The Covenant of Water, is an immersive experience in an emotional ocean.
It’s a voluminous novel, written in spectacular prose about endearing characters who live in the span between 1900 and 1977, and who collide with life with varying degrees of impact. It shares many of the qualities of Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese’s previous novel, which I fell head over heels in love with. Both books span over generations and continents, both involve orphaned kids and family secrets, both are as much about the science and art of medicine as about people and events, and both are written in exquisite language.
The Covenant of Water, was written over 13 years. Verghese is a medical doctor, author, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School. How he finds the time to write a 730-page novel, is beyond me.
The first plot is about Mariamma, who lives in Kerala, in the south of India. In the year 1900 she is 12 and is married off to a 40-year-old widower, who lives in a far-away village and has a 2-year-old son. To comfort her, Mariamma’s mother tells her, “The saddest day of a girl’s life is the day of her wedding. After that, God willing, it gets better.”
It’s love at first sight between Mariamma and her stepson Jojo. Not so between her and her husband. In fact, the widower is reluctant to marry Mariamma. But over the years the couple grows to love each other and have children. The husband’s family has a strange “condition”. Many males are born with an innate fear of water and often die by drowning even in shallow water. The story follows the trials and tribulations of generations of this family, their relatives, neighbors, friends and servants.
The second plot in the book is about Digby Kilgour, a Scottish surgeon. As a Catholic he is looked down upon and is not allowed to develop his considerable talent. So he joins the Indian Medical Service and goes to Madras to get away from his unhappy past and to avail himself of better opportunities to train and practice surgery. “Oppressed in Glasgow. Oppressor here. The thought depresses him.”
The story is sprawling. Digby’s plot, although introduced early-on in the book, disappears for a long time, only to make a comeback towards the end and connect to the main one. A multitude of characters and subplots are introduced and developed. Medicine is practiced (my favorite) and joked about. A multitude of serious themes are explored. The oppressive cast system in India, the plight of lepers, rare diseases, harassment of women in education and society, religion, ghosts, love, art, addiction and loss are recurring themes. Funny episodes and lines are thrown in as well. Overall the very broad scope of the book seems to need a bit of trimming and tightening.
Verghese’s prose is meditative and sumptuous. “He stares at his blistered hands. The thumb alone would prove the existence of God. A working hand is a miracle; his are capable of removing a kidney or stacking bricks.” “Her scars, her burns, and her contractures were all on the inside, invisible…unless one looked into her eyes: then it was like looking into a still pond and gradually making out the sunken car with its trapped occupants at the bottom.”
His characters are smart, sensitive and lovable. Even his trees, elephants and ghosts are adorable! He makes the reader fall in love with his characters and then drags both character and reader through hell. I found the novel too emotional and jam-packed with suffering. I also found the great majority of the characters to be kind-hearted and self-sacrificing. There are only a couple of half-hearted villains. None of the many tragedies in the book are caused by villains. Life itself is the villain.
I greatly enjoyed the medical sections and especially the medical jokes. Akila, a head nurse at a Madras hospital helps/teaches the resident doctors in the L & D (Labour and Delivery) ward. She has her own “Better out than in” or Five-F rule: “Flatus, fluid, feces, foreign body and fetus, are all better out than in.” She yells commands at more than one doctor at a time. To one who’s using forceps to pull a baby out, “’Ayyo! You call that pulling, doctor?’ Akila shouts from the other side of the room, without looking. ‘The baby will drag you back inside, slippers and all, if you can’t do better.’” And to another, “Doctor! By the time you finish sewing up the episiotomy, the baby will be walking…”
The Covenant of Water is a portal into an expansive world that with its powerful prose exposes you to many profound themes, and puts you through an emotional roller-coaster.
Alternate Perspective 