In Chessmaster, we have a particular version of Advaita that has, as I see it, the following major sources. One is the philosophical practice of Sri Ramana Maharshi and the other is the sunyavada of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. Allied to the former is, of course, the philosophy of Rao’s guru, Sri Atmananda, and Nagarjuna’s thought, equally obviously, is derived from the Buddha. In Chessmaster, not the realization of self is sought as in the earlier works, but a dissolution of self. While Moorthy through right action illustrates karma yoga, Rama jnana yoga or the path of knowledge, and Govindan Nair, a type of bhakti yoga, of complete self-surrender to the Divine, Sivarama Sastri represents the power of negative dialectics, the attempt not to achieve something, but to vaporize one’s self into nothing.

Here the familiar dichotomies between the male and the female, vowels and consonants, India and the West, the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, the sage and the saint, logic and devotion, truth and the world, all hinge on the opposition between zero and infinity. The Judeo-Christian tradition is shown to represent the quest for perfect society here on earth, which India is seen as denying the validity of the world itself. The way out, for Rao, is not to improve things as the saint-soldier does, but to dissolve contradictions completely. For him, all numbers dissolve into zero as they emerge out of it. Infinite is merely cumulative, while zero is total negation that cuts the root of illusion. One can never become perfect in time, but attain perfection only by negating time.

The only meaningful dialogue, for Rao, is between the Brahmin (zero, dissolution, negation) and the rabbi (infinity, completion, affirmation). The former is vertical, denying time; the latter is horizontal, finding fulfilment through time. It is such a framework that provides the skeleton of the plot of the novel. The first part, ‘The Turk and the Tiger Hunt’, shows the incompatibility of Siva and Suzanne like that of Rama and Madeleine in the earlier novel; the second part is dominated by Siva’s affair with Mireille; and the third with the dialogue with Michel, the Jewish Holocaust survivor. The steadfastness of the Siva–Jayalakshmi relationship and the impossibility of its consummation, and Siva’s relationship with his stepsister, Uma, and her inability to bear a child—these two relationships provide the glue that keeps the novel together.