The most common dream of young men from Kerala is about going abroad, and if he happens to be a middle class wage earner, his eyes are more often than not set on the deserts of the Arabian lands. Enamoured of the riches he would reap on landing in the Gulf States, he goes the whole nine yards to make his dream come true, at whatever cost. It is a story or a reality that
we have seen happening many times over, as residents of this treasure land.

It is in this much wonted background of desires and dreams of immigrants to the Gulf that Indian expat writer, Asha Iyer Kumar has set her debut novel, Sand Storms, Summer Rains.

The novel maps the lives of two men – Achu and Mustafa – who leave their villages in Kerala with the aim of earning wealth in the Gulf. The reasons for their money chase are different – while Achu is aiming for sheer affluence in his life, Mustafa is compelled by circumstances in the
family to go the desert land. They are men with dissimilar characters - Mustafa, wise and realistic and Achu, ambitious and impulsive – travelling the same road. They reach the Arabian shores, only to find life hand out a raw deal that they had least expected. Their future is fraught with events that eventually force them to return, one earlier than the other. Their journey finally
ends where it must – back in their villages. Just as their reasons to go to the Gulf are different, their reasons to return are also different.

Achu gains wealth at the cost of all else in his life and returns home to find life hitting a dead end, while Mustafa gives up his quest for wealth early, to seek peace and happiness with his family.

a reality sketch from these parts, which keeps the novel from becoming a typical gulf-oriented documentary on the lives of workers here.

The author draws vivid sketches of their lives, mostly contained within the boundaries of their families and traces their rites of passage as they glide from the status of ordinary but educated
villagers in Kerala to Gulfees. The characters are not larger than life, yet they strike a chord with their familiarity. They surprise us with their dissimilarity and uniqueness of nature, like Achu’sindomitable wife, Devaki, or Saira, the naïve consort of Mustafa. The events in their lives, although at times severe, serve as experiences that are not altogether unknown or unheard of in
such families where the men spend long years away from home. There is honesty in the way the characters render themselves to the happenings in their lives of which they have no control, and many of the instances and incidents in the novel are so evocative that it is difficult not to be touched.

The story may not be completely new for those of us living in the Middle East, but the manner in
which it is told brings fresh insight into the lives of those men and their families who have who
have given up all that they have in order to reach a much-vaunted position in life. The crises that
arise due to conflicts between parents and progeny, between spouses, between siblings are all
deftly drawn with the use countless similes and sometimes, forceful use of word play.

Sand Storms, Summer Rains,
as the title suggests, looks at two different worlds, one swept by the shamaal in the desert land and the other washed by the monsoon in the home country, both coming forth as poignant symbols of immigrant life in the Gulf.

The book will soon be available in stores in Oman, but can currently be bought on www.amazon.com

Book reviewed by
Rachel Mary Abraham