This delightful little book is set in an unnamed but ubiquitous neighbourhood somewhere in New Delhi, during the summer of 2020, that saw the outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown that followed. The fifteen interconnected stories trace the trials and tribulations, as well as the tragedies and triumphs of a group of people into whom Radhika Swarup breathes life with her creative vision. The narration actually begins with the exquisite cover that has the luminescence of a watercolour painting and invites careful scrutiny as every silhouette and signboard, and each laburnum and bougainvillea flower is a curtain raiser that sets the stage for the action and interactions that follow. The heart of the book is the friendship that develops between Shami and Navya, separated by generations but united in their love for books. It is the six-year-old Navya’s overture to start a book club, the New New Delhi Book Club, so called because, as she says with all seriousness, ‘the city is called New Delhi. And our Book Club is new’, with her elderly neighbour, that gives the book its message of hope and resilience, and the importance of human connections and contact at a time of fear and isolation.
The first household we are introduced to is that of the recently widowed Shami, who is looked after by Chetan and on whom his daughter Ashima keeps a firm and loving eye, in the midst of dealing with the challenges of the virus in London. The most interesting part of this house, where Chetan has his room, is its terrace that looks down on the street below, earlier teeming with life and now silent and deserted. This terrace also abuts the terrace where Saloni, who works in the next house, lives, and here begins another story of a love that ‘grew sweeter, felt more tantalizing for all the contact they withheld. They never touched, …but it was all understood, all taken on promise, like a yellowing mango left untouched on the branch.’ The promise may not be fulfilled, but the anticipation and hope that underlie it give not only this story but the whole book a lustre of hope and optimism that make it very special and eminently readable.
The narrative voice toggles between the third-person omniscient narrator and the first-person accounts by the characters in this human drama, and it is their point of view which gives the book its multilayered verisimilitude as we witness, hear about and then participate in all the quotidian details that are the warp and woof of all our lives. It is the mundane materiality of groceries, virtual schooling, work from home, and housework that remind us about the behind-the-scenes effort that people, especially women, make on a daily basis to carry on with the business of life, even in times of upheaval and uncertainty. The author goes beyond the residents who inhabit this relatively prosperous street to include in her creative ambit the grocery delivery boy Shyam, who decides to walk home to the safety of his village however illusory that safety might be, and the house painter Chhote Lal, who is able to reach home safely and repays the debt to people who helped him get there by cycling to the next village whose post office was still functional, and sending them Madhubani masks ‘to keep them safe’.
‘This time of introversion’ is not without its tragedies but also not bereft of hope as the future seems easier to focus on in comparison to the present which is often unbearably suffocating and ‘the new normal is the claustrophobia of our days’; so, Aanchal can dream about going to Paris the next summer and Mihir will write his ‘Coronavirus Rhapsody’ and share it with his grandfather Shami with whom he also shares a daily email. Radhika Swarup reminds us that he belongs to Gen Z, who find ‘community and belonging’ in the virtual world when human contact is prohibited. The past too, is invoked with pain and nostalgia as the bereaved and the bereft try and relive happier days whose memories are as sweet, but also as out of reach, as the malpua that Smita makes on a rainy morning as she recalls happier days with Om, her late husband.
The book opens with ‘a farrago of noises’, all bad-tempered, all rising in hysteria, until gradually, ‘the noise of Delhi died down’ and in this silence, we read inspiring stories of generosity, kindness and camaraderie, as well as courage, almost as if human beings were once again refined down to their elemental selves where a simple handshake reminds Niharika of the importance of ‘a physical meeting’ for all those touched by the stigmata of the pandemic, but especially for those on their own.
It was Ernest Hemingway who reminded us of the importance of showing ‘grace under pressure’ and this book with its very big heart is a memorial to a time of tragedy and fear, but also a monument to the possibility of a new normal, and a timely reminder of how love and kindness are the best panacea in times of anxiety and alienation, and the real fulcrum on which human society thrives.
Anjana Neira Dev is Professor, Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi, Delhi.