Londonstani
By Gautam Malkani
Penguin Press, 342 pages
Available at Powerbooks
Gautam Malkani is a young novice writer who’s out to prove his literary mettle in this modern world of melting pots, multi-culturalism and 21st-century angst and displacement. The setting is London, the borough of Hounslow, which travelers will recognize as that area you drive by as you arrive at Heathrow Airport and pass en route to London. In much the same manner that Taglish was created, the gangsta language the young residents of Hounslow converse in is an invigorating patois of Indian words, English grammatical constructions, and texting lingo (a glossary is provided at the end of the book). Jas is our protagonist/guide to this subculture, and along with his mates Amit, Ravi and Hardjit, we’re thrust into this world of kids barely into their teens, who are forced to confront a world where identity and belonging are as clear and defined as a beaker of murky sewer water.
For outsiders, this microcosm we enter is teeming with Pakis. But as Jas quickly sorts out for us, this world is, in fact, highly structured and hierarchical. First off, there are Sikhs, Muslims and Buddhists, while the whites who live in the area are referred to as goras or desis. Within Jas’ own world, there’s even the joke about how you don’t marry BMWs – black, Muslim or white. There’s constant "complicated family business shit" in this world, and it eventually drives a friend named Arun to suicide. There are intricate dating (and mating) rules and rituals. Constant in this world is the veneer of toughness, and how women are seen as objects one can possess but never relate to on an equal footing.
Cross-cultural influences abound. Whenever Jas gives advice to his mates, he channels Morpheus of The Matrix, but confesses that Amit’s mother couldn’t get into the movie as she found it too realistic, given that "there were no songs or sari changes in the film." In order to gain notoriety or status within the community, even at a young age, the boys have to find some means of making money behind the backs of their parents. To achieve this, the boys steal cell phones and set up a business unblocking the phones and passing them on to a retail network that deals in stolen goods and reconfigured cell phones.
This is very much a modern morality tale with intricate plotting, with a more than spectacular twist at the end regarding Jas’ color and identity. Rather than quoting you lines from the book, I opted to keep intact the surprise of discovery on how the unique language is faithfully rendered in the novel. This is a coming-of-age novel that dares to be different while staying as real as real can be. Well worth the purchase, and Malkani is a name to watch out for.
Ten Second Staircase
By Christopher Fowler
Bantam, 356 pages
Available at Powerbooks
If there’s a guilty pleasure I enjoy about England and the English, it would be for the eccentrics that seem to pop out of the English woodwork, with latent sensibilities intact. A creation of noted author Christopher Fowler, the septuagenarian detective team of Arthur Bryant and John May are a delight to follow. Ten Second Staircase is the latest installment of our intrepid heroes’ exploits, as they head London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. This is the unit tasked to cover crimes that have far-reaching social impact and repercussions, and are marked by strangeness that conventional crime units may find tedious to handle.
The novel is a wonderful mishmash of modern art, the Knights Templars, and secret societies of social dislocation and murderous vengeance via legendary and quasi-mythical figures. And it kicks off when one controversial female artist is thrust into her own installation artwork and murdered. The one eyewitness, a member of a grammar school class that was on a field trip to the art gallery, claims that the perpetrator of the crime was riding a stallion, and dressed up like a 17th-century highwayman.
This precipitates a chain of serial murders, and our over-the-hill, overage detectives are assigned to the case. All this happens at the same time that the Unit itself is being questioned and is being considered for possible disbandment. The charm of the book is in the detailed world that Fowler creates for our two heroes. They’re stubborn, they’re crabby, they’re forgetful, and their bones creak – but they’re outrageous fun. As when Bryant enters an office in the course of his investigation and the following exchange takes place:
"Your chairs are horribly uncomfortable," complained Arthur Bryant. "I crossed my legs and fell off."
"They’re Philippe Starck," said Julio Stamos. "They’re intended as a style statement!"
"If you’re going to keep people waiting for 20 minutes, you could perhaps try making a comfort statement. Treat yourself to some cushions; it wouldn’t compromise your ideals too much."
Elsewhere, May enters a specialist bookstore, and he "glanced at the depleted shelves, checking their covers – The Papal Outrages of Boniface VIII; Lost Zoroastrian Architecture, A Treatise on Catastrophe Theory Concerning Saturn and the Number Eight, The Cult of Belphegor, and Biggles and Algy: Homoerotic Subtext in Childhood Literature… it remained a defiant bastion of the abstruse, the erudite and the esoteric. Hardcore readers only."
And it is touches like these that make the world conjured so real and detailed, and yet so magical at the same instant. Can’t wait for the next Bryant and May mystery.