Geek God

After spending years in the 1920s, the decision was deliberate, says Kunzru, aged 33 and a bit. But the feel of new-millennium India did not come from days at the India Office Library, as with the first book; it was born in biannual visits to India over the past two years. 8216;8216;I have cousins in Noida, an aunt in Jaipur,8217;8217; says the author, whose mother is English and father, Kashmiri. 8216;8216;It8217;s awesome, the way Noida sprang up from simply nothing. That kind of energy is something you just don8217;t get in London.8217;8217;

But, of course, that8217;s a quality a Kunzru8212;UK-born and bred8212;can appreciate more than Arjun Mehta, tech graduate with silicon chips for dreams and a US visa for wings. Twenty-something Arjun, one of Transmission8217;s three leading characters, crosses geopolitical borders, only to realise in the land of the free that mental barriers are tougher to overcome.

Ironically, it was in the US, when Kunzru was promoting his first book, that Transmission was born. 8216;8216;So many cities, so many hotel rooms, after a while the sameness of it set me thinking,8217;8217; he says. This was also just after 9/11, when Kunzru8217;s 8216;8216;cafe cregrave;me8217;8217; complexion inevitably attracted hostility, if not downright hatred.

Alongside the germ of a wry, rollicking book, the circumstances bred in him a desire to go beyond the surface of the UK8217;s significant 8216;other8217;: the Muslim population. Kunzru recently played journalist in a Channel Four documentary on Islamic art sourced from The Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, Russia, and a private collector.

8216;8216;Actually, I wasn8217;t supposed to be on the show,8217;8217; Kunzru tries to hide his big grin behind his hands. 8216;8216;Some friends of mine were making the film, I arm-twisted my way into it to be able to meet the authors and art historians who could enlighten me on a subject I knew nothing about.8217;8217;

Notwithstanding his permanent place in the Indian glossies8212;a position he seems quite resigned to8212;it is surface appearances that provoke Kunzru the most. Transmission surprises the reader with its familiarity with Bollywood stereotypes, right from the sleazy producer to the pushy mama, the stud hero and the location shoots. All this, assures Kunzru, is the result of interest born during London8217;s much-hyped Indian Summer in 2002.

8216;8216;Bollywood Dreams made me realise I had to go deeper,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;And watching the black-and-white movies of the 8217;50s and 8217;60s the Dev Anand-Nutan starrer Tere Ghar Ke Saamne is a favourite, I found there was an emotional core I could connect with8212;my father8217;s sense of humour was more Raj Kapoor than anything he had seen in the UK.8217;8217;

In Transmission, Kunzru found the perfect virus vehicle in Leela, 8216;8216;India8217;s new dream girl, shinnying up the greasy lingam of the Mumbai film world like the child in the conjurer8217;s rope trick8217;8217;. A desperate Mehta uses a Leela film clip enchantingly, the film is titled Naughty Naughty, Lovely Lovely to infect millions of computers across the world. Kunzru8212; who rose from tea boy to associate editor of the British edition of techie magazine Wired before it folded in 19978212;has a lot of fun with the virtual mayhem without getting, er, totally wired.

One of those connected souls the virus touches belongs to Guy Swift, a marketing whiz free-falling down his own concept of the highway into the future. He breathes branding, thinks in buzzwords, hard sells with his heartbeat. 8216;8216;You would have thought,8217;8217; writes his creator, 8216;8216;he was untouchable.8217;8217;

Just as Kunzru seems now. The paranoia of the second book is safely behind him. He still doesn8217;t have to think about earning a living. And his head is buzzing with ideas, none of which concern India.

As talk veers to Amitav Ghosh8217;s new book The Hungry Tide8212;which he hasn8217;t read8212;a new animation grips the visibly tired Kunzru. 8216;8216;Think about it,8217;8217; he says, leaning forward to emphasise his point, 8216;8216;why is it that all the Indian authors who sell in the west are writing only about Indians? The book-reading public there, as in India, is a very small section of the middle class. They nurture a very real nostalgia for things as they used to be, as they seemingly still are in India: emphasis on relationships, bonding, emotion. That8217;s the reason I focused on the new India8212;no one else is doing it!8217;8217;

The only-Indians may not be an entirely fair allegation, but Kunzru makes his point. Transmission complete.