Video, vagrant love and violent revenge

The only way to make clear to you my confusion over Lady Lolita’s Lover by R. Raj Rao, is to sing that song from the Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer film The Sound of Music — “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria ” The song, if you recall, featured a bunch of nuns trying to figure out Maria’s character. Is she a flibbertigibbet, a will of the wisp, a clown Is she a headache or an angel

If I weren’t so lazy, I’d write a new set of lyrics for that song, featuring a bewildered book reviewer trying to figure out what to make of Lady Lolita’s Lover. How do you solve a problem like this novel Is it a miracle of substance over style Is it the most first-draftish of all the published novels I’ve ever read my whole life Should carbon-fighting, oxygen-providing trees really have been pulped to provide the paper for this book Can the book be returned to its editors for drastic rewriting Does it rate a 10 on a rising scale of headache-inducement from 0 to 10, or only a 9.99999

I dare those nuns from The Sound of Music to try and solve this problem. It’s beyond even the power of the mother superior. But then again, there’s no way I’d let this book get into the hands of any nun, particularly one from The Sound of Music. Because in spirit and temperament, Lady Lolita’s Lover is the very opposite of that beloved but so-sweet-it-gives-you-cavities movie. It’s a book about some of the more base aspects of the entitled middle class: sex and class.

Lolita was originally named Lalita, but changed her name because she feels nothing as plebeian as Hindi cinema’s most famous mother-in-law, Lalita Pawar, and Indian advertising’s most famous purveyor of detergent, Lalitaji. But after she marries Aroop, a merchant navy man with an almost inexhaustible salary account, she discovers she does have a taste for the plebeian after all. Specifically, she wants unlimited sex with an underage video delivery boy named Sandesh.

It isn’t hard for her to lure 15-year-old Sandesh into her vast flat in Dadar, where her husband hardly visits and her baby daughter is the responsibility of her housekeeper, Kamalabai. Sandesh has had the hots for Lolita ever since she walked into the video parlour where he worked, and complained about having to sign for triple-X porn. In almost no time, despite the presence of the baby and Kamalabai, Lolita and Sandesh are an item — and Lolita even pays him for the privilege, though the boy hasn’t yet figured out that sex is not necessarily love, and that love can be for sale.

Lolita knows what she’s doing but for Sandesh this is a fantasy come true: which means he’s living in la-la land. As the years pass, Lolita and Sandesh barely bother to hide their relationship any more, which provokes Kamalabai no end. So, eventually Aroop hears of it, and before Lolita can blink she’s been moved to Goa lock, stock and barrel. Sandesh has been beaten so badly, there’s barely anything left of his face and the video parlour where he worked trashed to nearly nothing.

The last is Aroop’s big mistake because the video parlour owner files an FIR and a tabloid reporter in search of any kind of crime files a story. A story that catches the attention of Mumbai’s top lawyer, Jeevan Reddy, better known as JR, who has Sandesh’s face repaired and files a case on the young man’s behalf against Aroop and Lolita, promising Sandesh lakhs in damages.

JR doesn’t do this purely out of the kindness of his heart. Though he’s Malabar Hill wealthy, he has a taste for the plebeian just like Lolita — specifically, Sandesh. In exchange for getting India’s top plastic surgeon to fix Sandesh’s face, and for suing Aroop and Lolita, JR expects Sandesh to become a part of his life. And so the young man, though he’s far from gay and still dreams of Lolita, does what JR wants. And just as he did with Lolita, he realises his value to JR and gets out of him what he wants. This time though, Sandesh is not innocent. He knows exactly what’s what.

Then Aroop appears on Sandesh’s horizon again, and Sandesh wants revenge. Violent revenge.

Lady Lolita’s Lover could be a good story. Somewhere in the mess of writing, it is a good story. But the way it’s written is not worth the paper it’s written on. If I were R. Raj Rao’s editor (which, thank goodness, I’m not), I’d twist his ear and force him to rewrite the book from beginning to end. Because this could be a great story, brilliant even, provided it was written well.

The elements are all there. The book deals with subjects that few writers in English have explored in India — sex and class, sex and age, the corruption of uneducated youth, the middle-class sense of entitlement. There is humour — this book could be truly funny except for the author’s strange need to explain his puns. There are insights into gay life that are much needed in homo-illiterate India. There are insights into the world of rent boys. Lady Lolita’s Lover has actually got a lot going for it. It’s really too bad its author and editor didn’t properly think it through.

Kushalrani Gulab is a freelance editor and writer who dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea