Short Story: The Fork in the Road

This was published in Himal's January 2012 issue- but with some mistaken proof-reading- so it's better read here.

After the unremitting crush of the station, it was a relief to be out on the street. Here too, the crowd was about us, the wretched commuters in their dishevelled clothes, the hawkers hawking tirelessly, the beggars lying decrepit, the autos wending their way through the lot, but at least we had the use of our limbs. I turned to ask Tara if she felt like walking on.

She was staring hard at a point in the distance. I could see only the usual, sullied road, fringed with shacks, filled with poverty. Then I saw that she wasn't really looking at anything. She was staring into space. A moment's consternation seemed to seize her, it parted her lips, but she said nothing.

'The park', I said, 'is down the road. It's maybe another kilometre from here.'

'We can walk', said Tara, 'Let's just walk.'

It was good weather for walking. It had rained hard the previous night, but the slush and the puddles had dried through the morning. The monsoon mugginess still lay on the air, but with an intervening layer of fragile cold. We walked between the traffic and the hawkers, our shoes crunching the road's loose rubble.

Tara walked briskly. I was surprised. As far ago as I could remember, she was the kind of girl, that if she wasn't running, then she strolled. Now she walked straight with narrowed eyes that looked not left nor right.

'Slow down', I said, 'You'll tire yourself out.'

'I'm alright.'

'You'll tire me out.'

She paused with a sigh.

'Why do you want to dawdle? To take in the atmosphere? When we're moving at least it doesn't smell so much.'

I knew what she meant. Everywhere, the air was fetid, every square kilometer suffused with the odour of thirty thousand unlooked-after bodies and everything they got up to. This was Tara's second visit to the city, and she was beginning to loathe it. I didn't blame her. However-

'You may as well get used to it', I said, 'Especially if you're going to be visiting often.'

She shot me a look. I ignored it, but perhaps she was right; perhaps, though I didn't intend it, a certain something had crept into my tone. I changed the subject then; I tried to interest her in the skyline beyond the slums. A range of ugly high-rises looked over that tattered sea.

'Bombay has scale', I said, 'It's a phenomenon, even if it's a tragedy.'

'It's shitty.'

My heart knocked suddenly, unexpectedly. Hastily I muffled the mood, but it was disorienting all the same. Her diamond eyes, her pithy speech. Sharper now than I ever could remember. Did one never grow indifferent?


Only when we were well inside the park, did Tara relax her pace. The traffic noises had faded now; the snarl under the flyover which had taken us, even on foot, a full ten minutes to negotiate, was out of sight. Teak and peepul flourished on either side of the shaded road. Other trees too, that I couldn't name, and in amongst them tall grasses, shrubs in flower, all the lushness of the forest floor.

'A national park', I announced with approval, 'A whole forest ten minutes from the station! I can't understand why more people don't visit here.'

'Small mercies,' said Tara, 'You hungry?'

'Already?'

We were carrying water, juice and sandwiches bought from a coffee shop in Andheri. The plan was to eat after we were good and tired exploring the park. But now I realized she was right.

'Well?'

'I guess we can buy more later', I said. Then I laughed. 'We must be getting old.'


A signboard up ahead pointed the way to a lion and tiger safari trail, a Jain temple, a 'Viewing Point' from where, it was said, the whole city was laid out, and a set of ancient Buddhist caves. I felt no particular curiosity for any of them. Closer at hand was the sound of splashing water; an intuition of space. We followed a grassy lane that broke from the main road, and took us through a patch of wilderness. Soon the wind picked up, and then it was on its way to us, all the way down the forested slopes and across the breadth of the lake.

I could see us then; Tara and I; close and familiar; stumbling to rest by the water-side; the wind in our hair. At intervals further down the bank, on rocky outcrops and ragged grass, other couples sat two by two. The small-town boys with their over-slick hair, the girls in their gaudy jeans, but it was I who was wrong to notice. They shunned scrutiny in their quiet knots, creatures of Nature at home in her lap, drinking deep of each other.

Meanwhile, we looked at the trees, and the sky, and the shimmering colours in the flat of the lake. We sat side by side, munching our sandwiches in a silence that seemed important. After a while, she said:

'So you feel it too?'

'Feel what?'

'Old. Do you feel old too? Because I do.'

'Oh that', I said, 'I was only joking about that. Come on- we're twenty six.'

She looked at me with a kind of disappointment.

'Don't you feel any- any nostalgia now... for the past? For how things used to be?'

'Well, I mean...' And then suddenly, looking away from those earnest eyes, I decided to be candid. 'Well... ok. I guess, I do sometimes think back- to college... first year college, second year...Yeah, it was different...'

It had come to me just the previous night, woken inside me as I struggled to sleep. Just a stray memory of a long time ago. A muggy night in a telephone booth, on a run-down street wet with rain. Tara a thousand miles away, talking excitedly of a friend I'd never seen, and a book I'd never heard of. But nourishing me, as I clutched the receiver, gladdening my essence with just the music of her voice, as the rain does the earth. And then, as I lay there remembering, a whole era had seemed to open out, like a chapter in a history book; days spent in gratitude, nights soaked in enchantment, when pleasure and pain were constant and indistinguishable, but that each was a blessing I never doubted, because I knew, the way you know things- deep in your bones- that my star was shining, the world would be mine, the girl would be mine. And never once the possibility entertained that-

I touched the grass. It was rough and bristling. The breeze passed with a pungent sigh. Something shuddered through me.

Tara's face, gold in the sunlight, was soft with remembrance.

'Remember Penang', she was saying.

'Penang?' I was surprised.

'I don't know how we managed to meet there! Remember? A foreign country and no cell-phones!'

'Yeah', I said, 'Yeah, that was something.'

'And nowadays people call and call and re-confirm until you're right there looking at each other.'

'Yeah, most rendezvous' seem to begin like that now. Both parties in the same place talking to each other on the phone.'

I laughed, and she laughed too. But she laughed a lot harder than I thought the thought merited. That confused me. The onset of the cell-phone revolution was not the stuff of my nostalgia. I had thought she wanted to really talk; now I waited impatiently to resume the proper tone. The soonest I could, I interjected-

'See, I think we just felt a lot more invincible then. We felt things would turn out right for us no matter what. But now, we know we're not special any longer. We know that anything can happen to anybody, there are no guaranteed rewards.'

Tara was listening, but I couldn't read her expression. There was a frown and then there was nothing. She looked out over the lake.

'For example', I hesitated, 'With love, for example.'

But now her laugh was quite manufactured. Smarting suddenly, I turned my tone safely dry and cynical.

'I mean, you certainly screwed me over.'

'Haha', she laughed, 'Haha, yeah that was it.'

Her gaze stayed on the hilly forest, that overlooked the banks beyond. I thought of the snuggling couples, so perfectly harmonious (or so I imagined) and the two of us, whom any passer-by would take for the same. But the difference wasn't just that we weren't in love. That I had known for five years. That was alright by me. The occasional pang was not unwelcome- it was proof of the past. There was something else...

'Seriously, though', I tried again, 'Dreams really take a beating, don't they?'- but before I could finish the thought she interrupted with finality.

'God!', Tara exclaimed. Her eyes were alive with outrage. 'God, just look at that!'

I stared a moment at the grass and the water, until suddenly I spied the offending plastic bag. It was held down by a rock, half-immersed in the lake, fluttering futilely. It looked as though it was drowning. And alongside the bag, offensively cheerful, lay the rest of the litter; multi-coloured wrappers, a soft drink can and a packet of chips.

'Garbage even here...' Her voice grew faint with disgust. 'Inside a fucking national park!'

'It is awful', I agreed.

'It's fucking ridiculous! Doesn't anybody care?'

I jerked my head towards the pockets of lovers.

'Not them anyway.'

'God!', Tara got up swiftly, 'This sort of thing is so... let's go!'

'Go where?'

'I don't know, anywhere.'

'You want to see the tiger museum?', I suggested.

'Anything, anything.'


The tiger museum was a little gallery near the starting lines of the tiger safari. It was a good idea to visit there. It meant a short walk through a strong breeze, and then the quiet gloom of a mostly empty interior; palliatives for her temper and antidotes for my nerves. We wandered past cheerfully illustrated, well-written displays. We both loved animals- and that love is prelapsarian. The half-hour we spent in the museum seemed snatched straight from each of our childhoods.

'Did you know', I read aloud, 'that tiger stripes are like fingerprints? Every piece unique.'

'Did you know', she retorted with pleasure, 'tigers can leap thirty feet at a time?'

'Well check this out- from the mouth of the tiger- if humans fought fair, they'd be the endangered ones.'

'Aww', she came over, 'he looks so cute!'

'He looks like a Lolcat.'

'You're right!'

'And when did those become such a craze? I don't remember them in our hey-day.'

'Our hey-day?'


Later, while the bus was loading passengers for the safari, we bought cups of hot, sugary tea from a kerb-side stall, and took them to a parapet under a tree. Someone asked if we were getting on too, but Tara shook her head. I was glad. We sat and sipped the tea and watched the crowd leave, and when the ache of the engine had died on the air, I looked at her.

'It's great seeing you again', I said, 'It really is.'

'You should have been more in touch', she answered calmly.

'I know', I said, 'I know, I should have. I really don't know why I wasn't... But... I'm really glad you found time for today. And you know, I was thinking, it's so great we've been able to be friends for so long... through all the different phases. I mean- that's a rare thing.'

I watched her smile- that private smile, half-blush, half-smug, as though she'd just had a compliment. I knew it well. And I was happy then. Happy the way I had expected to be, seeing Tara again after so many months, happy the way people should be, when Love has been buried, and its ghost exorcised, and their mutual caring, enriched by their history, can have its untrammeled say.

'Tara', I told her, 'I've been depressed. I don't know how to explain it, but I think you'll understand. I think it's what you said, about feeling old.'

'You said that.'

'Yeah, I said that, but you noticed it- and I tried to play it down. But it's true. I was feeling it just the other night...as though enthusiasm itself has become a thing of the past. And now only endurance remains. Endurance until the crack of doom! And the soundtrack of life has suddenly changed from Beautiful Day to- I don't know- Fade to Black.'

She laughed. We both did.

'You know me', I went on gratefully, 'I always try to put a brave face on things. But this city- it does get you down. And India- India!'

'I know.'

'India is an ordeal... I mean, it's alright if you're happy in your ivory tower- and you talk about India Shining or whatever- and maybe it's ok if you just dive into the thick of things and don't give a damn, but if not...if you look around you, if you pause to think... It makes you doubt if anything you're doing has any point whatsoever. I mean, maybe a tiny section of the very elite are interested- or pretending to be, I think they're mostly just pretending to be- but other than that, who cares? Everybody's either stepping on somebody else, or trying to avoid being stepped on. Everything's so degraded and hand to mouth. The newspapers-'

'I don't read them', Tara said firmly.

'Yeah... I mean, the crime, the corruption...'

'I don't read them.' She was shaking her head.

'And the chaos', I said, 'The country is a cacophony. And instead of finding out how to stop the noise, and change it into music, everybody's basically looking for ear-plugs. Anyway... you know what I mean... It all...'

'It all adds up', she said, 'to something quite depressing.'

Her voice was clear and unflinching.

'Exactly', I said.

I laughed then, bitterly again- but I wasn't feeling bitter. No, I was feeling calm, almost heroic, like a soldier sizing up a battle-field, the war-zone that might destroy him but can no longer overcome him, because he has already made his peace with it. I was feeling protected.

Around us, the light was changing. The leaves were going from green to gold, glimmering gently as they turned in the breeze. A premonition of dusk had entered the late afternoon and struck it through with beauty. Or perhaps not, perhaps the beauty was in my way of seeing. Any environment is beautiful when once it is background; and with Tara beside me the wider world seemed to fall into place- turn dreamy and unintrusive. I tasted the warm tea. I felt like putting my arm around her.

'How was New York?', I asked her suddenly, 'You never really told me.'

'Oh New York', she said, 'Yeah, New York was great. We partied a straight 72 hours.'

'Wow! So it's everything it's cracked up to be?'

'I guess. Maybe. I couldn't live there though.'

'No?'

'I couldn't live in America at all.'


I nodded. We had talked about this before. America, the land of work and achievement and climbing ladders to golden prizes, and freedom and sex and great portions of greasy food; America that knew only one way, which was forward, and one speed, as fast as possible; whose attractions and exhortations had shaped our generation in so many fundamental ways; was yet a foreign country. Tara had felt that just months into her course- felt it so strongly she had called me up one night to tell me.

So here she was now- back home, to face the music.

'Well', I said, 'I'm proud of you.'

She beamed at me, stretched her back, gazed around her with appraising eyes.

'Do you want some more tea?', I asked.

'No.' A sudden discontentment creased Tara's brow. 'Let's go.'

'Where to?', I was surprised, 'It's quite nice sitting here.'

'Well, we can't stay forever. Anyway I need to find a loo.'


On the road again, she talked about her work. It was difficult, she told me, it was frustrating. I thought that was inevitable. I could imagine Tara, with her urbane tastes, her earnest ideals, her great expectations, floundering in the around-the clock- politics and feudal culture of a Delhi set-up.

'They spend all day talking', she said, 'and drinking tea- and when I want to leave at six, they look at me like I'm a shirker! Even though I've actually been getting things done. But just because I don't stay till midnight with the boss- oh, and they're all so scared of the boss. It's pathetic.'

'But what's he like?', I asked her, 'The boss.'

'Oh he's nice, he's fine... But I have to work with the others, right.'

'Yeah, but he doesn't discourage these pointless late hours?

'No... he's very laissez-faire that way.'

'I guess he enjoys the power then.'

'Maybe... I don't know... at least he cares about the work. Most of the others don't, you know. Once we were talking over lunch and one of them was like, haan, so the hospitals are over-crowded and unclean and unequipped, but then it's a big city with so many people, so what can you do? And everyone was nodding, and I was thinking, there are big cities all over the world! We are supposed to be thinking of ways to improve things! We're supposed to be this important 'think-tank'!'

Her voice, so warm and ebullient when she was happy, was peaking with indignation. I looked at her, striding past the still gulmohars, hot with anger, bathed in shade. And then, as I looked, it seemed to me that all of Nature was rushing to her side; the breeze fanning her crumpled brow; the leaves in the trees rustling their sympathy. The evergreen forest was receiving her rage, but her young heart still filled with disappointment, and my own heart went out to her, as it always would.

'Tara', I said, and my speech, as I heard it, was soft and wise, 'I think- what we have to do - is just accept our reality. We have our skills, our beliefs, and they're different from the majority's. They just are. You, for example, you believe in cities, you believe in building things that have scale, you believe in the possibilities of the individual, and maybe most of your office doesn't think that way, maybe their heart is somewhere in the country- the town or the village, I mean. Maybe they leave things to destiny... If we're the first fully urban generation, with all our liberal education, then maybe we have to be the fall-guys. We have to pit our wits against the way things are, and not expect any great rewards for ourselves- but just look for solutions. And we can do that, right? We can even have fun doing that... I think you just have to keep going... Because what you're doing is really great, it's really fundamental.'

As I talked, she walked beside me, not saying a word, with her head lowered and her eyes narrowed. It was the way she had walked from the station to the park. It was a new note in her persona, that I hadn't known in the days when I adored her. But perhaps this briskness, this hardness, was only on the surface; the strong exterior of a grown-up woman.

A little later, as I waited outside the park's toilets, I thought again of Tara and I. In the morning, going to see her, stalled in traffic with time to think, I had been apprehensive. It had been so long; we had fallen out of touch. What invisible strands had snapped between us; I didn't know. We couldn't be friends in the ordinary fashion; that had been clear for years. Two elements, unstable in proximity, must either unite or separate. We had to separate. But although we walked on parallel lines, never meeting, I was reminded now that our road was the same. We saw the world the same way; we hurt at the same things. We shared a community, be it of disappointment and broken dreams and the weight of a nation's failure, but a community no less.

I gladdened with that idea, and the still beauty of the forest seemed to swell and deepen too. It was pregnant with hope, as Tara came out to join me, her mouth pursed in grim disdain.

'Not good, hunh?', I smiled.

'Don't ask', she said.

'Well- maybe the animals use it too.'

'That's disgusting', she winced. 'Anyway', she went on smoothly, 'So this job has been a real pain. But it's ok, I'm quitting soon. I'm looking forward to that. I'd like to spend some time doing nothing at all.'

She was walking on ahead of me; I caught up to her.

'You're... quitting?'

'Ya, after I get married. I'll be moving here with Akash, so I'll have to quit anyway.'

She was still walking; in what direction I didn't know. It seemed to me the wind had ceased and the scufflings in the forest gone silent. I stared at her, but she neither caught my eye nor avoided it.

'Tara', I said, 'Tara, hold on.'

'What's the matter?'

'I didn't realize, you were getting married.'

'Oh I made up my mind a while back. It was just a question of when. I've been seeing him for two years now. You know that.'

Her speech seemed to fly by me, as brisk and removed as the rest of her. She turned to walk on, and in a stupor, I walked with her.

Soon I was aware of a great weight on my bones. I could hear my breathing, slow and strained. A bench by the road tugged at my vision, and I broke stride towards it. It was damp and gritty; covered in yellow leaves. I sat as best I could. I could feel Tara's gaze following my movements with incredulity. A part of me was incredulous too.

'What's the matter?', she said again. She was drawing closer. Her voice held an unfeigned astonishment.

'What's the matter?'

I shook my head.

'You're surprised? Why are you so surprised?'

I didn't know what to say.

'We talked about this two years ago!', said Tara, 'I told you even then I was going to marry him. Our parents are involved already.'

I tried to grin, but a sadness inside was choking me, all the harder because where had it come from?

'I thought', I said, 'that you were going to...'

'What?'

'Take a call on it.'

Tara threw her head back with sudden animation. Her lips parted in mirth.

'That was then! A long time ago! I made up my mind after that! But I don't understand why you're so surprised. I've been seeing him constantly. I've come to Bombay to see him now, haven't I?'

'I thought', I repeated, and I was talking to myself now; stunned into open introspection; trying to trace, through my speech, the roots of my reaction, 'you said, this wasn't it. I thought you were going to... wait... till you fell in love again.'

For a moment, she was angry. I braced myself for the easy and unanswerable lie. But something prevented that. Perhaps it was the honesty of my emotion, my unabashed bewilderment, my vulnerability, that made her candid.

She started to talk. She said she used to think that way when she was younger, but she wasn't twenty one any longer. She said she had learned to be sensible, to be wise, to take things as they came, and not always as she chose. She said, what was love, but making your peace. She spoke freely, not from the heart, but a nimbler, more persuasive, more dangerous place.

Years ago, when we had talked of Life and Love and what it all meant, we had talked like seekers after a common truth, who do not balk at argument. That wasn't her tone any more.

'I don't know about you', Tara said, 'but I know what my dreams are. And they're not wild or bizarre or unconventional. Maybe they aren't romantic. Maybe they aren't going to save the world- or the country- or anybody. I don't care. They're mine. A house to live, a space of my own, a companion I care for who cares for me, friends whom I know I can trust, just enough money that I don't have to worry about money. And that's it. That's all I want from life.'

'But that's all I want too!', I wanted to tell her, 'That's all I want too!'- I wanted to scream- but then how could I explain the distance between us? How could I justify why I sat, drowned in loneliness, while she stood not inches away, neither lover nor comrade, drawing further and further apart with every passionate sentence she spoke? I could be pompous and futile, or I could stay silent.

'You understand?', she was asking me, 'Do you understand?'

'I think so', I said.

We were quiet then. A great weariness seized me. I looked at the ancient trees, stirring gently all about the late afternoon. Maybe the signs had been there, and I had failed to read them. Maybe our road had been the same. But I had forgotten the fork in it.

'Aren't you going to get up?', Tara laughed, 'You're not actually old yet.'

'I feel old', I said.

'Let's go', she said. 'It's too late to see the sights here- let's go back.'

'You didn't enjoy coming here.' I looked at her.

'Oh I did', she said quickly, 'It's really beautiful- but I'm tired. And we have that awful commute still to come.'

No, she hadn't enjoyed it. Not the forest, not the lake, not the flowers in the trees. She had gotten brisk. She remembered the garbage and the dirt and the looming spectre of the broken city. A cold wind swooped down on us; it was bracing to me, but I saw Tara give a little, fearful shiver as it passed. Then suddenly it was easy to get to my feet, to almost put my arm around her. I didn't, but the thought of it played in my mind, healing me, tormenting me, as we walked back to the waiting streets.

The Necessity of Fiction

This was published in the September 2011 Hindu Literary Review.


"Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry." So said the French poet Charles Baudelaire, and I think he meant it quite literally. For the centre of everybody's life, rich or poor, oppressed or oppressing, working or idle, is a dream, a world created inside the mind, an imagined perception of the way things are. Surely, then, to forego the nourishment of this omnipresent imaginative faculty, is to fall sick. And surely, art is the cure.

But if the sickness should abound, and yet be wrongly diagnosed, then there will be no cure, only a likely aggravation. Such would seem the case with Indian writing in English, whose condition can only worsen, if it continues to be misunderstood. So far, this lack of understanding has begetted many damaging ideas- the idea that our literary establishment can safely piggy-back on the West's; that the tide of home-grown 'frothy' fiction should be celebrated, because it sells. And most recently, the idea that non-fiction can take over from fiction, and tell us the stories that will make us well again.

A Mistake in the Making

For a while now, this view has been gaining currency. Nilanjana Roy informs us: “In 2010, when Basharat Peer’s memoir of Kashmir, Curfewed Night, was published, one of its most enthusiastic champions was William Dalrymple... A few months later, Dalrymple spoke of his excitement at what seemed to be a new trend — the slow shift towards non-fiction replacing our somewhat obsessive focus on Booker-winning novels and other fiction.” Also in 2010, Alok Rai, reviewing Annie Zaidi's book of non-fiction, Known Turf, wrote that: “Despite the hype surrounding the novels-with-large-advances, the best writing today is happening in non-fiction. Of course, fiction presents certain unique problems... but the gravity, let alone tragedy, of human existence apparently lies beyond its clownish scope.” This year, in an interview published in April, Chiki Sarkar, the then chief editor at Random House India, said: “I am largely unimpressed by current Indian literary fiction, but I think we're going to see extraordinary non-fiction from the younger generation. Basharat Peer, Samanth Subramaniam, a young writer called Aman Sethi who we publish this year, Sonia Faleiro - these will be the real stars of the coming years.” And while praising Aman Sethi's A Free Man this July, Nilanjana Roy added: “For years, a writer friend spoke wistfully of the Great Barsati Novel: a mythical beast that would do for Delhi, presumably, what Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City had both done for New York. But the road to the Great Barsati Novel has been paved with failed attempts, and perhaps Delhi will find its chroniclers in non-fiction rather than in fiction.”

Now, what is interesting about these quotes, is that they do not merely commend the state of our non-fiction; they also feel the need to compare it with the state of our fiction. This is understandable, just because comparisons are tempting. But it is not very helpful, because the categories here are essentially incommensurable. There is no sense in gladly decrying bad fiction, as though, with the arrival of good non-fiction, it has ceased to be a worry. Moreover, to expect that the blessing of high-quality non-fiction can redeem us, in any way, from the burden of low-quality fiction, is to misunderstand the nature of the two forms- and to risk harming both.

The Nature of the Forms

The names are almost self-explanatory. Fiction is make-believe; it entails a positive commitment to imagining. Non-fiction is anything but make-believe; it requires, in the face of the facts, a scholarly restraint on imagining. These territories are entirely different, and the boundaries, though they may be porous, are also impassable. Thus, a piece of reportage that is full of lies, does not become a piece of fiction (except in poetic condemnation), because to imagine a few facts is not to commit to the imagination. Nor does a factual account told with imaginative verve become fiction- because the facts will keep that verve in check. Conversely, once the imagination is fully deployed, so that it takes, quite literally, a life of its own, then it does not matter if the contours of what follows are traced from reality- one is still making-believe. And by making-believe, one is submitting to the test of 'story'. Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, 'story' is beside the point; what matters are the fruits of inquiry.

These are the general distinctions, which are also easier to recognize than to articulate. But once they are understood, what does it mean to say, like Hartosh Singh Bal, that “the one genre that can overcome the limitations of Indian Writing in English is well reported non-fiction that is specific to a time and place”? It can only mean that Indian writing in English has no need for make-believe. And what does that mean? That as writers and readers in the English language, we must stick to interrogation? With our environments held fast under our microscopes, and its contents the subjects of our scrutiny? But this is not how anybody really lives. A city, for example, may be chronicled ever so brilliantly in non-fiction- and to great benefit- but it is only in fiction that it can recede to an abstract setting, that dream-like blur through which we all actually pass, not scrutinizing, merely living. It is only in a story that we can really feel its spirit.

The Root of the Matter

In the nature of things, then, non-fiction, no matter how superior on its own terms, cannot serve the ends of fiction. But why is this view taking hold at all? Why are we loath to accept the necessity of fiction? The answer, I think, is that by requiring a real commitment to one's own imagination, it is fiction that strikes the raw nerves in our psyche. The guilt and self-loathing and sense of uprootedness that afflicts the Anglicized, Westernized Indian imagination, can still be kept at bay in non-fiction. With its separation of object and observer, non-fiction allows us a certain distance from our selves. Not so fiction; that demands absolute introspection, a gouging out of the self, the courage to take one's own emotions so seriously as to transmute them into an offering. And it is these emotions that are specially painful to the touch. Even the timid 'clownishness' that Alok Rai spoke of, which has so degraded our fictional output, is only a kind of anaesthetic.

However, if the aim is to get better, there is no escaping the places that hurt- and there is a high price for trying to. Just as Indian English fiction can only worsen from neglect, so Indian English non-fiction can only buckle, if handed the burden of trying to do two jobs at once. That way lies half-heartedness; flimsy treatments both of subject and self, which might masquerade as high literature, but will take us far in neither direction. Let us not, therefore, get too comfortable in condemning our fiction. We cannot do without it.

Bangalore Reading of Show Me A Hero, on April 15th

Am doing an event in Bangalore on Friday, April 15th, with Toto Funds the Arts, for my new novel Show Me A Hero. I'll be in conversation with Dr. Arul Mani, the well-known writer and critic. Do come if you can- details are below, and the invitation is at the TFA website.


Venue: Crossword Bookstore, ACR Towers, Ground Floor, 32 Residency Road, Bangalore - 1


Date and time: Friday, 15 April 2011 at 6.30 pm

Show Me A Hero

My new novel, a coming of age/crime fiction story set in Delhi, has been published by Rupa and Co. It's available on stands and online too.

More info about the book is on the right-hand panel of this blog and on the Facebook Page, which is here.

Book Review: 'The Red Devil: To Hell With Cancer- And Back', by Katherine Russell Rich (Tranquebar Press, 2010)


(A shorter version of this was published in February's Hindu Literary Review)

Subtly Showy

The Red Devil is a woman's story of her struggles with cancer. This makes it hard to review. To criticize the memoirs of a cancer patient might very well sound both insensitive and ignorant. But assuming (as one must) that one is entitled to assess it, it must be said, that although the book is captivating from start to finish, it is also somewhat shallow.

Caught Amidships

Katherine Rich was 32, a high-flying magazine editor in downtown Manhattan, living a fast-paced life full of work and travel, and married to a romantic, tempestuous Argentinian. Then in the space of weeks her marriage broke up and she discovered she had breast cancer. But athough it might seem a wretched incongruity that such a full life should suffer such a swift fall, Rich's own view is that it only made sense. 'I smoked two packs of Newport Lights a day', 'I drank, a lot', 'I ate like shit', 'I worked out... hardly ever', and thanks to a 'high-drive, adrenylated job', 'mostly, I inhaled stress'. As for her marriage, keeping the love alive had become an obsession, which, writes Rich, 'is the same thought repeated over and over till it blocks off reason, till it leaches sanity. And cancer is a single cell that reproduces uncontrollably till... it starves the tissue around it and ultimately destroys its host.'

It is intelligent, articulate ideas like these that make for the attractiveness of Rich's writing. They sparkle throughout her narrative- the way that cancer engenders loneliness ('if your body is divided within, how can you not feel divided from the world?'); the peculiar horror of losing your hair ('we've all had sore throats, we've all been tired, we've all thrown up before... but in the natural universe hair doesn't... fall out with a sudden, horrifying thud of force); how difficult it is to accept a chronic illness as part of your life ('after illness, as after sin, the temptation is strong: to flee the bed.').

She also presents a grim picture of the American medical establishment. The history of her treatment abounds with dodgy diagnoses, overlooked symptoms, adversarial tussles with dispassionate doctors, who are too afraid of being sued to properly care. It is easily inferred from this book that market forces and health-care are a dangerous mix. Also, that while New York may be a wonderful place to be young and healthy, it is not so pleasant to be sick there, and dependent for support on a paid therapist. For Indian readers, this book should also lead us to appreciate better the personal touch of our own culture, the familial networks that we sometimes take for granted.

But these inferences are not made by Rich. Her roving eye flits from subject to subject. In the space of pages we find interesting things being said about recovery, relationships, doctors and friends. However- and this is where the book suffers- none of these leads is properly followed through. Instead of staying with her insights long enough for them to bear fruit, she more frequently lets them descend into glibness.

Pop Psychology

For example: the first time Rich suggests that her depression over her broken marriage was a factor in her cancer, it is an interesting thought. But later, when we find her merely insisting she got 'breakup cancer', she sounds more than a little superficial. Similarly, when she analyses her dreams- a wild cat represents the illness, because it is wild and her name starts with 'Kat'. Similarly, when we find her trying a whole litany of pseudoscientific cures- from psychic healers to Egyptian ankhs to 'purple drops sold by a mysterious cowboy in Casper, Wyoming.'

This is not to mock Rich- anyone with cancer might be so desperate- and indeed she chastises herself for the fact. Just as she chastises the 'talk-show honesty' of her generation ('self-revelations about sex or degradation...but never venality or arrogance or the other, more banal sins that actually made us look bad'). But it is one thing to be perfectly aware of a shortcoming, and another to overcome it. The truth is that 'The Red Devil' does feature a kind of talk-show honesty, where splendid insights are dragged down from their rightful pedestal and mixed up in the shallows, and where the aim is not so much to share one's courage, as to have it confirmed. In the nicest and discreetest way, it is a showy book, one outstanding proof of which is that it reads like a novel. The dialogue is all within quotation marks, conversations are described in implausibly cinematic terms, and the love stories are weaved in like sub-plots. This 'fictional' treatment helps the book read easily, but it also hides the absence of real, helpful content, that a more mundane and less stagy style would not have been able to. To sum up, I think 'The Red Devil' will have you genuinely liking and rooting for the author, but I doubt it will have you thanking her.

Book Review: Jimmy The Terrorist, by Omair Ahmad (Penguin Books India, 2010)


The Wrong Story

(This was published in February's Biblio under a different title).

At a hundred and seventy seven pages, Jimmy the Terrorist is a slim novel, and yet a massively uneven one. It features subtly fashioned characters alongside rank caricatures, great skill and also great carelessness, wonderful prose and plain meretriciousness. Examined closely, these contradictions suggest a core flaw- a kind of original sin- that plagues Ahmad's book- which is a mismatch between the material the author actually cares about, and possesses a genuine feeling for, and the politically 'significant' material that he has determined to take on.

An excellent prologue sets the scene for the story. Jamaal Ansari, also known as Jimmy, a young Muslim in the non-descript town of Moazzamabad, in U.P., has stabbed a police inspector and been killed in retaliation. Journalists from Delhi and Bombay descend on the town, “like kites upon a fresh kill.” The implication is that they will learn nothing save the superficial and dramatic facts. But our narrator, a weary, half-cynical, anyonymous native of Moazzamabad is about to tell us the real story- the truth that underpins 'Jimmy the terrorist.'

This story is then divided into two halves, which can quite accurately be labelled the father's half and the son's half. And it is necessary, we are told, to begin with Jimmy's father, because “whatever Jimmy was, whatever Jamaal became, in the end he was their son, Rafiq's and Shaista's, and their story. And because their story played out in Rasoolpur, he was also the story of this mohalla. And of Shabbir Manzil... the hub around which the mohalla revolved.'

Similarly, in his note at the end of the book, Ahmad explains:

“There is a line in Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic Dune that has stayed with me- 'Still, but one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?' So for me the book also became at least as much, if not more, about Jimmy's father.”

Now, at first glance, there does not seem anything improper about asserting such connections. But they come with an implied promise on the part of the author. We are entitled to expect that, over the course of the story, the connections will be more than just asserted. They will actually be established, and in some psychologically convincing way. As we shall see, in Jimmy the Terrorist, they are very far from established. This is especially a pity, because before that point where the tracks fail to connect, and the book comes off the rails, is some very fine story-telling.

In confident, controlled prose, Ahmad brings to life Moazzamabad, a largely Hindu town in which the Muslim community resides in apparently easy harmony, though “lightly, with more culture and pride than hard faith.” Shabbir Manzil is the house where they come into their own, where “the notables of Rasoolpur mohalla... speak of poetry and cricket, perhaps make a learned comment, but casually, on some bit of politics...”

Our protagonist in this milieu is Rafiq Ansari, an English-educated, passably well-to-do young man whose sole ambition is to climb the social ladder to the gatherings at Shabbir Manzil. This is far more important to him than getting a job. And to begin with, his sense of priorities seems vindicated too, because when he does get in with the 'smart set', he receives in benefaction not just a job at a University, but also a wife to set up home with- the home that will give birth to Jamaal.

Rafiq, his wife Shaista, the doyens of Shabbir Manzil- these are ordinary, unsensational people, but in Ahmad's hands they are never dull. In fact, they are riveting- and all the more so because they are completely free of stereotype. One might not have thought that a small-town, middle class, mildly religious (at best) Muslim community, could make for such rich novelistic material. But it does, because Ahmad has a grasp on its own particular enchantments and oppressions. We can admire the wit and poetry at Shabbir Manzil, and the warm familial bonds of the community, but we can also see how the social hierarchy that beckons Rafiq upwards, reinforces his sense of inadequacy; and how the well-meaning domination of a protective brother sows the seeds of rebellion in Shaista. So later, when Rafiq is floundering to assert himself, and Shaista is a domestic tyrant, who rarely lets him so much as talk to their child, and neither can communicate with the other, we feel we have learned something. In a mohalla where “nobody ever spoke openly about anything; all the accusations were by insinuation; every blow was a stab in the back”, these are just the things that would happen.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets. Because from here on, Ahmad's attempt to force his perfectly interesting, but mellow, characters in the direction of violence and terror, is crude, uninsightful and altogether misconceived. That Rafiq, propelled by a series of coincidences, should turn to religion and adopt the manner of a mullah, is acceptable in itself. But it still feels a contrivance, made necessary by the need to join the dots to reach the novel's pre-determined conclusion- the transformation of Rafiq's son into Jimmy the Terrorist. In any event, it does not suffice. The dots never join. Ahmad never comes close to finding in his characters the pitch of psychological intensity, the deep-rooted sense of hurt, from which acts of terror must stem. In fact, he seems to realize this himself, and so he tries to bluff away the shortfall- as, for example, in the passage near the beginning of the second half of the book, when an unemployed and ostracized Rafiq is being given some advice.

“... 'There's a simple trick that will help you get a job at an Islamic school.'

Rafiq didn't like the word 'trick' but he listened.

'Just be angry', Harris said, 'Rant and rave. Talk about the grand tragedies, about oppression, zulm, riots and murder. Grow your beard a little longer and miss no opportunity to raise your voice against the suffering of Muslims. It's what the mullahs do all the time.

Rafiq nodded reluctantly.”


This is humorous, but the humour is all out of place. Such deliberate, self-aware role-playing is simply not the stuff that fanatics are made of. What Ahmad does, in passages like this, is betray his own distance from Ground Zero (so to speak). He was right at home when delineating the subtleties of social and family life in Rasoolpur, but to shift gears to the terrorist drama- the drama that the prologue had promised us- seems beyond him.

The entire second half of the novel is therefore reduced to a succession of blind alleys and compromises that undermine the story as a whole. We are told in great detail of the teasing that young Jimmy suffered in the missionary school he went to, on account of his relative poverty and his father's religiosity; also, that he fell into delinquent company. But these trials are far from extraordinary. The idea that mean-spirited, but perfectly common games of childhood one-upmanship- the kind that Ahmad himself, with his undeniable privileges, might well have undergone- are a breeding ground for terrorism, does not hold water. It suggests instead a kind of self-serving romanticism that exaggerates everyday ordeals, and underestimates actual hardship.

The upshot of all this- and this is no exaggeration- is that nothing that happens in the first three quarters of Jimmy the Terrorist has any particular bearing on its conclusion. His father's embracing of Islam, his mother's dotage, his school-mates' distrust- none of these were needed for Jimmy to take up a knife. Because when Ahmad introduces communal tensions to Moazzamabad, he ratchets up the scale of hostilities to such a degree that anyone might retaliate- and in fact many do, not merely Jimmy. The Hindu right-wing, fomented by politicians both local and national, is a “maddened hundred-armed creature carrying axes, iron rods, tridents and kerosene cans”; they torture a Muslim boy, burn to death the Maulana Qayoom; mount a fearsome campaign of intimidation against the Muslim community; and are about to commit a rape when Jimmy lashes out with his knife, crying out that he is 'Jimmy the terrorist.'

Which rings untrue, because he is plainly nothing of the sort. All he is, is momentarily violent in the face of immense provocation. Now, the point is not that this provocation, so garishly described, is untrue or implausible. The point is that it gives us no insight into any of the characters involved. As a colourful newspaper report of a series of nasty incidents, it is perfect. As a piece of fiction, it is strictly second-rate. We are provided only the superficial and dramatic- and no more enlightened than the 'kites' that came in from the cities.

Ultimately, then, Ahmad has not told us the story of a terrorist. Nor has he even told us the story of Jimmy- just many disparate details about the boy's family and school-days. The real story that he might have told- the story that he seemed most interested in telling, and which, at the end of the book, the reader is likely to be most interested in knowing about- is a gentler, less politically 'relevant', but much more enlightening tale of the subtle play of power in a middle-class Muslim mohalla. But to do that story justice, we would need a different book.

________________________________________________________________________________

Why Indian Publishing Needs to Get Less Fun

(This essay was published in July's Hindu Literary Review)

In the world of Indian English publishing, kitsch has begun to dominate the mainstream. Penguin India publishes 'Metro Reads', books that they call 'fun, feisty, fast'; Random House India produces the 'Kama Kahani' series of Indianized Mills and Boons; Hachette India openly states that it cares most about commercial thrillers; and with its latest, highly-marketed release, 'Johnny Gone Down', Harper Collins India seems to be headed in the same direction. These are all books that openly disclaim any particular literary merit. They are projected instead as 'fun' reads- with the implication that only a killjoy could possibly protest them.

A Preliminary Question

But before we get to that question- are these books fun for us?- there is an important preliminary question: why are they being offered to us? The easy answer is that the market is clamouring for them, just look at Chetan Bhagat. But this is too easy. It's been seven years since Bhagat's first book. Why would it take so long to follow his example? Moreover, the mainstay of Bhagat's readership has never been readers per se. It has been non-readers, those who are new to books, even new to the English language. This is certainly a massive group, and after Bhagat's success it has certainly been tapped- but by the smaller publishers, such as India Log and Shrishti Publications- not by the A-list. For them, Bhagat has simply been a fact of life- too dominant to ignore, too declasse to embrace. Which is one reason why their own 'fun' releases take great pains to explain that they're well-written too, that they 'bridge the divide' (a fashionable phrase) between the literary and the commercial.

In any case, with Bhagat's readership out of the picture, we can see more clearly that the push towards this new breed of writing is not being fuelled by market forces- those simply aren't strong enough. Our habitual readers of English fiction are not a small group, but they are not nearly so organized as to be pro-active in shaping publishers' decisions. Readers remain reactive and the freedom to decide what books get to them, remains primarily with the publishers. Unlike in more developed environments, 'publishers here need to be entrepreneurial', wrote Chiki Sarkar, Random House's Chief Editor, in an article in Seminar last year, 'A large number of our best-sellers have probably been commissioned ... Rarely do we discuss submitted work. Half of my list consists of subjects that I think would make a good book... And I would guess that’s the same for most other publishers here. [emphases added].' Her article, by the way, was called, 'Why Indian Publishing is so much fun'.

The impetus for new books, then, comes neither from the readers, nor from the writers- their submissions, remember, are rarely discussed. So how did the Kama Kahani series begin? Sarkar explains: 'We’re full of girls in the editorial department who had grown up on historical romances and hadn’t read any desi ones. So we figured we should launch our own.'

This answers our initial question. If, today, our shelves of Indian English fiction are crammed full of 'light reading', it is because our editors felt like it. That such centralization of literary power should hold sway in a world that includes readers and writers, seems unacceptable on the face of it- but let us hold our condemnation a moment. After all, more new Indian authors are being published today than ever before, in more genres than ever before. We have crime fiction, thrillers, young adult fiction, fantasy, chick-lit, erotica. These are books, says the Penguin Metro Reads Facebook page, 'that don’t weigh you down with complicated, boring stories, don’t ask for much time, don’t have to be lugged around.' They are what Hachette's M.D. Thomas Abraham calls 'crossover' books- not literature, but good enough to 'bridge the divide' between literary and commercial fiction.

No Such Thing

But what if there was no such divide? What if there was only good fiction and not so good fiction? What if being engrossing was a virtue, even in 'literary' fiction, and being shallow a vice, even in 'commercial'? Because the truth is, that the abstract standards of literary quality are constant. Campus novels and murder mysteries may be second-rate trash or the most moving experiences, but they aren't condemned by their labels to be a half-hearted compromise. So setting out to 'cross over', is simply setting out to lose your way. To try to 'bridge the divide' is to get on a bridge to nowhere. The galling element here, is not that you are arriving at mediocrity- there's no shame in that- but that you were aiming at it.

Getting Serious

If we remember further that Indian English fiction is a very fledgling body of work, greatly in need of direction and nurturing, then the escape to 'fun' seems even more of a cop-out. It suggests a basic lack of belief that quality books can be written by Indian authors- or an inability to recognize them. In the absence of a foreign endorsement, it is as though an unwritten rule prevails, that there may not be any serious writing, there may only be amusement. But such a self-loathing attitude helps nobody. It doesn't help the new genres. These can't be wished into existence by an editor looking for kicks; they must emerge naturally from those who care about them- like pulp fiction did, in the early American magazines. And it doesn't help the new writers, because there is a sad, but common, phenomenon, of authors being published and simultaneously disrespected. In the recent past, for example, there have appeared a number of essays lamenting the inferior state of Indian English writing. But the curious fact, which would be funny if it were not annoying, is that the same people who have contributed to that state have nodded along sagely, and sighed.

The point of this present essay is not, I hope, similarly futile. It is simply to argue that we ought to demand high standards from everyone associated with our literature: not merely our writers, but also our critics and editors. Then maybe Indian publishing can get serious.