Prayaag Akbar’s second book is as thought-provoking as his first, Leila. Using a matter-of-fact style, Akbar draws a succinct portrait of Indian society caught in the glare of social media headlights. If life was a struggle to stay afloat for the earlier generations, it is a struggle to stay relevant for today’s generations. The author’s strategy is to tell it like it is, and if the reader wants to infer that the story is a critique of things as they are, well, that is entirely the reader’s prerogative.
We are introduced to Nisha and Mayank, strangers to each other, both denizens of Delhi. Nisha comes from a small hill town and palpably misses it even as she enjoys the perks of the big city like working for a Japanese confectionary company at a swanky mall, acquiring a big-city boyfriend, learning to recognise the soft and hard expressions of luxury. She comes across as a practical girl who is ready to do whatever it takes to thrive in Delhi.
Mayank piques the reader’s interest because he is an intelligent young man stuck making patriotic videos for a shrill YouTube channel. This content creator is a history buff, he can actually tell right from wrong even as he is stuck in his right-wing job, and most importantly, he has aspirations.
Even as the reader wonders where Mayank goes from here, he uses AI to morph an unknown girl’s photo into a picture of Mother India… of course this is Mother India under attack from inimical men wearing skull caps and hurling rocks at her. The picture he has lifted is Nisha’s from her Insta feed, and when it goes viral, life changes for both, the doer and the done to.
Readers are given a clear look at the factories that churn out these rage-inciting, hate-perpetrating, shoddily produced videos, a confusion of imagery and bullet points that spreads manipulated ‘facts’ and vows eternal revenge on all those who have wronged Mother India. The story takes a look at distorted history, fanned resentments, troubled family histories, at the mad hunt for fame or notoriety online, at the “fabulous heedless people”, at those who look for something called ‘migrant venality’.
The look at the capital city’s ‘development’, which tramps over old water bodies, still older hamlets, the old way of life, swapping it for a frenetic modernity, is a distinctly sardonic one. The manner in which Nisha considers using social media to her family’s advantage is both pragmatic and strangely optimistic.
Akbar’s triumph is that he refuses to get preachy; he keeps things at surface level, even upbeat. This is a mirror to our social media world where nothing is static, where every new scandal quickly makes way for the next. As one character says, it doesn’t matter what (he) is actually saying or trying to say, what matters is how we interpret it, how we relay it to our followers. Those who learn how to manage this whirling carousel are on top of things. Today, nothing seems like the end of the world… and yes, it is for the reader again, to decide if that’s a good thing or bad. After all, Mother India is apparently strongest when she’s attacked.