Two Lives

Remember the time you climbed the attic of one of your old relatives and came across an old trunk and opened it and found it full of letters tied in bundles and souvenirs? You guiltily go through various bundles and find precious nuggets and trivia such as your grand ma’s love letters and your grand pa’s correspondence with the insurance agent. If you love people, and love to find out what makes them who they are, you would be sitting there studying each item totally absorbed and transported to a different era with every find.

Reading Two Lives (author:Vikram Seth) results in similar experience. I came across this book when I was browsing through the bargain section of Barnes and Noble and found it marked quite cheap for a hard cover book and bought it on an impulse. I found it more absorbing than the “Consciousness Explained” by Dennett that I was reading and ended up reading it cover to cover using whatever little time I had to spare.

Two Lives is a biography of Henny and Shanti who are from from entirely two different worlds and meet in pre war Berlin. He is a dental student from India and she is one of the two daughters of a Jewish widowed mother who takes him as a paying guest during his stay in Berlin. Her other daughter Lola loves Shanti, Shanti is more keen on Henny but keeps his distance as Henny already has a fiancé Hans, who is half Jewish and is her boss’s son. The mom Ella likes Shanti over Hans. The pre war turmoil interrupts the lives of these people and each one is impacted in a different way. Shanti cannot get a job in dentistry in Germany after he finishes his studies and he has to go to UK to requalify and become a dental surgeon. Henny gets out of the oppressive Nazi regime by the sponsorship of one of her boss’s acquaintance in UK. Shanti is the only familiar face for Henny in London. Lola and Ella end up and die in the killing fields of Nazi Germany, Lola in the notorious Auschwitz and Ella in an old people home designed as euthanasia center rather than a home. Hans to escape his fate marries a Polish Christian. Shanti joins British Army and sees action in African and Italian fronts. He loses his right hand in Italy and comes back to London. In spite of the loss of his right hand, he perseveres and becomes adept with his left hand to become a much sought after dental surgeon. Finally Henny relents and marries Shanti and they have a wonderful thirty-eight years of married life together. Henny gets painful cancer dies at the age of 82. Shanti dies nine years after her death, living out a lonely life and missing her terribly every day.

This is a true-life love story told by Vikram the author who has a superb way of working with the words. Being a poet does not hurt his mastery of the prose. Shanti is a younger brother of Vikram’s maternal grandfather Raj who supported Shanti in his quest to go abroad and study dentistry. Vikram stayed with Shanti when he was in London during his high school and college days. Vikram and Henny become close when he has to learn German as part of his entry requirements to Oxford within six weeks. She becomes his intensive tutor and he gets to know her soft side.

Vikram after publishing “A suitable boy” (a Dickensian novel touted highly for Booker prize) is looking for inspiration. His mother suggests him to write about his great uncle Shanti’s exploits. He takes her suggestion and starts his research. By the time he starts gathering the material, his great aunt Henny is long gone. So he sits down with his Shanti uncle and interviews him intensively for background. Fortuitously Vikram’s father finds an old trunk of Henny in the attic filled with Henny’s letters to and from her friends from pre and post war Germany. He pieces together an engrossing tale of love, intrigue, tragedy and joy amidst the suffering.

If you like to piece together people’s lives by fascinating tidbits, you would love this novel. You will get a healthy dose of banality and the terror of evil Nazis and will join the group of intrepid warriors who gave their lives and limbs for a large cause. You will end up wondering whether Henny did really love Shanti or her true love was Eva and whether Shanti was a genuine hero or had feet of clay and what will old age make you. Reading this will take you through an utterly thought provoking journey into Two (memorable) Lives.