I was sitting at a coffee house recently when a fellow storyteller proclaimed, 'In India there are no 'state of the nation' novels, only 'state of the state novels'. I thought there was merit in her assertion. India is too vast, too diverse to be bundled within the folds of a single novel.
But another novelist, a creator of short experimental novels, asked, 'Then what about Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children?' 'It's primarily a 'Bombay' novel - and mind you, not a 'Mumbai' novel - because that's the part which rings most true.' The novelist held firm to her opinion.
And then I put forth my two bits: 'So by that parameter, is Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy a 'Bihar' novel?' 'No,' she said. 'It is primarily a Punjabi novel, because that's the part which rings most true.'
A noted polemicist, she had just changed goalposts and brought in ethnicity to buttress geography. I wanted to bring Qurratulain Hyder's 1959 novel Aag Ka Dariya and Shrilal Shukla's 1968 Raag Darbari into the discussion. But I knew my friend would describe them both as 'eastern UP' novels. 'Perhaps in India, all novels are 'state of the nation' novels.'
As I walked back, I thought about ways to write a complex and political novel set in India that would appeal to readers across the country. I then thought about one of my favourite novels, VS Naipaul's 1961 A House for Mr Biswas, set in the Caribbean but, in ethnicity and attitudes, probably the best Bhojpuri novel not written in that language.
So, there are no set rules. A 'state of the nation' novel is probably easier to write in a continent like Europe where each nation has, at best, two main languages. Even geographically, countries are compact and there's homogeneity in terms of culture and ethnicity. There a Gunter Grass could write The Tin Drum (1959) and accurately take the temperature of war-time Germany.
I can't think of a single novel set in India which can be called an equivalent. Also, it helps when you set out to write an extensive 'state-of-the-nation' novel to go fabulist or magic realist, rather than social realist in your endeavour. Aag Ka Dariya and Midnight's Children are examples of the former, and A Suitable Boy of the latter.
In India, those novels work best that take as their canvas a single city, or a homogeneous geographical unit, to tell their story. Two novels come to mind. In her book, Quarterlife, Devika Rege sets out to describe the rise of the Hindu right and Maratha chauvinism in Maharashtra. She does not set out to include the whole of India in her novel because she knows that what is politically and culturally true for Maharashtra is not true for Bihar.
Rege is one of those rare Indian novelists writing in English or other Indian languages, who understands the intricacies of caste dynamics and does not shy away from describing their shameless effrontery. Apart from its structure, what surprised me was Rege's female characters know how to negotiate men, a skill which, if one goes by the novels published in the past decade, women have fully foregone or lost.
Anjum Hasan's 2024 novel History's Angel is set in Delhi, around the time of the CAA agitations in December 2019. Its protagonist, a Muslim school teacher, is in love with Delhi's architecture and heritage. But he feels alienated by the blatant communalism. While not yet so, he feels the North Indian Muslim is well on the way to becoming a second-class citizen.
History's Angel does not purport to be a 'state-of -the-nation' novel. It doesn't even set out to be a 'state-of-the-Muslim' novel. It works because Hasan knows her old Delhi well. Sometimes it is through a compact chronicle of a bustling lane that one takes the pulse of an entire city.
And that brings me to Anuradha Marwah's 2024 Aunties of Vasant Kunj, a joyous skewering of South Delhi attitudes and prejudices that uses as its canvas a single DDA colony, and yet feels universal in scope. Sometimes, when you go smaller in your narrative gauge, you hit the fictional mother lode.
But another novelist, a creator of short experimental novels, asked, 'Then what about Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children?' 'It's primarily a 'Bombay' novel - and mind you, not a 'Mumbai' novel - because that's the part which rings most true.' The novelist held firm to her opinion.
And then I put forth my two bits: 'So by that parameter, is Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy a 'Bihar' novel?' 'No,' she said. 'It is primarily a Punjabi novel, because that's the part which rings most true.'
A noted polemicist, she had just changed goalposts and brought in ethnicity to buttress geography. I wanted to bring Qurratulain Hyder's 1959 novel Aag Ka Dariya and Shrilal Shukla's 1968 Raag Darbari into the discussion. But I knew my friend would describe them both as 'eastern UP' novels. 'Perhaps in India, all novels are 'state of the nation' novels.'
As I walked back, I thought about ways to write a complex and political novel set in India that would appeal to readers across the country. I then thought about one of my favourite novels, VS Naipaul's 1961 A House for Mr Biswas, set in the Caribbean but, in ethnicity and attitudes, probably the best Bhojpuri novel not written in that language.
So, there are no set rules. A 'state of the nation' novel is probably easier to write in a continent like Europe where each nation has, at best, two main languages. Even geographically, countries are compact and there's homogeneity in terms of culture and ethnicity. There a Gunter Grass could write The Tin Drum (1959) and accurately take the temperature of war-time Germany.
I can't think of a single novel set in India which can be called an equivalent. Also, it helps when you set out to write an extensive 'state-of-the-nation' novel to go fabulist or magic realist, rather than social realist in your endeavour. Aag Ka Dariya and Midnight's Children are examples of the former, and A Suitable Boy of the latter.
In India, those novels work best that take as their canvas a single city, or a homogeneous geographical unit, to tell their story. Two novels come to mind. In her book, Quarterlife, Devika Rege sets out to describe the rise of the Hindu right and Maratha chauvinism in Maharashtra. She does not set out to include the whole of India in her novel because she knows that what is politically and culturally true for Maharashtra is not true for Bihar.
Rege is one of those rare Indian novelists writing in English or other Indian languages, who understands the intricacies of caste dynamics and does not shy away from describing their shameless effrontery. Apart from its structure, what surprised me was Rege's female characters know how to negotiate men, a skill which, if one goes by the novels published in the past decade, women have fully foregone or lost.
Anjum Hasan's 2024 novel History's Angel is set in Delhi, around the time of the CAA agitations in December 2019. Its protagonist, a Muslim school teacher, is in love with Delhi's architecture and heritage. But he feels alienated by the blatant communalism. While not yet so, he feels the North Indian Muslim is well on the way to becoming a second-class citizen.
History's Angel does not purport to be a 'state-of -the-nation' novel. It doesn't even set out to be a 'state-of-the-Muslim' novel. It works because Hasan knows her old Delhi well. Sometimes it is through a compact chronicle of a bustling lane that one takes the pulse of an entire city.
And that brings me to Anuradha Marwah's 2024 Aunties of Vasant Kunj, a joyous skewering of South Delhi attitudes and prejudices that uses as its canvas a single DDA colony, and yet feels universal in scope. Sometimes, when you go smaller in your narrative gauge, you hit the fictional mother lode.
