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Harinder Baweja, Editor, Special Projects, picks her favourite read of 2020
The poor have dreams too
Set in modern day India, debut writer Megha Majumdar’s A Burning takes the reader straight into the midst of three life stories. It starts dramatically and we soon know that the main protagonist, a Muslim girl named Jivan is set for a roller coaster ride that collides constantly with police, state and judiciary.
Accused of aiding Islamist terrorists, who set a train on fire, Jivan’s tryst with the law starts with a Facebook post that asks, “If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government is also a terrorist?”
The protagonist is not just Muslim. She is also poor and has been uprooted from home after a corporate takeover of her home in West Bengal. But the poor have dreams too and Majumdar tells the dream and its tragic takedown with a power that often hits the gut.
Before Jivan is arrested for sedition, she introduces us to the second character named Lovely, a hijra, starry-eyed about making it in Bollywood. The third life story is that of PT Sir, Jivan’s school teacher, who too aspires for more and soon finds himself scaling the political ladder of a right-wing party.
Jivan is continuously let down and PT Sir is unsparing too, as he uses his student and her Facebook post and eventual arrest to build his nationalistic credentials.
The book is steeped in despair and despondency and as Majumdar takes us through Jivan’s life, she tells us of its crashing disappointments. No one comes to her aid; neither Lovely not her PT Sir.
The novel captures some of current India’s despondencies vis-a-vis the police and the judiciary. To some extent, Jivan encapsulates the insecurities of the Muslim minority and as she is handed out the sentence in the end, we are reminded of the Afzal Guru case, in which the Supreme Court had said that the Parliament attack convict must face the gallows to “satisfy the conscience” of the country.
A Burning is bleak and Majumdar doesn’t tap into some of the obvious glimmers of hope that were visible through 2020, particularly from civil society. But it’s her story to tell and she tells it vividly, even if, helplessely.
