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BY,, CHITRA SUDARSHAN

January and February seem co have been the season for literary festiva ls everywhere -

Chennai's The Hi11dt1 Literature for Life festival was held over three days between J anuary 13- l S. This was followed by the now famous and estab lished Jaipur Literature Fe.rtiua/held b etween January 17 -24, which has at its helm ce lebrity writers Namita Gokhale and William Dalr ymple. The list of authors who attend this festival every year must be the envy of li t fests everywhere. The l....L1hore Literrdt11'B Festival, the most INDIAN LINK g lamo rous in Pakistan, was held between February 2124, was attended by Vikram Seth, Mira t air, J\mit Chaudhari and a host of other well - known aud1ors from arnund d1e world.

The 2014 Perth 117,iters' Festival and the recentl y concluded Adelaide IPiiten' Festival were attended by aud10rs Jaspreet Singh and Jeet Thayil. Jeet Thayil's book Narcopolis was reviewed in this column a couple of years ago.

Heli1tt11 is a novel by Jaspreet Singh, which has as its backdrop the anti- Sikh riots of 1984. \Vhen his business trip to Iceland en route co Delhi is prplonged by a vo lcanic eruption , scien tist Raj Kumar begins to obsess; the killing of his former professor in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the day after Indira Gandhi's assassination; the whereabouts of the

An ees Salim professor's widow; the troubling ro le his father may have played. in the killings, haunt h im. lmran Jabbari is t he so n of the local /,nam, and like everyone else in the 111ohallc1, be was named after d1e successful, rich and famous of Paldstao lmran is therefo r e, the

T'a11i()• Bflgh (Picador India, 2013) by Anees Salim won Th e Hindu Prize for Best Fiction in 2013, announced at The Hi ndu 's Lltem!111-e far Life write rs ' festival in Chennai It is the tale of a young man, lmran Jabbari and his friends, who, partly o u t of boredom and partly inspired by their local 1.egend and aging Don , Abu Hathim, decide to form a 'gang' to emulate him. This ragtag group does n' t really do much b y way of big-time crime, until one day when the ir are hired to despatch some scolen scooters to different parts of d1e city. Nai've as they are, t hey think dus is their big break, and agree to do it. Only after bombs go off in all the locations where they packed d1eir scoote r s, d o d1ey realise they have been conned and inadvertently involv ed in a terrorist act.

Sentenced for 14 years, Imran i s assigned to the bookmaking section of d1e prison, where each time he opens a book and stares at its blank pages, the memories of Vanity Bagh come alive and we are led gently tl1rough the notuncommon lives of the vzohallds inhabitants.

It i s an extremely readable book , written wim wry, understated, self- deprecating humour, which will resonate well with Australians

However, what I fonnd unsettling was the entire Nfuslim community in Va11ity Bagh identiiied with Paldstan, and that tl1e only 'other' was Me hend.i, a nearby suburb which is represented as a rnonolitluc, unvarie;gated Hinduextremist neighbourhood. The only idiom of interaction between the (o nly) two gmups is along a binar)' divid e, and of tense confrontation and perennial distrust teetering on cornm Ltnal riot; there was simply no od1er form of inter- d.igi tation, eve n of d1e commonplace everyday life. This may have served the author's narrative, bm such r eductionism, eve n for d1e purposes of s torytelling, seemed too simplistic and unrepresentative to me.

However convenient tl1is is for a storyline, such reductionism, and one -dimensional narrative is a li ttle disquieting. This was rny only real grouse witl1 d1e novel. i\nees Salim is an advertising professional in K o chi ,vh o bas w ritte n four nove ls and is working on his 6ftb. V a11i()1 Bagh i s bis second novel. Others on The Hindu Book Prize s hortlis t included Manu Joseph (The T!licit T---ftlppiness qf Other People), Manjul Bajaj (Another Mcm'I Wife tmd Other S to,ies), Sonora Jba (Fm-eign) and Amandeep Sandhu (Rolf of Ho11our)

The author uses the right tenor of optimism and resignation; dark, but wry humour that we are lu lled into thinking this is a 'slice of life' - of fami lies, neighbours and the community

The only idiom of interaction between the (only) two groups is along a binary divide, and of tense confrontation and perennial distrust teetering on communal riot