This is a splendid novel, beautifully written, cerebral, and moving. Nath relates the story of Ananda, a fictional Buddhist monk, as told by a Chinese monk Xuanzang, a historical figure, traveller and great scholar. The year Ananda’s tale begins is 631 at Nalanda monastery located near Patna in what is now Bihar.
This is a fateful year. Northern India is united under Harsha and China ruled by Tang Taizong, both tolerant men attracted to Buddhism. Islam is rising in Arabia, its adherents are preparing to conquer large areas of West and South Asia and North Africa. It is an era of change.
Ananda is a youth chosen to become a monk because of his intellect and quiet studious nature. He shares his cell with Kushala, a restive lad who is both kind and cruel. Ananda is happy with his life at the great Buddhist university, the daily round of prayer and study.
Kushala is not and is drawn into a group of monks seeking personal enlightenment through non-spiritual means — such as consumption of alcohol and engaging in sexual activity. They are regarded as ‘heretics’ by the Nalanda community and Xuanzang.
Ananda is asked to serve Xuanzang, who travelled to from China to Nalanda to study with its rector. Xuanzang and Ananda set off on a journey south to visit monasteries and consult sages. Ananda wants to learn how to gauge the spin of the earth to fix the dates of Buddhist festivals. He secures a book filled with mathematical formulae which might solve the problem but fails to decipher the formulae. The book is lost when Xuanzang returns home, depriving Asia of key astronomical data.
The climax comes because Ananda cannot break free of his friendship with Kushala and stifle his curiosity over the practices of the ‘heretics’.
Biman B Nath is an astrophysicist at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore. Like Xuanzang, Nath has travelled far and wide in search of knowledge. He has worked in India, the US, Israel and Germany. Like Ananda, Nath is intrigued by time.
In an article published in Frontline, the issue of March 15-28, 2008, he reveals how a medieval mistake has left India with faulty traditional calendars which are “out of sync with the seasons” because time is moving slower than these calendars record and, according to his calculations, 24 days have accumulated in 1,450 years.
This is why, Nath says, Makara Sankrati, the winter solstice, is celebrated in the middle of January rather than on December 22. His novel is a novel way of explaining how and why medieval scholars did not correct this fault.
NOTHING IS BLUE
Bimal B Nath
HarperCollins,
2009, pp 242,
Rs 295
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