A game of cricket in the lawns of his house confronts the narrator of this novel, Ashwin, a 12-year-old boy with a dilemma. He has to answer at that very moment whether he is still a child. “No, I am not”, is Ashwin’s defiant response. Thus the story takes off.

The Sacred Grove is set in a small Indian town where Ashwin’s father is the district collector. Thanks to the government, as Ashwin says, they had the best house in town and it was not much of a town any way, with three main roads and no red lights. But Ashwin liked the town; it had heart, it had soul, people believed in the same things. That was what Ashwin and the driver Rafiq thought.
Though there is an inconsequential temporal sequence in the book, it is Ashwin who decides which incidents in his life he wants the reader to know. He chooses as he pleases and his concern is with the “here and now” told in the language that he speaks.
The story begins with Ashwin’s mother’s unexpected pregnancy. When his father tries to explain it to him, Ashwin is dismissive because he has learnt all that he needed to learn about reproduction in school. The narration continues with Ashwin’s triumphs in computer games and cricket, he describes his humiliation in football with unflinching honesty when he manages to kick the ball into his own goal. “My life stank. I wanted to die.” Ashwin is the urban middle-class everyboy.
The first part of the book deals with the everyday life in this unnamed town. The build-up is slow. We enter the child’s world and recall our own childhood. We observe with Ashwin the sycophancy that bureaucratic hierarchy inevitably generates, we are confused by the hidden prejudices even in parents and we try to cope with the onset of puberty. Relationships develop and the author explores the bond between Rafiq the temporary driver and Ashwin. Rafiq teaches him the reverse sweep and takes him to the Farid Baba Darga which has been long revered by the entire town. The tabiz that Rafiq gives him becomes Ashwin’s talisman. It breaks his heart when his mother takes it away from him.
Then things change and the narrative picks up speed. A simple project by the history teacher takes Ashwin and his friends to the sacred grove, sacred to both Hindus and Muslims. Ashwin and his friends visit the remains of a forest at the edge of the town. As the children chase history in that forsaken forest, they listen to the stories and legends that surround it. There is a Hindu legend and a Muslim legend and the seeds of hidden discord long buried in the dead leaves are stirred with a little help from a local politician. The peace of the quiet little town is shattered. Violence and death lead to more death and violence. And in the end the little boy who is accidentally caught up in the events loses friends and innocence. The story that began as an idyll ends in a nightmare.
First-person narration by a boy protagonist is a difficult literary device. First, it restricts the point of view and second, sustaining the voice of the child as it relates events of the adult world becomes an awkward burden. In the earlier part of the book Daman Singh does a remarkably good job. She has observed children carefully and having a teenage son must have helped. She knows what they resent and what they appreciate among adults and how quickly they see through the hypocrisy among grown-ups. She understands what they find heroic and what to them is utterly uncool. She has delightfully captured the cadence of a child’s voice. As the narrative veers into the adult world some of this music is lost.
The Sacred Grove is not really a children’s book; it is the adult who needs to listen to Ashwin. He might be wilful and manipulative but he has something to say and there are lessons to be learnt from what he has to say. In spite of the jagged edges, the stereotyped characters, and the hurried conclusion, The Sacred Grove is a worthwhile read perhaps because all of us were once 12, struggling to be understood and suffering the pain of growing up.

Aloke Roy Chowdhury can be contacted at alokeroy@hotmail.com