Unravelling hidden secrets
Reviewed by Shalini Rawat

The Skinning Tree
by Srikumar Sen
Picador India. Pages 217. Rs 499

Growing up has its consequences. After the sunshine and surf, memories have become discoloured, a yellowy darkness sets in. Some memories belonging to our childhood need to be thrown out head-first because we have dwelt upon them too long. In the dark recesses of the mind, lizards have morphed into dragons, shadowy corners into dungeons and unliked/unlikeable adults into monsters. No wonder these memories are the first to come tumbling down when we sit down to write our stories. Our maiden works are heavily imprinted with our childhood impressions and memory footnotes. Writing is part of the liminal space of the author. Subliminally, he tells his tale. The Skinning Tree has stayed inside our heads for too long. For a long while we have tried to grow up and change. And now all grown-up and changed we look too much like ourselves. Hence, the need for spring-cleaning or catharsis.

As the waters of the narrative come to a standstill and we peer deeper in the hope of catching a reflection of our real selves, an array of hazy images appear and disappear one-by-one: Of long-lost friends and foes, of grandma's wrinkles as we remember them, of the house which always seemed more accommodating than huge, enough to contain childhood fantasies.

For the narrator in the pre-Independence days, there is a world waiting to be recounted and secrets waiting to be revealed. He recalls the joys of living in a grand old house with an extended family of servants. It is the horror of a boarding school, the traumatising discipline imposed by the 'sisters' and 'brothers' who dutifully respond to disobedience with sinister punishments that scar his childhood in the second half of the novel. The longer the children stay in such institutions, the more they are dehumanised and the circle of violence goes on. Events at the school grow grimmer but the narrator is hopefully rescued.

The author has beautifully captured the tone and diction of the schoolboys' jargon, the senseless acts of violence by the teachers in the name of disciplining the students and how some of the boys are drawn to the circle of violence. They may not be able to voice their anger but their hatred and mistrust of the system is obvious in their 'threats and references to violence' which lends an aura of trepidation to the narrative. The novel can safely be classed under the category of 'terror', if any such category exists. It raises important questions on the capability as well as quality of 'alternative parenting' by schools. Sadly, such schools exist even today and though the environment may not be as sinister, they do irreparable harm to the child's consciousness nevertheless. The cycle is being repeated and innocent children incapable of voicing their feelings languish in such 'noble' institutions.

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