‘The Chinese Mansion’: A deft magical realism novel about a lawyer’s insecurities and inner demons

The Chinese Mansion by Siddique Alam, translated from Urdu by Jaideep Pandey, is a genre-defying, richly-layered work of experimental fiction with a lawyer of repute, adept at handling both civil and criminal cases, as its protagonist and narrator. A chronicle of rural life in eastern India, particularly Bengal, and a keen analysis of how justice is delivered at times but mostly denied, it also portrays how grief never vanishes and resurfaces, shifting shapes.

Flitting between dreams and reality

First published as Cheeni Kothi in the year 2016, The Chinese Mansion opens with a phantasmagorical vision the protagonist has as a teenager. He spots a dragon in the sky that hisses out steam. A man with a bald head appears and says over and over – “It is nothing but a nightmare. Why don’t you try to give sleep a chance?” And even as he pretends to sleep, he hears a loud explosion.

Closely following the life and career of our unnamed protagonist, a lawyer, the novel in five chapters details five different plot-lines, all of which coalesce to reveal our his personal history. A court case involving the rape of an eight-year-old girl by a 40-year-old man in a village assumes centre-stage. As a defence lawyer to the defendant accused of rape, our protagonist continues to fight for him, wriggling through loopholes in laws, even while he feels the accusations are true.

His star-crossed love and sexual attraction for a woman client, Aisha, whom her elder son strongly disapproves of; his fleeting friendship with a lonely, retired police sub-inspector who loves cats; his equations with Hiranmoy Kaku, his clerk who assists him in court cases whom he knows from his father’s days; and with Mir, his domestic staff member whom he defended unsuccessfully some years ago in a double-murder trial; and his obsession with the titular Chinese mansion that stands opposite his house are the other four threads.

“That day, it dawned upon me that our dreams accept realities from our wakefulness in the same manner as our wakefulness accepts incidents from our dreams.” Moving between dreams and reality, the narrative lays bare the insecurities and inner demons that haunt our protagonist, who is a conundrum of conflicting thoughts. Jaideep Pandey’s translation shifts between the real and surreal realms with effortless ease and elan.

A richly-layered narrative

As the translator points out in his note (best reserved for reading at the end, even though it appears at the beginning), the author places a great deal of importance on animals and inanimate objects. In his opinion, the superficial knowledge that human beings possess only makes them over-confident and heavily biased control freaks.

Here, dogs and cats propel the story forward by deeply influencing the actions and thoughts of men. The retired sub-inspector falls into a deep emotional abyss after his cat Payal dies. Jhabra, the dog’s near-death and revival, forces Mir to break the status quo and face his future. The river bank where the narrator meets the retired sub-inspector for the first time, or the river bed that bustles with vaious activities, depending on the time of day at which the narrator crosses it on foot to meet Aisha, is no less important than the human characters. The courtroom building and Aisha’s house across the river are sketched crisply in words. The weather, too, described vividly, adds a sense of atmosphere. The Chinese mansion, which holds many secrets, is not just a prop that heightens mystery but a metaphor that symbolises the darkest corners of the human psyche which we’d prefer to keep unexplored.

That the only “woman” character lingers to satisfy the sexual fantasies of the protagonist leaves a bitter aftertaste. The climax feels a little lengthy and stretched out, like a protracted courtroom drama.

Though grounded firmly in rural Bengal, the commentary on caste, class and gender discrimination, deep-seated bigotry and socio-political reality holds a clear universality, reflected in lines such as these: “I am very familiar with the way life goes on in the countryside. It’s an extremely backward region surrounded by rocky hills and infertile plains, where for miles on end, there is an extreme dearth of water. The state government uses this district as a beggar’s bowl so that it can get all sorts of monetary help from the central government as also from international welfare organisations. But nobody can say where all this money goes year after year. The district is still in the same shithole it was seventy years back; in fact, it would not be wrong if I say that every year, the situation is going from bad to worse.”

An incisive dissection of the legal framework with a spotlight on the principle of “presumption of innocence” until one is proven guilty, tumultuous familial relationships, love and its loss, death and trauma – the novel leaves a lot to unpack without running into the risk of getting cumbersome. The use of metaphor and magical realism lends an element of intrigue without confounding readers. May more such works of literary modernism that tease the reader’s comprehension and attention be made available in translation.

The Chinese Mansion, Siddique Alam, translated from the Urdu by Jaideep Pandey, Hachette India.