Q & A--A REVIEW

“Do you have ‘Q & A’?”
I enquired at the Book Store, local & popular, on my way home, a late evening languid journey. The day was suffused with motley voices--vendors, maintenance personnel, security guards—all bumping into each other. Ironically, the disturbed mind desired further distraction—a new fiction.
“No”,
came the stunning voice, once again confirming my belief that negative answer in Bengal always sounds more convincing than a positive one. I could feel a weird smile appearing, unintentionally, greeting the salesman. But just before it could recede to normal position, I blurted out,
“Don’t you have Slumdog…”
“Oh, ya. Certainly”, his swiftness proving my self-professed conviction about Bengal wrong.
Once SM was in possession I felt pity for the poor author—the cover page flaunting the movie name, the author banished to a miniscule space.
But, yes, I was again proved wrong.
Having been through with the story, I strongly feel, there could not have been possibly a more apt title than SM. Q & A was way behind. The fiction is entirely on the slums, its inhabitants, their restless, stubborn & translucent life styles—the Q&A session being a well-crafted pattern/design to lure the readers till the end. I think that human relationships and the divisions between human beings are more brutal and straightforward in slums than those in “normal places”(where we live!), where everything is hidden behind walls under a veneer of urban sophistication.
The fiction is fiercely fast paced & laden with humour born out of darkness. But, most importantly, what it has been capable of generating is a scientific exactitude of depicting a feeling of “Nothingness, Non-existence” by the recognized part of our society.
There is always only one side of the river in our (so-called) civilized society; the other side, though visible & quite obvious, is being simply refused to be acknowledged by the stronger side. The marginal sections of the society—the beggars, the scavengers, the prostitutes, the servants, the maids, the cooks, the drivers—though an integral part of the scheme of things are treated as non-existence, a passing forgettable memory in the course of our journey. A Nothingness. A Non-existent. A Non-entity.
The undertone, the evocative smells, the muffled voices of these marginal people may be quite similar to that of “The White Tiger”, though SM is certainly not rich in literary content and smacks of “Bollywood imaginary boldness”.


The quality of narration is very simple, straight from the heart, at times morally strenuous but quite enthralling all the way through.
Overall, one enjoys the walk, the light seeping through the lives of the characters, silently, imparting a feeling of liquid shimmering. And most importantly, even though one experiences certain incredulous things, the truth is apparent.

“All you need to do is to reach out and pluck it.”