Krishna
I did not care for the story – bottom line. However, some of the rants below are based on my personal experience in India and I did find out that some names etc are indeed used in India. Still it does not take away from the fact that it is a strange name to pick, as it does not matter to the story one whit. Enough with my disclaimer, and on to my review and rants. (I have tried to not let me personal views influence the review)
Strange that the narrator lives in Mumbai but has a name like Batuk. Her boss is Mamaki Briila. Neither names are not familiar to a person who grew up in India, like me. However, looking up, Batuk indeed seems to be of Indian origin but I can almost swear that it is not a common name there.
Anyway, moving on: Batuk is a fifteen year old girl. She seems to be a child laborer, employed to make sweet cakes for Mamaki in exploitative conditions.
There is a very confusing thing about Prince Puneet being “apparently” molested by two policemen until Mamaki throws them out. You wonder until you realize that ‘making sweetcakes’ is a euphemism for sex and that the story unfolds in a brothel.
Soon you realize that this is described superficially; simplistic with no depth in it. Just the circumstances, to the western eyes are ‘exotic’ as it is set in Mumbai, India. The story just drags along – exploitation of kids, poverty, casual cruelty. After a while you notice the cardboard storyline with no emotional depth.
The pathos comes from the fact that Batuk is a prostitute. Abandoned by her parents (they seem to have willingly sent her there) she is pimped by Mamaki. In addition to slave labour, she has this additional ‘task’ as well. But her pathetic little cubicle is a throne room in her mind, with a lot of gold inlays and the world at her feet, waiting for her commands.
Touching? Yes. But the depth of narration is lacking, and you just infer these and it does not create the impression the author is surely hoping for. The author also talks of putting plastic sheets over farmland to ‘protect the crops from the ferocity of the sun but still let sunlight in’. Could be true but I have not seen it anywhere in India earlier. But that is not to say that it does not happen.
The story goes from ridiculous to ridiculous with Batuk (in flashback) is being taken to Mumbai and talks to an Oak tree on the way waiting for a bus in a bus stand. The tree pleads with her to stay with her forever and she refuses. What the heck are you supposed to make of it? The innocence of a child, the slight deficiency in mental powers? It definitely is not clear and you simply find yourself getting irritated instead of sympathetic.
The description is either childish or oh-so-convoluted. The water she gave to the oak (‘because it told her that it was thirsty’) rose up in her father’s eyes. Of course he knew where he was taking her, even if she did not. Yeah, we get it, but we don’t have to like the poetic description. It comes across as cheesy.
And it goes on being cheesy. The bus driver for no reason takes it into his head to bully Batuk and her father totally out of character threatens him with a knife. And the driver drives on. It is like random incidents threaded together – with not much narrative power and the exotic details added (‘I watched Madhya Pradesh diasppear’) so that it would keep western eyes reluctant to stop reading and throw the book across the room, but it completely underwhelms an intelligent reader.
We are taken through the reluctance of the boy prostitute Puneet to run away, despite Batuk’s urging until it was too late. When he was about to move into adolescence, he was taken away and castrated to provide continued benefit to the brothel.
And the story goes back and forth – Batuk recounts her auction (as a virgin) and her subsequent forced rape to make her malleable for the new life. Again, it is expected to be very poignant and heartbreaking, but seems to be a bit wooden, focused on narration rather than emotion.
And Batuk slowly reveals how her father had left her there and how she slowly was ‘prepared’ for customers.
All heart wrenching plot and events, but the limp narration still irritates. Also while the author tries hard (in a fashion) to give local colour to the story, she does not seem to be able to avoid the western allusions that come naturally.
When she thinks back to her native village (why? No reason – just randomly she seems to want to think about disjointed stuff) a weak boy there called Jitender who was physically slight and annoying on top of that. “He was like a pebble stuck in your shoe” says the author. Pebble? Shoe? In a poverty stricken village? In India?
The absurdities abound. After Puneet is depressed about losing his manhood and realizing that he is now stuck there forever, Batuk writes a pointless story about the world balancing on a grain of rice and an equally silly fantasy story.
She reminisces some more, her TB, how she learnt to read and write while in the hospital, such things. If done well, this would have been a dual timeline story, which the author intended. However, the story lurches from deep issues to mundane, pointless issues and does not let you stay absorbed in the fate of the main characters. At least for me. She learns to read and is so successful even though self taught that a priest is very happy and sends a tutor, Chophra. (Chopra is a common name in Northern India but never have seen it spelt with a ‘h’).
The orphanage where Puneet lived was managed by Yazaks (never heard of the term and a quick search in Google did not turn up anything) who ‘have divested themselves of humanity’. Huh?? The Yazaks are merciless and kill a boy for stealing a bicycle and getting money for his ‘services’ outside and not faithfully giving back the money. There are other extreme practices on girls, like sewing shut their vaginas for ‘having sex for pleasure’ and female genital mutilation for second offences and such. Running away, according to the author, is impossible because of the honour code among orphanages. Sounds more like customs in another country transplanted into India.
The babies born there are fed to another place and used as props for beggars to increase the alms out of ‘sympathy’.
And the story goes into events of serial degradations to Batuk as she is pushed off from man to man, and she describes each in some level of detail, meant to wring pity out of your heart. She has a self appointed ‘husband’ called Shahalad (another unusual name, at least for me – no one except perhaps Puneet seems to have a common enough name) but is used by other more powerful people including a drug dealer from time to time in terribly degrading ways.
She meets Puneet when he is brought to the same Orphanage (which is actually a brothel).
Meanwhile she has a what appears to be a completely pointless dream of a hat seller losing all the hats and their falling all over the place. Multiple times. You wonder why. Even as an allegory, it does not seem to make sense.
One of her clients recommends that she be taken for a ‘party’ and she is transported to a huge and luxurious mansion. Batuk fully understands that she is there to give pleasure. (Meant to evoke pity in your heart).
What prevents pity is the cockamamie philosophy. She likes a servant (slave? pimp?) there called Hita and things they are one. ‘Can water in two cups, if mingled, can then be separated? They are one.’ says the author in a weird-ass philosophy lesson.
I finally found what irked me. She is talking down to the reader instead of talking to the reader. Lays it on thick but with insufficient linguistic depth.
We slowly learn that this place is ‘use and lose’ for young girls and they have chosen Batuk as the latest in a series of girls cruelly exploited (and disposed of, I guess. The book and the pages were ‘found later’ so I guess Batuk is no more)
There is a crude rape from the doctor who came to check on Batuk but this is told from the fifteen year old Batuk’s own narration. But following that is a huge poppycock philosophy that underwhelms and bores you, the reader. Go figure.
And then it is one long sequence of Batuk brutalized and bedded in alternate succession. Iftekar, the young but violent son Iftekar and the father who is rich and powerful, have ‘bought’ Batuk. Iftekar seems to have abused and killed other girls in the past, as we hear from floating remarks. The story is expected to be pathetic but ends up being tedious.
She feels a compulsion to write down everything, including Iftekar’s impotence. When this is discovered in the midst of his violent gang of friends, Iftekar goes berserk. It is one whole scene of gratuitous violence – a sword pushed into her vagina, her losing consciousness and waking up in a hospital are the end scenes. It is a huge series of sexual abuse (Batuk being a whore and having been ‘bought’) and physical abuse – slaps, hits, bruises….
It gets to be a bit too repetitive and excessive to read. What he cannot do in the narrative style, which still reeks of childish descriptions, he makes up in gratuitous violence to make you pity Batuk.
Finally the situation goes out of control and Batuk loses consciousness. Now, I do not want to give away the ending but she does wake up to continue the story. I will not dwell on the details. However, I will say two things : In order to stress the continued torment that the little girl forced into prostitution, there is yet another pointless fairy tale interrupting the main flow of the story and it equally irritates as the first one she wrote for Puneet.
Second, the story falls between two stools. The plot is purely adult and so it is intended for adults. The style and depth of storytelling is suitable for very young children and so does not hold the interest of readers like me. A pity.
3/10
== Krishna