Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

 

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika caught my attention with its quirky title. The blurb reminded me of a book I read - Sheet Sahasik Hemontolok by Nabaneeta Dev Sen , translated from Bengali by Tutun Mukherjee.

Both the books are broadly similar, dealing with the loss of independence, a sense of loneliness and helplessness at one's deterioration of health with old age, everything inevitable. Both are studded with many characters and their perspectives. Both offer a bold take on feminine desire and sexuality, bordering on the erotica. While Nabaneeta Dev Sen's novella is Indian in context, set in the city of Calcutta, Sarah's work is set in the city of San Francisco, allows us to travel briefly to places across the world. 

The protagonist in Like a Mule* is a 75 years old Nigerian woman, a retired English professor - Dr Morayo Da Silva. Let her age not deceive you for she has the verve of a youngster, speeding down the streets of San Francisco in her fancy car. She is feisty, wise, ambitious, kind, headstrong and fiercely independent.

A fall causes her a hip injury, surgery and physical therapy thereafter lands her in a rehabilitation home for old folks. Here, Morayo has plenty of time to revisit her past and we readers are privy to the bittersweet memories and her most intimate secrets. 

Thanks to Morayo, there is love for books and food in the book. Her love for the cosmopolitan environs of the San Francisco city where she resides is as strong as the sense of nostalgia for her husband's hometown - Lagos and Jos, the city of her childhood in Nigeria. Violence between Christians and Muslims and Boko Haram's reign of terror back in her homeland leaves her in angst and so does the racist vitriol in the USA even though both routinely feature in the news.

Childless and divorced years back from her ambassador husband, Caesar, Morayo's loneliness gnaws at her at times even when her day is punctuated by a familiar few around her - a mailman, a florist and his sister, a younger woman who turns her primary caregiver during the therapy, all belonging to different nationalities and cultures.

It is at the end I figure out a possible explanation for the title. Morayo imagines after she comes back home from the therapy center that her friend gets her an ice-cream and she is licking the melted drops of honey lavender & salted caramel from her fingers. The honey lavender is probably symbolic of her passionate love, an undying longing for her lover Antonio whose caress she desires even when dancing on the edge of old age. And the salted caramel maybe reflects her failed marriage which also gave her something sweet - travelling across the world & meeting people from various cultural backgrounds.

 Like a mule, Morayo, is carrying the ice cream to the sun, slowly, letting it melt; letting memories of her past meld into her present for she is a person who cherishes her past as much as she is enthusiastic about her present & unfettered by an uncertain future.

The novella is polyphonic in nature with an array of characters and mélange of perspectives. While this diversity is enriching, the risk of 'too many cooks spoil the broth' feels too close. Luckily, the novella manages to swerve away from it and turns out to be a well layered, good read.