'One Small Voice': Read This Book To Understand The Reality Of India Today

 [First published in YouthKiAwaaz]

One Small Voice is the debut novel of Santanu Bhattacharya. The ‘one small voice’ is the voice of Shubankar “Shabby” Trivedi, who grew up in a typical upper caste, (self-defined) middle-class household in a small town in northern India. In the newly liberalising India, the greatest aspiration of his parents was to ensure that he had an English medium school education, studied engineering and got a well-paying job which would enable him to purchase a larger than the one his neighbours’ children drove.

His rather uneventful life was disrupted when communal violence swept through northern India in 1992, and he became the sole witness to a brutal lynching. He scanned the newspapers for many days hoping to find the name of the victim, but he soon realised that in times like that, the media reported stories of “deaths, not of the dead”.

For a quarter of a century after witnessing that incident, he would continue to try and seek the name of the victim, whose name he remembered started with the letter M. What shook him up most was the conspiracy of silence adopted by those who knew the victim- they chose to defame the victim by describing him as a “kaamchor” who probably went back to his village, only to avoid having to confront the brutal truth of his passing.

Though, on the surface, Shubankar appeared no different from hundreds of thousands of adolescents like him, this incident changed his worldview completely. He could not find common ground with his family, which, instead of condemning the lynching, chose to justify it. This led him to drift apart from his family and create an independent life for himself in Mumbai. This estrangement also led to small but significant acts of rebellion, like the time when he took a flat on rent in his name because the landlord was not willing to have a Muslim tenant.

Shubankar would still have remained a slightly stereotypical man if not for an accident that left him physically crippled, battling PTSD and questioning every aspect of his existence. The story is told in three timelines- the schoolboy Shubankar, who is a prisoner of the middle-class aspirations of his parents; the Shabby, who has broken free from his cloistered existence and is exploring Mumbai physically, sexually and emotionally; and the post-accident Shabby who is dragging out an existence while trying to decide whether to try and put himself together again.

The narrative shifts seamlessly between the various timelines, with each chapter gently pushing the story forward. The accident is alluded to throughout the book, and by the time we see details of it, it is almost anticlimactic and opens up far more questions than can ever be answered.

What are the schisms that hold the country together? What causes people to turn on those who have selflessly helped them in the past? How are some friendships sustained while others drift apart? What compels people to forgive those who they have grievously hurt?

One Small Voice is not just the coming-of-age story of Shubank Trivedi. It is also the story of India from the newly liberalised economy of the 1990s to a society where a new class attains affluence, creating more divisions between those who have access to air-conditioned malls and those who do not. It is the story of an India where people gradually stop trying to hide their communalism and where even affluence doesn’t necessarily protect you from becoming a victim of politically sanctioned mob violence.

The book tackles many issues that are of relevance today. The invisible labour of women, the pressure on high school students to get admission into professional courses, the increased indoctrination of young people, differential expectations on men and women, growing cynicism and changing definitions of morality. What could have become a tedious social commentary is avoided because of the well-developed character of the protagonists. Each of the characters has hidden facets, and they never fail to surprise us when they react in ways different from how we expect them to behave.

The story spans a quarter of a century- a tumultuous period where the country is repeatedly rocked by mass violence. However, regardless of the magnitude of violence unleashed, it is possible for people to remain only vaguely aware of it or to completely forget about it if they were not directly affected. However, the patterns of violence repeat and will continue to do so till the cycle of violence is broken. Through the stories of the remarkable set of characters, the author shows how the country is fractured along the lines of class, caste, religion, gender and language and how the gap between the powerful and the oppressed in each of these intersections keeps widening. The book starts with fire and ends with fire; the past, the present and the future are all intertwined and will continue to be.

Yet, the book ends with hope. The hope that sanity and peace will prevail; that silent masses will finally realise, as Shubankar’s parents do, that the idea of “oneness” which has been sold to them is actually divisive.

“What matters in the history of time is not the story that dazzles today, but the one that sparkles with so much honesty it survives. Even if it is old by only one small voice.”

This book is that “one small voice” which will endure. Read it to understand the reality of India today.

[The book is published by Penguin Fig Tree. I got a review copy from the publisher, but the views are my own.]

Book Review: ‘Climate Capitalism’ Offers The Optimism We Need In These Times

 [Written for YouthKiAwaaz]

The AQI in Delhi has been hovering between ‘unhealthy’ and ‘hazardous’ for nearly a week. Schools have shifted to the online mode, there are restrictions on outdoor activities, hospitals are reporting a sharp uptick in the number of patients with respiratory-related ailments and newsrooms are running programmes on what can be done to tackle air pollution.

When you witness the same story repeating itself every year, it is easy to give in the despair. “The Toon Guy”, Rohan Chakravarty, captures this eco-anxiety in his recent cartoon when an environment campaigner mourns- “It’s a lost cause. Nothing makes sense. We are all doomed.”

In such a scenario, Akshat Rathi’s book “Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions” offers a glimmer of hope. The author takes us on a journey across five continents and profiles unlikely heroes who are driving the fight against climate change.

From the Chinese bureaucrat who did more to make electric cars a reality than Elon Musk to the Danish students who helped to build the world’s longest-operating wind turbine or the American oil executive building the technology that can reverse climate damages, the book introduces us to people who are working in different ways to develop and scale technologies that can bend the carbon emissions curve.

Capitalism brought us to the brink of a catastrophe; capitalism needs to save us from it

It is unfettered Capitalism that has brought the world to the brink of a climate catastrophe. Though it has been obvious for decades that we cannot continue polluting the “commons” of the atmosphere without having to eventually pay an extremely heavy price, we failed to tax polluting industries.

Now, we have a limited time window for deploying solutions to reverse climate change, and that time is certainly not sufficient for overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a more benign system. If we are to achieve zero net emissions by 2050, it can only be done by reforming capitalism and harnessing the forces of capitalism to tackle the climate problem.

Climate capitalism, the author argues, is about aligning the world with what is considered economic common sense.

The author uses ten case studies from across the world to show how, in the long run, it would be tens of trillions of dollars cheaper to achieve climate goals than to deal with the costs that come from the damage caused by missing them. China is the world leader in the production of both Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the batteries that power these EVs; though the two stories are not directly linked, both were caused by the coming together of favourable government policies, people with an entrepreneurial spirit and the persistence required to develop new technologies.

The success of solar power in India too can be attributed to the coming together of people, policies and technology, and the story of wind power in Denmark shows how government policies can catalyse people and technology to come together to generate clean energy.

In the chapters, “the Fixer”, “the Billionaire” and “the Wrangler”, the author profiles individuals who, in very different ways, contributed to creating an enabling environment for clean technology. These are individuals who influenced government policy, ensured the flow of capital into cutting-edge research and who ensured that the climate agenda figured in top-level discussions.

Perhaps the most inspiring stories are those featuring Vicki Hollub and Paul Polman. Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, flipped the business model of her company from being one that extracts carbon from the ground to one that attempts to capture carbon from the atmosphere and bury it deep underground.

Yes, government policies played a role in making it economically profitable for her to do so. Still, this example shows that carbon capture is something that can be attempted on scale. Paul Polman changed the focus of Unilever to ensure that social responsibility was at the core of all their processes, resulting in the consumer goods company becoming the most sustainable company in the world. These two examples hold out hope that capitalism can align itself with challenging climate goals.

The book is overtly optimistic, but don’t we need optimism?

The book, however, paints an extremely rosy picture. While the ten stories profiled in the book show that a ‘green economy’ is both possible and profitable, what is left unsaid is the fact that this is possible only when multiple factors fall into place at the same time.

Each of the success stories is a result of the combination of favourable government policies which follow a carrot-and-stick approach, financial investment into R&D, technological breakthroughs, people with the foresight and ability to drive new processes, and a market that demands and consumes clean technology. It is unlikely that any of these success stories can be replicated if one or more of these factors are missing.

This book is an antidote for people living from eco-anxiety. It shows us that all is not lost; that if enough individuals demand accountability and climate justice, they can force governments, capitalists, and scientists to come together to start working on their ambitious climate goals. In the words of Bill Gates, who is also featured in the book, “(the book is).. an important read for anyone in need of optimism.”

The book is published by Hachette India. I received a review copy of the book, but the views are my own.

When you win a battle you never expected to win

WE WON!!!

Two simple words. But even 24 hours after the NGT ruled in our favour, the enormity of what we accomplished is yet to sink in.

How can people win against the system?
“We are just a motley group of people. How can we expect to take on the System”, I told a friend in a rare pessimistic mood last year. “Only the Avengers can pull this off; we are not them.”
When we set out to save the Chevella Banyans, we hoped to win, but I doubt if we expected to win.

Everyone makes it a binary between Development and the Environment
Everybody knows that banyans are a keystone species. Nobody denies the economic benefit of having a stretch of massive road lining banyans. Everyone claims to love trees.

BUT, that dreaded word- DEVELOPMENT! We were constantly accused to coming in the way of development.

We have been conditioned into thinking that it is always a battle between the environment and development. People advocating for the environment are branded as being “anti development”. But, it need not be a binary. Both can co-exist. Both must co-exist.

“Road bhi. Jhaad bhi” was always our slogan. Widen the road by all means, but do it so the largest clusters of banyans and some of the last Deccan grasslands are bypassed. But people were unwilling to listen. Sadly our planners first draw a road on paper, then force fit it on the terrain.

When we didn’t make much headway with changing public opinion, we had to go to the Court
Two years back, we took the case to the NGT, but we didn’t have a watertight argument even there. The law doesn’t protect the rights of road lining trees outside forests and reserves. We were fighting on a technicality. But our lawyer had faith in his arguments and we had faith in him.

Gathering the Data
How many banyans were we talking about? NHAI claimed there were only about 700 banyans. We estimated double the number. To resolve the matter, we walked the entire 42 kilometer stretch and counted the banyans on either side of the highway. There were 914 banyans!

While we were at it, we also geotagged each of the banyans, photographed them, and noted down estimated girth, height and other notable features. This database was invaluable. It helped us respond to each of NHAI’s claims with data based arguments.

The dreaded T-word
Then, there were the flagbearers for translocation. People genuinely seemed to belive that you can translocate trees the way you move furniture around your drawing room. We spent an inordinate amount on energy in educating people about what translocation implies, the low success rate, and how massive banyans such as these are unlikely to survive translocation.

Everything was in our favour, but would we win?
We were in a strange position. Everyone accepted the economic value of the banyan trees. Everyone realised that NHAI had made little effort to minimise the environmental disturbance. YET… the contract had been awarded. The trees had been marked and land acquired. Would the NGT rule in our favour?

The day before the judgement, I was asked if we would win. Though cautiously optimistic, I was realistic enough to say, “maybe not. But that we fought so hard with hard facts will make it easier for those who come after us.” The ruling was a validation of all we believe in.

The judgement is a landmark one because it recognises the worth of road linking trees which are outside forests or reserves. It drives a wedge into the current thinking that planting “n” trees compensates for felling one.
We hope that this ruling sets a precedent and is used by others to drive a wedge into the mad expansion of infrastructure without even considering the environmental repercussions of it. We would love nothing more than for others to build on what we achieved.

Book Review: The Centre, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

 [First published in YouthKiAwaaz]

It all began with Adam.
Doesn’t it always?
We met at a literary translation studies conference at Senate House, and it was through him that I first learned of the Centre.
Or….no, wait. Actually, pause. Rewind.
I should probably start with why I was at the conference in the first place.”

The first fifty words of Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s debut novel, “The Centre”, are clever and clumsy at the same time. Clever because the little wordplay and the introduction of the title of the novel into the text immediately draw you in. Clumsy because the words and style seem almost conversational. Both these descriptive words continue to swivel through the mind while reading the book.

The premise of the book is intriguing. The protagonist, Anisa Ellahi, was 18 when she came over from Pakistan as a student with dreams of achieving fame as the translator of important works of literature. Now, nearly two decades on, she was “living by myself, making mediocre karela cashew stir-fry,….. and pretending to make a living by writing subtitles for Bollywood films.” She meets and starts dating Adam, who has native-level fluency in ten or eleven languages. During the time they are together, she struggles to teach him even a few words of Urdu, but just before they fly to Karachi to meet her parents, she finds that he has acquired the ability to speak Urdu at the same level of fluency as her grandmother in just 2 weeks. Through him, she comes to know of a top-secret and super-exclusive program which promises fluency in just 10 days.

After breaking up with Adam, Anisa signs up to learn German at the Centre. Despite her scepticism, she emerges with absolute fluency in the language and proceeds to translate a slightly obscure German work, which is received with much critical acclaim. Though Anisa should be content with finally achieving all that she has ever dreamt of, she continues to remain unfulfilled. She is plagued with troubling dreams which clearly belong to “the Storyteller” whose narration she heard continuously for 10 days at the Centre. In her discontent, she reaches out to her Supervisor at the Centre and embarks on learning a second language. As she finds out more about how the Centre works, she continues pondering on the ethics of the immersive programme and whether the price extracted is worth it.

The Detailed Characterisation

Though told through her voice, the protagonist is extremely unlikeable. She is self-centred and ensconced within layers of privilege. Though she is a brown girl living in a racist society, Anisa’s class consciousness comes through in most of her interactions, especially in her interaction with her boyfriend. She looks down on her best friend’s boyfriend- though she justifies it by saying that her friend is consciously dumbing herself down to please him, it is clear that she also disapproves of him for who he is. She also, more than once, betrays both confidence and friendships without the slightest remorse.

The only recipient of her unconditional love seems to be Billie, the cat she jointly adopted with her boyfriend. Despite, or perhaps because of, being so unlikeable, Anisa comes across as a well rounded character.

The secondary characters are similarly well etched. Her best friend, Naima, goes through a complex character arc, which is extremely believable. That she is aware of what she is doing and still does it only makes it more poignant. Shiba, the Supervisor at the Centre, was probably my favourite character- independent, intelligent and caring. I wondered what she saw in Anisa that made her trust her so much. Through the characters of Anisa and Shiba, the author also brought home the fact about how quickly people living abroad adjust to a feudal lifestyle when they return home to India/ Pakistan.

Varied Conversations In ‘The Centre’

The book raises very pertinent questions about appropriation and assimilation. Can language be picked up through a brief but intense study, or should it be gradually assimilated through lived experiences? Can a person who achieves fluency in a language without having experienced the language be said to be truly fluent? At what point does assimilation through an immersive experience become cannibalisation?

The author describes how many multilingual people have “these sort of ‘neutral’ accents, the kinds of unplaceable dialects you sometimes find in third-culture kids or global cosmopolitan elites raised in the international schools and gated compounds of Oman or Turkey or Singapore”. She questions if it is a natural outcome of knowing multiple languages or because the speakers consciously or unconsciously strive for “unplaceability”. While the author talks about language and translation, one is reminded of R.F. Kuang’s recent best sellers “Babel” and “Yellowface”, both of which tackle similar issues. Who owns the language? At what point does learning and using a language not your own become colonialism and/ or exploitation? How should one value the contribution of a translator or an editor of a work? These are important questions, and while neither author gives any answers, at least the questions get flagged off.

The book also tackles themes of feminine friendships and relationships. She repeatedly talks about how women in romantic relationships allow their own fire to be dimmed so as not to outshine their heterosexual partners. She speaks of how female friendships are often devalued in a quest for a romantic relationship. Do women really need a heterosexual partner- can’t they survive and flourish even in the absence of romantic relationships as long as they have strong female friendships?

Despite being quite self-centred, Anisa consistently underplays her success and blames herself for every failure. This is a typical feminine trait, and it is often the most competent woman who suffers most from it. It is flagged off and left for the reader to ponder over or not. The other issue that is flagged off is the sexual dynamics at play in professional settings; the author brings up the interplay of consent and power structures and how men walk away from such encounters without having to pay any price.

The book is tightly paced. Though the story is set over several years, the pace lags and speeds up according to the needs of the narrative. Weeks pass by in a single sentence, while time slows down at when she is at the Centre. At a critical point in the narrative, we are presented with two scenarios, either of which might have played out- that we are kept guessing about which of the two scenarios took place in that blimp in time, only reinforces the point that is being made.

I would certainly recommend this book. Though 300 pages long, the pace of the book never flags. Many issues are brought up and left for the reader to resolve on their own. Towards the end of the book, you realise why ‘clumsy’ was a word that first came to mind while describing the book- there is a reason for the narration to be as it is, and it fits totally with the story. At the end of the book, more than one ending is indicated, and the reader is left to write their own. That, perhaps, is the hallmark of an engaging book.

The book is published by Pan Macmillan. I received a review copy, but the views are my own.