Mowgli of the Other-world

Sailen Routray

Cover of the first 'adult' edition of The Graveyard Book
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons 

Since the time an acquaintance lent me a copy of one of The Sandman books in 2005, I have always been a huge Gaiman fan. But because of the desultory nature of my reading practice, I never actually read through his corpus properly. I was in Bangalore then, an indifferent doctoral student in a nondescript research institute surviving on a small fellowship. One could afford fiction only if it was available in the form of cheap, second-hand paperbacks. Despite trawling through the heaving shelves of 'Blossoms' on Church Street in Bangalore (where I was based at the time - the city, not the bookshop, although some friends had doubts to the contrary), I could never find a resold copy of any of the works by Neil Gaiman. This perhaps tells you the love that his readers have for him and his books.

I espied a copy of his American Gods on the bookshelf of a quizzing friend, borrowed it and read the tome with wide-eyed fascination. Perhaps the only other texts this novel is comparable with, is the non-fictional oeuvre of Roberto Calasso that reworks myths from civilisations across the globe in volume after volume. From then on I was hooked. In fact, there is a strong mythical/mythological undertone to Gaiman's most other works as well.

Neil Gaiman in 2018 (Wikimedia Commons)

This is quite evident in The Graveyard Book. A toddler's family is murdered in an unnamed English town and he escapes into a nearby abandoned graveyard that sprawls across a hill; it has been re-designated as a nature reserve. Here he is adopted by a kindhearted ghost couple. But of course it takes the whole graveyard and multiple ghosts and other kinds of beings to raise this child.

He is named as Nobody Owens by his guardian and godfather Silas, and is called as 'Bod' by family and friends. The novel chronicles his adventures till he becomes an adolescent. Like most great works of fiction, it is also a story about many other things - the process of growing out of puppy love and parenting, to name only a couple.

The novel is also a fresh take on a classic theme - the bringing up of the heroic, sometimes semi-divine, foster-child. Gaiman starts the acknowledgement section of the book, by saying , 'First, foremost and for ever: I owe an enormous debt, conscious and, I have no doubt, unconscious, to Rudyard Kipling and the two volumes of his remarkable work The Jungle Book.' 

Illustration from the 1894 edition of 'The Jungle Book'
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Mowgli is an obvious inspiration behind the creation of Bod: the former is brought up by a wolf pack, the latter by a community of ghosts. The bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera act as guardians in Kipling's stories; in Gaiman's novel the role is played by Silas and Miss Lupescu who are not exactly 'living' but aren't ghosts either.

The wolf-baby is himself reminiscent of a very popular mythological story set in northern India on the banks of River Yamuna - the foster-child Krishna being brought up in Gopa by Yashoda and Nanda as his parents. This divine child faces numerous attacks on himself till he overcomes the source of them all, the demon Kalanemi (whose name means, 'a portion of the wheel of time') reborn as Kamsa. Kalanemi was the son of Hiranyaksha and was killed by Vishnu in a battle.

The battle between Kalanemi and Vishnu in Bhagabata Purana
Artist - Manaku (drawn around 1740 AD)
Photo credit - Wikimedia Commons

Bod's birth has also been foretold; he foils many attempts on his life with his own ingenuity and not a little help from his guardians. Krishna straddles the world of gods and of men; Bod has a foot each in the spheres of the living and the dead. Loving folks such as these is shot with peril; Yashoda and Mrs Owens find this out soon enough.

The way The Graveyard Book is structured and where its story ends, leave enough scope for future action and many sequels. It is a pity that Gaiman has not followed up on the subsequent adventures of 'Bod' Owens.

Note: Copyright of this work rests with the author.