The Narrative Strategy in Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis

Abstract

Abstract

Jeet Thayil belongs to a brave new generation of Indian authors; a breed that challenges established norms of writing, and doesn’t fear controversy when furthering its opinion. He has taken the subcontinent’s publishing scene by storm since the publication of Narcopolis (2013) which documents the underworld of contemporary Mumbai and has won an array of prizes. Thayil is now being hailed as the leading light of a new generation of Indian novelists, who are willing to take on the less salubrious realities of life in the world’s largest democracy. The novel fits into the recent literary wave of “Dark India”, a body of literary fiction which seems to have found a niche in the market, writing as it does of the underbelly of Indian society: its slums, poverty, deprivations, depravations, and destitutions. Narcopolis, with its setting on Bombay’s Shuklaji Street of the 1970s, and 1980s crowded with opium dens and brothels, with its cast of drug addicts, drug peddlers, prostitutes, criminals, and even a eunuch is a book which definitely sets out to depict a non-shining India, which may be a more faithful representation than what it had been the norm up until recently, of the exotic, lush, extravagant India. While presenting Narcopolis at the Jaipur Literary Fest in 2012, Thayil had this to say about Salman Rushdie’s ban in India: “It seems there is a contingent of people at every gathering looking at a sentence or a gesture to get offended. It is cheapening of the idea of rebellion” (Samantara). This is a sentiment that the entire younger generation in India, finds agreeable. This sort of courage and conviction, largely unheard of for many years, is a great sign of changing times in the sub-continent.