Review: The Red Tin Roof by Nirmal Verma

“All that was needed was to wind key and his memories chugged out like a toy train on its track, carrying him past wayside stations which more or less resembled one another, year after year, from one season to the next. When Kaya talked about Babuji, the train pulled at the Summer Station, sun flooded, nestling among pines, the needle-leaves honed to dazzling sharp points”.

Set in the Shimla, THE RED TIN ROOF is full of such picturesque and beautiful imagery throughout the course of the novel. The novel is set in a surrounding which dwells in the lap of nature and the author has justified this choice by beautiful descriptions which creates a very lively and realistic impressions of the setting in our minds. The author beautifully recreates the scenery before us by his strong use of language and imagination which pours life into the novel. 

The novel primarily revolves around a young girl Kaya who finds herself in virtual seclusion owing to the inappropriate company she had been since her childhood (sometimes old women, sometimes old men sometimes young girls and sometimes her younger brother). As she grows towards her youth she finds herself alone with her difficulties as she is unable to express and share her grievances to anyone around her. Kaya starts to develop a certain distance from the people around her ultimately shrinking and winding inside her inner self. Kaya wanders all around her locality in her loneliness and solace fiddling with the abundant treasures of her memories and is found mostly engrossed in deep thoughts and tangled in questions to which she never finds any answers. The novel is thus a constant effort and struggle of Kaya to break off this shell and discover her individuality.

Nirmal Verma has focused this novel on a very crucial stage and time of Kaya’s life. It’s the time when she makes a transition from childhood to adolescence, it’s her journey to overcome her fears and illusions and her development into an individual. In the midst of immortal mountains where hardly any change is visible, the swift movement or switch from childhood to adolescence, be it the physical or the emotional aspect of this transition, is not easy for Kaya to face alone. She stands at the point of life where she is laying her steps into an all new world leaving her childhood behind and the coming  time is full of symbols and indications  of the mysteries which lie ahead in her life.

On one hand this novel shows the loneliness of the soul while on the other it shows the misery of facing the naked biological realities of the body all alone. But this tale is not only about a secluded girl but its more about the orphaned feelings and emotions of the girl which seek security and comfort in the presence of someone.

The characters in this novel are lost in the stark darkness of their individualities. We find them seeking answer and meaning of their existence in the maze of fear and memories.

The novel although written in a very straight forward language and possessing a very modest plot spreads a magical charm over the reader with its imaginative and creative outlay and the effervescent environment created through his writing by the author compels the reader to get engrossed in the novel an form a part of it.