Self-absorption against a violent, lovely background

So confident and effortless is this novel, I had to check twice to confirm that it was indeed a debut. It is very specific to its characters and places and makes no claims to grand ideas, but still makes some very sharp points about privilege and the damage caused by self-absorbed good intentions. And it is excellently written.

Shalini, the narrator and protagonist, is thirty when the novel starts.

and that is nothing. […] There is nothing to be gained by pretending to a wisdom I do not possess. What I am, what I was, and what I have done — all of these will become clear soon enough.

She grew up in Bangalore, as the only child in a middle-class family. She says:

Titanic events have ripped [the country] apart year after year, each time rearranging it along slightly different seams and I have been touched by none of it: prime ministers assassinated, peasant-guerillas waging war in emerald jungles, fields cracking under the iron heel of a drought, nuclear bombs cratering the wide desert floor, lethal gases blasting from pipes and into ten thousand lungs, mobs crashing against mobs and always coming away bloody.

This sounds like a comfortable upbringing, and indeed, Shalini is one of many middle-class Indians who can afford detachment from larger Indian and world events. Her problems lie closer to home: her mother has a mercurial personality, does not gladly suffer people she thinks of as foolish, does not care about social mores, and can be charismatically energetic or arrogant and bitingly sarcastic. (The high and low moods, ‘surges of intense laughter’, alternating sleeplessness and feverish energy sound very much like manic depression, but it is neither diagnosed or treated in this novel — a not uncommon situation in India where mental illness is often hidden or unacknowledged). Shalini’s mother is intelligent, but has not studied beyond Class 10; her family could not afford college for all the children and the education of her brothers took priority. Her husband uses her lack of academic achievement against her in their arguments, adding to her frustration and bitterness.

With a work-obsessed father and a frequently joyless mother, Shalini’s childhood seems lonely, without warmth. She remembers only a few times when her mother seemed happy: when a travelling salesman, Bashir Ahmed from Kashmir, came by.

I was six the first time he came, and I still remember it. […]

His thick hair fell over his forehead, which was the colour of unpolished rosewood, and his eyes were a light, stunning green. […]

Perhaps due to her mother’s state of mind (‘the glittering in her eyes that had been there all week’) and perhaps due to Bashir’s handsomeness (‘a style utterly foreign to our southern city’), Bashir was invited in to display his wares. And thus started a pattern: every few months, Bashir would come by (always during the day when Shalini’s father was at work), but after that first visit he was firmly discouraged from selling anything. Instead, her mother asks him for stories of Kashmir.

A few years later, when Shalini is in college, her mother passes away. Shalini, untethered and unmoored, drifts into a job, in and out of meaningless relationships, until she suddenly decides to visit Kashmir and tell Bashir of her mother’s passing. This might seem like a forced plotline, but in fact the author makes Shalini’s rootlessness so real that it seems quite in character.

And thus starts the second part of the novel. Shalini is a visitor in Kashmir, with no real understanding of its history or current political situation. The first signal that Kashmir is not just another part of India appears when her cellphone does not work:

‘Outside prepaid doesn’t work in J&K. It is the government rule’

In Kishtwar, her destination near Jammu, she looks for a hotel but is guided to a house instead. She says she is “looking for someone”, is welcomed by the homeowners, and eventually ends up in a village a full day’s walk from Kishtwar with Bashir’s son and daughter-in-law. There is an idyllic period enjoying the beauty of the mountains and a growing friendship with Amina, Bashir’s daughter-in-law. But this is Kashmir, and inevitably, the tense political situation intrudes on her naive, self-absorbed, finding-herself vacation.

The couple she stays with in Kishtwar, Abdul and Zoya, turn out to be hosts for a never-ending stream of Kashmiris looking for their missing relatives, and they have their own heartbreaking history of a vanished child. Shalini hears two different versions of how the mosque got burnt, one from an Indian soldier, and one from Abdul and Zoya — which is the truth? The fear and tension among the community is palpable. A followup chance meeting with the Indian soldier, this time when she is accompanied by Zoya, has a strikingly different tone: the young soldier is well aware of his infinite power and ability to abuse it.

The author does a remarkable job of sketching out the characters. They are all seen from Shalini’s perspective, but it is also clear that she is just one minor blip in their own complicated lives. Abdul and Zoya are bereft but resolute, and their grief is not something Shalini can really understand. Shalini’s father is a fairly typical chauvinist, but undoubtedly loves his daughter. Shalini’s mother is perhaps the most complex character: the reader sees only glimpses of her limited life as a housewife because, of course, as with most young children, Shalini sees her mother largely in relation to herself. Likewise, the other characters may seem initially warm, simple, and wholesome from Shalini’s part-ignorant, part-naive perspective, but there is a clear consciousness that they have other concerns that she is unaware of.

There are two strong Kashmiri women characters in the book. Zoya is cold and unsmiling, occasionally inexplicably angry, but eventually opens up. Over time, Shalini becomes comfortable in their house, and imagines herself spending every day with them, occupying herself helping in Zoya’s office. Amina is friendly and warm, but she has layered secrets. With her too, Shalini eventually imagines herself staying in the village, teaching children English. But with both of them, Shalini is too self-centered to provide an empathetic connection, focusing instead on her own need to belong, to be part of a family, to wipe away the painful history of her own mother.

I could sense the loneliness that lay behind her smile, and I could hear, too, the entreaty in her voice for a woman’s understanding, a woman’s sympathy. And to my lasting shame, I denied her both.

Not a very likeable character, is Shalini, but it is a solidly honest , very realistic portrayal.

The last quarter of the book is fairly shocking, though not completely unexpected.

To create a world of such well-defined and complicated characters, to show only snippets of their lives through the protagonist’s view but indicate so much else, and still leave so much beyond the protagonist’s and the reader’s understanding, and to combine this with a coming-of-age story and an equally complicated personal history, is a remarkable feat for any author, and even more so for a debut novel. Highly recommended.