Starting in 1991 and stretching across the next decade, Patna Blues begins with its young protagonist, Arif, coming to the aid of an ill old gentleman whom he sees in a park, being helped along by a beautiful woman whom Arif is instantly attracted to. Soon enough, the gratitude that Sumitra feels for the young man who took her father to the hospital and helped them has turned to a reciprocation of Arif’s feelings. The problems, though, are many. One is the obvious: Arif is Muslim, Sumitra is Hindu. She is much older than him. And, worst of all—the one thing that keeps pricking Arif’s conscience, even as he draws dangerously closer to Sumitra—she is married, a wife and a mother.
Woven in with Arif’s own dilemma are the many problems that beset his family. The poverty that will cause problems in the weddings of his three sisters, for whom hefty dowries will need to be provided. Arif’s younger brother Zakir’s ambition to be a film star, and the embarrassing failures that come in the way. Arif’s own inability to get into the IAS, which has been his dream, and his parents’, for so long. Hindu-Muslim tensions. The Babri Masjid. Corruption.
All of this plays out largely against a backdrop of Patna, but also ventures briefly (and memorably) into the countryside. There is drama, there is folk lore and myth. There are the romantic dreams of a youth with his head in the clouds. There is harsh reality, the waking up to something that is not Utopian.
I found Patna Blues an unusual and interesting book: on the one hand (primarily concerning the Arif-Sumitra love affair, and Arif’s repeatedly failed attempts to crack the UPSC exam) it has a touch of the fairly common tropes that pervade a lot of mass-market fiction today. On the other hand, there is a lot here that is a far cry from the rest: serious issues, some very enlightening insights into what it is to be a lower middle class Muslim in India today (or twenty years ago; does it make a difference?), and a very believable setting. The stories that Dadi tells Arif, and the folk lore that abounds in the rural countryside, were charming—and evoked nostalgia.
The language is simple, though occasionally slipping into the slightly stilted. There are some well-loved couplets from Ghalib, Faiz, and others (including some beautiful poetry by Abdullah Khan himself, one of which, A Workable Dream, I would have liked to read in Urdu too, not just English).
If I have a complaint, it is with the way Patna Blues ends, leaving several important questions unanswered. I won’t say what those are, because that would amount to spoilers, but it was irritating. Is a sequel in the pipeline?
