“Everything in Legal Fiction is fiction. All that is fiction is fiction, of course, but even truth is fiction. If the people, stories, places and incidents at any point appear to be true, it is our collective misfortune. We advise you to consider it a fault of the imagination and move on.”
I read these lines three times, before I thought I could get a glimmer of Chandan Pandey was trying to convey. After finishing the book, I circled back to these lines, and they finally started to make sense.
The book deals with an India where reality and fiction coexist so seamlessly, you cannot distinguish between the two. An India where the enactment of play appears more real than reality itself. An India where life imitates art, and art is based on life.
The story is loosely based on a now forgotten incident where a policemen saved a man from a lynch mob. But the characters and settings are universal. We hear mumbles of similar incidents, which are soon drowned out by tidal wave of fiction and misdirection, till all that remains in the memory is a vague sense of resentment against the favourite enemy!
The book tackles the issues that define small town India- growing religious intolerance, corruption, patriarchy, intimidation, violence and fear. It dares you to look in the mirror to confront a reality you want to avoid. It forces you to look at an India where reality and fiction blend so seamlessly you find it hard to distinguish between the two.
*spoiler alert*
The book ends where you least expect it to, leaving you to write your one ending. Is the writer challenging us to chart our own destiny?
*end spoiler*
The work is a translation, but at no stage did it seem translated. The flavour of the original was captured so well, you almost caught yourself mentally translating them back to the original Hindi/ Bhojpuri.
A difficult read. But if there is one book you want to read to understand the India of today, it is this.
No comments:
Post a Comment