Chronicles of lives after death

There’s a mathematics to living in a city. For the marginalised, safety, which is murderously tethered together with crime prevention, is at best a myth. It’s something others possess at their expense. Furthermore, in the modern world, neopatriarchy and hypervigilance add insult to injury, making the notion of safety illusive. When it comes to its representation in contemporary literature, Sonia Faleiro’s The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice, and Jessica Knoll’s Bright Young Women come to mind. 

Although a glimpse of the books noted above offers a limiting view, it’s well-established that violence is gendered. While someone gets to roam scot-free after committing a crime, the wronged are left to attempt to seek justice depending on their location and access to the levers of power. This nuance is often palpable in women’s work. However, in this genre, what writers irrespective of their gender hold dear to themselves is an array of adjectives such as pacey, page-turner, and unputdownable. Pause, and hence, reflection, isn’t often considered valuable.

In that sense, author Nilanjana S Roy’s Black River is a shapeshifter in genre fiction because it snakes through the murder mystery with deliberate slowness. Unassuming, sensitive, and deeply engrossing, the novel is populated by characters whose inner lives are explored at a principled pace, allowing for an organic unpacking of many themes, ranging from belonging and grief to parenthood and justice. In a conversation with DHoS, Roy shared what rendered authenticity to her work, exploring Delhi neighbourhoods on foot, and more. Excerpts

As you’ve explored Delhi on foot, especially the low-lying areas near the Yamuna, could you tell us what it’s like to walk around as a woman?

It’s astonishing to explore Delhi as it’s known to be an aggressive city. There exist—as if almost consciously—masculine and feminine spaces. The latter are very few though. But you’re right about one thing: When I go out, I go out with the weight of my privilege almost like a visible cloak around me. The moment I open my mouth, I speak in English. Then, the clothes I wear. Or something simpler than any of it, the confidence. All of it, however, can be a separation and a bridge.

This whole process of walking around Yamuna, which is still a place of wonder for me, started many years ago. I still remember that I had taken a cab. I got out of it and asked the driver to go because I just wanted to see. Within about five minutes of walking, the city dropped away. The city I knew. Standing on clayey banks, feeling the force of the polluted Yamuna, I saw the silvery grey expanse stretching out to God-knows-where and the fishermen with their boats. The women standing there looked at me either with suspicion or welcome. The former came from a doubt: Who’s this freak of nature? What is she doing here with all her freedom? Then, there were others, including a few men, who helped me map the city, informing me what was safe or unsafe.

What kind of conversations did you have with the women you met?

The women I met — whether they were labourers, domestic staff, or homeless, their map of the city is very circumscribed. They have a fixed bus route. They meet friends at a specific time. Additionally, they’re very resourceful and resilient. They have an instinct that allows them to map out a place or a territory quickly. 

But the conversations that happen when you’re on foot are different from the conversations that happen if you stop the car, and they see you getting out of it. Conversations don’t work one way. So, if you want to ask intrusive questions about people’s personal lives, what they think about Delhi, and all of that, then first you’ve to be prepared to be open and vulnerable and get interrogated, too. It’s wonderful that the more vulnerable I became, the less reporting distance I kept between me and everyone I was meeting, the safer I felt. As a result, many different worlds started to open up to me. So, walking alongside being vulnerable, allows you to meet people halfway. However, I wouldn’t encourage women to do this without a thought. I feel the need to say that because it’s unsafe; it’s powerfully unsafe in many areas.

What advantages do women authors writing crime have over male authors?

Women would never talk to a male reporter the same way they do with women. It takes a while to build up that trust. For a man, he has to be located in that area and even then, there are prohibitions—how long you can talk, what you can reveal in front of your family, etc. So, on the flip side, we’ve access. But I’m less interested in the classic police procedural. For me, what happens after a crime, the way society reacts, comes together, or fragments, is more exciting to explore and with the confidence I have gained from the success of Black River, I’m going to have a lot of fun with the next one.