Due disclosure: The writer was once my classmate. But since we weren’t and aren’t exactly BFFs, I think it’s safe to review her latest book, which I was tempted to read after she won The Hindu Prize for children’s writing last year for another.
Venita Coelho’s Boy No. 32 is the sort of book that I immediately thought would make a great film — it’s racy; it has a sweet protagonist in the shape of Battees, the orphan; a taut plot; and it is jam-packed with wacky characters.
As with much new-age children’s writing, Coelho keeps it real — no sunshine and cupcakes. And she doesn’t talk down, opting instead to make Battees relate his story to readers as he would to his classmates. He is on the run because he has seen the man planting the bomb that brings down the courtroom and the orphanage where he lives.
It’s a fabulous opening scene — four kids trapped in the rubble and communicating through a mysterious telepathic code. But this inner voice Morse-coding is the only element of magic realism in the book; the rest of it is rooted in the very real and dark underbelly of Mumbai, with Coelho unflinchingly detailing its violence and evil. Many aspects are spot-on — not giving the hero a name, for example, but calling him Battees or 32, the number he was assigned.
Kashmiri Lal, Eunuch Queen, Beggar King, Aunty, Potla — the cast of characters Battees meets, befriends or outwits in the course of his adventure is long and zany — and his escapade as full of edge-of-the-seat calamities as any Lemony Snicket misadventure. But Battees is resourceful and determined to not just save himself but also rescue Goongi, the little girl he has befriended.
Coelho is a screenwriter, and a Hindi film aura suffuses the book, but in a fun, masala blockbuster way. She has also written TV serials, and that influence is trickier. She seems compelled to end each chapter on an implied ‘To be continued’ note, like the ‘penny’ novels of old. But this Dickensian touch works well in the Mumbai she depicts and the shades of Oliver Twist she evokes.
If the end had been a little less long-drawn, it would have helped tauten this otherwise smart book.
Boy No. 32; Venita Coelho, Scholastic, ₹295
