The 23-year-old protagonist of Anisha Lalvani바카라s debut novel Girls Who Stray is unnamed. In the absence of a name, A becomes one among many young girls, who must navigate mean streets and cities patrolled by the patriarchal playbook. After pursuing a degree at an 바카라obscure바카라 British university, A returns to India. Her father, a not so well-off government servant, has bought an apartment at Greater Noida. Theirs is not a happy home by any standards: her parents are divorced. The two of them live in separate houses, in separate cities. Her father plods on, at a loss to find words for what he is feeling, and her ailing grandfather lives with him. A has no idea what the future holds for her. A year ago, when she had flown to England (on the wings of a hefty student loan), she had dreamt of leaving India behind and building a career abroad, of leading a life of first world glamour, of embracing a future secured 바카라in the middle of dreamy England, moors that undulate all the way to the stormy ocean.바카라
But reality bites. She realises that her degree isn바카라t of any practical use. Burdened with her loan and armed with her degree, she comes home to an India teaming with startups and angel investors; 바카라new pipelines, expanding airports, smart cities sprouting at every corner바카라; an India 바카라where anything produced anywhere in the world can be bought at throwaway discounts during festival seasons바카라. She is filled with dread at the prospect of selling out to corporate greed, 바카라enticed like everyone else, by the promise of a steady, medically insured, provident-funded future.바카라
Listless, A wanders around Delhi, Noida and Greater Noida. She sees the gap between the privileged and the poor widen; the scales of justice more and more skewed, poised between tragedy and farce. Soon, she falls for an obscenely rich property developer. Trouble follows (as it usually does, when property developers are involved). There is a double murder, the question of her complicity in it, the weight of guilt she lugs around. The novel features a lot of kinky sex, but it바카라s hard to figure out what pleasure바카라if any바카라A gets from her violent lover바카라s lovemaking. Eros no doubt moves in mysterious ways and marches to its own beat, but I wouldn't blame readers who tire of the couple's encounters.
What Lalvani excels at is in capturing the protagonist바카라s feelings of alienation. As a brown person in England, A finds herself at a loss to fit in. Most of her fellow students seem to belong to rich families and are free from financial worries. They are well-read, well-travelled, and have an air of assurance that money bestows on them. A struggles to be part of their so-called intellectual discourse and ends up contributing the bare minimum. Her self-doubt in a foreign country is very well sketched, as is her unease in her home country. She feels like an outsider in England. She feels like an outsider in Delhi and Noida, where powerful men with money and connections make all the rules.
The novel echoes the real-life violence and misogyny that women are subject to in public places in Delhi and its suburbs. Women, marginalised by both class and gender, are the worst affected. As A wanders around the city, she sees the seedy underbelly of it. She sees protestors gathering at places like Jantar Mantar바카라바카라farmers, masons, artisans, tribals바카라, who have been deprived of their livelihood, their land, and their homes. She feels a spirit of solidarity with the marginalised, but is buried too deep in her anxieties and uncertainties to join their ranks and to hear their stories.
Lalvani writes with poetic intensity about the city and the streets, about the brutality of sexual violence, about pervasive sexism in public spaces, about the value judgements heaped on girls like A, who wander (a.k.a 바카라stray바카라) in India. A is an atypical fictional heroine, and her choices, misguided as they may seem at times, raise important questions about desire, love, control, freedom, and female agency.
A understands she is privileged. She has flashes of insight about how she is in a far better position than millions of others across the country, who are 바카라desperate for a job, millions mangled, raped...still cleaning shit from the clogged sewers for a living because they believe that is what they are destined to do바카라. But her insights rarely translate into action because she is mired in her private anxieties.
The novel is seeped in a strong sense of place. Lalvani has a keen eye for detail and her descriptions capture the horror and the beauty of the many spaces A drifts through. The gothic facades of the English university town A lives in for a while, the paved streets, the 바카라charming textbook village바카라 next to her university, the meadows and moors, all come alive on the pages. Back in India, A바카라s observations about the cityscape바카라the blind march of progress, the stark differences between the spaces that the wealthy and the poor call their own, the streets where danger lurks and sexual predators roam, the streets where men roam free and women are advised to tread cautiously바카라are vivid and original. A바카라s outsider status is established clearly and her coming-of-age pangs are keenly felt. But the thriller elements seem like a forced addition at times, and the erotic escapades can get tiresome. As a coming-of-age narrative, Girls Who Stray lingers long after you finish reading it.
