VJ James on ‘Anti-Clock’: ‘Time has imprisoned us’

The author says man can never claim to be master of time until he experiences timelessness and infinity

VJ James’ latest work Anti-Clock (Penguin) is a riotous journey through space and time. A coffin maker, Hendri, wants to see the body of his sworn enemy, Satan Loppo, in a coffin, he has made. There is also a 112-year-old clockmaker, Pundit, who was part of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) who is trying to turn back time by creating an anti-clock. “The anti-clock plays a critical role in this novel,” says James. “It augurs unexpected phenomena. Nature’s own direction is fundamentally anticlockwise. In the book, when man steps in the opposite direction of Nature’s movement, the anti-clock intervenes by seemingly travelling back in time. The narrative relies on the surprises wrought by the anti-clock in Hendri’s life.” Each chapter of the novel starts with a passage from the Bible. “I try to adopt a unique treatment for each of my novels. In Leyka (2006), I adopted the narrative structure of a translation. Most readers, including Malayalam film director, Lal Jose, assumed that I had translated a Russian book! In Anti-Clock, Hendri reads the Bible every night before going to sleep. Hendri’s story starts with the passage from the Bible that he has read that day. The Bible becomes an inseparable factor, highlighting the unending pathos of the man’s daily life.”