City of Rains

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

The narrator of City of Rains, the first novel by Toronto poet and
academic Nirmal Dass, is a traveller, an Indo-Canadian who, on a journey
of self-discovery to India, is involved in a car accident in the little
village of Dhanoa in the Himalayan foothills of the Punjab. He meets the
village teacher, Raj Kumar, a man with a story to tell. “I am not
sure,” the narrator says, “whether this talent of mine for
listening, for drawing out people’s stories, is a gift or an
affliction.” As he recovers from his minor injuries, he becomes
Raj’s confidant and friend. The teacher shows him the journal in which
he has written about his life in his former home, the French city of
Rouen. The remainder of the novel consists largely of excerpts from the
journal. Much of what Raj has experienced of life resonates profoundly
with the narrator.

“What does it mean to live in two worlds?” asks the narrator.
“Raj’s journal suggested a man who was comfortable in any land,
unburdened by the baggage of a particular culture.” Raj symbolizes a
life indelibly shaped by what the heart can lose: “I wrote,” he
answers when the narrator asks him why he began his journal, “so the
dead could speak, and to remember those still living.”

Dass’s prose avoids the over-richness often found in novels dealing
with lives mystically led. There is melodrama on occasion, and some of
the language could use some dampening, but these are minor faults. The
book is highly readable.