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Unveiling social evils

By Shobha Sengupta

When you pick up Pinki Virani’s book Deaf Heaven, be prepared to see the underbelly of human nature. Deaf Heaven is Virani’s first work of fiction, but is actually a thinly veiled piece of non-fiction. For with every character, every event, one makes a connection with all that’s real, and read about in the newspapers over the last few years. There are characters one instantly recognises: the Bachchans, Karisma Kapoor, Shobhaa De, Sadhvi Rithambara, etc. As one reads through the book, one recalls real events gone by. As a matter of fact, one tends to concentrate less on the several stories that Virani attempts to weave and more on the recall of what or who.

Journalist and writer Pinki Virani’s latest work is a commendable effort at documenting the social evils the country is plagued by, like rape and domestic violence, with the help of several characters, some of whom meet a violent end. It is important to remember that Deaf Heaven is a book written about issues of grave concern by a social activist. Virani’s expose of these through fiction may not be a significant literary work, but should be seen in the spirit with which it has been written.

Virani is the author of three books — Aruna’s Story, Once was Bombay, and Bitter Chocolate. All three are non-fiction and confront uncomfortable subjects. Aruna’s Story is about the rape of a nurse that left her in a coma. It recreates the real-life tragedy of a young woman who set out from her small village in Karnataka to be a nurse in Mumbai. She was brutally raped in the most shocking manner on the eve of her wedding to a doctor. Abandoned by her family, she now lies in the hospital where she once treated patients back to health, barely alive. Aruna’s rapist, a sweeper in the hospital, walked a free man after a mere seven years in prison for robbery and attempt to murder.

Bitter Chocolate, the book for which the author is best known, is about child sexual abuse in India. Once was Bombay is a collection of seven non-fiction stories with themes varying from the history of the city to analyses of its current state. This collection looks closely at the near collapse of the city ravaged by communal and social strains, and underworld terrorism.

Deaf Heaven experiments with a device that — unfortunately — is not entirely successful. The book is supposed to be narrated by a sutradhar (storyteller). This narrator is the spirit of a sometimes dead, sometimes dying librarian, who tells, as according to the author herself: "a pan-Indian story — its crises and realities —through a set of characters bound by six degrees of separation over a life-changing weekend." Saraswati, a Bengali librarian with a cleft lip, whose words do not make sense to the people around her because of the deformity, dies on a Thursday amid her beloved books in the library.

Her body is discovered only four days later. In the meantime, her spirit, freed from life, begins talking to characters placed all over the country. These include her sister Damayanti, wife of a superstar; Tisca, a heroine spurned by a rising star; Qudsia Begum, a Bengaluru beautician and wise mother; Czaerandhari, a former maharani and SMS addict; and Nafisa, a hard-talking journalist. The dead Saraswati narrates their stories, conflicts and crises. In the course of this narration of the lives of ordinary characters, the author manages a social and political commentary.

Pinki Virani, in Deaf Heaven, has not been able to stray from her forte: non-fiction. Throughout the book she has these clip-ons where facts have been boxed and highlighted. So whether it is the Bhopal gas tragedy, or Babri Masjid, or the Godhra incident, all have been factually placed in front of us, alongside her strong opinions on the subject. Non-fiction is this author’s forte, and she is far more comfortable in that genre. To give probably what is the worst example of her attempt at any literary style: "The truth is, both savagery and morality are deeply writ into us. In the human brain’s basement is our primal wiring, the amygdala. As we evolved from apes into humans, the amygdala kept us hardwired to react with suspicion to other tribes... (Think about the brain-fry if we lived only at amygdala level in today’s non-cave age!). Higher regions of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, can be brought into play to cancel the amygdala alert." Where was her editor?

Interestingly, Deaf Heaven is supposed to be condensed into a pack of 90 SMSes, to be made available this month through a SMS subscription pack, and it will also be converted into an audio mobile book. Her next book is aptly called Bloody Hell. Do pick up Deaf Heaven, it has been written with the best of intentions.

Shobha Sengupta owns and runs Quill and Canvas, a bookstore-cum-art gallery in Gurgaon