VIOLENCE IS COMING
ANNIE ZAIDI’S new novel painstakingly jots the recipe for communal conflict
In Prelude to a Riot, Annie Zaidi’s new novel, communal violence is slowly coming to an unnamed Indian town. And the signs are everywhere. In the conversations of the Hindu men who disparage illegal workers, in the organisational antics of a shadowy ‘Self-Respect Forum’, in the growing tensions between plantation labourers and owners.
This is a novel about build-up, as the title indicates, a novel interested in breaking down the mechanics of how communalism accretes until it explodes. A Muslim student is forced to eat pork, a boy is found dead in a ditch, a trio of men smash empty beer bottles into shards of glass to reinforce a boundary wall, someone buys a new gun. What we are shown first is how violence surfaces in small, discrete episodes.
Broadly, Prelude..., focuses on two families, one Hindu, one Muslim, and a cast of interconnected characters weaving in and out of each other’s lives. There is Abu, the university student raised by his grandfather who is increasingly made insecure by the burgeoning communal tensions he senses around them. There is his college friend Devaki, trying to resist the tide of deepening bigotry in her own family. There is Garuda, a teacher at the local school whose history lessons are barely veiled harangues to his students.
The narrative is built on the backs of these characters, and sundry others, most of whom are allowed soliloquies of their own. This Rashomon-esque tableau with its rotating points of view aims to provide a three-dimensional picture of a society in flux and capture the emotional temperature of a oncepeaceful place on the cusp of violence. Prelude..., also incorporates a range of other stylistic devices in the telling: from history lessons to newspaper articles, poetry and advertisements.
There is much to admire in Zaidi’s turn of phrase and her lucid prose. But the formal experimentation feels like a stunt and some of the characters, stuck with expository lines, are heavily drawn. Given the contemporary themes it seeks to tackle, the novel is certainly ambitious, but unfortunately, not consistently diverting. At under 200 pages, it is tight but eventually feels trapped by its own desire to impress. ■