5 days ago
Review of Ranbir Sidhu's book, Night in Delhi
Here's the first and, to my mind, the most important foundation for Ranbir Sidhu's new novel Night in Delhi: almost everybody here is out to scam somebody.
If you've ever read a Khushwant Singh novel or seen the movies of Dibakar Banerjee (Khosla Ka Ghosla and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye), you'll understand that most landmark Delhi texts make this point — because it has always been true. This city is the Valhalla of hucksters, the nourishing nucleus of the confidence trick that is Indian democracy.
The novel's unnamed protagonist is a minor crook and thief who lives with his boyfriend/ pimp, Jaggi, a talented but violent man who performs in drag in Delhi's underground music venues. The two live together in a place owned by the deeply unsavoury Basam, who looks the other way when it comes to rent because the duo often steals stuff for him. The protagonist's seemingly oblivious American acquaintance Susan is under the thrall of a transparently fraudulent godman. And a recently-dominant mafia group in the city pauses for breath, in anticipation of a new leader.
'Dirty realism'
All of these happenings are a window into the city's invisible gears and mechanisms, the covert economies that keep the whole thing together on a wing and a prayer. Sidhu's gaze is unflinching, shorn of sentiment, intent on grabbing the reader by the scruff of the neck, making them look at things they would have otherwise turned their gaze away from.
In the novel's opening line, Jaggi 'unzips his fly and produces his penis' — had this been in the middle of the novel, the reader could not have been blamed for thinking that rape/abuse is in the offing. Instead, Jaggi gets up and pees on the floor, the yellow pool intended to drive away Basam, who had been lingering with the two of them (Jaggi and the protagonist) against their wishes. It is a brilliant, dramatic moment and one which sets the novel's noirish, 'dirty realism' tone.
Early on in the book, the protagonist gets involved with tele-scammers, the kind targeting American senior citizens, scaring them with stories of tax evasion and pilfering their retirement funds. In a darkly funny extended scene, we see the protagonist giving it his best shot, trying to scam the bemused Mrs. Elaine Drummond, 73, from Idaho.
'We've travelled a long way, Mrs. Drummond and I, through the woods in the night and now we're close to the city in the dark, the undiscovered country, glowing distantly, as we struggle forward, and I'm ready, with luck, to show her that shining destination. As we talk, the room gradually grows quieter around me. One after another, my colleagues remove their headsets, cut short their phone calls, and rise from their chairs to gather and listen... Everyone is enraptured, and except for me, there is silence in the room.'
By the time the cons and deceits are wrapped up, Night in Delhi proves itself to be an essential Delhi novel, and another resounding success for the author of the brilliant 2022 book Dark Star, a devastating meditation on misogyny, nationalism and displacement.
The reviewer is working on his first book of non-fiction.
