To add to the relentless grimness of 2020, we now have a disturbing novel from award-winning author Benyamin. However, reading Body And Blood, (translated from Malayalam by Swarup B R), one realises that the book alerts us to corrupt forces working together to profit from organ harvesting. Such caution is welcome; even in dire times.
The story begins with a hit-and-run accident involving a postgraduate student from Kerala, Midhun, who is a member of a spiritual group. “They gathered every Saturday evening in the name of Christ in a second-floor apartment on Mandir Marg. To sing songs. To pray. To read the Bible. To listen to the Gospel. Theirs was a fellowship that had about 50 to 60 people in its fold —‘the explorers’, ‘the beginners’ and ‘the ones who returned’. One of the many fellowships in Delhi — small, intense and full of goodness.” Through the influence of the fellowship, Midhun gets a lucrative job, as do the other young migrants — Sandhya from Himachal Pradesh, the Goan Rithu and the Chennaite Ragesh — who have become his good friends.
Though Midhun is in hospital with seemingly minor injuries, his condition deteriorates and he is declared brain-dead. His friends and family adjust to this new development.
Finally, death denying the ‘undo’ option, the fellowship steps in. One of its private enterprises, the Trinity Foundation, created to promote organ donation, flies in Midhun’s parents and takes care of all arrangements — including the dispersal of his eyes, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys and heart to recipients long in waiting. Grieving for him in their separate ways, his friends leave Delhi for a while, but are summoned back by Pastor Philip of the fellowship with orders to ‘engage in missionary work.’
Told in the plain language and brisk reportorial style that are hallmarks of Benyamin’s storytelling, the remaining narrative plunges the reader into a murky world of modern religious groups and the threefold reasoning they provide — scientific, spiritual and social — to further their commercial interests. Could the hit-and-run accident have been a cold-blooded murder? To answer this question, the loosely-jointed plot — partly detective fiction, partly a medical mystery — follows a skidding route. Readers looking for the typical denouement may be disappointed by the inconclusive ending.
However, the novel is not your average whodunnit. In its reflective moments, it paints a believable picture of vulnerable and lonely young people who, having moved away from home in search of jobs, a better life, love and freedom, end up in the clutches of spiritual saviours, who encourage them to: “Ask for what you want when you pray. If you want a car, do not just pray for a car, pray for a car that has the colour you prefer.”
The nexus of religious leaders, medical and legal experts, all supposedly from noble professions, who have no qualms about profiting from organ shortage, justifies the title, an ironic take on the religious doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and wine being offered in the sacrifice of the sacrament of the Eucharist during the Mass becoming the body and blood of Christ.