Capital drama

What would Lear do if he were to exist in today’s Delhi? This could potentially be a breaking news headline or a question posed in any prime time show. In this context, “ Bhagwan sab kuchh dekh rahe hain. Papaji sab kuch dekh rahe hain” could also be the line that sums up the fictional and historical dilemma of a King Lear set in modern-day Delhi. Asking questions while the big daddy watches, however, is not allowed in the saga of the great Indian patriarchy that Preti Taneja charts out over 545 pages.

Still, We That Are Young is an exercise in figuring out the questions that dog Delhi’s glitterati in their ceaseless — since eternal would be too elevated an epithet — and somewhat mundane quest for walking the tightropes of status quo and faux pride.

Naturally, the patriarch of the story — brush up your King Lear — is the protagonist who cannot let go of his tragic ironies. Being a modern-day figure, Devraj — ironically, ‘king of gods’ — is fraught with OCD-like behaviour and tragic capers that climb newer heights with every turn in the book. His iron-fisted control is accepted by all.

His daughters Gargi, Radha and Sita are prized mannequins in the family set-up. The three could have been characters out of Chekhov’s Three Sisters , but for their singular lack of meaningful agency for a large part of this sprawling novel. Most times, the three women act as per the father’s will and offset their emotions against all that churns around in this brooding family drama.

Gargi’s seeming quest for an idyllic existence manifests in poetic desires where she wants to wear verses around her body:

these are stories of love,

Tales of youth, drunken pleasure,

Some filled with clemency, endurance.

Others colored with vanity endurance.

I am young,

I am still young.

But this too is only a lament of sorts. From Gargi’s opulent engagement ceremony — where she can show skin — and feeling accomplished at keeping an iconic Dayanita Singh photo in her possession, to Radha’s sheltered life among the men she sometimes conjectures as monsters, to Sita’s seemingly emancipated ecological activism, there is, within the grander family hierarchy, the sordid hierarchical limitations of each of these characters. Gargi holds the key to the office, yet feels it hangs “flaccid in her hand” and that “she’s only the performing elephant for Radha’s PR team”. Radha’s relationship with her partner Bubu, which seems to encapsulate her other relations too, is a ritual of enticement and apathy. To Bubu’s suggestion that she should move to his parents’ at Paradise Park and enjoy the privilege of going “from bedroom, to car, to covered shopping” all the while “without even feeling she had left the house”, Radha’s desire to rebel remains wishful thinking, a mix of teenage fantasy and adult iconoclasm, the latter obviously a tottering hyperbole:

— I don’t want to, she had said. I like going to London; they have the best clubs, and street food you can eat until three in the morning.

Street food continues as a compelling image in Radha’s life, as though the act of desiring it nourishes her failed rebellion. The food metaphors — particularly, gulab jamun — in Taneja’s sentences, in general, convey the sense of Delhi as a heightened epicurean bundle of emotions, at times even clashing.

Other than ‘Lear’ the patriarch, the significant male characters that move the storyline are Devraj’s aide Ranjit, and his sons Jeet and Jivan, the latter an illegitimate child. They and the sisters, alongside several others, offer a ringside view of a grand-scale life of an elite family that is tied to and propelled by rather old-fashioned social mores, business wrangling, and the game of one-upmanship. That is where the book seeks to rewrite the epic tale of King Lear in the dreary but opulently baroque settings of Delhi.

Significantly, Company, the business outfit owned by Devraj, alludes to postcolonial nostalgia, a credible aspect of this Farm-owning, surveillance-prone business empire. Farm is another symbol of unpalatable activities a reader might visualise in this book of turmoil.

In this large canvas of human follies and ambitions, Sita, a foil to her sisters and the other major characters, comes out as the ‘rebel’, triggering her father to disenfranchise her from the family’s wealth and advantages that ensue from Farm and Company. The forces are unleashed as Sita steps out of her safe haven and Jivan arrives in Delhi.

Taneja’s narrative sweep emulates the Shakespearean story arc, if at all there’s such a formula. The palace intrigues are not quite virulent in this book, the deceptions are not exactly executed fully, the loves and relationships are less theatrical and more calculating, and the fears and anticipations are sans trepidation. In portions it reads like the Bard is presented on a raj-kachori platter — if one were to drop another food metaphor — where tastes vie with each other, till the king-size fried puffed dough crumbles. A sincere attempt that comes close to a lot of possibilities. The sentences and dialogues excel in Indianisms, or, rather, Delhi cliches, although at times the effort seems laboured. From corridors of high power, to deeply misogynistic and patriarchal norms, and filthy rich men controlling their subordinates, the story is perhaps a familiar one to those who know Delhi well. But this story must be told, as Ranjit says to Jeet at some point, “We are traveling — stories are for retelling —”.

Nabina Dasis a Hyderabad-based poet who teaches creative writing

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