The City and the Novel

Sailen Routray

Somehow, Bombay has been, till very recently, seen as the ‘only city’ in the national imaginary. Through representations in the films produced by the Bombay-based Hindi film industry, and in Indian English novels, the Bombay of the mind often occupies a greater imaginative space than the real Bombay. Paradoxical as it may sound, cities become real only when they are creatively imagined into being – through novels, stories, memoirs, feature films, and other artistic forms.  

In the English language, no other Indian city perhaps has received as much creative attention as Bombay. But Delhi, of late, seems to be getting some imaginative care; in such a context, the book under review, Lovers like you and I can be seen as a Delhi novel, although it does not self-consciously fashion itself as such.

The novel is etched around a middle-class Delhi girl, Nayan, who is hopelessly in love with Salil, an intriguing character who has serial monogamous relationships with many professions that include being a student of civil engineering, medieval history, and photography, as a researcher in music, and being a general lay about. 

This relationship is counterpoised to Ratri’s (Nayan’s mother) relationship with her husband which is increasingly loveless; her journey from the tiny town of Kalchini to a humdrum existence in Delhi is alleviated only by an almost magical presence of Hindustani classical music in her life. Therefore, at another level, this is a novel about music, and the ways in which thinking about it can inform the ways of narrating fiction. Discussions of ragas frame discussions of people and situations, and discussions of people and situations frame discussions of ragas.

Apart from the protagonists, a set of intriguing characters populate the pages of this novel – Nayan’s brother Neel who shifts into documentary filmmaking after his graduation, and remains only sporadically in touch with his family; the reclusive writer Harshini Deb who likes her glass of gin; the eccentric film maker Palash who mentors Neel; and the young suicide Jugnu who continues to haunt the memories of Nayan and Neel years after her death following an unwanted pregnancy.

But as already mentioned, perhaps more than anything else, this is a novel about Delhi, especially the Delhi of the 1990's and early 2000's, when a set of drab habitations suddenly congealed together to form a city – the new, artistically vibrant, and culturally diverse ‘cosmopolis’ that we know today.  

This novel recreates the sociality that was birthed into existence over the last couple of decades in Delhi through conversations in the neighborhood roadside chai shops near academic campuses such as the National School of Drama, through private parties in the houses of the artistically accomplished, and through the hothouse work culture of the increasingly numerous and important media organisations. 

At the same time it also pays homage to a much older Delhi – the poetry of Ghalib and the Qutub Minar haunt the architecture of the novel, and the poet himself plays an important role in the story when the protagonists – Nayan and Salil – meet while fighting over a copy of a special edition of Divan-e-Ghalib at the book store at the Shri Ram Centre.             

The storyline, although it meanders to Benares and Nepal (following the ever-peripatetic Bengali diaspora), is deceptively simple – boy meets girl, boy and girl grow distant, and, then, the closure, where their possible reunion is hinted at. The plot meanders with its own logic around this plotline and is quite simple. But the novel is ambitious in other ways. 

Different kinds of narrative voices (third, second and first) are used, in the form of letters, diary entries etc. for producing narrative complexity, and a roughly hewn texture. For example, Maithili’s (Palash’s muse and ex-lover) diary entries, written in the first personal singular voice, give us glimpses into the transition from life as a carefree young adult in Kathmandu to the closeted life of a Bengali housewife in Baghbazar in North Calcutta.

This has a strange resonance with the story of Jugnu that we encounter in the beginning of the novel, whose life is tragically interrupted with her suicide. But sometimes these voices do not congeal into a whole that hangs together. Although it must be said that the dissonance so produced is not always disagreeable. 

In a similar way, there is an attempt to make Hindustani and English talk to each other in the novel, especially through the Hindustani poems of Salil and their English ‘translations’ by the novelist. Sometimes such tactics work, sometimes they don’t.

The manuscript of the novel was shortlisted for the Tiber Jones South Asia Prize for the year 2013. The book is well-produced. It liberally uses sketches (more than thirty in number) that are perceptively and beautifully etched, add to the narrative, and heighten its appeal. The novel, although adjectival at times (a common failing of Indian novels written in English), makes for an engaging read. 

It must be said here that certain sections of it could have made for better reading with a greater amount of editorial attention. If the particularities of Delhi would have been etched out with a few more details, the book could have had more depth. But despite these quibbles, this reviewer sincerely hopes that Lovers like you and I receives the deserving attention of readers.

Details About the Book: Minakshi Thakur. 2013. Lovers like you and I. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. 210 pages. Rs 275. ISBN: 9789351160298.

Note: A version of this review was first published in The Dhauli Review in 2014.