The quasipolitans

Dear Qayenaat,

Your unusual name is certainly one of the reasons I have chosen to write directly to you, the protagonist of the novel under review. I wanted to be able to use it right away, to signal that this is an unusual book, riven with odd and interesting dualities.

For instance, your name suggests that you’re a Muslim, though you’re not. It means “the world (…) all of God’s creation” yet you chose, early in your life, to use it without a surname as if cutting yourself free from the clutter of the world. As a single woman in her early fifties, you are the sort of character who, in murder mysteries, would be called “the spinster” whereas you’re actually a divorcée, bold and free. Your story includes a steamy romance but it’s really about Idealism and Art.

For all these reasons, I enjoyed meeting you. It was easy to think of you as a friend I might meet over coffee at the Bangalore Gymkhana. Yet for these same reasons, ie, because you’re credible and likeable, I found your actions during the course of your story increasingly difficult to justify. Take, for example, the incident with the cigarette lighter. Yes, you’re overcome with rage at that moment. Yes, it may well have been a nasty shock to find a best friend apparently flirting with your ex-boyfriend. But ... arson! Do you see what I’m saying? It’s extreme even for someone at the peak of a romance, never mind 15 years after the romance has died.

Frankly, even before that scene, I had my doubts about you. It’s not just that women who continue to smoulder for a man are edging into Classic Spinster territory. It’s also that Baban, the object of your past passion, is such a pompous, unattractive creature. We see him through your eyes as a caricature of today’s artist-superstar, a man who flies around the world with a glamorous young woman posing as his manager while he collects giant art commissions from hither, thither and yon.

Someone like you, intelligent and idealistic, would surely laugh at your youthful folly and move away? Instead the old flame is rekindled and you are thrilled when he suggests that he really did love you once and may still be interested in you now. Another ex-lover, Sathi, is also an odd combination of cool-cat-with-heart-of-gold and man-of-flexi-morals. He shares your home with you but not your bed. He cooks up dal-rice meals while also making embarrassing revelations about his undying love for you mid-dinner party.

I realise these are minor inconsistencies. But they pile up. The morning after the fire, for instance, when you are told that a death has occurred, you switch from being light-hearted about burning down a building to guilt-stricken about having inadvertently killed a friend. Even though it’s very clear that murder was nowhere in the picture, you take on the mantle of a marked woman and decide that you need to leave Bangalore, lie low and “go into India”.

So you run away to a small town called Simhal “1,500 kilometres away” north of Bangalore, with the idea of writing a paper about an obscure dance form that you had once seen performed. By going there you enter the Indian version of “Darkest Africa” where anything is possible because it’s not within the confines of a city. There are tribals and cellphones, a crumbling regal palace and enchanting dancers, loyal retainers and a mad queen-mother. There’s a surly, glue-sniffing young man who rides to your rescue on his two-wheeler when required and there’s also the classic tall handsome charmer — not merely a prince but a King — for you to lose your heart to. There are modern medicines to take care of your sudden illness and there’s also an ancient ritual that you find so savage, you realise you can no longer accept your self-imposed exile. You return to the city no longer fearing arrest because… well? Time heals all wounds, including corrosive guilt.

For me, the inconsistencies were like tiny, whining mosquitoes that I could not swat out of my mind as I read about your exploits. Eventually, they succeeded in drowning out the many interesting bits of the novel. I ended it feeling sleep-deprived and cross.

Fortunately, however, my response is likely to be atypical! For very many readers it’s good enough that you’re lively and witty, an older woman who’s taken charge of her life. Like Victoria, the Anglo-Indian heroine of Bhowani Junction , you feel the pressures of conflicting idealisms, you have the blood of an accidental death on your hands and you have lovers from three different strands of the modern Indian pantheon: an artist, a commoner, a royal. The discussions about art and ideology that you have with your companions are genuinely refreshing. Live long and prosper, as the Vulcans say.

— MP

Manjula Padmanabhan is an artist and the author of The Island of Lost Girls

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