I read “Hospital” with trepidation. I was apprehensive about getting triggered regarding my mental health issues, but if anything, I am glad I read it, because while it may seem that the book is about descent into madness and maybe to some extent it is, but it is also about so much more. It is primarily about language, and Arunava Sinha being the translator par excellence that he is uses it sometimes playfully, sometimes using melancholia, mostly matter-of-fact, and sometimes as a means of self-exploration for the protagonist Sanya (yeah, it is a metanovel inspired by real-life events). He is in absolute sync with the mindset of the writer, the protagonist, and more than anything else with where the story unfolds – that in a hospital in Australia.
The story is told from the perspective of a patient – all in first person – of Sanya’s feelings, of what is unravelling slowly yet surely, of what is hidden behind a wall of caution when it comes to giving away too much, of safeguarding oneself and seeing the world as an enemy by and large, Hospital asks big questions: What is sanity? Who is sane? What is the societal parameter of someone being sane or not? And all of this is questionable a little more than ever, because you as a reader are made aware from the first page that the narration could be unreliable, but you cannot help it – you have to read it, you have to know how is it going to be for Sanya – what her life is going to turn out like – how her world is constantly shifting and changing.
Arunava’s translations are always a delight to read. He gets into the skin of language, and what emerges is something extraordinarily unique only to what he has translated from the source. Hospital cuts like a knife and makes you so uncomfortable as a reader, which I think should be one of the objectives of literature – to shake the reader, to get us to spaces that are suffocating, and make us see things – whether we trust them or not, rely on them or not, that is secondary – in fact should not even be considered, given how the story propels us further.
Hospital by Sanya Rushdi quietly takes you by the hand, and then leaves you to your own device in the mind of the protagonist. We live with her, and see the world through her, the places we know, and the places we are made aware of. The titular place then becomes most ordinary, turns extraordinary, lets us in, and makes us see all the failings and sometimes joy of living.
Of Books and Reading 
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