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Review: Lonely People Meet by Sayantan Ghosh
The novel on the effects of urban alienation and the lengths to which vested interests will go to satisfy the need for connection
Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy discovers secret about girl.
That, in a nutshell, is the premise of Sayantan Ghosh’s Lonely People Meet. The novel is an earnest attempt to capture the effects of urban alienation and the lengths to which vested interests go to satisfy the need for connection.
The boy in this case is Karno, an aspiring young writer and unsuccessful marathon runner who also helps out part-time at a Delhi bookstore. And the girl is the enigmatic Devaki, with whom he starts up a relationship after an unlikely bag-snatching encounter.
They swap life stories and he is ever more drawn towards her and her mysterious ways. They deepen their relationship by regular meetings in coffee houses, parks, speakeasies, and other atmospheric Delhi destinations. During these encounters, she tells him of her earlier relationship with college professor Faiza, which he is fascinated by: “together they were teacher and goddess”.
The plot shuffles along in this quiet and not entirely unpleasant manner when, without warning, it switches gear to incorporate speculative elements involving new identities and “the marketplace of our thoughts and memories”.
In doing this, Ghosh steps into a corner of the literary territory inhabited by others such as Kazuo Ishiguro in Klara and the Sun, and Ted Chiang in some of his short stories. All of them raise issues that walk the line between intimacy and artificiality, authenticity and fabrication. Ghosh’s tonality, setting, and executional mapping are very different, but the common aim is to use speculative elements to explore emotional isolation.
The concern is that in these pages, Ghosh comes across as overly fond of philosophising and editorialising. There are regular reflections on life, loss and love, and quite a few of them sound regurgitated, such as: “The only permanent truth under the sun, however, is that everything about human life is impermanent.” This is a pity, as it comes in the way of letting the actions of the characters speak for themselves, and instead tells the reader what to think.
In addition, there are attempts at cultural signposting that can come across as vapid. Throughout the novel, people are given to saying things like: “Let’s spend the evening together, watch an old Bergman classic, dancing to your favourite music by Coltrane.”
The book is at its strongest when placing its characters against urban settings, playing off the first against the second to convey how life in a city full of people can ironically remain empty. The scenes set against the milieu of young middle-class Delhi are evocative and shot through with a weary, knowing melancholy.
Lonely People Meet is partially redeemed by its emphasis on the human core beneath the high-concept scaffolding. As Karno uncovers the truth about Devaki, the novel gestures toward the idea that the desire for connection can blur the boundaries between the real and the constructed in ways we may not fully grasp. Yet, Ghosh’s tendency to overstate his themes and lean on ready-made reflections often dulls the force of this premise.
Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.
