Going down the road less travelled

New Indian Express

11-05-2025

How many of us ever get a chance to follow our dreams? Even rarer, to double back on life, to go back to square one, and follow a passion rather than a profession. In an India where an emphasis on bland academics, on being an engineer-doctor-lawyer-banker-civil servant still holds sway, a profession in the arts is often frowned upon. Worse still would be a profession in the performing arts: nautanki is a pejorative. In such a situation, for a banker to go back to his passion—theatre—and that too in a small town is a novel, daring idea.
Annie Zaidi's The Comeback: A Novel is a story about such a person: Asghar, nearing 40, a married man, father of two daughters, and a banker in Lucknow. 'Successful' in the conventional way of middle-class India, Asghar's life receives a jolt when his best friend, the now well-known film actor John K, gives an interview. Reminiscing about college life and college theatre, John talks about Asghar doing stage productions in college, at the expense of studying for his exams. John laughingly confesses that he helped Asghar in the exams by standing outside the window and telling him the answers. And just because of that, Asghar's bank now fires him, claiming that his graduate degree is invalid.
Told from the point of view of John (who is actually Jaun Kazim; 'John K' is his stage name), The Comeback takes off from this point. Asghar goes back to his hometown, the fictitious Baansa, not too far from Lucknow. Far away in Mumbai, John tries to deal with the guilt of having wrecked his friend's career. John's desperation builds when he realises how badly his carelessness has affected Asghar: not merely in a practical sense, but emotionally. John's increasingly wild attempts to get through to Asghar, to apologise, to find out what Asghar is doing (setting up a theatre company in Baansa) and to revive that old friendship play out against a backdrop of show business in Mumbai and in Baansa.