PERCY BHARUCHA

is a writer and illustrator with two biweekly comics

If there’s a book I’ve had the most fun reading this year, it is Upamanyu Chatterjee’s first volume of short stories, The Assassination Of Indira Gandhi: The Collected Stories (Volume One). There are several reasons this collection is to be celebrated: Chatterjee is a proficient wordsmith who uses historical figures, fictitious journeys, old heroes and contemporary issues to convey that the emperor is always naked. His subjects include homesick Sir Thomas Roe and his misadventures with translators and maharajas; a father’s obsession with Othello; thirteen-year-old students dealing with the aftermath of their classmate’s murder; a bored civil servant’s first contact with small-town India; and a young boy’s study of the absurd legal quagmire that is section 377. While Chatterjee explores the various shades of humour, he enjoys examining the consequences of the trivial – Sir Thomas Roe reading the book of Jehangir backwards having opened it the wrong way, and life imprisonment under section 377 hinging upon the definition of the word ‘penetrate’. Underneath the humour that is characteristic to his work, Chatterjee hides devastating truths. This collection is a fine balance where neither the truth nor the humour overpowers. Both are employed using a light touch making this a perfect note on which to end the year.