A Burning - Megha Majumdar - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Megha Majumdar

GENRE: Indian Contemporary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: June 2, 2020

RATING: 4.5 stars.

Have you ever read a book where you don’t want to shut the book even after you complete reading it? Where you just stare into vacant space, shocked and speechless? Where the characters stay in your head even when you want them to leave you? Where you don’t want to believe that such type of people actually exist in real life but deep down, you know that they do?

When I picked up this book, it was just another Indian author book but to be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, it came with a boatload of expectations attached: much-acclaimed, well-reviewed, a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2021, a Goodreads Choice Award finalist for Fiction and for Debut Novel in 2020, and despite all this, a GR rating of just 3.75 (my usual cut-off for GR ratings is 3.8) I was prepared to be disappointed and just wanted to get this book out of my TBR. Boy, was I proven wrong!

Story:

The book begins with ‘a burning’; a terrorist attack on a train in the Kolabagan area of Kolkata. The book ends with ‘a burning’; the embers of shock and pain smouldering in your heart. In between these two points, you meet three people:

• Jivan: A slum dweller who has been lucky enough to get admission in a local girls school through an NGO. But her father’s ill health and the dwindling family resources make her drop out after the 10th standard and take up a sales job. While she is determined to move up in life, fate pulls off a masterstroke. Jivan is accused of the terrorist attack because of a careless comment she makes on Facebook. Will she be able to clear her name of such a charge?

• Lovely: Yet another slum dweller, Lovely too harpers big dreams. She knows that she is a talented actor and she wants to make it big in the world of movies. The only hitch is that she is a hijra. But is this a hitch in the eyes of Lovely? Not at all. She swaggers her way through the book, knowing that she’ll do anything she can to make it big in filmdom. She has the only alibi that can save Jivan. Will she be able to save Jivan even if it comes at the cost of her acting dreams?

• PT Sir: Guess who this is? If you have been to school in the same generation as I, you will surely get it right. PT Sir is a “PT Sir” (a Physical Training teacher) in the school where Jivan studied earlier. He is used to getting no appreciation for his hard work on the sports ground. One fine day, he happens to catch the speech of a right-wing political leader and is mesmerised by the ambience and effectiveness of her words. Soon, he starts making his way up the political ladder. But his rise seems to coincide with Jivan’s fall. Will he be able to use his new political power to help his erstwhile favourite student?

The story is told from the perspectives of these three characters, with Jivan and Lovely voiced in first person and PT Sir in third person. (I don’t like abrupt shifts in voices but in this novel, the transition between the two grammatical voices and the three characters is almost seamless.)

Other than hearing from these characters, the story also provides some “interludes”, which contain events involving none of the three people mentioned above but are still relevant to the main plot. These interludes are painful to read, and one of them is truly gruesome. All the worse because you know that these things happen in actuality.

For a debut novel, this book is surprisingly well-crafted. The main theme running through the novel is of inequality, be it political, social, caste-based or gender-based. A secondary thread typing together the narratives is of aspirations: how high can you dream given your circumstances and how far are you willing to go to fulfil them. I found both these themes interesting and well-written. The way the story moves on tying every plot point, humanising every character, letting us understand their internal and external struggles, their motives, their disillusionments… Everything is written so smoothly. So in terms of character sketching and plot planning and development, it gets full marks from me.

The characters are where the book outshines typical debut works. Lovely will steal your heart, there’s no doubt about that. Her character is the best-sketched in the book and her humour and gutsy demeanour in the face of challenges will make you feel for her and cheer for her. I especially appreciated the way her dialogues were written in the continuous tense, giving a more realistic portrayal of her language hurdles. Jivan and PT Sir too are very intelligently-created characters and you won’t have trouble believing any of their deeds. I also loved how befitting the names were. ‘Jivan’ is struggling for her ‘life’ in prison. PT Sir, whose actual name is never revealed, wants to go much further than his extracurricular subject allows him to. ’Lovely’, self-christened as such, is ‘lovely’ only in her own eyes as the rest of the world can’t seem to see beyond the fact that she is not a true woman.

On the flip side, the book also caters to many stereotypes about India. (Wish I could say that these stereotypes are false.) There is poverty, squalor, caste-based struggles, religious fanaticism, political zealotry,… most of which seem to be depicted with an eye on the facts but will still hurt some sentiments. I guess it all depends on how you take it. Is it accurate in its portrayal? Yes, as far I could make out. Does it name any political parties, or point fingers at any specific religion? No. But there are a lot of hints provided, and as they say in Hindi, ‘samajhdaar ko ishaara kaafi hai.’ Even if intended for the Western market (I’m not sure if it is), the book doesn’t show a white-washed picture of an exotic India (à la The Henna Artist with its historical rubbish) but presents a grim reality of the dirty politico-religious underbelly of India. It hurts, all the more because it’s true.

As far as I am concerned, the book gave me much more than what I was looking for, and left me a saddened Indian but a satisfied reader. Much recommended, but to be read with an unbiased mind and a clear head.

To lighten the mood of this dark review, I’ll bid you adieu with a line that PT Sir tells his wife:

“Beware! What all you do on Facebook... It’s full of criminals.”