The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Club Literati

On 20th February, Club Literati, Bhopal hosted a discussion on Kiran Desai’s new novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. The attendance was rather thin — inversely proportional to the formidable size of the book. The discussion, however, was lively, notwithstanding the fact that only a few had completed the novel, some were midway through it, and others were still undecided whether to embark on the 670-page journey.

This blogger, the lead discussant, made a few opening remarks and read select passages. What followed was a wide-ranging conversation on the book, the author, and its central concerns: loneliness and love; the challenge, thrill, triumph and trauma of migration; alienation and uprootedness; the pull of disparate cultures; and the inescapable tug of familial bonds, even as the joint family frays.

A reader sensed a strong autobiographical undercurrent. Another observed that every author necessarily draws from lived experience. Someone felt that the lengthy excursions into art, artists and galleries did not always appear integral to the story.

The matchmaking letter to the Colonel — in which Dadaji thoughtfully lists Sonia’s many redeeming virtues while cancelling out her “cons” (too tall, too dark, hot-tempered) — reminded this blogger of that memorable scene from Sholay, where Amitabh Bachchan meets Mausi and solicits Basanti’s hand in marriage for his buddy Dharmendra – not a most-eligible bachelor.

“Why are you reading only from the early chapters?” asked a watchful participant.

“So as not to reveal the climax. Why play spoiler? Better that readers discover for themselves whether love trumps loneliness — and whether Sonia and Sunny live happily ever after.”

A Few Observations

The novel is a tome: 21 Parts, 75 Chapters, 670 pages. To assist navigation, it lists members of the three key families — including no fewer than thirteen house staff — along with the pets: Babayaga (cat) and Pasha (dog).

If one loves fiction, the size need not deter. It is an enjoyable read: vivid character sketches, evocative nature writing, and sparkling prose. The plot unfolds at a languid pace; yet the gifted storyteller sustains interest. Some may find it unputdownable. I read my hardcover intermittently over three weeks, savouring the journey through its narrative maze.

This is not a book to rush. There is no murder mystery to solve. It is best consumed in measured sittings, allowing its variegated strands to settle and its kaleidoscope to reveal a panoramic view.

The novel arrives two decades after Desai’s Booker-winning The Inheritance of Loss. Unlike her mother and mentor, Anita Desai, who has been prolific, Kiran Desai writes at a slower, more deliberate pace. Loss was the defining motif of her earlier work; here, loneliness assumes that role.

Loneliness is the novel’s overarching theme. Sonia and Sunny are young, educated, ambitious, and privileged. Why, then, are they so adrift? Why do stable, soulful relationships elude them?

Is their loneliness exceptional? Or is loneliness the common inheritance of modern life — each person lonely in her own way, to borrow and slightly bend Tolstoy?

The novel opens with Sonia’s loneliness; soon, the solitude of Sunny, Illan, Ulla, Babita, Seher and Mina Foi emerges. Like a creeping smog, it threatens to envelop and suffocate them all — past and present alike.

Sonia, an aspiring writer, hopes to produce a novel but makes little headway. Her stories meander, criss-cross, dissolve. The centre does not hold. One wonders whether this mirrors the author’s ambitious attempt to stitch together multiple plots, sub-plots, continents, characters, art, philosophy and memory into a single, sprawling canvas.

After college in chilly Vermont, Sonia lives with Illan, a rising artist who treats her as a creative catalyst for his paintings. She is enamoured, almost in thrall; he is volatile and self-absorbed. In a fit of rage, he humiliates her, expels her from his flat at three in the morning, and ends her apprenticeship. Yet she struggles to free herself from his shadow — a ghost hound that pursues her across continents.

Sunny, meanwhile, is a struggling journalist, low in the professional pecking order and uncertain of his future. His relationship with Ulla seems fragile from the outset. His domineering mother Babita’s presence lingers over him — from Jackson Heights to Venice, Mexico to India.

Their loneliness persists despite these provisional attachments. Is it merely personal? Or does it spring from deeper roots — culture, migration, family expectation, history?

Does love dispel loneliness? Or do the two simply learn to coexist — no longer at war, yet never entirely reconciled?

Or are we, as human beings, condemned to carry loneliness as our inseparable shadow?

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