Legal Fiction: A Novel

Legal Fiction was one of the best reads for me last year. I reread it again this month because I was in conversation with Chandan and Bharatbhooshan and enjoyed every minute of it.Legal Fiction is unlike anything I read and kept thinking about it a lot. The themes of disappearance of a Muslim man, love jihad – a term coined by the right wing of the country to bring to task Muslim men who love Hindu women, the struggle of people in a small town who are constantly under surveillance whether they like it or not (in one way or the other), the idea of democracy just being on paper, and ultimately that of rule of land being followed over rule of law.Silences play a major role. Silences that force people to look within, to understand their spaces, look at the role of caste and religion that draw invisible boundaries, silences that reflect lack of agency of women, and how vocabulary defeats what we feel most of the time.Legal Fiction put simply is about the disappearance of a man – a man who lives in a small town with his wife and is from a minority religion in Modi’s India. It is about the agency of an urban middle-class man, Arjun, who travels to Noma – the fictional village – to locate the man, Rafique. It is about what Arjun unearths in Noma, and what goes on behind closed doors, and sometimes right in the open, only because it can.Chandan Pandey makes no bones about what he has to say. The writing is sparse, calls out the hypocrisy of the system, where things have gone wrong and continue to do so, and above all packs in a punch and more on almost every single page.Bharatbhooshan’s translation reads like the original (I also read the book in Hindi). It is fast-paced, reads like a thriller but is so much more, mesmerizing, like a sort of fever dream, and above anything else a mirror for us to see ourselves in and understand what we have become vis-à-vis what we were.

Just an ordinary nove of 150 pages. It does not need the hullabaloo credited in the blurbs. Not the worth of time or money.

It is a short and fast-paced read, but the depth that it explores is quite high. The idea of the story is to showcase that there are always multiple perspectives to a situation, and there are times when what we see might not be the truth. The storytelling is powerful and makes the reader pause and contemplate the theme he is exploring in the story. The emotions that Anuj feels are very real, and they are portrayed beautifully, both when he is speaking aloud and when he is thinking. I loved that the story is set in the inner mofussil town that provides a gravitas to it. The devil lies in the details, and Chandan details the plot just enough for the reader to make the connections. The book does not provide a specific ending, but the cliffhanger makes the story even more real, almost as if a life like incident unfolding.

The premise of this book is extremely promising, the author craftily creates a story the highlights one of the most dangerous religio-political issue in India— Love Jihad. The story started out strong, giving us a mysterious vibe around the whole missing person issue. As we get introduced to new characters, it adds layers to the story, things start falling into place. But somehow it fails to reach a proper climax or give us answers.Our protagonist, Arjun is the textbook definition of "spineless." In a way he's relatable, he doesn't want to get involved in whatever political game is going on with Rafique and his street play troupe, but his curiosity to know about Rafique's life gets the better of him. The story gives us the hard-hitting truth about what happens when someone tries to unveil the truth behind dirty politics played using religious sentiments.Even though I know that the whole point of the book was to give us readers the reality, it felt so empty. Because... let's be honest the book doesn't give you the answers you want, it has an open-ended plot, so I felt highly unsatisfied. Just 156 pages wasn't enough for a story of this gravity, I wanted more— from both the plot and the characters.

It’s a translated book from Hindi language. I was excited to pick it because I haven’t read that many translated work. I will briefly summarise the blurb. It’s a fictional work, a novel. The protagonist of the story is Arjun Kumar. One day at late night, Arjun received a call. It was from Ansuya. Ansuya was his long lost girlfriend. It took a while to get the call. Ansuya told him that from the day before his husband didn’t return at home. She tried taking help of police too. Arjun was a writer by profession. Archana is his wife. Previously they had tussle due to Ansuya. Archana offered Arjun to take her brother’s help as he has political reach outs. Rafique was a college professor. He had a mysterious disappearance that impacted so many lives and that mystery is deeper than it seems. Read the book to unfold entire plot. I liked the plot as it’s filled with drama and mystery. There are number of twists and turns plotted that keeps it interesting. Author has captivating narration style. Police turned down to file a report and Rafique’s student Janki is also missing so it seems “love-jihad” case but is it so. I liked how the story moves at completely unpredictable manner. Author has used amazing vocabulary and language. I couldn’t put it down for one time. I could imagine the characters moving in front of my eyes and around entire time. I enjoyed a lot while reading. Indeed good one. Strongly recommended from my side.