The Fourth Monkey: A comic, Erotic and ‘Sophic Tale

Madan Swaroop, a professor of English literature in his fifties, recalls 25 years of his married life on his flight to Kanglung, Bhutan, on a teaching tenure. His beautiful wife is an ardent Krishna devotee a la Mira Bai. She restricts marital sex to once a week, which leads to conflict and comedy. A vivid description of the college campus and the Bhutanese way of life follows. He gets involved with two of his students. There are parallel dialogues between the wife and her god and between the husband and his organ. Shades of Calvin and Hobbes! The imagery of cricket for sex creates its own humor. In the midst of human characters, a god’s shadowy presence looms over the happenings. A Joycean epiphany at the end caps it all.This novel aspires to entertain. Creating characters and putting them in predicaments and then devising ways to remove the impasse keeps the reader thoroughly entertained. The Narrator being an academic, the vocabulary is literate and the text is replete with allusions to myths, paintings, films and literature. Quotes and half-quotes abound. reveries galore manifesting the subconscious obsessions of the characters.