“I told you it's a djinn,” Faiz says. “You won't catch it on the Purple Line.”
First time novelist Deepa Anappara started her writing career as a journalist in her native India and in her author's blurb it points out that “her reports on the impact of poverty and religious violence on the education of children won the Developing Asia Journalism Awards, the Every Human has Rights Media Awards, and the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism.” What could possibly be more important to write about, than the welfare of children, in a country that apparently sees 180 children go missing every day? With Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Anappara revisits this area of her concern and expertise, and as my ARC explains through an interview with the author in the endnotes, Anappara's intent here was to give a voice to the powerless or missing individual children who tend to get lost in dull statistics or lurid tabloid headlines. I applaud Anappara's intent, think that she did a really nice job of capturing the voice and experience of children, loved the gritty setting that she brought to multi-sensory life, but there was something just a bit too didactic about this story; too heavy with repetition, peripheral social issues, and telling-not-showing. To be sure, there were plenty of nicely novelistic touches here, but this wasn't a complete success for me. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Do you know there are people who'll make you their slaves? You'll be locked up in a bathroom and let out daily only to clean the house. Or you'll be taken across the border to Nepal and forced to make bricks in kilns where you won't be able to breathe. Or you'll be sold to criminal gangs that force children to snatch mobiles and wallets. Take it from me, I have seen the worst of life. This is why children should never travel unaccompanied. This is why I'm giving you a lecture. What you're doing, it's irresponsible. It's downright dangerous.Jai is a nine year old boy living in an illegal slum (or basti) on the edge of a “hi-fi” neighbourhood. He likes to play cricket in the alleyways, argue with his older sister (the celebrated athlete, Runu), daydream in class, and watch true crime TV shows with his parents when they finally get home from work every night (his Ma is a maid for a demanding woman in the closest hi-fi building, and his Dadi works on the metro's Purple Line nearby). When one of the neighbourhood kids, and then another one, goes missing, Jai enlists his two best friends – the most brilliant girl in class, Pari, and the hard-working Faiz – to join him in “detectiving” the case. What starts out as a Hardy Boys-type adventure becomes much more serious as more and more children go missing from their slum, and along the way, we are told about: a corrupt and indifferent police force; a sexist and downtrodden society that sees young girls taking care of their even younger siblings while their parents work long hours at unstable jobs; the frequent flare-ups between Hindu and Muslim neighbours (exacerbated by a self-serving political class); rampant child labour (out in the streets and with piecemeal work in their homes); and frequent comparisons of the food, hygiene, homes, job stability, access to justice, and education opportunities available to the rich and to the poor. It's a lot. The best part was Jai's naive and mischievous nature (many of his actions and observations are innocently humourous within the surrounding seriousness) and it was novelistically satisfying (if emotionally heavy) to watch as his innocence becomes corrupted by the reality of his world:
Believe me, today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realise at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We are just specks of dust in this world, glimmering for a moment in the sunlight, and then disappearing into nothing. You have to learn to make your peace with that.I did find this to be a heavy read – I was rarely excited to pick it back up again – and as it is at heart a mystery, I knew that the plot would need to resolve into either: a) The missing children are all found alive and returned to their parents; or b) Some unhappy fate would be revealed. And as I read, I couldn't really decide which would be the more satisfying (as in “real” or “earned”) ending, and I will note that Anappara's conclusion didn't disappoint me. Again: this isn't totally unsatisfying – and I did learn plenty – but it didn't feel like a complete success, either.
