Weaving fiction into recent history is a challenge. The exercise becomes complex when what transpired is fresh in our memory and there are too many grey areas and sensitivities involved.
The movement in Punjab in the early 1980s for a separate Khalistan which resulted in the Indian Army storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar and culminated in the assassination of Indira Gandhi followed by the anti-Sikh riots does not make for an easy narrative. It has so far been visited (at least in English) through by analytical and factual accounts — Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle by Mark Tully and Satish Jacob; Operation Blue Star: The True Story by Lt General Kuldip Singh Brar and When a Tree Shook Delhi by Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka.
Kanwaljit Deol who served in the police, must be complimented for trying to bring to life the Punjab of the violent early 1980s. But her attempt to portray a social upheaval through a handful of characters fails to do justice to it. Deol’s fictional portrayal of history through her main protagonists — young Fareed from Maranwale village in Central Punjab, and Sikand, a confused Delhi-based journalist — is too simplistic to capture the madness that gripped the State.
True, we do get a feel of life in the hinterlands and the frustration and hope that induced the young to pick up the gun. But these themes are fleetingly examined. Cases of human rights violations by the police as well as by the separatists remain half explored. Perhaps Deol could be pardoned because she does not pretend that her novel is a faithful recounting of events.
The liberal sprinkling of Punjabi expressions without translation also tends to alienate.
There are passages when the novel attempts to rise above the ordinary — Sikand’s interviews with Bhindranwale; Sikand and Fareed trapped in the Golden Temple complex with armed man waiting to launch a holy war, and the hilarious foiled bank robbery are cases in point. But these are green patches which ought to have been in greater abundance… At the end of the day, a missed opportunity.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Off the Record: Untold Stories from a Reporter’s Diary and the novel Junkland Journeys.
