There is a line somewhere towards the end of Rohit Manchanda’s The Enclave which describes how different sections of time can exist together – that the future doesn’t replace the present, and the present doesn’t replace the past. Instead, they develop like a layer over the existing, a thin patina at first, eventually accumulating their own selves and stories and identities without erasing what came before them. This was a surprisingly profound line that spoke to me because unfortunately much of the book plays out the same way – the later, slightly better portions developed over an indifferent first three-quarters of the book, which unfortunately do not erase it.
The book, chronicling the regular everyday life of a divorced woman in her early forties, Maya, seems to be too self-aware to feel organic. It is supposed to be set in the 2000s, starting off somewhere in 2007. Yet, it is acutely conscious that it is being written much later, and the retrospective lens of narration takes away any authenticity that could have given the book some weight. Technology is written about with the awareness of having progressed in the later years, the recession is viewed as a blip, the very essence of being a 2000s story is absent to the extent that I didn’t realise it was set in that decade then until I had already read a major chunk of the novel.
Where’s the conflict?
But its biggest drawback is its lack of faith in its lead character. An ex-husband who has nothing to do with her, a son who is away in boarding school, a measly job at a government institution, yet somehow, Maya lives in a 2BHK in a gated society in Mumbai, is technologically so savvy that she could be living in 2027 instead, has so much money from her father whom she, of course, doesn’t get along with (cue woman with daddy issues) and has an inexplicably rich brother living in the Philippines who is somehow always sending money over to her whenever she asks. The book does not provide her with any conflict. Her many paramours seem to have eyes only for her whenever they meet.
She of course has a very healthy relationship with her son despite quite openly not being involved in his upbringing. And of course all the men in her housing society are too enchanted by her seductive appeal to think clearly. At one point you will begin to wonder if anything about Maya warrants a book being written about her at all, because all these tropes were done and dusted years ago. Nothing about Maya feels like something you haven’t already read or seen.
Men writing women can be fraught. There is a vague likening to Narcissus, someone so vain they fail to see the world around them for what it is. But this metaphor doesn’t realise itself as convincingly as the author might have liked. There seems to be a limited understanding of how women actually think, and in an attempt to be subtle about trying to paint Maya as a flawed character, Manchanda overdoes it to the point that you don’t really know why you are reading 200 pages about a very annoying person.
Maya is apparently freewheeling in life, according to the blurb on the back cover, and the book seems to be doing the same, both of them hurtling through time, space and words towards no coherent conclusion or significant developments. There are no arcs, no acts, no solid characters – in fact, no characters you will feel anything for. There are also factual errors – Neetu Singh and Shashi Kapoor were not brother-in-law and sister-in-law, since Shashi was Neetu’s husband Rishi Kapoor’s uncle – and comparing a roadside splatter of paint to Jackson Pollock but “restrained by colour” because it’s white on dark roads is incorrect because Pollock has in fact created white and grey paintings.
Overcrowded with words
Credit where it’s due, Manchanda sure knows a lot of words. Almost so many that none of the sentences feel real, often making the reader feel that every word was googled with a “-synonym” tag, and whatever came up in the search was replaced in text. Once you are barely done making sense of one line and move on to the next, you are bombarded with more of the same. The paragraphs don’t make sense because they seem to be piling on their predecessors without any point to them. There are some moments set up for prime comedy, but the excessive flower takes away the impact.
What is unfortunate though, is that in the middle of all this, there seems to be something the novel is genuinely trying to put across – how all-consuming Maya’s vanity is, her overconfidence in herself, and her disregard for others, all of which make her far less of a person than she thinks she is. But this is lost in the muddle of words. Fleetingly some lines will pop out, some scenes will suddenly pierce your weariness and demand your attention, and in those moments, I was rooting for the author to take this momentum all the way through.
But the flashes of brilliance fall short and fizzle out soon after, and we are back to trying to figure out what each sentence means. There are some sharp observations peppered throughout the book (why indeed do all institutional boulevards feel the need to be flanked by nothing but royal palm trees?) but they don’t add up to actually lending the book some of their weight. I will say this though, even if I wasn’t a fan of the book, I am intrigued by Rohit Manchanda’s writing enough to give it one more shot a few years later when I have regained the energy to read.
The Enclave, Rohit Manchanda, HarperCollins India.
