Q and A. By Vikas Swarup
Doubleday; 303 pages
** 1/2

Tokyo Cancelled By Rana Dasgupta
Fourth Estate; 383 pages
**

Reviewed by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Every now and then, the publishing world issues a familiar beam: Presenting the Next Big Thing in Indian Writing. Indian Writing: presumably a gold standard that new writers, of Indian origin, or writing about India, have to aspire to. Vikas Swarup and Rana Dasgupta have both recently shared the dubious honour for their debut fiction. The books and the writing are markedly different; the common slot they occupy being defined by Six-figure advance & Marketing hype.

In Q and A, Ram Mohammad Thomas has won the biggest TV quiz show in history: Who Will Win a Billion? He is a poor waiter from Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum. There are two catches, however. For one, he has never gone to school. Two, the foreign franchisees of the show don’t have a billion rupees to pay out at once – they are suffering a money crunch. Ram is accused of cheating and arrested. A young woman lawyer arrives JIT and spirits the boy home where he tells his story in thirteen chapters. Since his rescue from a dustbin, the orphan has led an amazing life that has fortuitously supplied him with answers to each of the quiz questions. And thus unrolls the first Bollywood film on the printed page.

The author, Vikas Swarup, is obviously enamoured and inspired by the Indian filmmaking tradition: dacoits, provincial princess, teenage prostitute, masochist Bollywood star, underworld Bhai – the Garam masala is all there. There is even the mother in white sari and long black hair who surfaces periodically like some long-suffering yo-yo. To that, he has added a generous heaping of herbs de etrange: bisexual Movie Mogul, gay Christian priest, spying Aussie diplomat, Voodoo practising Haitian. Tying the various strands together is a series of daft coincidences: the woman lawyer is actually the young girl Ram had rescued from an abusive father; the smarmy quiz show host is actually the mysterious masochistic lover of one of Ram’s ex-employees, and of Ram’s sweetheart; Ram is on the show not to win money but, no guesses here, actually to seek revenge and kill the host.

For an Indian, well-fed on a rich diet of Bollywood, Q and A is a tired book. Approach it as a non-Indian reader and you will find a universe of psychedelic imagery, bizarre concurrences, madcap characters, and discover Bollywood in a book. And just as a Bollywood hero from an impoverished background can recite Urdu poetry and drive Ferrari with ease, uneducated Ram can spout philosophy, speak like an autist, and hold forth on topics such as Poverty, Desire, Life. 

“I wanted to write something different, not the run-of-the-mill Indian family saga,” he says of his novel. “No karma-dharma exotica.” Though not a family saga, Q and A is stuck in the spice trap. What is served up in the end is the ubiquitous Indian Curry, a dish privy to all foreigners, and no Indian. (Curry: a term cooked up by the Firangis to encompass the cornucopia of Indian gravy dishes.)

Rana Dasgupta, a fan of Chaucer, an ex-Marketing Consultant, insists that he is Indian only in name since he was born and brought up in UK. Further, he demolishes any attempt to be pinned down by his ‘Indianness’ by opening his book in an un-specified airport where a Tokyo bound plane has landed, huddling together thirteen passengers who tell stories of places as removed as London, Lagos, Paris, Poland, Detroit, Delhi, Osaka, Odessa, Bosporus, Buenos Aires…

He wanted to write tales, he says, not for the stories but for the entertainment. Certainly, they are inventive: a boy who becomes the custodian of memories; a young girl whose presence makes sheets, clothes, newspapers grow and sprout; a Japanese entrepreneur in love with a rubber doll; a sailor who coughs up a sea bird; the role of Oreo cookies in making Robert De Niro’s love child a wizard… The stories-within-a-novel is free of any leit motif or central vision; the only common thread being how fantastic each story can get. And, strangely, for thirteen different narrators, the tales emanate consistently as if from one voice.

The thin line between “magic realism” and plainly ludicrous stands frequently revealed: “the air she exuded with her slow breathing smelled better than anything they had ever smelt. It made one feel young and vital, it made you feel like reproducing!”

If only the author had treated each story as more than an ‘ideas rack’, the feeling of exhilaration in the initial pages would not have turned to frustration. Sheherazade produced her masterpiece, One Thousand and One nights, under the fear of execution. King Shahryar’s sword was obviously a better motivator than a Publisher’s six-figure advance.