‘One begins each new work for a different reason. This novel is about confusion’
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The unnamed narrator of Geetanjali Shree’s novel Our City That Year (recently translated by Daisy Rockwell from the original Hindi, Hamara Sheher Us Baras, 1998) tells us the story of three young people—writer Shruti, her sociologist husband Hanif and their friend/landlord Sharad, who is also Hanif’s colleague—struggling to respond to communal violence in their unnamed city. The book’s fourth principal character is Daddu, Sharad’s retired father, a genteel, progressive, profoundly moral figure.
Around them, as the city descends into madness, the narrator expresses her fear of running out of ink, the way a place can run out of petrol during times of unrest. Another time, the words “Hindu" and “Muslim" visit her nightmares in corporeal form, boots click-clacking with military rhythm and precision. These striking images, deployed within the narrative framework of the novel, are fever-dream manifestations of the moral and writerly anxieties stared down by Shruti, Hanif and their kind every day.
“One begins every new work for a different reason. This is a novel about confusion," Shree says when we meet in Delhi. “The narrator is confused about how to tell this particular story, about the kind of atmosphere where communal violence happens.
She feels every method, every approach, every possible angle to this narrative has been exhausted. It is therefore difficult to offer meaningful commentary, but equally hard to stay silent. This pashopesh, dilemma, and the trauma that comes out of it are what impelled me to write this novel." The trio’s attempts at making sense of the tragedy can be described as flailing, at best.
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