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A Burning by Megha Mujumdar left me chilled. And it wasn’t just because the book reflects the realities of present-day India, but because this story could be anyone’s story. This could be your story. This could be my story.
Sedition is a serious crime, one worthy of rigorous investigation by law enforcement authorities, but in the world of the novel, all that gets thrown out of the window. All it takes is a single tweet, post, share, comment to be labelled as public enemy number one—due process be damned. If you are unfortunate enough to have the ‘wrong name’ or practice the ‘wrong religion’, that just makes their job easier. Whatever little hope you might harbour of a free and fair trial, you should leave it at your doorstep the second police drag you hand-cuffed across your threshold in the middle of the night. The system, your friends, the press, your fellow citizens (especially your fellow citizens) will fail you; it would be foolish to think otherwise.
Jivan is living the dream, well not really, but her family is better off now than when they once were. When they leave their impoverished life behind in the village to live an impoverished life in the big city, a chance encounter with an NGO worker brings forth a small reversal in fortune. And so, on a ‘poor-people scholarship’, Jivan begins her formal education at an English school. Jivan is not blind to this privilege and is determined to make the most of it. She studies hard, learns English (the language of prosperity), plays sports with enthusiasm and after passing her tenth standard exam, quits school and gets a job as a salesgirl at Pantaloons, a large retail chain. With her salary, she supplements her household’s income, buys her mother a new saree, a shiny blue one with a border, and for herself a smart-phone — the size of a brick. Her dream of being ‘middle class’ someday is off to a promising start.
Then a terrorist faction set a train on fire one night, and all goes to hell. Jivan makes the mistake of calling out the government and the police on social media for the ineffectualness. It doesn’t help that she was present at the railway station (to smoke a cigarette, oh the irony) at the time of the burning. Or that she is Muslim. Or poor. As the book progresses, we learn that’s all the government needs to declare her as the culprit and for people to bay for her blood.
The story is told from three distinctive points of view: Jivan (the protagonist, the victim), Lovely (the hijra, Jivan’s only friend and ally) and PT Sir (an opportunistic teacher at her old school, who feels slighted by her insufficient gratitude for the kindness he has shown to her, he had after all given her food from his tiffin. A banana here, a sandwich there).
Amongst the three voices, I found Lovely’s to be the most compelling and entertaining (if such a thing can be said about this book). She also shares the most in common with Jivan; they both live on the fringes of society and have the audacity to want a better life for themselves. Perhaps this is why they are drawn to each other. Lovely dreams of becoming a movie star and Jivan teaches her English so that she can read scripts and talk to big-big movie producers. By sheer luck and a strange turn of events, Lovely gets her big break, but it comes at a price. Did you really think it would be free?
Of all the characters, it was PT Sir, who was the most hair-raising. The man, dare I say, embodies the worst in all of us, an ordinary person, all too willing to turn the other way in the face of depravity if it is self-serving. The author portrays this so splendidly in the final conversation between Bimal, the newly appointed chief minister and PT Sir. The scene left me with a deep sense of discomfort because it was all too easy to slip into his shoes and roost there.
I loved the sparse, unsentimental prose. It felt as though the author had chosen each word, each sentence, each analogy to inflict the most hurt upon the reader. Ironically, it is the lack of melodrama that darkens the mood of the book.
I did not care much for the interludes that expand upon the lives of the minor characters. At one point, especially with these sections, it felt like the book was trying to do too much. Also, the quick changes in perspective and the switch from first person to third person takes some getting use to, but these are small gripes.
No matter what side of the political divide you come from, A Burning gives you a lot to think about. For that alone, I would recommend it.
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Reality in fiction
“I saw my mother then as a woman. I felt her humiliation. And where I had always felt shame, I now felt white-hot anger” – Megha MajumdarPower. A word so often used that the depth of its meaning is no longer felt. An expression of authority. A privilege. Our downfall.‘A Burning’ is the story of three characters: Jivan, Lovely, and PT Sir, whose fates were intertwined in the circumstance that changed their lives. Not that they didn’t know each other, but they pretended not to for the sake of theirs and their family’s well-being. But that’s how the world works, isn’t it? We mind our own business and look after our lives, without an iota of care for the lives that are being affected. Our civilization is built on this principle.The book highlighted a fictional tale of true events that happen in India now and then. A person is guilty when the government and the people say they are, and not because of the truth. Broken foundations lead to the crumbling of even a grand structure; which is exactly what’s happening to our country. The book was well written, except for the fact that the grammar was changed for each person, making it seem like Lovely didn’t know English and Jivan knew very little; something that I did not appreciate. Other than that, the book was a masterpiece, nay a memoir, of some lost soul.
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