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‘Night in Delhi’ by Ranbir Sidhu: Delhi noir, the underbelly of our shining, thriving, spiritual nation

The book ends up throwing punches at the ‘moral’ Indian middle class
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Night in Delhi by Ranbir Sidhu. Westland. Pages 204. Rs 399
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Book Title: Night in Delhi

Author: Ranbir Sidhu

More than two decades ago, I read ‘An Obedient Father’, a novel by Akhil Sharma. It punched me in my solar plexus and made me take a hard look at New Delhi, at India, at the systemic violence that we overlook and/or suffer from, at the corruption that seeps into everyone, and how every act is an act of power. While it would be unfair to compare my immediate impression of Ranbir Sidhu’s ‘Night in Delhi’ to my memory of Sharma’s novel, it reminded me of it. I have always wanted to go back to ‘An Obedient Father’ and have recommended it to people; you will have to wait a year or so to find out whether I will feel the same way about this book.

At the moment, I can only say that Sidhu has written a novel that sets out to give us Delhi noir, but ends up throwing punches at the ‘moral’ Indian middle class, showing us an India where everyone is out to exploit anyone they can, in order to survive, if not to thrive. If you don’t hit the other person, the other person will hit you. You write your story on the bodies and minds of others, even as some others write on yours. This is the underbelly of our shining, thriving, spiritual nation, an underbelly that exposes what the rest are like. At least, this is what the novel aims to do.

The unnamed narrator of the novel is a male prostitute, a petty thief, and a con-man. His streets and, as he discovers, the streets of people with more power and money are the same, whether you walk on them in the day or night, or whether you cruise in fancy cars. Everyone is on the make here. Everyone has a price. This is a violent, unstable world, the only certainty being that life is nasty and brutish.

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The other characters add to this worldview. The narrator’s lover is also his pimp, who is as violent and crude as he is a soulful singer in underground clubs. They have rented a room from a man who is capable of greater violence than they anticipate. There is an American middle-class woman who is a ‘willing’ victim of an Indian guru, whose philosophy is that there is nothing wrong in the world and that violence and power and strength are the only truths. She is raped and beaten but keeps going back to him to learn more lessons to attain nirvana. There is a big man, a rich man, someone who sexually exploits as many people as he can, and sets up a call centre to defraud people in USA of their savings, while employing his call boys. There is a woman who, equally exploited, is now his procuress and trusted lieutenant. We also have a foreigner who wants to capture the soul of the nation, to make it desire whatever the highest bidder wants. What he likes otherwise is violent sex with the narrator, whom he pays well!

You get the point, there is no one here who is good. But then, there is no one who is completely evil. What do those terms mean in a world where might is right and you have to do what it takes, finding any kind of gratification any which way.

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But, as the narrator realises, there is love in this world, as there is sympathy, and pity — and all this when you don’t think they even exist. But what do they do, except weaken you? They only make you vulnerable. The only nirvana possible in this world is to walk away from it. But where does the narrator go in the end? Where can he go?

It is ironic that I read this novel of sex and violence, grime and filth, of a society rotten to the core, after I read two rom-coms (‘Aunties of Vasant Kunj’ by Anuradha Marwah, and ‘For the Love of Apricots’ by Madhulika Liddle)! All three authors write well. There may have been a time when I would have preferred this novel, but it may be your time to do so.

— The writer is a translator

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