Express News Service
The Faraday Cage––an enclosed space that shields its interiors from electromagnetic radiation––is perhaps one of the most significant discoveries by English scientist Michael Faraday. From protecting electronic devices to the construction of a prison, its applications are endless, across various fields. Its clever use in Siddhartha Deb’s The Light at the End of the World is surreal for a variety of reasons. It is reasonable to suspect that the principal characters in each of the four novellas that constitute the book are living in a Faraday Cage, tailor-made to their circumstances.
The first, ‘City of Brume’, is set in near-future Delhi with hyper-visible effects of climate change. Meanwhile, India has witnessed a series of demonetisation and the world has been ruptured by a “Chinese flu”. Former journalist Bibi, who would have been termed as a ghuspetiya by the current dispensation, is presently working for a consultancy firm, Amidala, and has been tasked to find a former colleague, Sanjit, from the Daily Telegram.
Bibi and Sanjit, who is speculated to have died in a car accident, had worked on a few assignments that could potentially put Amidala’s clients in trouble. The narrative meanders in a dreamlike trance, but the taut storytelling resembles Deb’s journalistic vigour. Sample this, a moment when Bibi is exiting
a typical Delhi farmhouse after being instructed about the job: “Then the door shuts behind her, muffling the man’s coughs and the priest’s murmurs. The way back is shorter, more direct, without any of those levels, as if Bibi has imagined it all.”
The undertones of nationalism continue in the second novella, ‘Claustropolis: 1984’. Its protagonist is a hitman, who after murdering Sikhs in Delhi is on the move to Bhopal, which is about to witness the Union Carbide disaster. He is following a “target”, who can potentially put the American company in jeopardy for their questionable security equipment in the factory, and like Bibi, is a “test subject in a labyrinth, a rat in a maze”. Another Faraday Cage.
The hitman, whose patrons describe him as someone who is “ready to fuck every enemy on behalf of the nation”, feels shielded by his “dharma”. The world Deb recreates from India’s past, resembles its current climate where an army of people have dedicated their lives to the “cause” of nation-building. The cage here is an insecure institution, for anything that’s built on erasure is doomed for disaster.
Further, there are uncomfortable jokes throughout the tale that stay true to the character, who is describing everything in first person. But, call it the curse of the path of the dharma he’s on, which prophesies karma, he finds himself uneasy when he sees flashes of “a pink turban”—shadows from his past he can’t seem to ignore. While he’s taught “compartmentalisation”, keeping separate parts of his life in separate boxes––one for Manu’s book (Manusmriti) and one for sex, etc.––the lines get blurred time and again.The author consciously outlines details that string the novellas together. Not only are they connected by the fact that they all describe an oppressive institution of some kind, but also that they’re all driven by a quest. It’s fitting to note the continuous mention of a boatman: a philosophical innuendo about people navigating through the river of life. It finds mention in the music of Ranen Roychowdury and Bhupen Hazarika that Bibi listens to. Here’s an example: “At the lake, I asked the boatman to remain on the shore. He was long and thin, this boatman, almost a man of two dimensions.”
The following tale, ‘Paranoir: 1947’, has a veterinary doctor, Das, as its protagonist. He is given the task to pilot a vimana. India is going to be partitioned soon; bloodbath awaits. The committee that has delegated Das on the mission believes that this aircraft can help prevent the tragedy. One is not sure whether Das gets to pilot it though. Sample this sentence that accentuates the confusion: “Who is this pilot inside the pilot?” There’s someone following Bibi and the hitman across novellas. And just like them, Das also finds the “synchronicity” of his life disturbed. The mentions of (Sigmund) Freud and (Nikolai) Gogol’s stories further heighten the drama. And once again, there’s a boatman who ferries passengers in his “little boat”. In the final novella, ‘The Line of Faith: 1859’, which was slower than the rest, a colonial soldier is trying to find the fugitive Magadh Rai, who participated in (or perhaps led) the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857. An uncanny sentence is often repeated:
“Have you ever?”
The novel is not only a testament to the fact that uncomfortable truths are often revealed in fiction and poetry more than in “bad journalism”, but it’s also a departure from the South Asian novels that are churned out as if from an assembly line production.
In more than one way, it’s a subliminal telling of the present and foretells the future, confirming the arrival of, as novelist Karan Mahajan notes in his blurb, “a new kind of [a] subcontinental novel genre.”
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