Book name- THE FANTASTIC AFFAIR OF DESPAIR
Author- Doorva Devarshi
Published by- Picador
Price- Rs 499
Doorva Devarshi’s debut novel is the story of a woman we know as ‘she’ and it traces her journey from her cramped office-life in a city to a city of frescos, onto a Himalayan dharmashala and, finally, into the labyrinth of nature. In this journey which she undertakes, or rather is driven to undertake, she and the reader meet multiple other characters who come into contact with her for a brief period of time before either she, or they, move away.
But the novel is not just the story of this one “silent woman” as the blurb describes her. It is the story of her being made into what she is today along with the lives of the multiple other ‘silent’ women whom she comes into contact with as well as with the men who have made them so. The women in the novel are all silent in one way or the other in the face of the systemic violence and the generational traumas they seem to be carrying. Be it Mrs Pradhan, the woman’s landlady, Leela Ma, the sixteen-year-old pregnant wife of the owner of the dharmashala or the generations that have come before them in the form of the mothers and the grandmothers of these characters, they have all not only faced and absorbed violence but also passed it down to future generations through their (in)actions. The men — Kailash or Bablu Nath, Aarav, Kumar or the woman’s uncle — are complicit in this suppression, either by being agents of violence themselves or by turning a blind eye to it.
There is another strand that runs in the novel with more of a folklore-like quality and links the violence of a man’s world to the violence he unleashes on a mostly forgiving and compliant nature, trying to drown every opposition whether it comes in the form of mankind or the mythical beast that is said to be prowling around civilisation. Devarshi tries to bring all these strands together through the agency of the main character who, ultimately, leaves the world behind to come face to face with this much-feared beast of the fables.
There is strength in Devarshi’s writing, and in the way she describes the wanderings of the characters and links them with others around them. But the novel falters in its attempt to bring together the mythical and the everyday. Her attempt to tackle too many themes also dilutes the book’s power somewhat. There is a sense of disjointedness that runs throughout the narrative mirroring the disjointedness of the protagonist’s life. This quality is further amplified in the final lap of her journey wherein Devarshi attempts to bring the story to closure. Then there’s the prose; it is lyrical and poetic but can, at times, draw too much attention to itself. The Fantastic Affair is not flawless but shows promise.