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| After a power struggle at her university, math professor Nela Sambashivan travels to her native India on a sabbatical, and is drawn into the lives of ten year old Ranu, the cunning motel-keeper who exploits her, and an unscrupulous Uncle who believes that everything is for sale. Nela's transformation from abstract thinker to selfless guardian begins when she and her lover rescue Ranu from a forced marriage, but it is only when the child unexpectedly fails to thrive in her new surroundings that Nela must confront her miscalculations about altruism, ambition, and the choices we make for one another. |
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Reader Reviews
*“How can we tell whether a bird is being chased or leading?” asks Nela, trying to analyze the motion she sees in the sky. Author Cheryl Snell leads her readers to view the world through different eyes in this intricate novel, Rescuing Ranu, and her story is a delight to follow.
Flying home from India, Nela sits next to a westerner on the plane and muses on math and the importance of seeing someone’s eyes. Sitting together in a car, two mathematicians smile, “You iterate and I converge.” Mathematician that I am, I’m hooked. But lyrical descriptions of Indian tradition are equally enticing, and pages pass in a fire-fly dance of otherness, belonging and story.
The author conveys the passion of mathematical mystery just as beautifully as that of love, and opens the worlds of university, India and mathematics to delightful scrutiny. But Jackson and Nela don’t just come from different geographical places. The mystery of family ties and separation fuel their relationship too, and Nela’s relationships with her future, job and students.
Particularly impressive is the author’s ability to include Indian words and concepts without need for obvious explanation. Images flow naturally and vividly with powerful emotions. The scene shifts; one leads, one follows, and in India little Ranu flits, sometimes young, sometimes old, on a path that skirts disaster. Perhaps love plots the turning shape of the graph.
In the end, a story that starts on one part of a circle ends on another, but the circle’s the same, unbroken despite the distance it lies across. Nela completes her best work, and hope and story survive. Lyrical in scope, in symbolism, and in plot, Rescuing Ranu is like making sense of mystery without all the answers; a novel that feels balanced, right and new, with a delightful sense of the old.
-Sheila Deeth
I just finished it and enjoyed it thoroughly. The characters were very strong, with interesting personalities. Nela is a woman that everyone can be interested in.
The story was imaginative and unpredictable; I liked it's various twists and turns (for example: no one knows who Ranu is until the the book is 1/3 read).
All in all, it's an outstanding work of fiction and it's easy to see why it's an Amazon favorite. I'm recommending it to all my friends.
--D. Schwartz
*Rescuing Ranu is a great book- --really riveting, edge of the seat reading. Fascinating. Thanks for writing this great book---
... Jennifer Kumar
*This intelligently written book on a complex subject seems very real. I learned about culture and traditions of another country and the drastic impact of cross cultural transitions. Excellent book.
...A.S.Schaerf
*This story is well written. I found myself at the end of the story before I knew it. This is one hallmark of a good tale - I didn't have to "get into" the story, I felt that I was engaged to the tale from the first page. The author did a good job of simply and directly narrating the action. In some way, the writing seems "eastern" in nature, which adds to the subject matter.
...Jan Lee
Summary
After mathematician Nela Sambashivan returns from her mother's bedside to England to teach, she finds everything has changed: there's been a shakeup in the department, her house and garden have gone to seed, and she can't get the American she met on the plane out of her mind. When she meets him again at a departmental party, Nela and Jackson embark on a brittle romance and scientific collaboration. As they draw closer, Nela's colleague and cousin Ashoke's long standing possessiveness flares up, and he betrays Nela over a student's complaint while
Jackson is away on a job in India and cannot come to her rescue.
Nela, seeing little left for her in her old life -- a slippery man who can be counted on to save the world but not help her, a black mark on a stalled career -- decides to go to India to research the mathematics of collectives. She tells herself that she is not looking for Jackson, that her work is the most important thing.
She finds shelter in a run down motel and is served by Ranu, a ten year old orphan. The two strike up a friendship as Nela takes the girl under her wing, teaching her, getting involved in her problems.
One day, when they are shopping in the market, Nela sees Jackson, delirious with fever and abandoned by his co-workers. Nela nurses him back to health and they re-kindle their love affair. As Jackson regains strength, he becomes protective of Ranu, and forms a kind of parental alliance with Nela on the child's behalf. They visit her village and decided to improve it. They enlist the help of Jackson's engineers, clean the water supply, and start a school.
One of the village elders, the treacherous Uncle, secretly arranges to marry Ranu off, but in a daring move, Nela and Jackson save her. Nela is wounded and takes refuge in Jackson's engineers' camp.
They know that Uncle will exact revenge, and they determine that Nela should take Ranu to England for a new, safe beginning. Jackson will stay on, saving his corner of the world. His type of altruism serves the larger society, while Nela's shrinks to focus on the child. They are both willing to give up personal happiness for these ideals, and though they cannot stay together, they marry to facilitate Ranu's entry into Britain.
Ensconced in Nela's old house, Ranu fails to adjust. Ashoke is up to his old tricks, too, and it is with vindictive pleasure that Nela announces the technical fact of her marriage just to watch his reaction. She sees once again that there is nothing left for her in her old life. She has made Ranu sacrifice everything for something that does not suit her.
She decides to take the child back to her old family home in India, and begin once again. The aged aunt who lives there welcomes them warmly. In the place where she began her life, Nela prepares to start over -- without Jackson, but with the belief that, since we are all caught in an endless cycle of birth and re-birth, change is the only constant. Perhaps Jackson will find his way home again. As Chitti tells Nela in the closing scene, "Anything is possible."
Cast of Characters/Important People
* Nela: abstract thinker turned altruist for the love of a child
* Jackson: altruist on a broader scale, he loves Nela, understands her need to work, and to do what she thinks is right for her child; he reserves the same rights for himself, and therein lies the stalemate
* Ranu: an orphan who changes the lives of the lovers
Memorable Quotes
* “How many cousins are worth one brother?”
spoken by Nela, explaining Hamilton's Rule to Ashoke just before he betrays her.
Setting & Important Places
* Kerala, India; London, England
Organizations
* Engineers Without Borders:
First Sentence
*As long as the man kept his sunglasses on, Nela could assume he was asleep.
Main Themes & Symbolism
* altruism: If two brothers and seven cousins were drowning, who would you save? Hamilton's Rule specifies the conditions under which reproductive altruism evolves: r × B > C where B is the benefit (in number of offspring equivalents) gained by the recipient of the altruism, C is the cost (in number of offspring equivalents) suffered by the donor.R is the degree of relatedness. So, how related must Nela and Ranu, or Nela and Jackson be, in order for one to rescue the other?
* the mathematics of collectives: Nela studies this subject, and Jackson helps her discover a new fact about pursuit and cohesion in birds' flocking behavior --- each bird only follows the bird in front of it, although they appear to be engaged in a complicated group choreography. In the novel, who follows who -or what- is a central metaphor.
Inspiration
*One Sunday, my husband was reading the paper when he burst into laughter. "What? What?" I asked. He showed me a cartoon of two brothers and eight cousins drowning. "Well, that's macabre."
"No, that's Hamilton's Rule," he told me, "which tells us under what conditions altruism is manifested. The man on the shore must determine how many nephews are worth one brother." Just the scaffolding I needed for Rescuing Ranu! It would be interesting to put my protagonist, the headstrong mathematician Nela, in a situation where she would be forced to go from abstract thinker to selfless guardian.
Other questions arose from that. How related do you have to be to make the cost-benefit ratio of saving someone favorable? And what of the relationships not based on blood? Since Nela had to undergo some kind of transformation, what could be the catalyst for such a change? A man? A child? Possibly. Love could soften the emotional scar tissue Nela had built up through years of straddling two cultures. The plight of immigrants, the lives they make elsewhere, and the families they leave behind, raised yet another question: how much can a person stand to lose? When confronted with dueling loyalties, which part of a divided self goes, and what stays? Themes of sacrifice, survival, and the mysterious alchemy of love began to take shape on the page---and suddenly I was in business!
Discussion Questions
1. Does Nela choose her own dharma? Does Jackson? Jackson is the only man Nela has ever met who seems completely supportive of her work, yet Nela does not entirely trust him. Is he for real?
2. Is Nela's transformation from abstract thinker to selfless guardian motivated by the love of the child, a sense of duty, a romantic idea of family and home, or something else?
3. Why does Ashoke try to ruin Nela? Were you surprised by his disregard for their family tie?
4. Did you expect Jackson to trade his personal happiness with Nela for his altruism toward society at large? Couldn't he and Nela have hammered out a more satisfying negotiation?
5. Do you believe Jackson will eventually make his way home? After all, Nela was able to find him in Kerala without trying very hard. One bird follows only the one in front of it.
6. The idea of flocking is as much an underpinning of the story as the idea of Hamilton's Rule. In what way does your community apply these natural laws?
7. Will Nela be happy in the culture she once rejected? How does the idea of shame factor in? In what ways is she Eastern? Western?
