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Samrat Upadhyay. The Guru of Love,
Houghton Mifflin/Rupa, Price Rs.195, Pages 290,
ISBN 0-618-24727-0.

   Amid the wider phenomenon of Indian Writing in English, non-Indian writers from the sub-continent are left largely undiscussed — except perhaps Michael Ondaatje and Hanif Kureshi. Even though literature in the native Nepali is highly evolved and practised, English-language writers from there haven’t yet entered the wider map. Therefore last year, I read with keen interest two books from the Himalayan kingdom — Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History, and Samrat Upadhyay’s debut book, a collection of short stories, Arresting God in Kathmandu.

   Upadhyay has followed his maiden effort with a more sustained piece of writing, a first novel called The Guru of Love — a story of middle-class Kathmandu mathematics teacher, forty-something Ramachandra, who is married to Goma, a daughter of a rich family connected to the royals. He has no real friends to speak of and supplements his modest income by private tutoring. The ensuing story is predictable, an affair with one of his tutees, resulting in his wife leaving home for her parents. But the twist and the novel’s interest lies in the way his wife eventually handles the whole situation — Goma demands that her husband’s student Malati and her one-year daughter move in with them, as more intricacies follow.

   Samrat Upadhyay’s paints a slice of contemporary Nepal that is almost always overlooked in the innumerable books that have come from that country written by foreigners — most have ended up, in one way or the other, promoting its tourist trade and misplaced mysticism. The Guru of Love is a moving novel written with tenderness and compassion. Upadhyay’s strength lies in his style and language that seem deceptively simple, therefore lucid, finely etched, understated, and convincing.