Hindustantimes wants to start sending you push notifications. Click allow to subscribe

Review: More Bodies Will Fall by Ankush Saikia

Hindustan Times | ByLamat R Hasan
Nov 03, 2018 10:07 AM IST

Private detective Arjun Arora gets the better of the Delhi police and fights his demons in the north east even as he solves a murder case that’s gone cold

₹399, 311pp; Penguin

Ankush Saikia’s More Bodies Will Fall sat on my desk untouched for a long time. I would stare at the ugly cover – a man falling off a cliff, a botched sunset sky, an easily-missed optical illusion – and remember Jhumpa Lahiri’s remark that book jackets make or break a book and should be designed to fit like gloves.

In The Clothing of Books, Lahiri explored the art of the book jacket from the perspective of both the reader and the writer, and even wondered if a “uniform” (jacket) would help fix the complex relationship between text and image, author and designer, art and commerce.

Hindustan Times - your fastest source for breaking news! Read now.

However, when I did pick up Saikia, I couldn’t put it down. The glowing blurbs on the book jacket referring to his earlier works -- “riveting”, “a page turner” and “a gripping thriller” -- that had seemed to push me further away, seemed surprisingly true.

More Bodies Will Fall is the third in the Arjun Arora mysteries, and journalist-turned-writer Saikia shines as a master writer in this genre. Saikia, an insider in the northeast, simplifies a deeply political plot, and the subtext is a subtle social commentary on the Us vs Them divide; the divide between the “Indians” and those from the north east, exposing every crass stereotype that both sides hold.

A Naga girl is killed in Delhi. There’s been no headway in the case even after a year. Her rather influential father decides to hire a private detective. Arjun Arora takes up the case, albeit reluctantly, as the investigations are likely to lead him to the north east, where his past lies buried. Arora is a middle-aged detective who has quit the army, his marriage has ended, and he is struggling to make a mark with his puny detective agency thriving mostly on pre-matrimonial checks.

Arora is far from the quintessential, over-the-top, cocky detective. He is flawed and it is his imperfections and his ordinariness that draw the reader to him.

The ex-boyfriend of the murdered girl, Amenla Longkumer, is briefly held and let off by the Delhi Police. The boy had an alibi and besides, Amenla’s character is suspect as she is from the north east and it is therefore assumed that she would have had “many boyfriends”. As for Amenla’s father, the aged Mr Longkumer, he is not ruling out the involvement of an “Indian boy”, or a boy from Delhi.

A call centre employee, Amenla had rented a barsati in South Delhi, close to the nondescript lanes of Humayunpur village, where many from the north east live. Saikia’s writing is beautiful as he gives the readers a glimpse into the dead girl’s life. Amenla liked order and kept her single-room accommodation tidy – arranging everything from little shampoo bottles to credit cards, even the expired ones, to crisp bundles of currency notes – neatly. What did bother her was a large black suitcase which wasn’t hers and which didn’t fit in. The black suitcase holds the clue to her murder.

It is not an easy case. It has been a year since her murder and Arora has to deal with the deadly Delhi Police. His interaction with the cops is both funny and sad. “So you’re a detective? (Investigating Officer Kapil) Sharma asked with noticeable sarcasm”. Arora has to brag about the cases he has solved and drop names before the murder files are shared with him.

With Arora on his feet, the readers begin to see things which the Delhi Police didn’t or didn’t want to. Arora meets almost all the people Amenla knew in Delhi, but the leads eventually take him to the north east – the region he was not keen to visit, and the reason he was reluctant to take on the case.

After landing in Guwahati, Arora heads to Shillong and thereon to Nagaland and Manipur and into Myanmar, almost losing his life on the trail to find Amenla’s killer/s. Saikia is at his best here and keeps the scenes slick and real. The chain-smoking Arora, who has had a drinking problem and is almost proud to have gone dry for some time, allows himself a couple of drinks to deal with a near-death scenario, and with the ugly-sweet memories of his past life as an army officer when his wife Sonali was his companion, and he was at the mercy of a haughty officer.

Saikia’s plot is utterly convincing, and it’s easy to connect with the characters – especially Arora, an insider in the north east by virtue of growing up there and later serving in the army, but who will always be seen as an outsider, and, also Amenla’s father, Mr Longkumer, a deeply political man, who plays an important role in tribal politics, and will not allow his daughter to date a Kuki boy.

Ankush Saikia (Embor Sayo)

The low point in this thriller are the unnecessary details. As Arora rides through the concrete jungles of Delhi, the descriptions get overbearing. “Going up KG Marg, he swept around Connaught Circus before exiting past Regal Cinema on to Panchkuian Road, heading towards Jhandewalan. About a kilometre and a half down he crossed the Ramakrishna Ashram Marg metro station, and ahead of that took a U-turn...”

Just for this the thriller can double up as a touristy guide to help visitors traverse a large part of Delhi, complete with random information (“Why don’t you go and get one (xerox machine) this weekend from Nehru Place?) to the more specific - “Arjun had forgotten when he had last been to the parathawallah outside the nearby Vikram Hotel”.

Read more: Remember Death review: Most pulp fiction fails to portray true India. Not this

The occasional stereotyping is surprising. Arora goes into a boutique in Hauz Khas Village: “The price tags on the clothes made him raise his eyebrows - strictly for the idle wives of the rich.” Or when he meets old Delhi friend Bunty for a ‘car-o-bar’.

Saikia keeps his stories real. ‘More Bodies Will Fall’ is based on a huge cache of methamphetamine tablets seized in Manipur not far from the Myanmar border. He has kept up his game since he started his detective series with ‘Dead Meat’ based on the mid-1990s Naina Sahni Tandoor murder case, then followed it up with ‘Remember Death’.

Ankush Saikia’s work has raised the bar for Indian noir. If only his publishers would match it up with a fitting book jacket.

Unlock a world of Benefits with HT! From insightful newsletters to real-time news alerts and a personalized news feed – it's all here, just a click away! -Login Now!
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Start 14 Days Free Trial Subscribe Now
OPEN APP