Looking dystopia in the eye

We need good speculative fiction because we have all been witness to the dramatic ways in which uncertainty plays out. This novel may just be the much-needed nudge in this direction.

The history of science resembles a series of burst bubbles of complacency rather than a linear progression of knowledge. There have been answers to questions within these bubbles that have put the world in a lull until that one pesky question came along and threatened the status quo. And these questions — and their askers — have been systematically resisted by the might of institutionalised powers of that era. But each breakthrough — be it heliocentrism or quantum physics or the discovery of inoculation — has led to a cascade of technological innovations which have, in turn, not escaped the attention of politics or religion and global capital that have harnessed them for rampant profiteering. Science, it appears, isn’t exactly an innocent enterprise driven purely by the thirst for knowledge.

It is close to the bursting of such a bubble we inhabit currently that this novel is located. It is set in a decade since the pandemic; not so far into the future where the imagination can run wild, unbound by the fear of verification in one’s own lifetime, and not so close to the present where our senses are too dulled from counting our dead to be closed to a little flight of fantasy. And here, it tells a thrilling, fast-paced story.

Pot-pourri of characters

Microbes form the backdrop to this very human tale where the unlikeliest of characters cross paths. A retired Danish policeman who, while not a racist, prefers people to remain in ‘their own countries’. He is at loggerheads with his new-age, academic daughter. A young Caribbean woman who talks to her mother in her head is overcome by the need to transcend her limited world and follows a smooth-talking man with film-star good looks across the world to what turns out to be a sinister place. A retired secret agent who keeps swans for watchdogs gets involved in a secret mission with a hazy purpose. Another one who has lost her savings to cryptocurrency takes a strange new drug to calm herself. Scientists of every hue die, disappear, find spiritualism or common cause with the powerless of the world — all under mysterious circumstances — and play inadvertent roles in a larger plot. A phantom woman of singular beauty flits in and out of the dreams and visions of different characters. A journalist modelled after a real one — the veil over whose identity is so cleverly thin that one knows the author is very pleased with himself for giving her the name he did — is murdered just like her real counterpart. A fellow author is endearingly tuckerised.

Then, there are shreds of stories of truncated research, bizarre medieval afflictions, evil geniuses with Nazi sympathies, and stream-of-consciousness meditations upon the earth, the stars, and the universe that waltz across the narrative. There is elucidation on the mysteries of microbiology: single-cell beings that induce suicidal behaviour in larger organisms in order to facilitate their own reproduction and growth. And then, there is the all-too-familiar evil and greed, which not only have not changed since the great reckoning of the Covid years but have profiteered from it, and are stronger and craftier than before. Climate change and the refugee crisis rather than continue to be a sore point for corporate capital — to be vehemently denied or ignored — are now the grist of a new money-making machine.

Cinematic climax

And these stories and theories culminate deftly in a cinematic climax of grappling bodies, gunshots, explosions, escape, and nail-biting suspense over the fate of the good guys. The triumph of individual will over organised evil may seem far-fetched at first glance. But perhaps it is the message of miracle we all need to survive the glaring faults of the world that is our home. Just like stoicism, humour, and dissociation keep one going, the strength of individual action needn’t be underestimated in making life worthwhile on the planet.

The Body By The Shore is an interesting and entertaining book which offers much to think about. But in its material and timing, it has a greater significance in the history of ‘Indian writing’ and the conceit of strict compartmentalisation of literary genres in general.

Perhaps it was important for India as a new nation to write its melancholy out in the early decades of the English novel. Even the greats of arthouse writing have resorted to navel-gazing in ways that aren’t always absolved of self-pity. But it is time that these patterns are broken and the Indian novelist looks more outward and into the future and tells stories that are not necessarily about oneself.

Apart from Amitav Ghosh’s Calcutta Chromosome and a couple of other writers whose works have dabbled with dystopia, not many works of Indian authors come to mind who have put aside the rear-view mirror (or plain mirror) in their writing. We need good speculative fiction because having come face-to-face with the dramatic ways in which uncertainty poses itself, speculation is the new reality and speculative fiction that reflects on this is literary fiction. The Body By The Shore may just be the much-needed nudge in this direction.