Wild abandon in a drafty sky

This is a funny adventure that borders on the absurd.

Amit Majmudar’s Soar is set during World War I and it features two Indian soldiers in the thick of the war, fighting for the British Empire and putting their lives at risk. It is an unusually crafted novel with a tinge of magic realism, philosophy and a fair bit of banter.

Khudabaksh and Bholanath are the two soldiers in question. Khudabaksh is a Muslim, Bholanath is a Hindu and they are the best of friends and have been for some time. They both hail from Junagadh in Gujarat, they speak the same language and they are both fighting in a war that has nothing to do with them. All courtesy the British Empire, which believed in drafting soldiers from its colonies, especially India, and sending them to their deaths.

In a strange twist of fate, Khudabaksh and Bholanath are sent up in a surveillance balloon that snaps free and floats away. The two Indian soldiers are left with each other’s company in a drafty sky…until they find they have one more individual in their midst.

Extra passenger

That extra passenger happens to be a female squirrel. She is bad-tempered, uncannily intelligent and demands pages from holy books for lunch. It is up to Khudabaksh to feed her pages from The Quran. Or Bholanath to feed her pages from The Gita. She also has a penchant for nibbling at the balloon’s ropes until she gets what she wants. Which is usually all the time. But, the soldiers take a liking to her and call her Kabira.

The book then follows them and their balloon as they drift over fields and oceans and get into trouble with nuns and enemy German soldiers. There is a lot of bantering, bickering and moral philosophising.

The duo have a talent for eating whatever food they can get, including halogenic mushrooms. Most of the food leaves them with stomach troubles, which are detailed a little too elaborately.

Khudabaksh and Bholanath’s characters bleed into each other. They are, in spite of their religious differences, from similar backgrounds. Their innocent observations about the world around them sometimes border on stupidity. Their understanding of their religions is very basic, but that does not stop them from having theological debates. Their chatter does seem excessive at times, for both men talk way too much.

The battlefront is described well in the book as is the strange European landscape of World War I. Khudabaksh and Bholanath, in spite of all their silliness, are aware that they are forced to fight in a war that is not theirs. The plot takes them from point to point in strange and bewildering encounters. Not once do they cease talking, not even when facing a firing squad.

Soar has an interesting premise and a cadence to go with it. However, the constant banter takes away from both plot and characterisation. Sometimes, Bholanath and Khudabaksh seem to argue about the most inane things at the most inopportune times. Repeated use of the trope detracts from the overall storyline. Perhaps their friendship and religious banter was an attempt to bring in certain elements of the 21st century into the story and the effort shows. Their adventures are also excessively wild at times and bordering on the absurd.

In essence, Soar is different. There is humour, tragedy and reflections on the brutality of war. There is friendship, a squirrel who knows best and a pigeon who has an injured wing. There is a hot air balloon basket with trees growing in it. It takes time to get used to it all and it may have helped to trim the length of the novel just a little.