On the evening of a tedious day at work, a nameless surgeon in a nameless Indian village is already preparing to close his squalid nameless clinic (cockroaches in the corners, old instruments, no medicines) when suddenly a strange trinity appears on his doorstep: a young man, his wife in demolition and a small shaggy boy, their son. All three are terribly pale and look exhausted, and when the woman unwinds her handkerchief, the surgeon sees with horror that there are gaping wounds on her neck that are clearly incompatible with life. In response to the surgeon's mute question, the man who came (hereinafter the author will call him a teacher, since he used to teach at school) decides to tell his story - and ask for help.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Vikram Paralkar lives in the United States and is a hematologist-oncologist and scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of two novels: 'The Afflictions' and 'The Wounds of the Dead.'
On the way from the fair, he, his pregnant wife and little son became victims of robbers who took away all their valuables and then killed them. After spending some time in the afterlife, the teacher managed to beg one of the ministers there for the right to a second chance: he and his family could return to earth for one night, and if during this time the doctor manages to sew up and treat their wounds, then with the onset of dawn the blood will again will flow through their veins, their lungs will fill with air and they will be able to return to the world of the living. If the doctor refuses to help them (or simply does not cope with the task), then with the first ray of the sun, all three will die a second time - this time for good.
After some hesitation, the surgeon decides to help the aliens - and his clinic turns into a night anatomical theater. Under the flickering light of an old lamp, a surgeon will darn the dead, curse the poverty of the public health system, hastily deal with a local official extorting bribes, and anxiously wait for sunrise. The teacher will share news from the next world with the surgeon (in his description of the institution appearing as a Kafkaesque institution with a clear hierarchy of bureaucratic angels, but without a hint of the presence of God), the surgeon, in turn, will tell the teacher for what sins he himself was expelled from the paradise of a big city hospital in the purgatory of the village infirmary. Fear and distrust will give way to irritation, understanding, and then warm sympathy, until - closer to dawn - additional details emerge in the history of the dead that will force the surgeon to take a fresh look at the events of the passing night.
The acclaimed debut novel by Mumbai-born Vikram Paralkara, now an oncologist at an American hospital, is a convoluted ethical charade with a whole host of possible clues. What will change in the soul of an atheist surgeon when he learns that the afterlife still exists - does it somehow modify his behavior or not? Where are the boundaries of compassion and is it legitimate to extend ordinary moral standards to those who themselves are outside of them due to the fact that they simply do not belong to our world? What can you put at stake to save your own family - and should you inform someone who is in danger through your fault about the possible risks?
Deprived of any pronounced individuality, the heroes (it is no coincidence that none of them have names - "surgeon", "pharmacist", "teacher", "teacher's wife", "pharmacist's husband", "boy") do not pretend to the reader's love and empathy - they are just pieces of a puzzle that the reader can shift and reassemble in different ways, achieving the most harmonious pattern. However entertaining as the musings with which Paralkar entertains his reader throughout the endlessly stretching night of the novel (and these musings can really be very entertaining) are, in fact, we still expect to receive the master key to the novel at the end. It is important for us to find out what the hell is going on in the village clinic, whether the dead will come to life with the onset of the morning, whether the teacher lies about the afterlife or not, whether the afterlife official wished the heroes good or evil, giving them a second chance, and whether, in the end, the surgeon is crazy - in a word, we need some kind of reliable, tangible and clear interpretation of what is happening.
And this last reader's expectation Paralkar does not quite satisfy. All the way effectively balancing on the fine line of extremely pointed medical authenticity and abstract metaphor, in the finale "Night Theater" lays a confident turn towards the latter, leaving the reader in deep bewilderment. Probably, in this way the author is trying to avoid the frustration that a clear answer to any of the questions posed above is inevitably fraught with: any certainty kills, emasculates magic and mystery. However, one cannot help but admit that the path of shimmering and meaningful uncertainty chosen by Paralkar does not look that much better.
This article was sponsored by Kristine Ammerlaan
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