Finding The Perfect Link

IT takes a very light touch to ensure pastiche doesn't descend into parody. Successful pastiche also needs a careful selection of both model and genre, since an audience well acquainted with the original is a pre-requisite. 

It is thus ambitious for a first-time novelist to even attempt a pastiche. Norbu has however succeeded without qualifications. What's more, he has pulled it off with a plot that draws on familiar elements in the oeuvre of Hilton, Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle, and a cast culled out of Sherlock Holmes and Kim. Now these are names to conjure within the annals of popular fiction.

Much midnight oil has been burnt and many forests pulped in previous attempts to plug gaps in the diaries of John Watson, MD. I can recall one brilliant variation based on the premise that Watson was actually Irene Adler. Kim too has been the basis for much literary exertion. T.N. Murari wrote a semi-successful sequel with The Secret Agent and Hopkirk has spun off an entire series of histories-cum-travelogues inspired by The Great Game. 

Norbu picks a period in Holmes' life which is inadequately covered by the bibliophiles of The Baker Street Irregulars Society. This is the two-year hiatus that occurs in his life between the fateful encounter at the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem and Holmes' return to London. In The Empty House, Holmes informs Watson that he wandered through Tibet and "amused myself visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Lama. You may have heard of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend". 

Richard Wincor did make an earlier attempt to reconstruct events out of those few lines. But Sherlock Holmes in Tibet was flawed by the author's patent ignorance of the Roof of the World. Norbu, who is the director of the Tibetan Centre for Advanced Studies in Dharamsala, obviously doesn't have that problem. His evocation of the ambience of Lhasa when it was known as Lhassa, the capital of the forbidden realm of Thibet, circa 1892, is flawless. His feel for the period is very certain. The flavour of the streets and wharfs of Bombay, life in Simla, a rail journey on the Frontier Mail and a Trek to Tibet are all recreated in loving detail. 

But Norbu's trump-card is his choice of amanuensis in Shree Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, the unforgettable Surveyor-spy babu from Kim. Kipling based HCM on the scholar-spy Sharat Chandra Das and it is an act of inspiration to invite Hurree to understudy the absent Watson. In real life, Das was an expert on Tibet and the Himalayas. Hurree meets Holmes in Bombay and escorts him through several "Damn-tight places" to Lhasa and beyond. 

Hurree Babu's narration mixes scholarship on diverse subjects with literary erudition, a rationalist Spencerian approach, Latin dog-ends and Hobsonian Anglo-Indian slang in a manner unrivalled since Desani. Hurree is, of course, an old admirer of Holmes and also the first man perceptive enough to note Holmes' spiritual streak. The evolution of the great detective's persona remains consistent with the broad contours delineated by his creator. 

I won't reveal the plot in detail. But it revolves around paranormal deux ex machina out of Tibetan Mahayana legend, and features a high-noon style showdown between Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, MA, and the reputedly late Professor Moriarty, Phd. The author, like every other Tibetan in exile, also has an open agenda of publicising the history of Chinese interference and repression in Tibet. In this instance, Holmes foils the Empire's stratagems and plots against the 13th Dalai Lama. The whodunit is the weakest element in the book-it is really elementary. But that barely detracts from the book's overall quality. Mandala instantly places Norbu amongst the true greats of this genre.