Book Review | Story of a Gun and a Boy Forced to Grow Up Quickly
The narrative is packed with action and keeps the reader engaged. The plot moves through towns, gangs, families, friendships, and enmities
This is the story of Arvind and Sudipto, two schoolboys transplanted into the steel town of Rannwara, a small settlement in the forgotten backwaters of Indian life. One of them is a Tamilian (a ‘Madrasi”) and the other is a Bengali. Their struggles with the bullying they experience as a result of their ‘outsiderness’, coupled with a not so idyllic family environment (in the case of Arvind at least), and a chance encounter with Amar, a hitman from Mumbai, sets the stage for violence and revenge. It is as though the town is on edge, the fuse primed and ready to be lighted and then — it explodes with a single gunshot.
The narrative resounds (through the casual conversations and taunts of its characters) with all the regionalist prejudices and stereotypes that are so much a part of our everyday lives. We find those descriptions and cliches about communities and people only too familiar (even as we choose to ignore them) caught up as we are in the exhausting business of living. As such, the novel is a saddeningly realistic slice of human existence. That this is still pretty commonplace even in modern-day India is a depressing thought.
The narrative is packed with action and keeps the reader engaged. The plot moves through towns, gangs, families, friendships, and enmities. Some of the depictions are wonderfully detailed, even poetic. The manner in which the author describes the deadly arsenal that the hitman Amar carries, the assembling of the guns, and the particularly graphic description of THE gun is specially noteworthy. It is striking and replete with irony that the beauty and precision of the object is so much at variance with its purpose, its raison d'être!
Relationships, power struggles, the cruel underbelly of the human mind, the intense hatred and vindictiveness that drives ‘innocent’ schoolboys is depicted in all its starkness without any justification or whitewashing. That the family — supposed to be the sanctuary and the balm for the wounded souls returning after doing battle with the world — can be just as alienating, traumatic and cruel is a truth that we often overlook. How much do insensitive parents and other relatives contribute to the anguish, bitterness and loneliness that assails so many of us? And which eventually culminate in violence and bloodshed directed at oneself and at others?
The characters are well-etched and they stay true to form, propelled by upbringing, individual propensities and the pressures of societal and familial expectations. All of these come together, orchestrate and decide how someone will react when pushed against the wall, at the end of their tether and with no option in sight. The book is ultimately the story of a boy forced to grow up too quickly and painfully to hold his own in a power-hungry and exploitative world.
The reviewer is an award-winning translator and former professor. She is presently a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
Gunboy
By Shreyas Rajagopal
Harper Fiction
pp. 397; Rs 499