[First published in YouthKiAwaaz]
India was thrown into disarray after the demolition of the Babri Masjid- communal clashes broke out even in cities and towns far away from Ayodhya, and the state machinery struggled to maintain peace and harmony. ‘Bhopal ’92: A Novel’ begins on December 7, 1992, when a Divisional Engineer is driven to work in his government vehicle by his Muslim driver, and finds that he is the only officer who has managed to turn up in the entire telephone exchange. Ensuring that the telecommunication network is up and functioning is critical to maintaining law and order, and the entire responsibility for that falls on the relatively junior Divisional Engineer.
The novel is set in the sprawling campus of the telephone exchange in Bhopal, and is told over a over four emotionally charged days, where all the employees who made it to work (including the Divisional Engineer) stayed on campus because they were not sure if they would be able to come back to work the next day if they went home. During these days, the narrator (who shares the same name as the author) needs to keep the moral of the staff up, ensure that the telephone exchange is safe from rioters who may try to disrupt communications, troubleshoots when things go wrong, and analyses the data of calls placed to find patterns which may assist the law enforcement agencies. All this, while simultaneously dealing with the many physical and emotional challenges that are thrown at him.
Bhopal 92 is described as a novel, but it is very clear that there are deep autobiographical elements in it. Even if the entire book is not a memoir, the author was the divisional engineer in the telecom department in Bhopal at a time when the Babri Masjid was brought down, and he captures the atmosphere of the city and inside the telephone exchange really well.
There are many scenes in the story which have almost been written keeping in mind a potential movie adaptation- you can almost visualise the hero jumping into his government vehicle and driving through the curfewed streets to fetch a linesman who can restore the power supply to the telephone exchange. The scene where he accompanies a grieving family to the morgue to get the body of an employee released is similarly so rich in visual detail that you wonder how the author was able to describe it so well. But even in those scenes, what really comes across is the charged atmosphere of the city- it makes you relive a time when passions were rising high, and streets were empty of people, except those who were intent on creating trouble.
While the narrator overcomes many challenges which threaten to prevent the smooth running of the exchange, he also needs to get his own thoughts and emotions in order. He notices how quickly people who were earlier friends suddenly become adversaries. He sees how people suddenly start displaying communal feelings which they never suspected earlier. The narrator himself tries to understand why an employee he was very fond of behaved the way they say he did- he wants to know the truth, yet is almost scared to find out the truth because he feels that living in denial might be better. These are all issues which remain relevant even today.
For me, the most fascinating part about the novel are the detailed descriptions of the working of the telephone exchange. In today’s world of mobile telecommunications and internet services, it is hard to recall that there was a time when everyone depended on the landline telephone system, where outstation calls often look days to set up. In those days, everything was done manually, it is fascinating to read about how the technology worked, and how the almost primitive system still produced results.
The book is described as a novel, but since the narrator has the same name as the author, it is hard to determine how much of the story is true and how much is fiction. We know that the settings are real, and we suspect that many of the people and incidents might be based on real people and incidents, but attempting to sift through fact and fiction is sometimes tedious. There were times when I wished the book was a memoir instead of a novel, because while the book might have lacked in drama, it would nonetheless have taken the reader back to an extraordinary time and would have still given us a lot to think about.
The ending of the book is slightly ambiguous. You do not quite know what the author is trying to say- but perhaps it doesn’t even matter too much because the book is a record of a time which we have forgotten. It is important that we remember the time, because the times when some people revert to their basest instincts are also the times which bring out the best in other people.
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