In his past two novels Tejpal chose to seek the psyche of the individual at the threshold of alienation, loneliness and marginalisation. It is a mirror that never reflects a pretty picture, but one that cannot be ignored. Tejpal is unsparing about the dangers of obliterating the self in pursuit of a collective belief and the joys that spring from restlessness of human mind and savouring of the senses. The book is a plea for the power of doubting and dissent.
THE VALLEY OF MASKS
Tarun J Tejpal
Fourth Estate, Harper Collins
348 pages; Rs 499
