Alone and adrift

TRANSMISSION By Hari Kunzru, Hamish Hamilton, £ 5

There are few second chances in the crowded world of books these days. But if Hari Kunzru’s first novel, The Impressionist, didn’t quite make it after all the hype, his second novel, Transmission, takes hold of that second chance and doesn’t let go for a moment. From first to last page, Transmission is racy, intriguing, often hilarious, and a truly global novel.

The novel tells the story of Arjun Mehta, a geeky, socially awkward software type who has been body-shopped to America after a warm family send-off from his Noida home — but only to wait interminably on a bench in a downmarket San Francisco neighbourhood, watching daytime television and munching potato chips. Until he is picked up for a software assignment. His dream begins to come true when he is picked up by Virugenix, the world’s foremost virus-busters, even if he is only an assistant geek.

But the lay-off happens, as it always does, and Mehta is called in for the fateful final interview. Desperate to keep his job, young Arjun unleashes a virus into the world. To mark his feelings for Bollywood heartthrob, Leela Zahir, he names it Leela01. And soon the object of his affection is visible across computer screens all over the world. Arjun thinks that he has only unleashed a harmless little virus into cyberspace, an act he can undo with a little stroke which will get him his job back. But as computer systems come crashing down across continents, and life comes to a standstill, he begins to realize the enormity of what he has done.

Woven into the main thread of Arjun’s story is that of Guy Swift, an oversmart child of the New Economy who makes his money hair-splitting over brands, and selling images. But Swift’s life, precariously poised atop a ziggurat built upon bullet points and synaptical connections across cyberspace, begins to crumble with every new wave of the Leela virus. Meanwhile, Leela herself, making a Bollywood movie in a faux Scottish castle, has just about had it with her unreal life and her unbearable mother.

Interesting people, but Transmission is not so much the story of these characters as of trends that have criss-crossed the world recently: its great success is in describing the world of today in the language of today, and doing so in an entertaining way.

But the most compelling parts of the novel talk about the experience of the young, confused Indian geek, alone and adrift in a foreign culture. In suburban California, we are told, the only people on foot are either poor, or mentally ill, or jogging, or foreign — Arjun Mehta is both poor and foreign. And he thinks he will soon be mentally ill if he goes on like this: “The four benched consultants spent whole days in front of the television, eating chips and salsa and trying to ignore their creeping panic. Most mornings, one of them would have an interview, a tense half-hour hunched over the phone upstairs with the others trying not to listen, turning the tube up high, half-hoping and half-fearing that the interviewee would come back down hired. Usually, as soon as the client found out he was talking to a foreign national on a temporary visa, the conversation was terminated.”

This is a book that can not only make it to the Booker shortlist and even all the way to the prize, but also give Dan Brown a good run for his money. Transmission is like Pringle’s potato chips, but with zero calories: guilt-free, delicious and enormously addictive.