Tag Archives: Fiction

The novel is driven by its varied and eclectic characters—from the idealistic Nirupama, bound in her Left ideology, to Imogen, the young English lady, and Kedar, the art lover, to Gopal—the street-smart pickpocket turned gangster. Their lives, as different as they are, intertwine with others at the hotel—Jeremy Lambert, working on war intelligence, the French chef Paul Bonnemaison, and others who frequent the titular hotel, including sex workers. This wide variety of characters ends up creating a dynamic interplay between personal ambitions, history and memory. Their lives are framed by a first-person narrator, the son of Nirupama,

Thematically, No Place to Call My Own is a palimpsest of pressing concerns—gender, religion, and the precariousness of artistic ambition in a mercurial world. Gufran situates Sophia’s personal travails against the backdrop of seismic socio-political upheavals: the #MeToo movement, the Citizenship Amendment Act protests, and the global pandemic. These events are not mere historical markers but active agents that exacerbate Sophia’s sense of unbelonging.

All three works share a concern with moral ambiguity. Their characters are not heroes or villains, but flawed individuals navigating a world where ethical clarity is a luxury. Whether it is the grieving artist in The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, the conflicted investigators in Affairs of Deception, or the scheming insiders of Party to a Crime, the protagonists are all bound by the consequences of choices they can neither fully justify nor entirely regret.

The novel is narrated by seventeen characters, with the notable exception of Burhan, the voiceless victim, with several narrating multiple chapters; over thirty-three unnumbered ones, being opened and closed by Nabeesumma and Reyhana in that order. Nabeesumma, who is a character as important as Reyhana,

Inquilab’s narrative privileges the political movement led by Gandhi and the Congress, and evades the vast complexities of social and political turmoil that India experienced. One only has to look at similar other contemporary literary work—particularly the writings by Munshi Premchand such as Seva Sadan, Rangbhoomi,

Today, that same Majnu Ka Tila, now ‘MKT’ to Gen Z, features in Ankush Saikia’s ‘Chang Town’, where Northeastern students navigate racism, longing, and identity in the capital’s northern campuses. The two stories could not be more different in form or sentiment, yet together they trace a micro-history of urban transformation: a city seen through the same coordinates, altered by time. There are many such resonances across the book. Jalil’s Introduction wisely sets them up. Stories in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, English and Malayalam reflect Delhi’s many avatars—as imperial capital, partition city, bureaucratic core, queer subculture, site of migration and protest.

The domestic world Bulbul inhabits is also one of fractured solidarities. The household is run by the formidable matriarch, Dadu, and supported by Kona Das, a Dalit Hindu woman. Their presence gestures towards the overlapping hierarchies of gender, caste and religion within a supposedly homogenous Muslim household.

A book subtitled ‘Remarkable Short Fiction’ will surely include the great storytellers: Rabindranath Tagore, Munshi Premchand, Kuvempu, RK Narayan, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Mahasweta Devi, Vijaydan Detha, Ajeet Cour, Damodar Mauzo, Paul Zacharia and Bama, among others.

Firefly Games captures the various facets of Bengali culture, both in erstwhile Calcutta and of Bengalis in exile in the heart of India in the States of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. The intricacies of growing up, friendships and heartbreaks, corruption in government offices, relations between parents and their off-spring—Chakraborty touches on these themes and more.

But a complex formal puzzle is announced in the Author’s Note: ‘The chapters in this book are marked with a number and an alphabet. The alphabet marks its own absence in the chapter whereas the number is a more conventional ordering. And in embarking on this book, you are invited to follow either the numbers or alphabets and you will stilll be reading the same book…’

The most common thread in this collection is of the highly suspicious nature of men regarding their wives or girlfriends, of whom they are never sure, sometimes rightfully, many times because of their lack of confidence in their own attractiveness. ‘Yet Again’, ‘Chance’ and ‘God’s Good Man’ are three such illustrative stories. Destroying domestic harmony, fragile male ego plays havoc in couples’ relationships. ‘You have poison in your gaze,’ (p. 17) aptly summarizes Leena, the wife in ‘Yet Again’.

It is daunting to tell a multilayered story through the thinly disguised characters drawn from a middle-class family headed by an avowed patriarch of his time, Ram Mohan, who is essentially a man of consequence. In the mid-seventies, India was rocked by issues such as popular unrest in Gujarat, the JP Movement, the imposition of Emergency, the defeat of Indira Gandhi, Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the spurt in caste policies and the emergence of Kanshi Ram, and the bloodstained agitation for reservation. They created an air of unease, desperation, moral outrage and reprobation.

At the centre of Oberoi’s novel is the voice of a dead young mother, for the most part housed on an old torn suitcase in a dusty little storeroom containing cupboards full of her now unused things: fine saris, jewellery, knickknacks and baby clothes. Her narration of small events, tidbits about her two adorable daughters’ infancy and childhood is interrupted by mournful visits from the now grown-up elder daughter whose grief is compounded by a falling out with her younger sister.

The identity of the blacks and the browns on the Matilda is distinctly diasporic West African. The women on the lower deck whisper about Juju, and Aster’s friend, Giselle, sharply asks her as she writes down a list if it is juju. Juju, a form of spiritual power in African belief systems, often involving the mediation of spirits, ancestors or deities, was an integral part of the lives of enslaved Africans.

The cyclical and dehumanizing nature of violence is a central theme in the collection. Structural violence refers to the ways in which social structures harm or disadvantage individuals by preventing them from meeting basic needs. In ‘Sin and Retribution’, Goswami revisits the 1983 Nellie massacre from the perspective of a perpetrator, unravelling the layers of dehumanization that lead individuals to commit acts of extreme brutality. The story critiques the inherent futility and moral erosion of communal violence, emphasizing how both victims and perpetrators are trapped within the structures of hate and fear perpetuated by historical injustices and political opportunism.

This debut novel veers on a fairy tale, sinuously curving at times into the half-real, half-surreal feel of a folk story, allowing the extravagant to hover around the real. The description of the medieval gadi (a fort-like mansion, in which live members of the Deshmukh family) and its expansive grounds that merge into endless undulating emerald fields stretching in all directions is spectacular. As is the detailing of the opulent grandeur of the mansion within: the carved wooden furniture, colours of the textile furnishings, the clothes that this Zamindar family wears and the lavish food that it is served at every meal.

It is set in the 1920s, a time when young people began to question the social structures that sought to confine them. Their rebellion, subtle though it may be, is a significant aspect of the story. Today, many of the issues they faced might seem trivial, but in their time, these were revolutionary ideas. The merging of the inner and outer worlds, of personal desires versus societal norms, has been beautifully depicted. But the struggle to forge an authentic identity, one that grows and evolves with time, is never easy. The tension between what one wants and what is expected of them is portrayed with remarkable sensitivity.

The addition of a character like Nilima Gandhi also enriches the narrative because the frustrations of a housewife are also expressed. Even though Nilima comes from a middle-class family and has domestic help, the urge within her to be seen and validated for all she does for her family is strong and the author is empathetic to that need. She is also portrayed as a woman with patriarchal principles but that doesn’t hinder her capacity to bond with other women. The third protagonist is Dinitia (Dini), who is a social worker and a single mother.

The human protagonists of the story are a pair of iconoclastic fifteen-year-olds, Asha and Zeb, who protest against the stifling system through illegal graffiti (the author mentions the British artist Banksy as an inspiration in the Afterword). Things escalate when the young rebels witness the callous murder of a word mid-transport by security forces during one of their furtive getaways and are eventually scapegoated as criminals.

Constrained by the chicken-pox and trying to deal with it during the summer holidays, Paromita and her fellow chicken-pox afflicted neighbouring teens—Sunidhi, Agastya, Darius, and Nihal—decide to solve the mystery that has scarred all of the denizens of The Orchard.