The Amritsar Chronicles

The novel opens as Ramchand is wearying of his mindless home-shop-home routine; but the malaise is yet to be identified, the gloom more perceived than comprehended. The stimulus comes with a wedding in the Kapoor household, one of the biggest read richest families of the city. Ramchand is packed off to the big house with the best saris, and quickly appreciates the difference between the wealthy-cultured and the simply rich who frequent the shop.

It triggers in him an urge for self-improvement; cutting out the filmi pop culture his workmates thrive on, he begins brushing up his rusty English, figuring out basic science. Little by little, he builds up his own little bubble into which outside realities intrude but rarely.

Just as the reader is beginning to tire of the mundane regularity of Ramchand8217;s life comes the first shocker: His encounter with the down-and-out Kamla, wife of a colleague. Alone in a strange city, cut off from an uncommunicative, abusive husband, Kamla8217;s story in some ways is a reflection of Ramchand8217;s. But instead of aspiration, her life is taken over by a downward spiral that will climax, inevitably, in an orgy of violence that has been hinted at but never realised in the preceding pages.

Ironically, some of Ramchand8217;s vice of detachment seems to rub off onto Bajwa in these potentially most powerful parts of the novel. None of the shattering climax is witnessed first hand, thereby providing the same sense of remove that is the author8217;s primary target of attack. There8217;s almost an element of distaste in the manner in which Bajwa handles the end of Kamla8217;s story. In contrast, Ramchand8217;s own rebellion 8212; his effort to ensure the scales of justice aren8217;t weighed down by power and pelf 8212; is far more intimate in its immediacy and expression, and far more touching.

But more than Ramchand, more than Kamla, Bajwa8217;s strength appears to lie in the digressions, in the pen-portraits of the simpering Mrs Sandhus and Mrs Guptas, wives of not-so-straight bureaucrats and businessmen. In depicting their limited, appearance-is-all lives, Bajwa uses a light, scathing touch that recalls Austen in its mercilessness.

Bajwa, in fact, is a throwback to an earlier, gentler generation of Indian writers in English. There8217;s plenty of social observation here, lots of sly, straightfaced humour, tolerance and sympathy. There8217;s also genuine writing talent here 8212; the book is in the longlist for the Orange prize 2004 8212; and a gift for the understated. Bajwa embarked on 8216;8216;a very difficult thing to do8217;8217; in her debut novel, and she8217;s done a decent enough job of it for her next to be eagerly awaited.