A River Runs through Their Lives

Johal traces a century-long saga of memory and loss that flows from colonial Punjab to the global diaspora

- By MADHULIKA LIDDLE

G urnaik Johal's novel Saraswati is as much a story about rivers as it is about people whose lives they dictate. It is divided into seven chapters, each named after a river of northwestern India: Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab, Jhelum, Indus, Saraswati. Each chapter begins with an epigraph, and the one that heads Jhelum is the shortest. Just three words, and its slightly longer translation: Crescat e fluviis, 'Strength from the rivers', the motto of British Punjab.

It is a motto singularly apt for the book itself, a sprawling story of a family that begins in Punjab, spreads out across the world, and then circles back to Punjab. The story begins on a river, is tied up inextricably with rivers, and ends at the river for which it is named: the Saraswati.

In between the beginning and the end are tales that, river-like, rise and fall, go here and there. They are tied to the earth and are always, eventually, about strength, of whatever kind.