The Burning Elephant

The Burning Elephant is set in Kolkata before andafter the assassination of Indira Gandhi, which led to widespread violenceagainst India's Sikh population. The novel is told from the point of view of ayoung boy Govinda, whose father is the headmaster of a local school. It beginswith the intrusion into the schoolyard of an elephant that has escaped from itsowner, and is seen as such a danger that he is immediately shot, then burnt bythe police. This outbreak of violence in the idyllic world of childhood setsthe tone for the novel as a whole, which gives the innocent yet knowingperspectives of Govinda in his engagement with the crowded and complex life ofSerpent Lane outside the school, his awareness of the breakdown of therelationship between his parents, his sense that his own privileged life isunder threat. The way the tensions in his family are rendered against thebackdrop of the larger social tensions in India, while at the same timemaintaining Govinda's child-like point of view, is particularly compelling. Itis the outbreak of violence after Indira Gandhi's death which finally causesGovinda's father to migrate to Australia and it is the implicit lesson ofthis novel, never spelt out, but felt throughout, that such horror is often acentral fact of migration to this country.