Book Review: 'The Light At The End Of The World' By Siddhartha Deb

The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb

Publisher: Context 2023

MRP: Rs 799

Siddhartha Deb바카라™s commitment to deconstructing 바카라˜India바카라™ has been an abiding one. His depiction of India in 바카라˜The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India바카라™(2011), known for the controversy around the 바카라˜expunged바카라™ excerpt titled 바카라˜Gatsby in New Delhi바카라™, had ruffled many feathers by unearthing the fallacy of free-market capitalism and its insatiable hunger. His recent work is also a nuanced meditation on India - the politics of identity, dangers of cultural dissoluteness, the paranoia of fear-mongering, victimization and recovery of Indian syncretism.

As a renewed contact with history, Siddharth Deb바카라™s The Light at the End of the World (Context 2023) emerges from a historian바카라™s inner vision of India바카라™s nightmarish socio-political truths. Combined with a luminous rhythm of lyricism and a haunting reality of the loathing of humanity, the novel is a refreshing exposé of India바카라™s blighted past and strives to render searing insights into ethical questions that mortgage the present and the future of a nation. Deb바카라™s magic realism dredges up a nation바카라™s subterranean reaches to identify the maladies and the grace of syncretism to soothe India바카라™s scarred, tormented consciousness.

The novel begins with the invading nature of fog, a metaphor for intimidating oddity of realities. As I write this, the decision of the University of Kashmir to remove the works of Indian-American poet Agha Shahid Ali and Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer from MA English and BA courses is bound to jolt radical minds to the rude awakening of Bob Dylan바카라™s prophecy: 바카라˜We live in a political world/ In the cities of lonesome fear.바카라™(Political World). Deb바카라™s nature imagery raises a moral scaffold around the demon of fear induced by the politics of identity.

Deb바카라™s tongue-in-cheek humour in dedicating the novel to 바카라˜all ghuspetiyas everywhere바카라™ is an endearing intimacy with humanity that foregrounds India바카라™s vision of inclusion. It is also a satire aiming at those forces that relentlessly push Indian democracy into a black hole of power wielded by the cultish faith in majoritarianism. Blending fictional and non-fictional narratives, the novel confronts the chronic imperialism of ethnocentric culture that slots dissenting voices into the framework of seditious 바카라˜othering바카라™. Alluding to the Hindi poet Shrikant Varma바카라™s reference to Hastinapur, the Kuru Kingdom of the Kauravas in The Mahabharata, the chapter 바카라˜Claustropolis:1984바카라™ weaves two parallel narratives -India's first major industrial Bhopal gas tragedy and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Both narratives are grotesque in evoking the magnitude of uncertainty, fear, animosity, and carnage. Amidst the gravity of human condition that smells of 바카라˜burnt meat바카라™, Deb바카라™s dark humour hits hard as the narrator is enticed by his 바카라˜aashiqui spirit바카라™ (romantic spirit) and hears the iconic Kishore Kumar Bollywood song 바카라˜Chingari koi bhadke바카라™(When a spark flares up). A few pages after that one encounters the 바카라˜naya zamana aayega, aayega바카라™ (The new age will come), a reminder of the euphoric proclamation of the BJP government 바카라˜achhe din aane waale hain바카라™ ('Good days are coming바카라™). Deb바카라™s juxtaposition, showing the rupture between ideology and deficiency, brings out how individuals feel psychologically vulnerable and can ill-afford to keep their sanity against a steady diet of the ultra-hyped India where, ironically, the poet and former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee vents out the ordeal of fair governance: 바카라˜Faces are unmasked, /the stains are very deep,/ the magic is breaking, today I fear from the truth./(I) don바카라™t sing a song.바카라™

Readers can discern the left-wing perception in the allegorisation of major political events. Though it underscores the tragic irony of democracy, Deb바카라™s imagination seems to revel in the feverish passion of political ambition and the drowsy indolence of democratic truth in the ruling political party. One cannot rule out the intrusion of a left-wing journalist and his crisscrossing of diurnal and political, real and surreal realities in uncovering the ironies of political deception that thrives in a climate of ideological decay. What appears journalistic in the fiction is reactionary though Deb cherry-picks events. His esoteric guise of events, aimed at the Hindutva ideology, unravels the open-minded liberals subjected to cynical hostility. What Deb contests is the danger of ideological homogeneity eroding the ethos of India. What his narrative intends is the recovery of cosmopolitan tolerance.

In the last section of the novel, India drifts into an apocalyptic world. What pervades is a sense of quest that coexists with multiple incompatibles. Against the all-pervading forbidding atmosphere, what Bibi registers is a luxuriant depiction of irredeemable desolation and impending nothingness. However, amidst the lingering sense of emptiness, Deb employs impeccably the symbols of irrepressible yearning for regeneration through 바카라˜peacock바카라™s tail바카라™, 바카라˜cephalopods바카라™, and 바카라˜Buraq바카라™. The cryptic ending to the novel recalls John Keats바카라™ sensuous perception - 바카라˜The poetry of earth is never dead.바카라™(On the Grasshopper and Cricket)

Siddharth Deb바카라™s The Light at the End of the World claims its relevance and authority from the radical scepticism of a historian committed to re-envisioning the pluralistic ethos of India, the neurosis of regressive, ideological primitivism, and the savagery of intolerance. Deb time-travels in his sprawling narrative with his tools of cultural signifiers. The novel creates a sense of enlightened recognition and invites a reappraisal of India바카라™s chequered past and present to foretell the ways of the future.

(Sudeep Ghosh is an independent writer based in Hyderabad. He can be reached at sudeepmailsu@gmail.com)