You Beneath Your Skin - Damyanti Biswas - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Damyanti Biswas

GENRE: Crime thriller.

PUBLICATION DATE: September 17, 2019.

RATING: 4.5 stars.

My first crime thriller after a long time, my very first by an Indian author at that! And I'm just gobsmacked after reading this book.

YBYS tells the story of an Indo-American lady named Anjali Morgan, who lives with her autistic teenage son in our national capital. In an illicit amorous liaison with her is Jatin Bhatt, a senior police officer. Jatin meanwhile is also investigating a series of rape-murders occurring in Delhi, with acid being used to render the victims unidentifiable. One fine day, there occurs an unforeseen, drastic event that irrevocably impacts the lives of Anjali, Jatin, and everyone around them.

YBYS focuses on Delhi at its grimy & slimy best. The dark underbelly of crime is not just exposed but stripped bare to its bones. The book runs like a good Anurag Kashyap movie, so dark and depressing that you don't want to watch it and yet you can't stop till you reach the end.

How corruption and your contacts can be more important than your deeds, how the future of the high-born is considered more important than that of those born in lowly circumstances, how we use different standards to judge outsiders and family members, how we wear blinders while looking at those close to our hearts and ignoring their flaws, how drug addiction can make you do ghastly things without flinching, how the blatantly misogynistic attitude of some upper class males is ignored under the guise of masculinity,.... YBYS delivers one blow after the other to you and you just stand reeling under the impact. The standard attitude of the top honchos in the book, "No harm done, so no one needs to know", is exactly what happens in the real world where everyone is more concerned with their own name rather than with what's just and fair.

This is a debut work, but it didn't feel like one. The language of the book is perfect Delhi lingo, English with a smattering of Hindi and Punjabi. Some beautiful Urdu couplets also make an appearance. Kudos to Damyanti Biswas for making the language so realistic and depictive of a typical urban Indian environment.

Also worth appreciating are the character sketches. You can understand almost every character of the novel clearly, right down to why they did what they did because of the brilliant character development. Hardly any main character in the book is completely black or white, some have umpteen shades of gray. I even want to appreciate the author for the way she has named her characters, especially Anjali. The significance of her name can't be revealed here without a spoiler, but man! What a perfect choice of name for that character!

One of the most beautiful lines in the book is, "Sabke andar daag hotey hain. All of us have scars, secrets." How true is that! And yet we constantly judge by external appearances, whether for others or for ourselves. Time to ask ourselves, "What are we beneath our skin?"