Prayaag Akbar’s second novel, sharper in craft and ambitious in its scope, tries to understand the perils of living in Modi-fied India
Like his fine debut novel Leila, the dystopian tale of a mother trying to reunite with her daughter as the country around her shape-shifts, Prayaag Akbar’s Mother India (HarperCollins India) tries to understand the perils of living in Modi-fied India. Except that this one gets much sharper in craft and ambitious in its scope. The brilliant cover art by Bonita Vaz-Shimray — an aesthetically curated Instagram page with each alphabet of MOTHER INDIA spelled in a different square box — and the stories on top in circular blurbs titled ‘Home’, Puppies, ‘Travel’ give away the two central concerns of the novel: the pervasive and pernicious presence of social media and the tight clasp of right-winger politics, and the way they marry together to create an appalling, blood-curdling portrait of contemporary India.
Kunal Purohit, in his astutely argued and thoroughly researched book H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars (HarperCollins), talks at great length about the use of kitsch art to forward propaganda. This use of shoddy videos, disgruntled voiceovers, and manipulative facts has succeeded in creating a sense of alarm among Hindus against the Muslim takeover of the country. One just needs a stable internet connection and a decent mobile device to shoot a video or create a meme. And that’s all. Post it, and then wait for the tensions to incite.
The Propaganda Machinery
Except that most of these don’t understand the implications of their actions. It is not only the tantalizing idea of fame but also the prospect of earning money that fascinates these jobless, powerless youth. That, coupled with the moral righteousness of ‘protecting one’s country from invaders’, can prove to be a devastating combination of pride and self-assurance, propelling them ahead without a whiff of doubt.
The protagonist of Akbar’s novel is one such young man: a pup-loving content creator, Mayank. He works for a social media agency owned by a snooty Kashyap that deals in propaganda videos. The task at hand is to make a video of Bharat Mata after a JNU student’s fiery speech and refusal to chant a patriotic slogan took social media by storm — her populist image (unlike the lyrical wash of Abanindranath Tagore) in a red saree and sindoor in the parting superimposed on the Indian map, two intentionally dwarfed boys in skullcaps standing near her haunches, pelting stones on her limbs and breasts, causing big, gory-red blotches of blood to blot the screen.
The other half of the video is animated with the JNU student’s face photoshopped over Alia’s bikini body. The voice-over to accompany the video dictated by Kashyap goes like this: “Student of the Year says he doesn’t love Bharat Mata. Why should he love Bharat Mata? What has Bharat Mata given him?” As the speech goes on to include caste and other volatile subjects, Mayank wonders if such topics are even the content of his guy’s speech. The confusion grows, and he questions meekly, “Isn’t it that this guy, in his speech, said he loved the country? It was only this one symbol that he felt was not appropriate.” To which Kashyap rebukes him for being naive, adding, “It doesn’t matter what he is saying. What he’s actually saying or trying to say. It matters how we interpret it.” This emphasis on ‘we’ and the pithy conversations that pin down India’s current politics and its plummeting into a despicable authoritarianism make reading this novel a real delight.
The Many Versions of Reality
But while this might be one version of reality, Mother India doesn’t stop there. Instead, it jostles with other vectors that shape our modern consciousness, one of them being capitalism. In the second part of this four-part novel, we get a bird’s-eye view of a claustrophobic glass shop selling a vintage brand of chocolate called Dojuri through the salesgirl Nisha. She embodies a typical small-town, middle-class girl who dreams of a plush life in the metropolis. Suspended between two versions of her life — the bone-dry, conservative life at her hilly hometown, which she wants to run from, and the shiny, thirst-trappy abundance of her life at the shop that she aspires for — she faces a nerve-wracking uncertainty. She is unsure of herself and her place in the city. The fling with Siddharth, her senior at work, allows a sense of security to breed in her.
This section is replete with uncanny observations and gut punches, peppered as it is with elite customers and their eccentric demands. A constant tussle prevails between customers and sales executives, the former never leaving a chance to put the latter in place; the latter playing out imaginary scenes or mumbling cuss words under their breath at the former’s shenanigans. A man always buys two pieces of everything to avoid confusion between the wife and the mistress, and when these people can’t even buy one, it makes them wonder if [the ability to purchase] ‘is real power.’ Nisha doles out lucrative advice to customers whenever they sound indecisive: ‘Most people are here to buy knowledge. Some facts they can keep in mind to justify the expense.’
The Forces of Development
The third force that the novel delineates are disillusioned ideas of development and the rampage caused by them in animate and inanimate life. Unlike capitalism, which is taken a cursory look at, we get to examine the spectacle of development from diverse vantage points. First, and the simplest of all, the strike of luck in the development of Mahipalpur, and not Masoodpur, because it fell on the side close to Gurgaon Highway, turning over a new leaf in the residents’ lives, not ‘making them powerless in the face of change’ for once.
Second, the rushed construction of the metro pillar in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games, which caused a girder to fall, crushing many, including Mayank’s father, and its political and personal aftermath. Third, the unnatural raging wildfires of Ranikhet, so late into the season, which Nisha’s brother-in-law, Manoj, a local reporter, finds suspicious and begins to investigate.
Fourth, the stranding of migrants at the periphery of the shining metropolis. A policeman comments that a suspect sounds Indian as he is gradually sobering. A tenderness washes over Mayank when he looks at people sleeping on the pavements closely: “It’s hard to tell if someone is illegal as they sleep; they issue the same sounds, and the legs twitch still to the primal simian beat.”
Social Media’s Narcotic Snares
Social media’s narcotic snares and their potential to spread like wildfire come with their own brand of problems. One of which is the slipperiness of consent. Nisha realizes that her photo has been lifted off without her permission after a notification alerts her. Her sister has posted an online poll asking users if the two photos stacked side-by-side look similar. Nisha is aghast after seeing it. Not only because of the surreptitiously used picture but also because of her sister’s nonchalance to use her picture without asking her.
The three characters — Mayank, Nisha, and Manoj — come together in the last section, each of them trying to seek power to assure themselves of their place in the country or in the world, either through social media, the dream of a comfortable life in a big city, or the excavation of truth. While the last few pages can feel rushed, in a book length running over less than 200 pages, this masterful novel tries to achieve what could have easily run into many, many hundreds. A portrait of contemporary India, sketched with precision, alacrity, and understanding, it makes for essential reading.
