Visions of an apocalyptic future

Aradhika Sharma

Nayantara sahgal’s book vibrates with her sense of disquiet about the direction that she feels that India is headed towards — of extreme Hinduism and polarisation. In a speech (which was never spoken but was printed in several publications), she had expressed her discomfort about “all that is happening in India today, because it is affecting every side of our lives: what we eat, whom we marry, what we think and what we write, and, of course, how we worship.” The book reflects similar foreboding about a dystopian future that seems too close. 

The compelling story starts when Prabhakar, a political science professor who has written a new novel, is forced to violently step on the brakes of his car to avoid running over “a body that had suffered the fate of butterflies”. Axed, nude and lying spread-eagled on the road, the corpse has nothing on but a skull cap. The portents are omnipresent and grim. There’s a military tank stationed at the entrance of a university with its turret pointed at the doorway, the statue of Gandhiji that represents the Dandi march is destroyed and bulldozed, the earth in the kabristan is ‘overturned by a giant excavator’ and history books are re-written to eliminate altogether the existence of the Mughals. The general mood — even among the European community stationed in the town— to “put an end to intrusions by outsiders” and to ‘keep Europe European”.  Within a country, war criminals of a generation become national heroes of another. 

The growing trend towards separatism gives credence to the theory that Prabhakar had espoused in his book: The influence of those who preach goodness and compassion weakens before the matter-of-factness of cruelty practised by majority communities. Boundaries of culture and nationalism are redefined by people like Mirajkar, the ‘Master Mind’, a brilliant policy maker and political theorist, whose agenda, and that of his partymen, is to purge the country of every ‘alien’ element. This alien-ness, however, is defined by him and his policymakers, who ruthlessly excavate the age-old pillars of a society moored in virtues of compassion and morality. Just as the Spartans had created a whole nation of fierce warriors by taking away the childhood of the children, these people set out to change the very fabric of society,   

Prabhakar discovers that people and things that are perceived as ‘different’ in the town are being systematically eliminated. His favourite dhaba or ‘kaif’ , run by Rafeeq, stops serving its famous gular kebabs and rumali roti. Bonjour, a restaurant where he loves to have leisurely breakfasts, and which is run by a gay couple, has been wrecked by some lumpen elements. And he reads Katrina’s account of the vicious gang-rape of women of one community by men of another community, that is so heinous, so spine chilling that the reader simply wants to shut his eyes to avoid reading the sheer savagery of it. Katrina has come out alive but carries the livid physical and psychological scars on her body, mind and soul.  

Sahgal spares no punches. She’s written a book that’s stark and bleak and visualises the dystopian society, where Bharat isn’t matarbhumi any longer but pitrabhumi and women above the age of 17 would be addressed as Devi “as a mark of respect in a culture which revered women”. It’s a terrifying book where we encounter violence, bigotry and extreme nationalism. 

It’s a difficult book to read — the language is incisive, every sentence is textured and the images that she creates are so frightening that one simply wants to block them out.The hatred that pervades, the hunting and oppression of the innocent people who are ‘different’ are visions of a possible future that one would shudder to behold.