For a novel so enamoured of Delhi’s past, the concerns of Avtar Singh’s Necropolis are strikingly contemporary. Indeed, the five initially distinct but increasingly connected criminal investigations, conducted by the soulful, Ghalib-quoting DCP Sajan Dayal, often read like a who’s who of the city’s criminal zeitgeist, as seen in a Times of India news report.
Gang-rape, violence against our North Eastern citizens, racism and corruption on every level all feature prominently, alongside an unhealthy roster of gangsters, vulgar new money builders, kidnapped kids, African drug dealers, sinister ministers, prostitutes, and encounter specialists. Throughout the pages, the reader’s mind filters these stories through their real-life counterparts, cases we have known, and to that extent they’re given a certain power, amplified through our own private comprehension of their horrors.
Even during the description of an unrelated violent incident, the subtle echo of one of Delhi’s dreadful events floats before us:
The lights are still on, the men still asleep or pretending to be, on their common pavement and on their individual cycle rickshaws, a scant few yards away. Somewhat further and higher, the middle-class dwellers of Lajpat Nagar slumber on, their fans and coolers and air-conditioners perhaps more of an alibi.
But surely he screams.
Echo of reality
To my mind – and that of another blind-tested with the page – the passage invokes the Aarushi Talwar murder, the specific detail of an air-conditioner hum ensuring unbroken sleep while violence is committed creating a particularly unnerving impression.
Unnerving in and of itself, but also on account of the fact that the impression arrives shortly after another, far more fantastical one has already been given, of vampires and werewolves, fetishistic finger choppers, mysterious, sexy, possibly immortal clubbers, and the aforementioned DCP who, as is frequently the case with these kinds of men, intuits his way around a crime scene.
In light of all this, it feels as if Necropolis is two novels, one overwrought and supernatural, another earthy and procedural (though it’s not as if they could ever be pulled apart, the two sides need one another to survive). Still, the success by which they synthesise depends entirely on one’s own inclination toward fantasy, generosity, suspension of disbelief, and finally to one’s identification with the pivotal protagonist, DCP Dayal.
In an introduction that echoes the Matthew McConaughey character’s behaviour at the beginning of last year’s HBO series True Detective, Dayal makes “a fetish out of reconstructing the sequence of events” and, unlike his colleagues, who merely observed the syringe and the urine stain, Dayal “caressed as if with love the syringe, almost bent to sniff at the ground”.
Some of his subordinates see him as “borderline creepy”, but to the reader, who knows better and has seen this kind of anti-hero before, Dayal is marked out as essentially special, less a part of the police force many regard as criminal themselves and more a maverick investigator in tune with the intangible, poetic elements of the universe. It doesn’t hurt that he’s handsome.
Anyway, without giving the game away, DCP Dayal investigates this series of crimes, helped along the way by the rough-edged but loyal Kapoor, a typical North Indian cop who has people everywhere and knows how to hand out a beating, and the fresh-faced cyber-crimes officer, Smita Dhingra, seconded to his unity, representing the New India, the New Feminism, and the online savvy world. Essentially it means Dayal gets to have his hunches and make his connections while Kapoor handles the lowlife and does the grunt work and Dhingra helps him navigate the highlife while making sure he’s still down with the kids.
Oh, and did I mention the mysterious Razia, aka the Colonel, aka the Vampire? The love interest, antagonist and mystery, who, it is implied (an implication that Dayal seems to accept without batting an eyelid) is hundreds of years old, as old as Delhi itself.
This might sound like a spoiler, but since it’s already written on the blurb of the book, it’s not. And because it’s written on the blurb of the book it gives an impression of the subsequent pages that doesn’t quite tally with the whole picture, with disproportionate weight handed to one of the two sides, the supernatural one, which is by far the least interesting.
Writer's tics
In fact, upon learning I was going to read about vampires, werewolves and a centuries-old love interest, I feared the worse. I feared Twilight set in Delhi (I acknowledge that for some this may not be a fear at all). Thankfully this didn’t quite come to pass. In what is a gratefully received and smart move, Razia does not remain centrestage, and when, as a consequence of this, the novel shifts into its police procedural aspects to get inside the city – a city Singh clearly knows very well – it really is quite good.
Before we go any further though, we need to talk about a major sticking point, which is the language. It’s established early on that the language of this world is heavy. Which means to object to something as simple as passing through a gate is to “demur”, while someone’s appearance is their “visage” and naïve, posturing kids are “dilettantes of delinquency”. It’s a world in which the “hysterical city”, as it observes a mini crime-wave, is “nearing spontaneous infarction”.
It’s florid and verbose, and not only does it go against the conventions of detective fiction, the hardboiled nature of which typically employs a spare, terse style, it also tends to irritate. Yet it does seem strangely appropriate for Delhi. In fact, it reminds me of the kind of “at your service” manner of an old school city restaurant, where the maître d' has swallowed a dictionary and is keen to regurgitate it for one’s approval. It’s a cartoonish tone all told, one more suitable to satire and comedy – say, something like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair or Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces – where the characters’ pomposities are repeatedly pricked by the knowing narrator. In the case of Necropolis, it sits ill at ease, and often becomes unintentionally funny.
Another issue is the editing. Writers’ tics, which an editor should be alert to, are persistently present. I lost count of the number of times that eyebrows were raised by almost every character. It must have been more than 20 or 30; equally I lost count of the number of times the trio of investigators “chuckled” rather than laughed, a distinct choice of word that has a connotation unsuited to the material or the setting; I also lost count of the number of times a discussion with conflicting viewpoints was resolved with a joke that led to the aforementioned chuckling breaking out. There are instances too, where a distinctive word is repeated within pages – “desultorily”, for example – and sometimes within the same page. It’s sloppy and should have been caught.
I dwell on these not to be pedantic but because they get in the way of the reading experience, pulling the attentive reader out of the world that’s being created, and, in the case of Necropolis, get in the way of what does, once the whole vampire/werewolf/Razia angle settles down, in fact end up being a engaging, entertaining and fast-paced read.
Gripping passages
To the novel’s credit, as it continues it often forgets to be self-consciously wordy or literary, and when this happens, there are passages of real suspense and narrative economy. A set-piece near a dhaba during Delhi’s biting winter fog is genuinely gripping and superbly executed, as is a surprising sequence in Delhi’s forested ridge (with a prelude of questionable sexual tension), while a couple of the stories in their entirety, the second and third specifically, are thoroughly engaging, mostly because they deal with the city in the detail of its dreadful reality, rather than drifting into the (albeit structurally necessary) supernatural conspiracies that are ultimately used to bind the piece together.
Still, of these conspiracies there’s also something worthy of note. The overarching theme, if one takes the vampire to be metaphor, is of an ancient, dynastic and paternalistic group, intimately connected with the history of Delhi, gradually turning corrupt, losing touch with the reality and need of the city, and being threatened by a new wave of vigilante cum activist, starting off as a guerilla, cult movement with a single charismatic leader, before potentially rising into ascendency. Sound vaguely familiar?
All in all, it’s hard to begrudge Necropolis its faults (faults I acknowledge other may see as virtues). Structurally, with its connected episodes – which remind one of a short season of a TV drama – it’s innovative and appealing. It also defies expectations early on, exploring our fascinating, decaying and complex capital in directions interesting and unknown, long enough to keep the reader on their toes.
Deepti Kapoor is the author of A Bad Character.
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Gang-rape, violence against our North Eastern citizens, racism and corruption on every level all feature prominently, alongside an unhealthy roster of gangsters, vulgar new money builders, kidnapped kids, African drug dealers, sinister ministers, prostitutes, and encounter specialists. Throughout the pages, the reader’s mind filters these stories through their real-life counterparts, cases we have known, and to that extent they’re given a certain power, amplified through our own private comprehension of their horrors.
Even during the description of an unrelated violent incident, the subtle echo of one of Delhi’s dreadful events floats before us:
The lights are still on, the men still asleep or pretending to be, on their common pavement and on their individual cycle rickshaws, a scant few yards away. Somewhat further and higher, the middle-class dwellers of Lajpat Nagar slumber on, their fans and coolers and air-conditioners perhaps more of an alibi.
But surely he screams.
Echo of reality
To my mind – and that of another blind-tested with the page – the passage invokes the Aarushi Talwar murder, the specific detail of an air-conditioner hum ensuring unbroken sleep while violence is committed creating a particularly unnerving impression.
Unnerving in and of itself, but also on account of the fact that the impression arrives shortly after another, far more fantastical one has already been given, of vampires and werewolves, fetishistic finger choppers, mysterious, sexy, possibly immortal clubbers, and the aforementioned DCP who, as is frequently the case with these kinds of men, intuits his way around a crime scene.
In light of all this, it feels as if Necropolis is two novels, one overwrought and supernatural, another earthy and procedural (though it’s not as if they could ever be pulled apart, the two sides need one another to survive). Still, the success by which they synthesise depends entirely on one’s own inclination toward fantasy, generosity, suspension of disbelief, and finally to one’s identification with the pivotal protagonist, DCP Dayal.
In an introduction that echoes the Matthew McConaughey character’s behaviour at the beginning of last year’s HBO series True Detective, Dayal makes “a fetish out of reconstructing the sequence of events” and, unlike his colleagues, who merely observed the syringe and the urine stain, Dayal “caressed as if with love the syringe, almost bent to sniff at the ground”.
Some of his subordinates see him as “borderline creepy”, but to the reader, who knows better and has seen this kind of anti-hero before, Dayal is marked out as essentially special, less a part of the police force many regard as criminal themselves and more a maverick investigator in tune with the intangible, poetic elements of the universe. It doesn’t hurt that he’s handsome.
Anyway, without giving the game away, DCP Dayal investigates this series of crimes, helped along the way by the rough-edged but loyal Kapoor, a typical North Indian cop who has people everywhere and knows how to hand out a beating, and the fresh-faced cyber-crimes officer, Smita Dhingra, seconded to his unity, representing the New India, the New Feminism, and the online savvy world. Essentially it means Dayal gets to have his hunches and make his connections while Kapoor handles the lowlife and does the grunt work and Dhingra helps him navigate the highlife while making sure he’s still down with the kids.
Oh, and did I mention the mysterious Razia, aka the Colonel, aka the Vampire? The love interest, antagonist and mystery, who, it is implied (an implication that Dayal seems to accept without batting an eyelid) is hundreds of years old, as old as Delhi itself.
This might sound like a spoiler, but since it’s already written on the blurb of the book, it’s not. And because it’s written on the blurb of the book it gives an impression of the subsequent pages that doesn’t quite tally with the whole picture, with disproportionate weight handed to one of the two sides, the supernatural one, which is by far the least interesting.
Writer's tics
In fact, upon learning I was going to read about vampires, werewolves and a centuries-old love interest, I feared the worse. I feared Twilight set in Delhi (I acknowledge that for some this may not be a fear at all). Thankfully this didn’t quite come to pass. In what is a gratefully received and smart move, Razia does not remain centrestage, and when, as a consequence of this, the novel shifts into its police procedural aspects to get inside the city – a city Singh clearly knows very well – it really is quite good.
Before we go any further though, we need to talk about a major sticking point, which is the language. It’s established early on that the language of this world is heavy. Which means to object to something as simple as passing through a gate is to “demur”, while someone’s appearance is their “visage” and naïve, posturing kids are “dilettantes of delinquency”. It’s a world in which the “hysterical city”, as it observes a mini crime-wave, is “nearing spontaneous infarction”.
It’s florid and verbose, and not only does it go against the conventions of detective fiction, the hardboiled nature of which typically employs a spare, terse style, it also tends to irritate. Yet it does seem strangely appropriate for Delhi. In fact, it reminds me of the kind of “at your service” manner of an old school city restaurant, where the maître d' has swallowed a dictionary and is keen to regurgitate it for one’s approval. It’s a cartoonish tone all told, one more suitable to satire and comedy – say, something like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair or Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces – where the characters’ pomposities are repeatedly pricked by the knowing narrator. In the case of Necropolis, it sits ill at ease, and often becomes unintentionally funny.
Another issue is the editing. Writers’ tics, which an editor should be alert to, are persistently present. I lost count of the number of times that eyebrows were raised by almost every character. It must have been more than 20 or 30; equally I lost count of the number of times the trio of investigators “chuckled” rather than laughed, a distinct choice of word that has a connotation unsuited to the material or the setting; I also lost count of the number of times a discussion with conflicting viewpoints was resolved with a joke that led to the aforementioned chuckling breaking out. There are instances too, where a distinctive word is repeated within pages – “desultorily”, for example – and sometimes within the same page. It’s sloppy and should have been caught.
I dwell on these not to be pedantic but because they get in the way of the reading experience, pulling the attentive reader out of the world that’s being created, and, in the case of Necropolis, get in the way of what does, once the whole vampire/werewolf/Razia angle settles down, in fact end up being a engaging, entertaining and fast-paced read.
Gripping passages
To the novel’s credit, as it continues it often forgets to be self-consciously wordy or literary, and when this happens, there are passages of real suspense and narrative economy. A set-piece near a dhaba during Delhi’s biting winter fog is genuinely gripping and superbly executed, as is a surprising sequence in Delhi’s forested ridge (with a prelude of questionable sexual tension), while a couple of the stories in their entirety, the second and third specifically, are thoroughly engaging, mostly because they deal with the city in the detail of its dreadful reality, rather than drifting into the (albeit structurally necessary) supernatural conspiracies that are ultimately used to bind the piece together.
Still, of these conspiracies there’s also something worthy of note. The overarching theme, if one takes the vampire to be metaphor, is of an ancient, dynastic and paternalistic group, intimately connected with the history of Delhi, gradually turning corrupt, losing touch with the reality and need of the city, and being threatened by a new wave of vigilante cum activist, starting off as a guerilla, cult movement with a single charismatic leader, before potentially rising into ascendency. Sound vaguely familiar?
All in all, it’s hard to begrudge Necropolis its faults (faults I acknowledge other may see as virtues). Structurally, with its connected episodes – which remind one of a short season of a TV drama – it’s innovative and appealing. It also defies expectations early on, exploring our fascinating, decaying and complex capital in directions interesting and unknown, long enough to keep the reader on their toes.
Deepti Kapoor is the author of A Bad Character.
