The latest novel by Kiran Manral typifies the prolific and multitalented author’s inexhaustible imagination and courage, backed by an extraordinary felicity of language and ability to depict the rawest of human sensations. This story concerns three females Noor, Rani, Gulab, and one male, Teja, described through the pages in separate sections devoted primarily to each character.

Noor is a fallen angel, once the favourite among the moon god’s consorts, still blessed with light of the celestial spirit and the attar of roses, who ‘glowed like she was dipped in moonlight,’ which light she is able to bestow on others but with the ability to remove it long with the memory of her. Teja was an exception among males; ‘perhaps I had wanted to stay connected.’

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Noor, who “been around since the beginning of time” was stranded on earth due “to succumbing to mortal desire.” She needs love – “the only thing that protects another in this dimension” – to shield her from hellish monsters who wish to punish and reclaim her. She also needs carnal relations with males to survive, though “all humans were dispensable” and she admitted “none of the emotions that plagued humans about fidelity and love and moral compass.” She envies humans their death because “Immortality was burdensome…Freedom was this interval between escaping what pursued me and waiting for them to begin pursuing me again.” Few could resist her but “I always came back to those who had touched me… I am all you desire and all you need.” But without the light, Noor is “just flesh, sodden base flesh.”

Noor laments that humans were remiss; “if only they figured out how to harness their sexual energy… despite their antiquated notions of love.” But this energy was waiting at times for an entire lifetime to be awakened.

Rani is possessed by “an entity I could not define.” She is “God’s chosen child” who also had the light given by Noor after Rani clashed with Belkis Bi, the roadside peddler from the other world who is variably an incubus and a guardian spirit throughout the book. Later, Rani turns out to be the one who seeks out and saves Belkis.

Rani records that “shining brighter than the rest marked you out for envy, for punishment…you attracted terrible things, unwanted attention by humans, unwanted possession by others.” At another point she confesses, “I shone only when I knew I would be unseen but sometimes…it shone through unhindered, giving me courage and strength.” She is married to a professor but had her husband attempted sexual relations, he would have died an excruciating death. Rani does not age visibly even at 60 unlike her husband, who complains, “I have never known you to have sympathy for anyone or anything.” The exception was Gulab.

Gulab was abused by her father whom she killed when she was 17. She runs away, and is rescued by Teja who serves a gang of crooks as an assassin. Gulab’s pregnancy plays a large part in the story; it keeps the evil forces from dominating her.

Teja gets fewer mentions than the three females, but the narration of a murder perpetrated by him is well scripted. He has “hair down to the shoulders, an unruly mop of hair bleached copper by the sun … His eyes, the eyes of a hawk, were copper and bronze and caramel and gold…… long of limb and broad of shoulder… He stood out no matter what he wore.”

The descriptions of males and their motives are somewhat stereotypical contrasted with the finely drawn renditions of females.  “That was the problem with men, always trying to get into one without permission…old men invariably find themselves young wives when their loins refuse to perform.”

The dreaded assailants of the three leading women are “hounds from hell” with ten heads and snarling fangs who “hovered attentive like staff at a formal dinner,” seeking those who had the light in order to feed on them, while seeking out those who were suffering and tormented.

Three quibbles. Little purpose is ever served by the use of epigraphs and none in a novel. Here they appear otiosely before each chapter Why were the leading females so fearful when they could sense they were under powerful protection, either from Belkis Bi or Noor? And why is the avenging monster from hell in its various manifestations who claims and possesses women cast as a male?

This book needs to be read many times for its nuances to be appreciated, being a multilayered complex piece of fiction that blends the human and divine, reality and unworldly, and consequently extraordinarily hard to define or summarise.  The reaction to it will primarily be emotional. This is an essentially feminist narrative, with powerful, savage, elegant and evocative writing. Manral asks “when had a woman’s consent been of relevance to the taking of her body?” and declares “Men were sentimental when it came to first loves, while women weren’t,” and “Copulation was the only gateway for every single human being to glimpse a fleeting fragment of divine bliss.” Kiran Manral displays supreme skill in portraying female vulnerability, loneliness, distress, needs, desires and frustrations. In this genre of Indian fiction, she is first with no equals.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary

Spotlight

The Moon in the Lining of her Skin

By Kiran Manral

Hachette, Gurugram, 2024

354 pages, Rs 599/-