Perhaps no subject has yielded more novels, over more decades, from Indian-origin writers in English, than the immigrant experience. Yet evidently, there is no closure. The politics of identity rages on. Colonialism remains an open wound. In Nikesh Shukla’s The One Who Wrote Destiny , a young stand-up comic Rakesh (Raks, as he is known) sticks with ‘being Asian in the U.K.’ as the material for his shows. “It’s outdated, dude,” he is told by a girl he meets, and he must despondently agree, but maintains, “That is me. That’s my story.”
At the same time, he wonders if there is something to be said about his sister’s dying of cancer, a disease which seems to run in the family, and about that time the two of them spent in Kenya with a mysterious old Ba. His confusion is obvious, but by virtue of his candour, he is charming enough. Much the same could be said of the whole book, of which Raks, with his nervous energy, is a microcosm. “...he seems to talk a lot, he keeps a lot of thoughts spinning, and if he let these thoughts fall to the floor, he would have to start dealing with life.”
Close parallel
The One Who Wrote Destiny does not ever get around to ‘dealing with life’, but it makes significant gestures towards it. Two
themes, in particular, run through the book, and these, with slight modifications, are highly relatable for urban, non-emigrant Indians, who live and read in India. The first is fraught identity. Volitionally, Raks and his father Mukesh Jani are both disengaged from their Gujarati antecedents, but must nevertheless grapple with them, because of racism. There is a close parallel here for the urban, Westernised Indian, who is not at home in any particular social set, and is charged with alienation from traditional (generally Hindu) culture.
It is natural, in such contexts, to nurse grievances and hate one’s critics, who may indeed be hateful. Not only the ‘micro-aggressions’ that Raks and his sister complain of, but even the racist mobs whom Mukesh encountered as a young man in the U.K., remain facts of life today. So by focusing this book on racism, Shukla ensures he is both relevant and on the righteous side of the argument. But he also produces merely cardboard ‘bad guys’ who have no interiority, and towards whom no semblance of empathy is offered by anyone. Where this tack fails, therefore, is in the fruitful exploration of the protagonists’ identities. Nothing is built up, on any discovered foundation, so there is no escape from the endless cycle of angry reactions to the ‘other’.
Key cliché
The novel’s other theme, which hints at such a foundation, is of destiny. Scattered throughout the book is the word ‘ naseeb ’, along with mentions of the Hema Malini film by that name, and the song with the lyrics, ‘ Yeh hum kyaa jaane, yeh wahee jaane, jisne likhaa hain sab kaa naseeb ’ (‘What do I know, only he knows, the one who has written everyone’s destiny’).
More concretely, when Raks’s sister Neha learns she is dying of cancer, just as her mother did, she is driven to understanding why. But this is not the ‘why’ that asks for the purpose of tragedy in our lives. That interesting question is ignored, in favour of a somewhat self-obsessed search for a genetic pattern, within the Jani family, which might predict future cancers. Ironically, this purely scientific search culminates in semi-superstition. “Find Ba,” the dying Neha messages her brother, “She is the key to everything.”
When Ba, the Gujarati grandmother living in Mombasa, eventually takes up her portion of the narrative, the reader is unlikely to agree. Incidentally, this trope, of ‘the wise old woman in a distant land’, is one of the several clichés that Shukla’s writing lapses into. Set-pieces inevitably culminate in explosions; strangers cross paths with the protagonists merely to give key insights, and then disappear; romantic interests have fatal diagnoses. Nevertheless, the energy of the writing is able to cover these shortcomings. Similarly, the likeability and relatability of the characters — in particular, the father, Mukesh, whose belief that “a man’s actions are more important than his ancestry” — lend soul to this book, making it a worthy read.
The writer is the author, most recently, of The Outraged: Times of Ferment.
The One Who Wrote Destiny; Nikesh Shukla, Atlantic Books, ₹1,425
