Crimebytes & reality
Jyoti Singh

Sikandar Chowk Park
by Neelam Saran Gour Penguin Rs 295

The book focuses on the issue of crime. The story is set in India. Sidhanta, a journalist who covers a bomb blast that rips through Sikander Chowk Park in Allahabad, killing 57 people and injuring 115 seriously, relates the story. The cliched vocabulary of the reportage of the blast in the media is shrewdly brought to the reader’s notice. Sidhanta is moved by the deaths, especially the 11 dead whose bodies were all mangled and mutilated beyond recognition. The book is about these 11 people. For three years, researching their lives through relatives, friends and eyewitnesses, he struggles to experience their realities by proxy.

The characters include a self-effacing music teacher, Master Hargopal Mishra, who wouldn’t go abroad on a fellowship because of his family of stray dogs; Lynette Shepherd, who was extremely upset over her husband’s secret affair with Marcia Gosse; Vakil Sahib Mahendra Chanderji; Kartik, a precocious ‘problem’ child; a fire-brand feminist confronting the sexual misdemeanours of her friend’s husband; Swati Maurya, a young Dalit who defies her marriage and society and enters into a relationship with an unemployed Brahmin boy; Professor Mathur; Shirin Ahuja; Suruchi Chauhan; and Vani Kabir.

The writer dwells on sectarian violence. Hindu and Muslim communities oppose and refuse to recognise the marriage of Vani’s parents — her mother being a Muslim and father a Hindu. The day after the blast a mob storms Sakina Bibi’s house. Discovery of a Rs -100 note from Pakistan and the subsequent disappearance of Suleman Jameel, a prime suspect in the bomb blast — who lodged with Bibi Sakina — led the mob to attack and rape the helpless Rubina. The reporting of this event led to burning down of Sidhanta’s newspaper office.

A discernible reader will not miss the writer’s comments on various problems faced by the country. For instance, Gour speaks of population explosion, attributing it to the casual approach of the people. Sakina Bibi’s advice to a woman is: "Only two children, beti. Have more. Nonsense. Children are God’s gift. Have no worry. He gives and he shall provide."

The novelist has adroitly interwoven realism with fiction. Reference to the slain Australian missionary Graham Staines’ widow Glady Staines and her two sons, who were burnt alive, highlights the seething communal feelings in the name of religion that actually no faith propagates. Factual details of the hijack of the Indian Airlines plane, IC- 814 by the terrorists demanding Maulana Azhar in lieu of the release of passengers reflect the turbulent realities.

Like a clever puppeteer, Gour drives all the 11 different characters to Sikander Chowk Park on the fateful day. Her pulsating prose invokes a witty narration of the lives of characters and at the same time highlights issues of communalism and casteism, bigotry and faith, forgiveness and redemption. Keeping in mind the convenience of readers, the Hindi words in the novel ought to be in italics, like the Urdu words, and a glossary at the end would be an added advantage.

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