By Kunal Basu

Rs 499

Kunal Basu’s The Yellow Emperor’s Cure has all the ingredients of a riveting story — a clash of civilisations, tragic love, mystery, a backdrop of turmoil.
At the centre of the novel is young, brilliant Portuguese doctor Antonio Maria and his search for a cure for syphilis, a dreaded disease with no cure for most of the 19th century. Antonio’s search leads him from Lisbon to Peking on the heels of rumours that an ancient Chinese canon of medicine may have a cure for the disease.

Antonio spends a year in China at a time when the Boxer rebellion, a nationalist movement aimed at foreigners, is brewing. Living as a guest of the dowager empress in her summer palace in the western hills of Peking, Antonio learns the intricacies of ancient Chinese medicine from a mysterious Dr Xu and his young woman assistant Fumi.
Intermittently, he visits the European legation headquarters where amid a constant string of teas, dinner parties, archery competitions and other forms of entertainment to keep spirits up, the shadow of the Boxers is a
constant, jumping up in every other conversation, whether among the ladies of the league or their husbands.
“Boxers”, Polly explained patiently to a shy Mary McKinsey, the recently arrived wife of the young Scottish telegraph engineer, Roger, “are spirit soldiers, a ragtag bunch of bumpkins passing themselves off as God-sent saviours of China. There are eight million of them, or so they say, each capable of flying in the air and spitting fire, immune to bullets and bombs...”
Sarah Hollinger repeated what she’d heard from the domestics, that the Boxers were threatening all those who were close to foreigners: cooks and washermen, gardeners, guards and sedan bearers. They’re butchering the poor Chinese Christians; dragging them out of their homes and killing them on the spot...
Polly and Cedric tried their best to make everyone cheerful, but the talk slipped back to dead missionaries and a possible siege of the legation, with the men going on about guns...
Basu tells his story well, weaving a rich tapestry of issues ranging from the despair and suffering of syphilis patients, treated as social outcasts, to the bwilderment of a cut-and-dried Western scientific mind when encountering an ancient practice of oriental medicine where the rhythm of the pulse can tell you which organ is at fault.
In between come many more vignettes — the tragic life of eunuchs serving in the palace; life in the strange bubble that is the legation headquarters, the odd goings-on at the Chinese dowager empress’ quarters; the Christian missionary’s zeal against all odds — and more.
Basu is a great creator of pictures with his words. As you enter The Yellow Emperor’s Cure, the room of the elderly syphilis patient in a country mansion outside Lisbon comes alive with its accoutrement for the sick, the smells of rotting flesh, of juniper berries burning in a coal scuttle and the utter shock of the son as he discovers what ails his father.
In the second part of the book, Antonio’s surroundings and experiences as a guest in the summer palace at Peking are drawn with an equally skillful hand.
Particularly absorbing are the conversations between Antonio and Dr Xu or Fumi about the disease and its treatment. Basu shows Antonio’s struggle to accept a way of thinking and looking at things which is very far removed from what he sees as a rational, logical approach taught to him by his masters at medical school.
“But to cure a patient you must agree with the principles. Learning the rules simply isn’t enough,” Xu tells an impatient Antonio, who replies, “I can’t believe things that are untested and unproven.”
Antonio’s gradual understanding that there could be deeper, more holistic, sensory, emotional ways of understanding the body and the way it works is well-portrayed — showing the unfurling of an initially reluctant mind to alien ideas.
Basu comes out not quite impartial as he narrates the transformation. His sympathies are very obviously tilted eastward.
To get back to the storyline, Antonio, Lisbon’s ladykiller, falls hopelessly and seriously in love for the first time with his new teacher Fumi and the parts where he imagines what he will say to her, how he would take her back to Portugal, are quite touching if a bit ingenuous.
The Spanish doctor’s relations with his young Chinese teacher run like a spine through the rest of the book till Antonio leaves for home, a very different man from the one who came to China.
Does Fumi go with him? Read the book to find out. The Yellow Emperor’s Cure is about many things but primarily it is about the power of love; about how love can awaken senses and sensibilities which one may otherwise go through in life without ever discovering or experiencing.
If you got a bit lost while I summarised the plot that is the way The Yellow Emperor’s Cure is. Despite Basu’s fine language and great storytelling skills, one tends to get lost in details, explanations and background.
Yet some of these details are the most beautiful parts of the book in that lyrical style that made Basu’s The Japanese Wife such a wonderful story.
For me, The Yellow Emperor’s Cure does not hold together as well as I imagine it could have, but in parts it makes for absorbing, lingering reading. Anyway, China is the flavour of the day; go for it.

Sunrita Sen is a freelance journalist. She can be contacted at sunritas@gmail.com