Cite this Essay
MLA:
Dawson Varughese, E. “Post-millenial Indian (genre) fiction in English, Part One.” Indian Writing In English Online, 05 June 2022, indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/post-millennial-indian-genre-fiction-in-english-part-1-i-e-dawson-varughese/.
Chicago:
Dawson Varughese, E. “Post-millenial Indian (genre) fiction in English, Part One.” Indian Writing In English Online. June 05, 2022. indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/post-millennial-indian-genre-fiction-in-english-part-1-i-e-dawson-varughese/.
Introduction
Since the turn of the millennium, Indian fiction in English within India has experienced a genuine moment of opportunity in terms of publishing, reading and engaging with authors and their works. The collection of six academic texts by E. Dawson Varughese below – some excerpts, some complete chapters – have all been published in response to these developments and in turn, they examine what she refers to as a ‘perfect storm’ for post-millennial Indian fiction production. We begin with a complete chapter entitled ‘Post-millennial Indian Anglophone writers’ from R. Eaglestone and D. O’Gorman’s (eds) The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Fiction (2019). This chapter details the post-millennial moment and the socio-economic factors that have been at play in the literary markets of Indian fiction in English. It also identifies some key novels and thus offers an overview of a few themes prevalent across post-2000 Indian fiction in English (‘literary’ as well as ‘genre’ fiction); these are collated under three sub-headings: ‘Urban Underbellies’; ‘Female-centred narratives’ and ‘Politics’.
Published in 2013, E. Dawson Varughese’s Reading New India (Bloomsbury) was ground-breaking in its effort to shift the focus away from the long-established ‘literary’ Indian fiction in English, widening the lens to incorporate domestic, Indian genre fiction, thus taking in detective and crime writing to graphic novels and ‘Chick Lit’. This second text is excerpted from Reading New India (2013) and the chapter ‘Chick Lit’; it details some of the early post-2000 Chick Lit novelists such as Advaita Kala. This short excerpt also considers how post-millennial Indian Chick Lit remains in dialogue with ‘women writers’ of earlier eras such as Deshpande and Desai – a longer and more detailed examination of this appears as a chapter in Ulka Anjaria’s (ed) The Cambridge History of the Indian Novel in English (2015) entitled: ‘New India/n Woman’: decision-making and identity in post-millennial Chick Lit’ by E. Dawson Varughese.
The third text introduces the genre term ‘Crick Lit’ that E. Dawson Varughese first employed in Reading New India (2013). This excerpt considers how Indian Crick Lit, produced from within India, echoes some of the changes that the Indian cricket scene has gone through; in short, a post-westernization of the game and of the genre. This excerpt is taken from a chapter in South-Asian Fiction in English: contemporary transformations edited by Alex Tickell and published by Palgrave in 2016.
E. Dawson Varughese’s approach to post-millennial Indian genre fiction in English is usually one that foregrounds stylistic analysis, focussing on the language-literature interface. She often employs this lens of enquiry in order to explore and examine post-millennial ‘ideas of Indianness’. This fourth text is an excerpt from The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, edited by Violeta Sotirova and published in 2016 by Bloomsbury. Here, E. Dawson Varughese considers ‘style’ in Battle for Bittora (2010) by Anuja Chauhan, focussing on how the language-literature interface expresses ideas of changing India, gendered Indianness and ‘Young India’.
In 2016, Genre Fiction of New India: Post-millennial receptions of “weird” narratives was published by Routledge with a simultaneous Indian edition distributed by Manohar. In this book, E. Dawson Varughese explored the rise of mythology-inspired fiction in English from India within the Indian, domestic literary scene, in the new millennium. The book examined how reader reception is key in appreciating how this burgeoning canon is read, received and how (and where) it circulates. This book laid the foundations for the chapter that appears here as text five. Published as ‘Post-millennial “mythology-inspired fiction”: the market, the genre and the (global) reader’ in B. Chattopadhyay, A. Maity and A. Mandhwani (eds), Indian Genre Fiction: pasts and future histories by Chicago University Press in 2018, the chapter presents a distinct approach to this growing body of writing in English. Here, E. Dawson Varughese proposes that the body of post-millennial, mythology-inspired fiction in English to date is characterised by four distinct approaches of telling, which, in turn, find themselves on a spectrum of sorts; at one end lies a sentiment of ‘retelling’ while at the other end lies a sentiment of ‘re-imagining.’ Using examples from a range of mythology-inspired fiction texts in English from India, the chapter aims to elucidate the features of the ‘retelling’ through to the ‘reimagining’ texts.
Finally, the sixth text is an excerpt from her 2018 Palgrave book, Visuality and Identity in post-millennial Indian graphic narratives. This is taken from Chapter 2 in the book, which is entitled ‘Modes of Visuality in India’ and it presents the thesis of ‘(in)auspicious’ seeing in relation to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives. Although a short excerpt, this final text gives an overall introduction to the book, its concerns and overarching argument.
I. Post-millennial Indian Anglophone writers
(originally titled “Indian Fiction in English”)
I.1 Introduction
Focussing on Indian literary fiction in English, this chapter considers differences and similarities across the production of this body of work, paying particular attention to the differences between, on the one hand, novels written by authors from diasporic or transnational backgrounds and, on the other, novels by authors who have resided all or most of their life in India. I make this distinction because I suggest, in line with my other work (see Dawson Varughese 2012 , 2013 , 2016 ), that the novels written by those authors who have remained in India are less characterised by the tropes and guises of ‘postcolonial literature’. I suggest that in general, the diasporic or transnational texts that engage with ‘New India’ in various ways, have a tendency to propagate India as ‘the Other’ as they play towards the established mores of the western market (exceptions to this idea exist, of course, such as Half of What I Say (2015) by Anil Menon) and thus result in work that resonates more with a postcolonial framework.
As the discussion of the novels below demonstrates, some diasporic authors (Manil Suri, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee) craft stories that explore the migrant experience (such as migration from India to the US) as well as the movement between two (or more) cultural worlds and the tensions involved in this movement. Aravind Adiga born in 1974, who then returned to India in more recent years, incorporates the vantage point of moving in and out of a changing India that his own personal upbringing has afforded him. Other Indian authors who have lived or worked (or studied) in the West often draw on the two worlds of India and ‘elsewhere’, as demonstrated in the works of Anjali Joseph, Jeet Thayil, Vikram Chandra and Neel Mukherjee as examples. Crucially, I also discuss Indian authors who have spent most or all their life in India, such as Manu Joseph, Usha K.R., Manju Kapur, Anuradha Roy, Deepti Kapoor, Meena Kandasamy, Arundhati Roy and Omair Ahmad as examples. What is particularly interesting about this latter group of authors is how their writing is variously received within India and in the West, which suggests perhaps a generational shift at play in both the production and reception of their works.
Beginning with a discussion of the context in which literary fiction is read and propagated, this chapter is arranged by making reference to four overarching topics that have trended in Indian literary fiction over the past fifteen years: ‘Urban Underbellies’, ‘Female-centred narratives’, ‘Young India’ and ‘Politics’. Within these topics, I examine work by the authors listed above, thus both ‘diasporic/transnational’ and ‘domestic’ authors, demonstrating how all attend to these aspects of post-millennial Indian society, echoing concerns of contemporary living such as city life, the identity/ies and roles of women in New India, the experience of ‘young India’, sexuality and relationships, and the ways in which today’s society might conceive of India’s politics.
I.2 Publishing context
As an echo of these societal shifts, the identity of Indian fiction in English has changed significantly and also relatively rapidly since the millennium. Increased personal spending (especially amongst young Indians), the proliferation of literary festivals in India and greater publishing activity have all contributed to the rise of Indian fiction in English. For example, the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), founded in 2006, has been a key player in alerting the global literary community to India’s place and role in shaping the contemporary world literature canon. By inviting speakers from around the world, in particular Indian writers from the diaspora, the JLF has propagated a post-millennial positivity around New Indian fiction in English and, in turn, raised the profile of domestic Indian writing in English. It has also acted as a catalyst for many of the more recently inaugurated literary festivals held throughout the year in India. In addition to literary festivals, various literary prizes have entered the South Asian literary scene such as the ‘Raymond and Crossword Book Award’ (before 2014 it was the ‘Economist Crossword Book Award’ from 2011 to 2013, the ‘Vodafone Crossword Book Award’ from 2008 to 2010, and the ‘Hutch Crossword Book Award’ from 2004 to 2007). Established in 2010, ‘The Hindu Literary Prize’ recognises Indian works in English and in English translation and an influential literary prize which is currently affiliated to the JLF is the ‘DSC Prize for South Asian Literature’, inaugurated in 2011. Anuk Arudpragasam won this prize in 2017 for his novel The Story of a Brief Marriage ( 2016 ); Anuradha Roy won in 2016 with her novel Sleeping on Jupiter; and the 2015 winner was Jhumpa Lahiri for her novel The Lowland. Other winners include Cyrus Mistry and Jamil Ahmad of 2013 and 2014 respectively. Although the prize accepts works in translation, the winners to date have all been authors of Indian or South Asian fiction in English, although works in translation have made it to the prize’s shortlist. Given that prizes such as the DSC are open to Indian (South Asian) writing by authors residing outside of South Asia, the growth in production, confidence and the establishment of a new-found identity in Indian writing from within the country has, I suggest filtered through to the diaspora and the wider field of ‘world literature’.
The growth of the publishing scene within India has also played a substantial part in bringing Indian fiction in English to a wider audience. With increased fiscal confidence, the economy of leisure consumerism has boomed over the last 15 years and with this, the purchasing of books for leisure has become ever more commonplace: typically, a ‘popular’ paperback novel of Indian fiction in English will retail at ₹299 (£3–£3.50), and Indian literary fiction in English will retail at ₹499 or ₹799 (£4–£8.50) (exchange rates as of December 2017). Moreover, Indian publishers have become increasingly ‘visible’ as they form part of global publishing houses such as HarperCollins, Hachette or Penguin Random House. Consequently, post millennium, there is a curious, increased to-and-fro of Indian authors (or their agents) negotiating with international, global publishing houses via the New Delhi, Gurgaon or Noida headquarters. Narayanan warns of the potential consequences of such a relationship, saying: ‘if the global visuality of Indian writers is a significant consequence of de/reterritorialized corporations, its most adverse effect is the hegemony of these corporations as the prime global producers of Indian writing’ ( 2012 : 107). Independent presses continue to claim some space for themselves and companies such as Rupa Publications, Juggernaut, JaiCo, Leadstart and Speaking Tiger are examples of this committed activity.
I.3 Urban underbellies
As India’s urban centres have grown in size and structure, so Indian fiction in English has evolved its post-millennial urban narratives. Most notably, authors Aravind Adiga, Vikram Chandra and Jeet Thayil have explored the city in some of its darker avatars.
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger ( 2008 ) won the Man Booker Prize in 2008, with his portrayal of ‘New India’ garnering a marked interest. The novel is written as an informal letter which charts the life of Balram Halwai. Organised over seven nights of writing, the story explores the lives of India’s poor, the caste system, the underbelly of the city and what it is to survive in today’s India. Adiga’s second novel Last Man in Tower ( 2011 ) also explores city life, money and power as residents of a housing block are offered generous amounts of cash to move out in order for ‘redevelopment’ to take place. Set in Mumbai, the residents of Vishram Society (Tower A) are such an essential part of Adiga’s novel that it begins with a plan of the tower and its residents’ abodes from the ground floor up to the fifth. The tower finds itself in Vakola, in the vicinity of the airport and for most Bombaywallas, Adiga tells us, anything in or around Vakola is ‘slummy’. Vishram Society, however, stands as a respectable, middle-class housing co-operative. Adiga captures the idiosyncrasies of the people, the changing urban centre and the zeitgeist of contemporary Indian culture(s) in all kinds of detail in his novels, be it in the witty ‘NOTICES’ to the housing society, in his characters’ Hinglish or the ongoing social commentary of his (nosey) characters. Through both novels, Adiga captures an India changing at pace and although he has been criticised for attacking certain aspects of Indian society, others suggest that his novels offer introspection into the contemporary Indian psyche, a psyche which is changing dramatically, cutting across the generations, often placing them in tension. As money and corruption lace the narrative of Adiga’s Last Man in Tower ( 2011 ), so too do these interests trace through Adiga’s Selection Day (2016), which was shortlisted for the DSC Prize in 2017. The novel is supposedly inspired by the real-life story of a Mumbai businessman sponsoring teenage cricketers in one of the city’s slums. As a coming-of-age story, Selection Day (2016) privileges the male experience; it explores class, religion and sexuality through its young protagonists, Manjunath, Radha Krishnan and Javed, whilst examining the relationships between father and son(s) in a changing India. Vikram Chandra, meanwhile, was born in New Delhi in 1961, and educated latterly in America. Chandra lives in the United States and at times, in India. Winning the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2008, Sacred Games ( 2007 ) is set in the murky underworld of contemporary Mumbai. The novel takes Inspector Sartaj Singh, who we know previously from Chandra’s ‘Kama’, one of five tales in Love and Longing in Bombay ( 1997 ), and pits him against an infamous Mumbai gangster. The story is epic not simply due to its length but also due to the array of topics it weaves into its storyline: violence, mafia, Partition, Miss India, to name a few. The novel opens unusually, with the death of Gaitonde, the gangster everyone has been chasing and of whom in death Chandra writes: ‘A tooth winked pearl-like, whole and undamaged, from the red raw where Gaitonde’s tight-lipped grimace stopped abruptly’ ( 2007 : 46). Chandra’s style, replete with detail and adjectival musings, resonates with the complexity of Mumbai, its gangsters, police force and its women. The novel chimes with India’s turbulent 1990s and we are frequently reminded of that era, from Dil Se’s ‘Chainya Chainya’ pumping out of loudspeakers on the street to the communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims simmering away in the background. The novel cuts to India’s fascination with the ‘maximum city’ and its gangsters: its bhais, godowns and dadas, all of which have inspired many Bollywood films and nefariously slipped into public culture.
The dark side of Bombay is also the setting for Jeet Thayil’s debut novel Narcopolis ( 2012 ) and the city also appears in his 2017 novel The Book of Chocolate Saints ( 2017 ). Born in Kerala in 1959 and educated in Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai, Thayil won the DSC Prize for Indian fiction in English South Asian Literature in 2013 for Narcopolis ( 2012 ), which was also shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012 and then in 2013 for The Hindu Literary Prize. As its title suggests, the novel explores the world of narcotics, specifically opium, mostly in 1970s Old Bombay but also in the city in more recent times. The novel is anchored in Thayil’s own experience of drug addiction and alcoholism. The descriptive prose captures the detail of the opium dens, appealing to the visceral: ‘. . . a smell of molasses and sleep and illness, a woman tending the pipe, using a long needle to cook the opium, her hand moving as if she were knitting . . .’ ( 2012 : 3), and, ‘. . . she felt herself slipping through the mat into the floor. Below was a thick layer of cotton wool and below that were the blue pools of her nightmares’ ( 2012 : 182). Although the novel does not speak directly of the post-millennial years, it does highlight the changes that the city has witnessed and in terms of narcotics, the demise of opium and the rise of heroin. It is Jamal, the son of the opium house owner, who brings the narrative into New India through his relationship with Farheen, his text messages and, most significantly, his cocaine, MDMA and Ecstasy, ‘new drugs for the new Bombay’ ( 2012 : 281). Other urban narratives of New India include those by Manil Suri, who is an American writer of Indian heritage. He was born in Bombay in 1959 and moved to the United States for postgraduate study in mathematics. He has written various personal commentaries on growing up gay in India and about India and the US in this regard. Suri’s trilogy The Death of Vishnu: A Novel ( 2001 ), The Age of Shiva: A Novel ( 2008 ) and The City of Devi: A Novel ( 2013 ) has brought him various successes, with The Death of Vishnu ( 2001 ) winning the PEN/Bingham Fellowship in 2002. Manu Joseph’s novel Serious Men ( 2010 ), which won The Hindu Literary Prize and the PEN/Open Book Award, is also set in Mumbai and deals with issues of caste through the narrative of a Dalit who works as an assistant to a clever Brahmin astronomer in a scientific institution.
Joseph returns to Mumbai with his 2017 novel Miss Laila Armed and Dangerous (2017), taking on big questions about political forces and again, religious and societal division. Moving away from Mumbai, Usha K.R.’s novel Monkey-man ( 2010 ) foregrounds the city of Bangalore and is set in January 2000; the city that has morphed from ‘pensioner’s paradise’ to the IT hub of India. The book’s narrative hangs on the sightings of the elusive ‘monkey-man’ although Usha K.R. devotes most of her narrative to the detail of the characters and their lives, linked, as they are, through one ‘being’ – the monkey-man. Anjum Hasan also writes of Bangalore and Deepti Kapoor of New Delhi, with the latter’s novel A Bad Character ( 2014 ) discussed below.
I.4 Female-centred narratives
Post-2000 there has also been a rise in narratives that put women, and women’s experience, at their centre. Born in 1967, Anuradha Roy published her first novel An Atlas of Impossible Longing in 2008, followed by The Folded Earth ( 2011 ) which won the Economist Crossword Prize in 2012. Tabish Khair (2011 ), in his review of The Folded Earth ( 2011 ), writes: ‘This is the kind of novel about India that cultivated people in the West, particularly Britain, love to read. It is set in a refreshingly recognisable – Tolkien-like map embedded – but not overtly familiar part of India’. Longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker, her third novel, Sleeping On Jupiter (2015), won the DSC Prize in 2016. It tells the story of Nomi who has grown up in Norway following harrowing childhood years in India, living in an ashram as an orphan and being abused by the temple’s spiritual leader. She returns to India and the location of the ashram later in life and the novel charts both her journey and that of a handful of others as they explore their own lives, memories, sexuality and desires. Roy has been praised for her elegant prose, but Sleeping On Jupiter (2015) has been criticised within India in particular for its portrayal of Indian society as miserable, poverty-ridden and wrought with issues of sexual violence and inequality.
Winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1999, Manju Kapur’s debut novel Difficult Daughters (1998) similarly explores female experiences, in particular the role of women in family life, education, marriage and love. These themes recur in her subsequent works A Married Woman (2003), Home ( 2006 ), The Immigrant ( 2008 ) and Custody ( 2011 ). Kapur, born in 1948 lives and works in New Delhi and although some of her work, Difficult Daughters ( 1998 ), A Married Woman ( 2003 ), Home ( 2006 ) and Custody ( 2011 ), echo this in their own geography, portrayal of bourgeois lifestyle and politics, her later novel The Immigrant ( 2008 ) treads a different geography as it is set in Canada. Kapur’s novels explore a range of eras from Partition ( Difficult Daughters), the 1970s in A Married Woman ( 2003 ), the 1980s in Home ( 2006 ) and the 1990s in Custody ( 2011 ). Home ( 2006 ) captures 1980s New Delhi particularly well, with the story set in a fabric shop, its business threatened by new fashion and fabrics.
The changing times are made more intense as the Lal family home faces grief, loss, jealousy, love and repression within its own walls. Kapur, as with her other novels, explores the female characters carefully and fully, but in Home ( 2006 ) her descriptive hand extends to the portrayal of Karol Bagh in New Delhi and in particular, the Lal’s shop. She writes on the potential renovation of the family’s livelihood: ‘Central air conditioning a must, plaster-of-paris ceiling with frills and moulding, mirrors, a gold and glass chandelier, a tiled toilet (customers stay longer if you allow them to pee), a kitchen to store cold drinks and make tea . . .’ ( 2006 : 163). Kapur has been called the Jane Austen of India for her complex family sagas and gentle storytelling. Although a domestic writer (she resides permanently in India), she is a successful Indian author with regards to her reception in the West, mainly because her narratives are demonstrably of the upper echelons of Indian society and the kind of family saga that readers might enjoy exploring. Diaspora writers have also anchored their narratives in the convoluted lives of ‘the family’ but have equally foregrounded the challenges of the immigrant experience and a shared identity.
Such motifs are found across Jhumpa Lahiri’s work, and, publishing her first book Interpreter of Maladies ( 1999 ) at the turn of the millennium, she went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000 with this collection of short stories. Her debut novel The Namesake was published in 2003. Born in London in 1967, Lahiri’s family, from West Bengal, moved from London to the United States when Lahiri was very young. Lahiri considers herself an American writer. Her fiction explores both India and the United States through the identities of those living between the memories of the homeland left behind and the world in which they now find themselves. Her second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth ( 2008 ), was very well received, and her novel The Lowland ( 2013 ) made the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize but went on to win the 2014 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. West Bengal, its cultures and its capital city feature significantly in Lahiri’s work. The Lowland ( 2013 ) evokes the Calcutta of the 1950s and 1960s as it traces the rise of the Naxalite movement alongside the lives of two brothers, while The Namesake (2003 ), from the outset, suggests a gastronomically memoired Calcutta: ‘Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks . . .’ ( 2003 : 1). Lahiri has a Ph.D. in literary studies and has taught Creative Writing in the United States.
A fellow Indian-American writer of West Bengali origin, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in Calcutta in 1956 and lived there until her early twenties, when she moved to the United States to pursue postgraduate study. Like Lahiri in The Lowland ( 2013 ), Divakaruni charts the lives of her characters, separated by miles and by cultures – one in India and one in the United States – in her novels Sister of My Heart ( 1999 ) and its sequel The Vine of Desire ( 2002 ). As with the work of Manju Kapur, Divakaruni’s writing explores the female self and its relation to other females as well as exploring challenging relationships with men and with wider society. Her 2008 novel The Palace of Illusions ( 2008 ) epitomises this interest as Divakaruni embarks on a re-telling of the Indian epic The Mahabharata from the perspective of Panchaali, the wife of the Pandavas (the five brothers).
I. 5 Young India
As I have suggested above, the changing reading public is emblematic of an unfolding, generational shift, and this, too, becomes the concern for much new fiction. Anjali Joseph was born in Bombay in 1978 and read English at Trinity College, Cambridge to then graduate from the MA in Creative Writing programme at the University of East Anglia in 2008. Her first novel, Saraswati Park, was published in 2010 and won the Betty Trask Prize, Desmond Elliott Prize and Vodafone Crossword Book Award for Fiction in India. Another Country ( 2012 ), her second novel, was published in 2012 and charts Leela’s life as a 20-something in Paris, London and Bombay. Saraswati Park ( 2010 ) explores the sexual awakening of Ashish who is living with his aunt and uncle in a suburb of Mumbai, studying to pass his exams. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of learning, music and art and this almost-bildungsroman is steeped in both the arts – his uncle is obsessed with books and a letter-writer by profession, Ashish is studying literature – and in the lessons of life. Ashish has a lot to learn about life, in particular about love. A tumultuous relationship between the protagonist and his male tutor results in both the destruction and the recreation of Ashish. The trials and tribulations of Ashish’s awakening are met by the moods and colours of the city of Mumbai and Joseph captures the details of the city in surprising ways: ‘A fleet of cockroach-like taxis in black and yellow livery waited at the junction outside the GPO. When the lights changed they all, honking, took the U-turn. A man on a cycle passed; he carried a tangle of enormous red ledgers, each wrapped in plastic, atop his head. The gold on their spines flashed in the sun’ ( Joseph 2010 : 8). Her third novel The Living ( 2016 ) was shortlisted for the DSC Prize in 2017 and, like her second book, it straddles continents; Claire and her son in Norwich (UK) and Arun and his wife in an unnamed town in Maharashtra (India). Footwear connects the two characters as Claire is a shoe-maker and Arun makes leather slippers.
Deepti Kapoor evokes a very different kind of city, while still exploring ideas of ‘young India’ in her debut novel A Bad Character ( 2014 ) which was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2014. Set in present-day New Delhi, Kapoor has written a fierce depiction of the city and its society, post millennium. The narrator, Idha, moves from Agra to live with her aunt in New Delhi. She is alone. Her mother had died four years previously and her father is in Singapore with little interest in his 21-year-old daughter’s life. A timely novel, given the debate around living as a lone female in New Delhi, A Bad Character ( 2014 ) is dark and hopeless in its portrayal of the young woman’s life. Published by Jonathan Cape, the novel is, however, sincerely ‘domestic’, its narrative peppered with locales, Delhiites and the peculiarities of living in the capital city. It is also a breathless novel and Kapoor’s style communicates this from the outset, echoed in her main characters’ hunger to ‘survive’ life. Idha manages to make it through the New Delhi life she embroils herself in only to write: ‘My boyfriend died when I was twenty-one. His body was left lying broken on the highway out of Delhi while the sun rose in the desert to the east’ ( 2014 : 1). Bharati Mukherjee was born in Calcutta in 1940. Having lived in Canada and America for most of her life, she considered herself an American writer, and this positioning of identity is explored in her post-millennial novel Desirable Daughters ( 2002 ) and its sequel The Tree Bride ( 2004 ). Her novel Miss New India ( 2011 ), however, is set firmly in India, in ‘New’ India, and the novel, exploring the usual ideas of life in an Indian city post 2000, acts as a cultural barometer for call centre life in particular. Set in Bangalore, the protagonist Anjali discovers a new existence, a world away from Bihar and the lower-middle-class family she has left behind. Mukherjee observes the move from the known to the unknown well and she writes assuredly on the migrant experience. The novel presents an India that plays to the West’s ideas about ‘New India’ and thus rehearsed dichotomous motifs of poor and rich, rural and urban, illiterate and educated run throughout the narrative.
I.6 Politics
‘Politics’ appears variously through characters, locations and time periods in contemporary Indian literary fiction in English. The place and the politics of West Bengal appear in much of Neel Mukherjee’s writing. Mukherjee was born in 1970 in West Bengal and lives in the UK. He is the author of two post-millennial novels: A Life Apart ( 2010 ) (also known as Past Continuous [2008]), which was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2011, and The Lives of Others ( 2014 ), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker 2014. Both novels are set in Calcutta, although A Life Apart ( 2010 ) moves to England where the protagonist Ritwik embarks on a new life and forms a special bond with Anne Cameron who has, in different ways, lost much in life. The Lives of Others ( 2014 ) is set in West Bengal in the late 1960s. Supratik becomes involved in politics and activism, leaving the Ghosh family for the communist party, a contentious move given that the Ghosh family owns paper mills and is relatively well-to-do, residing in a large house. The novel is full of various Ghosh characters and this aspect of his craft resonates with Manju Kapur’s novels of ‘domestic life’ fiction through the various dramas and challenges that surround the family and its immediate community.
Politics permeates the pages of Anil Menon’s Half of What I Say (2015), which was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2016. Born in 1966, having lived in the United States and India, Menon’s slightly speculative novel has been described as a churn of characters. It is however, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the new governmental security outfit called the Lokshakti, that stands out from the narrative. Brought into existence in order to root out corruption, the Lokshakti has its own way of doing things; prisons, ‘soldiers’ and its own ‘Culture Department’. Inspired perhaps by Indians calling for anti-corruption laws and by supposed cases of ‘sedition’ in the post-millennial years, Half of What I Say (2015) eerily imagines an India of censorship, arrests and shadowy surveillance somewhat in the name of an anti-corruption agenda. Whilst the novel captures something of this post-millennial moment through its range of multifaceted and often complex characters, it pushes the narrative into the fable-esque or the mythical, asking the reader to imagine an India of now at the very edge of the imminently possible. The ‘quiet’ politics of Menon’s novel serves to agitate and unnerve both its reader and the idea of the contemporary, post-millennial Indian moment.
The lives of Dalit agricultural workers in Tamil Nadu are explored in Meena Kandasamy’s debut novel, The Gypsy Goddess ( 2014 ), with Kandasamy taking direction for the narrative from historical events. Christmas Day 1968 saw the massacre of Dalit workers in a village called Kilvenmani following the murder of a popular communist leader. The landowners attempt to force the workers back to the fields, and in their resistance the peasants are assaulted and over 40 people are burnt alive in a hut. Kandasamy is creative in form and style, her language use is witty and sharp: ‘Destination of the dead: Paapaan Sudukaadu, Nagapattinam. A cremation ground named after Brahmins but used for untouchables’ ( 2014 : 188). In Part Three of the novel entitled ‘Battleground’, Kandasamy includes Inspector Rajavel’s tabulation of the facts of the massacre, an (almost) inventory of death, each of the 42 entries including the words ‘charred’ or ‘burnt’ somewhere in their sentences. Meena Kandasamy who was born in 1984 identifies as a ‘poet, fiction writer, translator and activist’ ( 2014 : 283) and is based in Chennai. In her second novel When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife ( 2017 ), the protagonist is a poet with (outspoken) leftist political views. Set in South India, she marries a college professor who soon reveals his violent behaviour towards her. She tells her father of the abuse that her husband rapes her and beats her but her father asks that she reconsider leaving the marriage given the shame this would bring on her and the family. Kandasamy’s When I Hit You ( 2017 ) is a tale of a modern Indian family, which is based on the author’s personal experience. The story is visceral and its ‘truth’ presents a post-millennial notion of Indianness that many would prefer to have silenced. Shortlisted for the Man Asia Prize 2009, Jimmy The Terrorist ( 2010 ) by Omair Ahmad who was born in 1974 went on to win the Vodaphone Crossword Book Award in 2010. Mughal heritage runs throughout this novel (making connections with Ahmad’s earlier novella The Storyteller’s Tale [ 2008 ]) in both the locale of an old north Indian town as well as in the identity and religious and cultural practices of Jamaal, a.k.a Jimmy, and the wider community. The narrative exposes the lives of the residents of Moazzamabad and whilst the narrator is at pains to show the Mughal inspired architectural, intellectual and cultural jewels of the town (albeit in a diminishing state), the reality of existence in Moazzamabad is far less pleasant. Suffering from anti-Muslim prejudices, a rising right-wing Hindu movement and a life of poverty, Jimmy is brought up in miserable and challenging circumstances. The storyline is multi-layered and the characters are complex, which in turn echoes the socio-cultural landscape of Moazzamabad. Ahmad makes statements on this very complexity at various points in the story: ‘And maybe in all that I am telling you there is nothing to help us make sense of this town, our mohalla, that boy. We understand so little, after all . . .’ ( 2010 : 150). Arundhati Roy, known for her political activism, and made famous by her 1997 Booker Prize win for The God of Small Things, published her long-awaited second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness in 2017 with Hamish Hamilton. The novel focuses on some of modern India’s darkest moments including the insurgency in Kashmir and the Gujarat riots of 2002. A raft of many different voices, marginal, politicised and persecuted, Roy’s novel might be thought of as an echo of her own polemic positioning that the intervening years have been testament to; the Narmada dam, her support for an independent Kashmir, the US invasion of Afghanistan, campaigning for Adivasi land rights in Kerala and her criticism of prime minister Modi’s ascension to power, as some examples. The novel made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2017.
I.6 Other developments
In addition to an expanding catalogue of Indian Chick Lit and crime fiction, there has been a proliferation of ‘popular’ mythology-inspired fiction which rides on the back of the success of Amish Tripathi’s ‘Shiva Trilogy’: The Immortals of Meluha ( 2010 ), The Secret of the Nagas ( 2011) and The Oath of the Vayuputras ( 2013 ) (see Dawson Varughese 2016 ). These novels retail at around ₹299 (around £3.00–£3.50) and like Amish’s works, appear in many Indian languages. Since 2015, there has been an increasing interest in Indian speculative fiction which moves beyond the now established ‘mythology-inspired’ fiction, not least because it is typically more ‘literary’ in style. These novels include Vikram Balagopal’s Savage Blue (2016), Tashan Mehta’s The Liar’s Weave (2017), Prayaag Akbar’s Leila (2017), Anil Menon’s Half of What I Say (2015) and Manjula Padmanabhan’s The Island of Lost Girls (2015) – a sequel to the feminist dystopia introduced in her 2008 novel Escape .
Conclusions
This chapter has considered ‘diaspora’, ‘transnational’ Indian authors of Indian literary fiction in English as well as Indian authors who have lived most or all their life in India. I have suggested four topics or themes that have trended across this body of writing since the early 2000s, and thus the chapter has attempted to show how ‘Indian’ authors have engaged with ideas, amongst others, of the immigrant experience, economic liberalisation, the role of and the female experience in ‘New India’, as well as political events of both the post-millennial years and earlier ones in India’s modern history. I have suggested that literary festival activity and a more buoyant domestic publishing scene are responsible for transforming both the identity of Indian fiction in English and the dynamics of its distribution patterns. That is not to say that the world literary space is an equal playfield; as Pascale Casanova reminds us, an unevenness in this publishing domain should be expected:
Autonomy is nonetheless a fundamental aspect of world literary space. The most independent territories of the literary world are able to state their own law, to lay down the specific standards and principles applied by their internal hierarchies, and to evaluate works and pronounce judgments without regard for political and national divisions. ( 2007 : 86)
Indian fiction in English, within India at least, is challenging the orthodoxy Casanova writes of (when we think of ‘the most independent territories of the literary world’ as those in the West),not only through increased literary activity in publishing and by way of literature festivals but also through the content of some recent Indian literary fiction in English. The narratives of Anil Menon’s, Deepti Kapoor’s, Manu Joseph’s, Omair Ahmad’s and Meena Kandasamy’s post-millennial Indian fiction in English in particular, challenge an established (and arguably erstwhile) view of the identity of Indian ‘postcolonial’ literature. These authors’ novels move beyond the tropes of Indian postcolonial narratives that have been identified by humanities scholars in the West in particular (see Dawson Varughese 2012 ); instead, these novels story Indian experience (in all its variety) more through Indian paradigms, philosophies and lived encounters (often of the post-millennial moment).
The discussion of a range of authors here makes clear that some novelists continue to foster the idea of India as ‘Other’ through an exoticised imaginary, playing to certain stereotypes that have been established through earlier canons of Indian writing in English. The current Indian literary scene in English is in flux, however, and it is with an eagerness and fervour that the new writing produced from both within India and outside of India about India continues to shape what will become more steadfastly, the post-millennial canon of Indian literary fiction in English.
II. ‘Chick Lit’
Today’s body of writing that we might call ‘chick lit ’is mainly written by women, with a female protagonist who, in various ways, faces challenges, questions and changes in contemporary Indian society, these narratives often include a ‘love’ or ‘romance’ element and are often narrated humourously. However, there are a few exceptions, see: With or Without You (2010) by Partha Sarathi Basu, Love Over Coffee (2010) by Amrit N. Shetty and Chocolate Guitar Momos (2011) by Kenny Deori Basumatary. These male authored narratives, although stories of ‘romance’ (in various guises), have less emphasis on the female protagonist as they are told from the male perspective. Today’s canon of chick lit might be considered alongside female narratives that have been published earlier in the history of writing in English in India. The work of Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai, Shama Futehally, Temsula Ao, Nisha da Cunha, Kamala Markandaya as well as other women writers with recent novels in publication such as Jaishree Misra and Manju Kapur, all have engaged with female narratives. Lau (2006) writes of the emotional and domestic territories which are so often explored in the fiction of these writers, stating: ‘their writings frequently include detailed descriptions of the interior spaces of home, the negotiation of roles and hierarchies, and the emotional lives played out against a background of the bedroom and the kitchen’ (Lau 2006, p. 1098). This sentiment is echoed in Deshpande’s words when she states:
Yes, I did and I do write about women. Most of my writing comes out of my intense and long suppressed feelings about what it is to be a woman in our society, it comes out of the experience of the difficulty of playing the different roles enjoined on me by society, it comes out of the knowledge that I am something more and something different from the sum total of these roles. My writing comes out of my consciousness of the conflict between my idea of myself as a human being and the idea that society has of me as a woman. All this makes my writing very clearly women’s writing. (Bhalla 2006, p. 1)
This position taken by Deshpande is useful in setting a benchmark by which we might consider post-millennial chick lit in English from India. As [Section 3.1] will go on to demonstrate, the narratives of post-millennial chick lit, like Deshpande’s works, also explore ‘what it is to be a woman in our society ’and to further quote Deshpande: ‘the conflict between my idea of myself as a human being and the idea that society has of me as a woman’ (Bhalla 2006, p. 1). Anita Desai’s work has also often interrogated ‘what it is to be a woman in our society’, to take Deshpande’s words. Desai’s novel Where Shall We Go This Summer? was first published in 1975 and is an intense story of Sita, who struggles with the monotonous life of her married, middle-class existence. One of the most striking scenes in the novel is when Sita, seven months pregnant, prepares to leave for an island, Manori, which she knew as a young girl. Her husband warns that the journey to the island is too difficult; he considers the monsoon’s raging heat and the boat ride across the monsoon sea at seven months pregnant as out of the question. Sita believes that the island can work miracles and that the madness of the everyday that she has been observing for so long now, can disappear if only she can make it to Manori. Sita is terrified to bring her fifth child into the world and she is at odds with her husband, who she claims, has no idea of her suffering: “But you were always so pleased about the babies, Sita, ”he said, closing his fists, unclosing them, uncertainly. “They always pleased you. ” “ I’m not pleased, I’m frightened, ”she hissed through her teeth. “Frightened.” “Why? Why? ” he spoke gently. “Everything will go well. I thought it grows easier and easier.” “It’s not easier. It’s harder –harder. It’s unbearable,” she wept. (Desai 1982/2001, p. 32) The analysis of the new chick lit fiction contrasts the narratives of Deshpande, Desai and others against the post millennial chick lit narratives of Kala, Chauhan, Jain and Vadya. What remains in these new narratives is certainly questions of being a woman in society and ‘playing the different roles enjoined [. . .] by society’, as Deshpande writes, but what we might speculate as ‘different ’ in the new narratives of post-millennial chick lit is the decision-making processes that the female protagonists face. Chapter 2 has narrated how the lives of women in India today can play out and Sophie Das in Neti, Neti: Not This, Not This (2009) is one such example. The character of Aisha in Kala’s chick lit novel Almost Single (2007) examined here, is another such protagonist, both women characters finding themselves alone in Indian urban centres, with an independent working life, a group of friends and a boyfriend. In these novels, as with other chick lit narratives, it is the decision-making processes around the lives of these female protagonists that create a marked difference from the narratives of Desai or Deshpande. Both Hasan’s ‘Sophie’ and Kala’s ‘Aisha’ face moments in their lives when they stand back and ask what decisions they have taken and why. What is it that these characters want in their lives and how will they achieve it? Perhaps the best example of this is Kala’s ‘Aisha’ when, faced with the man she loves, who is handsome, successful, independent and wealthy, and moreover, who has asked Aisha to marry him, Aisha’s response is not ‘yes’ but rather, a request to spend time together so that they might know each other better. Aisha’s position here foregrounds the independence of decision-making that shapes many of the female characters found in the chick lit narratives of post-millennial fiction.
III. De-centring the Cricket World through IPL Crick Lit Narratives
In 2008, the Twenty20 cricket league was launched through the Indian Premier League (IPL), a professional league for Twenty20 cricket (see Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam, 2011, for a historical account of these developments) and it was this inauguration of the IPL which catapulted cricket into the popular domain. Chris Rumford and Stephen Wagg (2010) write that the IPL has brought about the realization that ‘cricket is now a global sport.’ (2010, p. 3) Notably, the formation of the IPL was chosen over a league of the altogether slower game of Test cricket. Although Test cricket has traditionally anchored international cricket to London, this association is increasingly tenuous given the globalization of the game and the physical relocation of cricket’s headquarters from Lord’s, England to Dubai in 2005 (Dominic Malcolm, 2014, p. 125).
[…]
It is evident that the IPL pushed the organization and the playing of cricket into a different mode, what Rumford (2010) speaks of as ‘postwestern’ (see above quote). The IPL, although influential through its media, celebrity and consumption potential is just as powerful in its (increasing) directives on the game of cricket itself. Rumford (2010) illustrates how the rise of Indian cricket has highlighted the fact that there is no one single global modernity and that we are have been alerted to ‘the emergence of a new East capable of shaping global affairs, previously seen as the preserve of the West’ (2010, p. 274). As I have argued elsewhere (Dawson Varughese 2012, 2013), post-millennial fiction in English from India has been involved in a similar shift, an emergence of new fiction, forging new literary directions, the control of which has previously been ‘the preserve of the West’. In this vein, the emergence of post-millennial Indian fiction in English reinforces Rumford’s argument set out in the quote below as this fiction too is also involved in redesigning the way the market is negotiated and played. Rumford (2010) points out that:
over the past two decades or so cricket has been postwesternized, not only in terms of the administration of the game (the ICC) shifting eastwards and the economic balance of power residing in the subcontinent but importantly in terms of the development of the on-field game and the way it is played. (2010, p. 275)
Crick Lit echoes this sentiment through its particular narratives as well as through the Indian domestic publishing industry and its markets.
[…]
As I have articulated elsewhere (Dawson Varughese, 2013, 2014, 2015c), many Indian novels in English are published ‘for sale in India only’ and the West knows little of what India is writing and reading as it relies on the books that make it to its shores, which are far from representative of the Indian writing in English (IWE) scene as a whole.
[…]
To further draw on Rumford’s sentiment above, Indian fiction in English like cricket is directing the manner in which the game is played and, in turn, de-centering the cricket world in both game and related cultural productions.
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