Only the Lonely

Cyrus Readymoney tours the Bombay cinemas and the dinner tables of his neighborhood friends with equal fervor, as alert to nuance in behavior as he is to the enchanting images projected in the Hindi theaters or the arousing flavors of the Indian delicacies served to him. This 8-year-old protagonist of Ardashir Vakil’s vividly sensuous novel “Beach Boy” demonstrates uncanny wit and resilience, as he seeks comfort away from his parents’ self-preoccupations and ultimately from the shattering dissolution of their marriage.

Recipient of the Betty Trask Award honoring British writers under 35, and finalist for the Whitbread Prize for first fiction in Britain, “Beach Boy” gives readers an opportunity to enjoy one of India’s newest and most engaging literary talents. Whether he is describing the urban landscape of Bombay or its suburbs, Vakil demonstrates richly hued powers of observation and has a knack for sweeping up detail, large and small:

“Bombay is not an island anymore. It was once many islands, as Mr. Machado liked to tell us. The sea was pumped out, and the rocks and earth dumped in its place. Along with the millions in this city, I live and breathe its salty air, mixed in with the fumes of BEST double-decker buses, trucks HORNS PLEASE OK, yellow and black taxis, bilious smoke rising from the tall chimney stacks of factories, the honeyed smell of charcoal braziers roasting peanuts, the rotting creeks, the open gutters, and the rows of drying Bombay duck.”

But Vakil’s eye travels beyond landscape as he looks at India’s bald social divisions and the more recessed divisions within his protagonist’s mind. Cyrus is not only able to distinguish the many-layered shadings of class among his various friends like the Vermas, the Krishnans (both families lower on the social ladder than his own) and the mysteriously wise Maharani, he is also able to adapt himself to their standings and sometimes self-aggrandizing postures. The Vermas, shunned by the Krishnans as commoners, often take Cyrus with them to the crowded Hindi cinemas, outings he keeps concealed from his other friends.

Precocious in his worldliness with ever-widening appetites, Cyrus seems driven as much by innate curiosity as he is by his own loneliness. Nevertheless, he does become discomfortingly aware of his outsider status: “My hair was too long, my clothes were out of sync, my features were foreign, I shouldn’t be traveling on public transport, hanging out of trains and buses, I shouldn’t be sitting in the foyer of a Hindi cinema waiting for the film to start.” Yet with the elastic wit of a survivor, Cyrus turns these differences to advantage, letting them become his “focus of influence and power,” giving him the opportunity to display his abilities, all the while striving harder and harder to prove himself worthy of others’ attention.

Vakil’s grip on the loneliness of childhood, particularly one stirred by divorce, assists him in creating a narrator ravenous enough to take everything in and young enough to be open to what he is taking. Youthful flexibility casts in the novel a sense of breadth and possibility, making the distant geography and culture all the more tangible.

When his parents split up and Cyrus moves with his mother, brothers and sisters into the 21st floor of a high-rise building, leaving his father alone in their glass-walled house by the sea, life changes for the boy in unpredictably complicated ways. Cyrus had always wanted to live in a high-rise and turns--as well as he can--this new disaster into an adventure. Although he misses his neighbors, Cyrus lives closer to his school friends and regularly joins in their after-school cricket games, still taking time to return to visit his old neighborhood. He also copes by emotionally and physically sealing himself off from his father: “On Sunday I went to see my father but he wasn’t there. I was pleased. I wouldn’t have to worry about being kept from the meals awaiting me at my neighbors’ homes.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, as Cyrus pushes his father away, he also turns his seemingly limitless hunger toward older teenage girls, often the sisters of friends, imagining an exciting new kind of emotional and erotic bond, as if trying to replace his parents’ relationship with one of his own. In the larger sense, Vakil grants Cyrus the freedom to regather those riches of his native country and culture that modern Indian life threatens to efface. From the spectacular imagery of Hindi cinema to the exquisitely prepared and presented traditional foods, Vakil mirrors a sensuality almost spiritual in intensity, thus sharpening the irony reflected in the surname he gives his protagonist.

Richard Eder is on vacation.