The Mountain of Light

The Mountain of Light

  - Indu Sundaresan

The first book by Indu Sundaresan that I read was ‘The Twentieth Wife’, and I was absolutely enthralled by it. I loved the sequel (The Feast of Roses) too. On a visit to Blossoms, I had been looking out for her collection of stories, ‘In the Convent of Little Flowers’; I didn’t find it, but I came upon ‘The Mountain of Light’. It belonged to the same genre (Historical fiction), and the subject – The Kohinoor (or Koh-i-Noor, as is described here) – appeared very interesting.

After I bought it, it kept on lying for almost two years (I was mostly in my non-reading phases during this time), before I started reading it on a flight. I finished about 105 pages in a single sitting on that short flight! The narrative kept me hooked, and at that point I didn’t regret buying it solely on the strength of the previous works I had read by the author. However, my conviction did not last the entire length of the book. It is undoubtedly a well written story, but I found it disappointing, and it failed to live up to the expectation I had from it.

The actual origins of the world’s most well-known diamond – the Kohinoor – are unknown; this book tells the story of the magnificent diamond from the time it reached into the possession of legendary Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab to its passing into the hands (or crown) of the empress of Great Britain, Queen Victoria. The diamond is also said to have a curse – a man cannot safely wear it in a crown, which is why the Mughal emprerors had it embedded in the Peacock Throne, and Ranjit Singh wore it in an armlet. The promise – as you can imagine – is irresistible. And this is where this fails. I felt that the book is composed of four distinct tales, only loosely bound by the Kohinoor.

The first part of the book narrates the events that led to the acquisition of the diamond by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Shah Shuja, the exiled king of Afganistan, and his wife Wafa Begum, are imprisoned by the Maharaja – he rescued Shah Shuja from imprisonment in exchange for diamond, but later Wafa Begum is reluctant to hand him the diamond as promised. At last, they have to surrender it to the Maharaja, who retains it, as well as the vast Punjab empire, till his death. During this timeline, the story meanders into an account of Lord Auckland’s sisters, Emily and Fanny – which would have been very well, had it had a relevance to the events that take place later on.

The second story deals with the boy king Maharaja Dalip Singh, the heir of Ranjit Singh, whose empire is annexed by the British. He is raised under the guardianship of the British regent (John? Henry? Cant recall the name) and ultimately exiled to England. The author seems to have completely skirted the unpleasant part of the British takeover of Indian kingdoms, and portrayed the regent in a very compassionate light. While I was approaching this part, I was apprehensive about the traumatic details of British oppression, however I found the completely benevolent tone difficult to digest too. A large part of this story is devoted to the life and affairs of the regent, and again, has hardly any relevance to the central theme.

A third story captures the actual transfer of the diamond from India to London, and as expected, is considerably dramatized. A little too much, I would say.

Then we find the exiled prince (or self-proclaimed Maharaja), old and dying, in Paris. Interspersed are his reminiscences of his early life in Britain. His initial years are covered with a lot of excitement, and a grand life where he has the queen’s favor, though he also starts to get a first-hand experience of deep-rooted racism. How and when he got from that privileged life to the current destitute state, is either not mentioned, or I am unable to recall after a couple of months.

There is no doubt that each story is wonderfully told, in the same delightful style that I found so captivating in ‘The Twentieth Wife’ – great narration with a rich imagery of people and places. However, that is what it amounts to – a string of stories, where the primary character (the Kohinoor) makes only a few fleeting appearances. The author has clearly stated that several events have been a product of her own imagination, but here the imagination appears to have taken the predominant role. The entire tale that is meant to be a historic fiction, was more fiction than history, and felt like it (I didn’t feel that so much in the books on Noor-Jahan’s life). It would not have rankled, if these sub-plots had a role to play in the central story. It was as if the characters made an appearance, engaged you, and then fizzled out. Overall, a good read, but unsatisfying.