Delhi noir

“Doesn’t he read a lot like Naipaul?” asked a colleague as she leafed through a copy of Aatish Taseer’s debut novel, The Temple Goers, at the Oxford Bookstore last Wednesday. A few minutes later, as Taseer read out passages after passages from his book at the launch ceremony in a wise old man’s voice, words strung together in precision paid homage to Taseer’s most obvious literary influence, VS Naipaul.

And as he narrated a part of his novel (“a typical party scene in upmarket Delhi”), Naipaul himself leapt out of the pages as an intriguing character referred to as the “Writer”. The Writer in Taseer’s book is the visionary who almost predicts the lead protagonist’s brush with fate. Much like Naipaul, he is astute and is dismissive about the concept of India as a democracy. As the party scene is played out in the living room of a posh Delhi household, we indulge in a game of identify-the-Delhi-celebrity. Isn’t the somewhat loud, chief minister who also happens to be a royalty of Jhaatkebaal (an imaginary state) modeled on a certain CM of a princely state? Isn’t the mother of the protagonist modeled on Taseer’s mother (journealist Tavleen Singh)?

Full report here Indian Express