The Sound of Water by Sanjay Bahadur
Based on actual tragic event in a remote Indian coalmine in 2001, Badahur – an ex-director in the Indian Ministry of Coal until 2006 – makes his literary debut with a scathing insider’s look at the tainted coal industry.
Badahur recounts the multifaceted layers of the mining disaster using three principal rotating voices: Raimoti, an aging, drug-addicted miner who knows from his miner-father and grandfather that the sound of water deep in the earth’s bowels can only signal grave danger; Bibhash, a lonely mining engineer who lives in near exile with only his growing pornography collection for company, whose lonely life is suddenly interrupted by the fate of six trapped miners; and Dolly, Raimoti’s youngest brother’s wife, a greedily manipulative woman who eagerly awaits news of her trapped brother-in-law because of the potential compensation his confirmed death might provide. Badahur unflinchingly captures the disparate lives of the haves and the have-nots, revealing the multiple layers of corruption and exploitation buried deep within all the characters.
This is not a happy book by any stretch of the imagination. And not a single character seems to have a shred of integrity, save for the a low-ranking bureaucrat who eventually commits suicide [could the message be that the honest can’t survive?]. But that’s not to say that this isn’t a worthy book … think of it as an illuminating exercise in Schadenfreude.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009
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