The Complex is Karan Mahajan’s first novel in a decade. Before readers get to access the messy affairs of the Chopra family residing in the titular building in the north of Delhi, Mahajan shares a note, informing them that the novel is based on “the family circumstances” of Mohit Chopra.
With Mohit, the author corresponded on two occasions, but he was surprised to find himself named as the “literary executor” in the former’s will. This novel, therefore, can be considered a “creative revision or posthumous collaboration” with Mohit, who had kept a 1,00,000-word “unsent message” for his Russian friend, which Mahajan was given access to.
This interesting caveat heightens readerly expectations. Or, if the note itself is fictive—a clever literary caveat, an invitation to co-create and imagine the Chopra family’s decline alongside the author himself.
Intention aside, The Complex is indeed a complex cobweb of familial relationships juxtaposed with a young nation trying to find its feet, but finding itself crippled by the alternate visions of its descendants, who reveal themselves entirely differently when observed closely. One such man is Laxman Chopra, one of the six sons of the patriarch, SP Chopra, who was “one of the framers of India’s Constitution and a former Reserve Bank governor”.
In the zeroth chapter, readers meet the narrator, Mohit Chopra, grandson of Brahmpal Chopra, another son of SP. Mohit’s father, Brij, is all set to return to the complex after serving a 25-year-long sentence for murdering Laxman. The other Chopras aren’t pleased that Brij would be back, and Mohit, now 44, finds himself negotiating his way around having his father back home.
The book is divided into three parts—Gita’s World, Laxman’s Complex, and My Protest. In the first, set in the 1980s, we meet Sachin, SP’s grandson and an engineer in the US, and his wife, Gita. An editor back in India, Gita finds herself befuddled being with her husband, “a short man with strong convictions”.
The narrative is indeed a complex cobweb of familial relationships, which reveal to be entirely different when observed closely
It isn’t hard to figure out that the Chopras are expecting “good news” from Gita, who would’ve to face this question when she’d meet her nightmare: the right-wing politician, Laxman. But Laxman was set up by a schemer, Vibha, SP’s daughter, to ensure Gita’s womb is injected with a Chopra seed.
Mahajan meticulously establishes the set-up leading to Laxman’s emboldened step, his assumed impunity because of his image as one of the “Sangathanis”. The narrator on Gita’s situation: “America. How eager she was to run away. And how little she understood the cargo of poison she would carry wherever she went. Pain knows no country.”
Gita finally convinces Sachin to return to India. Was it a sign for him to “complete the work his father had left unfinished upon his sudden death at the age of fifty?” Or was it one of the ploys of Gita to exact revenge against Laxman? “A country didn’t have feelings”, Sachin thinks.
Be it a private, familial affair that’s wilfully ignored, or a national tragedy that’s executed in response to the shaking of a huge tree; the trigger is a desire. It doesn’t matter who planted it or executed it because if all actors of a political scenario are convinced of its doing, then it’s meaningless to engage in finding who exacted “more damage”, like the question Brij asks upon his return: “So who caused more damage long-term—my brother or me?”
While this subject is broached effectively by Mahajan, the book is seriously injured by the projection of its Indianness. There are multiple instances where either dialogic submissions or narrative leaps appear jarring, which may have benefited from brevity. But it may have been overlooked in the interest of an Indian disease: thinking big, which, in the longer run, only ensures a greater fall.