Stevie‘s review of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Literary Fiction published by Random House 04 Feb 20
I’m still enjoying my occasional forays into reading non-Anglocentric literary fiction and the worlds opened up by those experiences. There’s always at least one point of connection in any story, even if it’s just the fact that all readers – and characters – have been children at some point and, in the case of this book, the main protagonists still are. Not that this is a book for children. It’s aimed firmly at an adult audience and has some very challenging and disturbing themes. Not least the day-to-day poverty that these children have to struggle through.
Jai lives with his sister and their parents in a closely packed community overlooked by the high-rise buildings occupied by their vastly better off neighbours – by whom many, including Jai’s mother, are employed as cleaners and the like. Jai goes to school, where he tries to work hard at his lessons, since he dreams of getting a job that will enable him to emulate those in the apartments. However, he is easily distracted by his friends, by the goings-on around him, and by the police dramas he watches on his family’s television. When a classmate is reported missing, Jai, who has previously paid little attention to the other boy, becomes frustrated at the apparent inaction of the local police, and encourages his two best friends to become assistants to the great detective he thinks he can be, as they search out the missing child. Soon they are looking for a number of missing children: the best friend of the first, and then an assortment of others, who are mostly unconnected, beyond having been last seen in the same area, close to one particular shop.
Jai’s searches are not limited to his immediate area. He ‘borrows’ money from his mother’s emergency fund and takes the Purple Line metro into the city, where he encounters children worse off than himself and hears the legends they tell each other about long-gone protectors and the fate of mothers whose children have also disappeared. One of Jai’s friends is convinced that the missing children have been snatched by an evil spirit, a djinn, although Jai is certain the culprit is all too human. As the numbers of the missing increase, different sectors of the community are turned against each other, particularly along religious lines, and the impact is particularly harshly felt by one of Jai’s friends. This only fuels Jai’s determination to seek out the truth, and in the end all the pieces fall into place, though not with the outcome Jai might have wished for.
This was definitely a tough read at a time when I could have done with something lighter. However, the writing was atmospheric and the characters were highly distinctive. I found it thought-provoking that Jai sees as normal situations which most western readers would find intolerable, should they have to deal with them for more than a few days. I was struck by the constant threats Jai and his family have to endure with regard to the impermanence of their home and neighbourhood, and with the adults’ acceptance of that just being the way things are. Definitely a book I should reread under less trying circumstances, if I am to fully appreciate all the information it has to impart.
Grade: B
Summary:
In a sprawling Indian city, three friends venture into the most dangerous corners to find their missing classmate. . . .
Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn’t let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into this neighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world.
Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.
But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.
Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined, and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience, and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a community that, once encountered, is impossible to forget.
Read an excerpt.
