BOOK REVIEW: FICTION

ESTEBAN

LOVE’S ORDEAL: One Priest’s Extraordinary Journey

BOOK ONE

Author: FISH NEALMAN

There is Divinity variously called ayin that shapes our mundane life and thus the ordained cycle runs. Failing this, there is some fallout of mistaken identities. The case of Esteban runs on this digression taking the recourse of the soulful pandering. Fish Nealman tosses love as a tactical gambit of humanism serenaded by Christian mores. But is there any hallmark of Divinity or does it stand on a slippery ground? The tussle between the identities of the sacred and the profane gets nebulous with the narration of Esteban, while he is in the making of a church priest. This is an account of deprivation that pursues Divination. The Good, Bad, and the Ugly emerge to defend themselves losing out to each other to ultimately get transmuted into a singularity undefined, the victorious enigma ayin!

Love ricochets in the Divine realm remaining utmost sanctimonious. ‘..that love is an unearthly force. What would Jesus say?’ sets the tone for the future course. If love doesn’t accrue ‘by destiny’ can there be some other recourse? Fish Nealman has raked up some humanist perplexities in this story. The lurid portrayal of Christian mores and human feelings is accentuated by abject poverty in the heart of a commercial town. Pilfering food items for dousing basic requirements brings a speck of remorse and a dab of obliviousness by Stephen Ferrari and his devout Christian family. This act gets condoned by the clergy partly with empathy and partly for gratification by sharing the booty. And thus a petty offense gets a stamp of authority to aggrandize depravity with impunity.

Thus human greed knows no boundaries, ‘No matter how large, a single chicken would never please the hungry and growing Ferrari flock.’ Divinity is dabbed upon the depraved to get a chaste proclamation. Sin without din becomes the ruse of the day, a novel ploy mastered by the Ferrari family. ‘One-upping the prior confessional lie became a self-imposed test of excellence. Lying was an art form he practiced religiously.’ Avarice creates rippling vicious circles. Fish Nealman has humorously made a graphic portrayal of how a person gets drawn into sinful acts with deluded brag and also enjoys societal impunity. ‘If the chickens were stolen, that would be a sin. But to both of his parents, perpetual hunger felt like a bigger sin.’ However, Divinity somehow prevails upon denigration since there is a human element that remains deviant and there is a constant tussle between Divinity and humanism. The author is clever enough not to employ stereotyped ways of divination and reformation but chooses an earthly quirk of fate to wing it. Esteban is the son of Stephen Ferrari. A devout family with annals of crime changes their track through circumstances. “Don’t be like your father. Do as I say,” she would plead. Esteban was confused. And this confusion popped up every second moment with its to be or not to be confrontation of prudishness and muted sexuality. ‘The priests said it was wrong to talk to the girls, so he didn’t despite the urging of .. other boys. However, Esteban found himself listening to the conversations about the girls. He listened to his peers brag about their exploits.’ The author has used his characters to analyze the perpetual parody of life and religion and grated religious beliefs at every stage for readers to see its worthiness to be upheld and has made an unstinted mockery of its practices. Is the author a non-believer? What does Fish Nealman want with his characters amidst the aura of dogmatic and ecclesiastic religion?

Esteban is ruthlessly told: ‘You weren’t our first choice…The Gregorian seminary can be challenging.’ To rebut pretensions, the author creates a double walker for Esteban. And this is a noble soul who tries to filter away the scum at the seminary from Esteban and invigorate him towards his goal. This noble soul tells Esteban – ‘Never let them know what you think. They don’t want you to think. Only tell them what they tell you..’ This is a marvelous expressionism adopted by the author to work out fact-finding of religion and soul-searching for readers in several ways. The tussle between humanity and religion now gets a judge with the advent of Esteban’s doppelganger or double walker. The double walker is an iconoclast who shows the humane facet of religion sans pretensions and high-handedness. There’s a paradigm shift in the connotation of religion. Esteban finds himself clamped between jovial-faced religion and the stentorian religion browbeating him menacingly. The author has made humorous catechism happen between Esteban and his double walker the very moment the high-handed religion bogs him down.     

The theological vacuum in the Gregorian seminary is laid bare by the noble soul double walker who goes on to reveal the true essence of religion as per Kabbalah to Esteban that everything was seeded from a state called ayin – “A state that was not defined by parameters and definitions that you have been taught. The ayin evolved into becoming a defined entity, namely the entity called the self.” At the same time, this noble soul renders the scientific basis of existence around informing him about the Newtonian picture of the universe and the ‘quantum indeterminism’ and “the realm of the very subtle.. And that’s where reality really plays itself.”

What should Esteban fall upon? Again the doublewalker vouchsafed saying, ‘You need to know the most important part of who you are and what makes you tick.” Where is the tinge of holier-than-thou imposition from this religion professed by none other than Esteban’s doppelganger? And what religion should it be called? The very identity of this doppelganger accentuates the veracity of religion and the revelations follow. The front matter of the book carries a fecund aphorism by a Hasidic rabbi that sets the tone for the entire episode of Esteban.  The book is written on a pertinent topic of the viability of dogmatic religions, narrated in a lighter vein using several innovative techniques of literature with the maverick insight of Fish Nealman. 

The book has a sequel to it, Esteban-Love’s Irony following the ordeal faced by prudish inhibitions in the present volume.

Publisher: The Paper House

Paperback: 174 pages