This week I read A Burning by Megha Majumdar. Majumdar was born and grew up in Kolkata, India. She left for the United States for college and completed her bachelor's degree in social anthropology at Harvard and her masters at Johns Hopkins.
India is located in South-Central Asia and is the 7th largest and 2nd most populous country in the world. India borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
A Burning centers around an act of terrorism, and how this act affects the lives of three individuals, as well as their community. One day, a group of men ran up to a halted train and threw flaming torches into the open windows, trapping and killing more than one hundred people.
The first character we are introduced to is a teenager named Jivan. After the attack Jivan scrolls on Facebook and sees post after post about the attack and the anger of the Indian citizens at the police, the government, and the terrorists. Jivan shares a video of a woman crying while she explains that a car full of policemen sat by and did nothing but watch the train erupt in flames while her husband and daughter were trapped inside.
Jivan adds the caption, “policemen paid by the government watched and did nothing while this innocent woman lost everything”.
As people comment and argue on her post, debating if the woman is telling the truth or speculating on what really happened, Jivan engages, feeling a sense of excitement in the internet exchanges. She takes pleasure in the distraction from her real problems, ”this was not the frustration of no water in the municipal pump or power cut on the hottest night. Wasn’t this a kind of leisure dressed up as agitation"?
It is in this excitement that Jivan writes something that will change the course of her life forever, she writes, “If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean…that the government is also a terrorist”?
A few nights later the police show up at Jivan’s parent’s house and she is taken into custody. She is now being charged for aiding the terrorists. They found Facebook chat records with a terrorist recruiter, there are witnesses at the railway station saying they saw Jivan with a package, which they say was probably kerosene and wood for torches. “Though they saw no men with [her], they allege that [she] guided men, terrorists, enemies of the country, down the unnamed lanes of the slum, to the station where the cursed train would be waiting”.
The only possible witness who could prove Jivan’s innocence is the second main character of the novel, a woman named Lovely. Lovely is a hijra. The word hijra is used in South Asia to mean a person that was assigned male at birth, but who identifies as either a woman or who identifies outside the gender binary. The general public believe that Hijras have a direct line to God and so a blessing from one of them is a blessing directly from God. Lovely lives in a house with other hijras who do blessings for marriages, babies, and other performances. Her dream is to be an actress and the highlight of her week is taking an acting class at a local man’s home. Jivan was teaching Lovely English, and on the day of the attack the package Jivan was seen with was a stack of English books that she was delivering to her.
The third individual the novel centers around is PT Sir, a physical-training teacher at a girls’ school. He was Jivan’s teacher before she left school to work to support her parents. PT Sir is the type who lives his life with an odd mentality.
He knew Jivan was a charity student and he saw potential in her as an athlete. He made choices to help her: like giving her a piece of fruit now and then when he knew she was hungry and not dress coding her for her dirty shoes. When Jivan left school, PT Sir was offended. He believed that Jivan didn’t show the appreciation that his kindness deserved. He was especially angry that she never thanked him before she left school.
Seeing her on the tv as a suspect in the terrorist act gave him a feeling of sick satisfaction,
Now he knows that "there was something wrong with her the whole time. There was something wrong in her thinking. Otherwise she would never have left without telling him, a teacher who cared for her, farewell, and thank you”.
PT Sir becomes involved with the Jana Kalyan (Well-being for All) party, whose leader is Bimala Pal, at the height of their political campaign. A chance incident where he fixes the microphone at one of their rallies, opens up a new path in his life. While he begins helping the party, his influence will only hurt Jivan.
He begins testifying for the Jana Kalyan party as a witness to crimes he has not seen, against those that the party claims are criminals. Although “PT Sir has never seen this man before…he knows—he has been told—that this is a man who has robbed and stolen for a living, but never been caught. It is true that he also belongs to the wrong religion, the minority religion that encourages the eating of beef, but that is a peripheral matter, according to Bimala Pal’s assistant. The main issue is, a robber has to be stopped”.
The topic of religion, specifically the conflict between the majority religion, Hinduism, and the minority, Islam, is the force working behind the scenes of the political actions taken throughout the novel.
In prison, Jivan is contacted by a reporter who would like to interview her and tell the public her side of the story. He isn’t allowed to take any notes, but he visits Jivan every week. Through these visits we go back in time and gain an understanding of Jivan’s childhood. We learn that the system has always been against her and her family. They, along with the rest of their village, were kicked out of their homes so the government could build new developments, they moved to the city, but her father could no longer work because his pain was too intense and the doctors did not take him seriously. Jivan ultimately made the decision to quit school so that she could provide for her parents. After the printing of this interview, Jivan learns the harsh reality of journalism, and that she has no control over how her narrative is spun.
The three individuals, Lovely, Jivan, and PT Sir, come together at Jivan’s trial, though they never speak to each other. The article written against Jivan is damning, and there is not much hope left. She is painted as a poor girl who grew up in the slums and whose hatred and resentment for the government grew up with her. PT Sir testified that while she was a good student, she was an outsider, and one day after her exams she disappeared under suspicious circumstances. He hadn’t seen her since and it was possible she got involved with terrorists. Lovely, on the other hand, tells the court that Jivan was a sweet girl who spent her time teaching her English so that she could audition for better roles.
Jivan’s age and potential, along with Lovely’s testimony, isn't enough. The judge’s verdict is guilty and Jivan is sentenced to death. The judge announced that “it is clear that the defendant has long been disloyal to the values of this nation. The defendant has spoken clearly against the government, against the police, on the Internet, on Facebook dot-com. This lack of loyalty is not something to be taken lightly. It is its own strong piece of evidence. There is a case to be made, as well, for soothing the conscience of the city, of the country. The people demand justice.”
Jivan, as the only suspect within reach, has become the country’s scapegoat. They cannot find the terrorists who set fire to the train, so they cannot punish them. If they can’t punish them, then there will never be closure.
While both PT Sir and Lovely feel remorse about the outcome of Jivan’s trial, they end up choosing to make decisions that help themselves. The trial was televised and Lovely’s humor and personality on the stand made her an internet sensation. This brings her auditions and acting opportunities, before she was type-cast as a stereotypical hijra character and never given roles where she could shine. Some agencies did not want to be associated with the only person siding with a “terrorist”, so in the end Lovely severs her connection with Jivan in order to depoliticize herself.
Bimala Pal wins the election and becomes chief minister of the state. She offers PT Sir a position as education secretary, but to prove his loyalty he must commit an act that will destroy Jivan’s final chance at freedom.
I thought that this was a very interesting portrait of what motivates not only a country’s leaders, but also its citizens. The connections between the internet, religion, and politics created a story that touched on many issues prevalent in India, but also showed the intimate life and tragedy of a young girl.
留言