Read an excerpt from THE FANTASTIC AFFAIR OF DESPAIR by Doorva Devarshi!
Picador India's literary debut of the year, The Fantastic Affair of Despair is a powerful story of self-determination in a world bent on endangering all that is precious about us and our surroundings.
Read an excerpt here:
She is, however, not one to be easily swayed by the bilious murmurs of others. Her mother, though now gone some years, had taught her to run and grab what she desired. ‘Nature is abundant and gives enough to everyone,’ her mother would say. She has grasped in her willowy fist the eternal love of a good man. She has built herself a house that stands the furies of nature. She cannot accept that she is barren. From her forays into the forest and the hoard of knowledge that her mother has passed on about its wonders, she believes there is a cure for their predicament.
Beyond their home of towering chir, there is a forest of bhanj, and somewhere in the nearby sprawling village, she has heard of a woman who prepares concoctions to relieve the ills of the womb. Her journey is to be no more than five days long – passing by the village where she had once resided, now denuded of its cover; the outpost of the timber company abandoned; a thundering river that froths at the edges and only passable by a new metal bridge; thicker woods that were known to home mauling beasts and angry bears. She says goodbye to her husband, letting her hand slip from his grasp, to instead hold that of nature, which she believes will convey her safely to the woman near the bhanj forest.
It is fifty-four days before she returns home. Her grieving husband has travelled to the medicine woman five times in these months, axed down the thickest parts of the forest and sent many men into others. His mother, who loved her like her own daughter and wouldn’t eat unless served by her, has died of a broken heart. But she arrives, untouched and unscathed, from the spot she left. Her red sari reflects the early morning light like a sheet of gems. Her feet, though bare, are soft and uncalloused. She only smiles at the villagers who gawk at her, and giggles at the women and children who scream and run away from the ghost risen from the dead. She does not wait to decipher the shock on her husband’s face before gingerly grabbing his unmoving hand and leading him into their home.
The Fantastic Affair of Despair
by Doorva Devarshi
As a newborn India wails into existence, a silent woman labours away in the cramped copy editorial department of a postcolonial magazine. Her days are fraught with the chauvinism of her male colleagues, sanctioned by the founder, Chief, who fancies himself a revolutionary. In the evenings, she returns to a near-peaceful cohabitation with her widowed, opium-addled landlady. But her monotonous life is suddenly interrupted by an act of extreme violence.
Unable to continue living as she had been, the woman enters a self-imposed exile – first in the city of frescoes, and then in a Himalayan dharamshala. Here, she befriends Leela, the pregnant child-bride of an unremarkable godman. Intimately familiar with violence, she notices how it has seeped into every crevice of this valley haunted by the discord between humankind and nature. Even as a fierce storm razes an entire village and a man-eating leopard prowls the ruins by night, political leaders remain occupied with grand ideas of national development, ignoring the victims’ plight.
All this while, the call of the wild emanating from the heart of the valley grows louder, and she cannot help but embark upon a treacherous trek across the mountainous expanse to answer it. What new twist of fate awaits the woman when she comes face to face with the beast?
Exquisitely observed and deeply moving, The Fantastic Affair of Despair is a powerful story of self-determination in a world bent on endangering all that is precious about us and our surroundings.