Name: South Haven
Author: Hirsh Sawhney
Publisher: Harper
Collins Publishers India
Pages: 296
Price: Rs 217
If you look at a place from far away, you see a pretty scenery. It looks perfect as a whole. Only when you come closer, you see the intricacies that pixelate your view. You can then see the truth, which more often than not, isn’t what you’d initially thought it to be. That is what Hirsh Sawhney explains in his debut novel.
South Haven deals with this concept in different ways. While it is primarily about an Indian-American teenager Siddharth trying his best to juggle many roles, the book really deals with the tension that exists in a society full of extremities. It starts with Siddharth’s memories of his deceased mother, and the reader is gradually introduced to the tension that exists between him and his father because of it. You feel the boy’s struggle as he accepts the fact that his father is seeing another woman, that too his friend’s mom. He has an elder brother called Arjun, whose point of view on things is quite different from that of his father, Mohan Lal. The Arora family seems to be quite divisive.
While you see Mohan Lal as an Indian immigrant raising his family in the quiet suburb of New England, you’d think he’s someone who wants to be accepted in the society he lives in. But when it comes to accepting his son’s relationship with a Pakistani girl, he shows his true colours — various shades of orange we’d say. Another important character in the book is the ‘new woman’, Ms Farber. A single mom to Siddharth’s friend Marc, she likes Mohan Lal, probably because she’s in love with her concept of ‘India — a manifestation of the phrase unity in diversity’. But then again, things are different when she gets a closer view. She’s bewildered with Mohan Lal’s regressive, convoluted, conservative and intolerant concepts.
There’s a lot of family drama. There’s apt representation of teenage angst and the need to fit in among prejudiced peers. There’s love, loss, rejection and redemption. It’s an emotional roller-coaster. The book is complex, just like our lives.
South Haven was a DSC Prize Nominee for South Asian Literature Longlist (2017)and has been nominated for an award at the Tata Lit Fest in Mumbai this weekend too.
