Rupi birthed her eldest son squatting in the middle of a paddy field, shin-deep in mud and slush. Soon after, Gurubari, her rival in love, gave her an illness that was like the alakjari vine which engulfs the tallest, greenest trees of the forest and sucks their hearts out. Now Rupi, once the strongest woman in her village, lives out her days on a cot in the backyard, and her life dissolves into incomprehensible ruin around her.
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey is the story of the Baskeys—the patriarch Somai; his alcoholic, irrepressible daughter Putki; Khorda, Putki’s devout, upright husband, and their sons Sido and Doso; and Sido’s wife Rupi. Equally, the novel is about Kadamdihi, the Santhal village in Jharkhand in which the Baskeys live. For it is in full view of the village that the various large and small dramas of the Baskeys’s lives play out, even as the village cheers them on, finds fault with them, prays for them, and most of all, enjoys the spectacle they provide.
An astonishingly assured and original debut, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey brings to vivid life a village, its people, and the gods—good and bad—who influence them. Through their intersecting lives, it explores the age-old notions of good and evil and the murky ways in which the heart and the mind works.
THE MYSTERIOUS AILMENT OF RUPI BASKEY: A NOVEL