A reader is deliberately disoriented, put in the same place that Shalini would be after 16 years of oppression, desperation, and despair. Deftly written, Leila starts slowly, sparsely. This is where the book’s power lies: Akbar has not told Shalini’s story in a vacuum, and the resemblance between her fictional nightmare and our reality is soul shaking. That particular scene is a terrifying and accurate description of the flimsiness of an individual’s sense of security. A reader might be reminded of the Gujarat riots and stories of how victims in the Gulbarg massacre stood with vases and bats to defend themselves against a frenzied Hindu mob at their doorstep.
When the Repeaters march into Shalini’s house during a pool party to take Leila, her husband Riz stands at the stairs holding only a cricket bat to defend his family. While reading about the community walls, and ‘paunchy’, ‘frustrated’ Repeaters - a clever name for the followers of an over watch Council that insists on conformity - the reader is confronted with real-time news of the RSS experiment to create ‘tall, fair, babies.’ When Shalini marries her husband Riz, the red tape surrounding their nuptials isn’t far from the experience of couples under the current Special Marriage Act.
But this is not a fantasy novel: the details described were already reality in many parts of India, long before 2014. There are no stray words, no unnecessary flourishes. The narrative, written in first person from Shalini’s point of view, doesn’t waste a sentence.
Shalini is placed in an internment camp - suddenly forced into the life of someone completely at the mercy of an intrusive, autocratic State. They have a daughter, who is taken away for being ‘mixed’.
A privileged Hindu girl, she marries an equally well-off Muslim boy even as the world around her marches towards segregation. It does rely on all the elements of stories like Animal Farm - the protagonist Shalini lives in an India that’s sorely divided, with walled ‘communities’ distinguished by religion. To call Akbar’s novel a dystopian fantasy is not quite correct. No light at the end of the tunnel? The canal at the Tunnel de Roue, near Marseilles, pictured in 1930.(Getty Images) Anchored by the heart-wrenching story of a woman’s desperate search for her daughter, Leila offers readers a picture of their potential future. Leila, Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel, straddles the line between surrealism and a clear vision of the direction in which our society appears to be heading.
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