Feral Dreams: Mowgli & His Mothers

By STEPHEN ALTER ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

- ANJANA BASU

A BOY WHO RIDES THE matriarch of an elephant herd and who rubs shoulders with langurs. The one who understands the language of wild animals but no human beings and who is christened Mowgli. Stephen Alter’s new novel takes the Mowgli tale to a new dimension and turns it into a question of identity. His wild boy—who is terrified of tigers and not in the least feral—hates the idea of being identified as a human being. However, life changes when he is adopted by an American missionary who can tote a rifle and shoot a nilgai when required. Miss Elizabeth is not a great believer in any god and she also befriends dacoits—including a Christian dacoit who is close to her—but she gives Mowgli, now rechristened Daniel, a new life and worldview.

There are different voices in the novel—the omnipresent author who escorts the boy through his jungle encounters, Elizabeth’s and ultimately Daniel’s. Elizabeth’s comes through the notes in her diary as she tracks the boy’s relationship with the other children she is bringing up in the mission. From the beginning, she is drawn to Daniel, possibly because of his strange upbringing and she trains him to speak, a word at a time, through Hindustani and English. She also documents the conventional missionary attitude—the boy has been rescued from the wild and needs to be brought into the fold of Christianity and thereby civilised through baptism with various Old Testament quotes about Nebuchadnezzar lying down with the wild beasts and chewing grass.