A middle-aged snake charmer wakes up one morning in Delhi, little knowing that by evening his whole world will have been turned upside down, his life irrevocably changed. Married to an embittered wife, the father of two indifferent sons, Sonalal's closest relationship is with his elderly snake, Raju--a defanged cobra with whom he has worked for 15 years. On this day, Sonalal and Raju set up shop in front of a popular tourist destination and for nine straight hours the charmer plays while the snake dances. At the end of the evening, just as he is about to stop for the day, Sonalal is tempted to perform one last time by the arrival of a busload of foreign journalists. At first, Raju refuses to cooperate and Sonalal is embarrassed. Then he begins to play "variations on Raju's favorite tune, such beautiful variations that, had they been recorded, might have guaranteed Sonalal's immortality. It was as if the finest music of his ancestors--seven generations of charmers--had condensed into the enchanting combination of notes now coming from his new been." Raju dances, the journalists shower the charmer with money and in his excitement, Sonalal begins to play wrong notes. Raju becomes enraged and bites; Sonalal, in a moment of madness bites back, severing the snake in two.
And therein lies the tale.
The Snake Charmer is Sanjay Nigam's deceptively simple novel about a deceptively simple man. Not for Nigam the verbal pyrotechnics of Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy; he tells his tale from just behind Sonalal's ear, opening up his character's heart and mind as well as his world in prose that is both simple and lyrical. Sonalal's moment of madness in front of the foreign journalists leads to his 15 minutes of fame: for a few days, his face and story are splashed across newspapers around the world, and for a few brief moments he has the admiration of his family, friends, and neighbors. But fame is no antidote to the tremendous guilt that gnaws at him; in fact, the greater his fame, the angrier Sonalal becomes at the world's incomprehension of the gravity of his crime. As his character seeks desperately for solace first in medicine, then in magic, and eventually in the arms of his favorite prostitute, Nigam limns a compassionate portrait of one man's crisis of faith and despair against a backdrop of modern-day India. By turns tough and tender, The Snake Charmer marks an impressive debut by one of India's most promising new storytellers. --Alix Wilber