ANIMAL'S PEOPLE, INDRA SINHA
Simon & Schuster, Rs 374 Pages 584

NONITA KALRA, THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Every now and then you come across a novel so honest that it leaves you gasping for breath - like a blow to the solar plexus. The emotion is raw, the story honest and the language simply that of the people. You know that once you start reading it will break your heart and yet you keep turning the pages because the story has to be told.

The narrator in Indra Sinha's Animal's People is Animal who speaks to a tape "mashin" but addresses the Eye who reads his words. He determines the pace, the content and the context according to his will. "I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being," says he in his introduction. But at the age of six, he wakes up to a fever that bends his spine permanently and reduces him to a life lived at the level of the crotch. The cause: the poison that leaked into Khaufpur "that night".

Animal is the damage the gas left in its wake. His life is the embodiment of the destruction. The people around him are a direct result of what happens when despair drags the soul into a dark and bottomless pit. And yet because they are human there is hope – and that hope gives strength to the determination to fight the good fight.

Zafar, an idealistic and charismatic leader, leads the struggle against the "Kampani" in "Amrika" that refuses to take responsibility
for its actions. He is joined by Nisha, the daughter of a famed local musician, who is also the love of Animal's life. When an American doctor Elli Barber joins the fray she changes the equation – leading to intrigue, betrayal and an explosive ending.

But the heart of the novel is the journey Animal makes from being a jaanwar to a man. It is revealed in the changing nuances of the relationship he shares with the two creatures he loves most – his dog Jara and his caregiver Ma Franci, a crazy old nun. The very human-ness of Animal's nature is what also gives the book its incredible strength. There is sensitivity yet no sentimentality when Sinha writes about a not-yet boy of 20 who is so human that he has to hide behind the guise of an animal.

But every now and then you also come across a book that has been written by a person who is more qualified to tell a particular story than anybody else. And this is Sinha's book, this is the story the author needed to write. Former ad-guru and author of The Death Of Mr Love, Sinha has worked with the survivors of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy for over two decades. He has visited time and again. He has written
about the struggle for justice. And he has lobbied for recourse. Check the author's website www.indrasinha.com for the finest essays on the subject.

Truth, it is said is stranger than fiction. In Animal's People there is nothing strange about it. There is just the truth. And it is Sinha's story all the way.