There is a certain subgenre of books within literary fiction wherein nothing good is allowed to happen, because the author has convinced themselves that that’s what Serious Literature looks like. When I saw the title of Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice (aka Kaliyuga), I was immediately apprehensive that this was one of those.
Yes, it already had a few rave reviews from across the Atlantic, but there’s a certain kind of consumer – let’s call them Slumdog Millionaire enthusiasts – in the West (and elsewhere) who goes crazy for the kind of grim, dark tragedy porn I’m talking about, because they’ve convinced themselves that’s what authenticity looks like. Now, myself being the self-appointed arbiter of what serious and authentic fiction actually looks like – it’s my book review – I entered this one with one eyebrow raised.
A novel where nothing good happens
You could certainly argue that Age of Vice is exactly that kind of book, but it’s not actually so clear-cut. Age of Vice follows a wide range of characters, all from different walks of life, all flies caught in a political spiderweb. At the centre of this web is the immensely powerful, obscenely wealthy, mystery-shrouded Wadia family, every member of whom is treated by the rest of the cast with utter (justified) terror and respect in spite of the fact that they are named Bunty, Sunny, and Vicky.
I’ll tell you this for free: that’s as much clarity as you’re going to get regarding the exact structure of what’s going on. The web is layered, complex, every strand connected to (too) many others. Every time you think you’ve met the spider, they turn out to be another fly. There are a number of plot lines, each being driven by a different character who thinks they’re the one hoodwinking all the others, which is a trope that I personally think is evergreen.
But to come back to my initial point: the politics of money, property, and elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Delhi is probably as gritty as it gets, which is why one can hardly complain when the novel has little lightness. You wouldn’t list the lack of a romcom subplot as a flaw of Gangs of Wasseypur.
To be explicit, I was right about one thing – nothing good happens.
The strength of Age of Vice, for the first 80% of the novel, is its structure. The book is divided into sections, each of them told from the perspective of a different character, and Kapoor has a steady grip on the wheel here.
Ajay, the loyal and trusted servant of Sunny Wadia, gets very close to but never fully sees the inner workings of the plot in spite of how indispensable to him he becomes; much of what he knows is what he deduced from Sunny’s orders and from rumours.
Neda, a sharp Delhi journalist and Sunny’s love interest, sees a side to him that is almost entirely masked from Ajay, but is – to her frustration – completely blocked out from seeing more than traces that hint of the actual shenanigans he gets up to.
There’s Gautam, grade-A sleazeball, one of the several players who’s convinced he’s winning when he is, in fact, only seeing half the board.
This is good in that there is a lot of satisfaction in seeing one character’s perspective fill in a few holes in the other’s – and they are reasonably distinct perspectives. The novel showcases Kapoor’s ability to develop and switch between voices.
A game of Blind Man’s Bluff
The flaw with this structure, though, is that Kapoor ends up withholding a little too much information, making the last section of the novel more confusing than intriguing. The narrative seems to lose more and more structure and coherence as it rushes towards its climax. This is obviously partially intentional, being that much of the cast is on drugs at this point, but all the same, it does take away from the story a little bit when one genuinely can’t quite tell what exactly just happened.
There are a few reasons for this: the introduction of a last-minute contender, sans foreshadowing, which isn’t pulled off very gracefully; it relies on the crutch of a drawn-out monologue/ flashback / infodump situation. The characters’ extreme awareness that they’re being surveilled, which they contend with a little too successfully, thereby keeping the reader in the the dark too.
We never get into the heads of Bunty or Vicky Wadia, the purported lynchpins of the whole plot (I say purported because there really is no telling who’s in who’s pocket at this point and I don’t trust any of them as far as an ant can jump. It’s one of the best things about the book). As it progresses, the novel more and more closely resembles a game of Blind Man’s Buff.
I read somewhere that this novel is planned to be the first in a series, and maybe this murkiness is meant to serve as a launchpad for the sequels, but I don’t think a little more clarity would have taken away from that in the slightest. I’m pretty sure that the plot of this novel, or series, is one of those complex, delicious ones, but at times it feels a bit like standing outside a bakery and trying to gauge the quality of the goods based only on smell.
Kapoor’s other strength is her ability to write about what she’s writing about – seriously, nothing good – while still holding off from dipping too much into mushy melodrama. I pretty much never stopped being able to take her seriously. Everything has the impact she wants it to have; her aim is strong.
The writing, too, holds up; aside from the occasional stilted dialogue (“We’re not zoo animals for your pleasure, not the smiling native to accessorise your enlightenment,” says Sunny in his introductory scene, betraying a what probably would have been a sparkling career in slam poetry), it never gets in the way of the storytelling.
I think Age of Vice is best described as a perfectly good book that only disappoints because you can so clearly see how it could have been a great one. But if it’s true that there are further books coming, I can see myself picking them up. Kapoor leaves you wanting to know what happens next.
Age of Vice, Deepti Kapoor, Juggernaut.
