Publishers : Pan Macmillan India
Rijula Das is a recipient of 2019 Michael King Writer’s Centre Residency in Auckland and the 2016 Dastaan Award for her short story Notes From A Passing. Her short story, The Grave of The Heart Eater, was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019.
Her English translation of Nabarun Bhattacharya’s short fiction has appeared in Nabarun Bhattacharya: Aesthetics and Politics In A World after Ethics, Bloomsbury, 2020. Her translation of Bhattacharya’s novel Kangal Malshat is forthcoming from Seagull Books in fall of 2022. Her short fiction and translations have appeared in Newsroom, New Zealand and The Hindu. She lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand.
Rijula received her PhD in Creative Writing/prose-fiction in 2017 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she taught writing for two years. Her critical research focuses on the connections between public space and sexual violence. A Death in Shonagachhi was born of this research.
In the red-light district of Shonagachhi, Lalee dreams of trading a life of penury and violence for one of relative luxury as a better-paid ‘escort’, just as her long-standing client, erotic novelist Trilokeshwar ‘Tilu’ Shau, realizes he is hopelessly in love with her.
When a young woman who lives next door to Lalee is brutally murdered, a spiral of deceit and crime further disturbs the fragile stability of their existence.
On May 19, 2022, the Supreme Court of India made recommendations emphasising the rights of sex workers and issued guidelines to ensure their ‘right to dignified life’. Almost on cue, this rekindled the perpetual debate on media platforms about the best approach to “help” these sex-workers resurface and be rehabilitated into the mainstream.
The debates reminded me rather obviously of one of my favourite books from last year – Rijula Das’s brilliant literary noir set in Shonagachhi, the largest red-light district in Asia. The book explores the nuances of the different sides of this very argument without claiming to have a ready, or even an easy, answer. More importantly, it highlights the fallacy of expecting a generalized solution to the plights of different human beings, with their own unique and complex histories – without allowing them more than token participation in the very discussion that seeks to determine how they must be treated.
The novel is told from the perspectives of a varied but well-developed cast of characters. Lalee is a sex worker in Shonagachhi who aspires to the affluent lifestyle of a highly paid escort. Shamsher Singh is an inept and corrupt police officer who nevertheless admires the “good cops” on the silver screen and is devoted to his young wife. Tilu is an impoverished writer who makes his living selling cheap eroticas, but has an entire mythological epic planned in his head and who has fallen in love with Lalee as irrevocably as he is in love with the city and its history. Deepa, on the other hand, is a social worker trying to better the lot of the residents of Shonagachhi, yet all the while aware of and pained by the privileges of her standing. The city of Kolkata, dour and splendid, violent and squalid, is present on every page. Das’s sensual prose vividly evokes the nooks and crannies, bylanes and highways of Kolkata as she strings its past and present together in a skilful orchestra. You can almost experience the sights and smells of Tilu’s ramshackle room, and see the hoardings outside. Tilu and his complicated relationship with the city are reminiscent of the old Bengali classics, achieving a combination of realism and nostalgia that I had never thought possible in a contemporary English novel English.
Be warned, however. If you judge the book by the title alone and go into it expecting the usual murder mystery, you will be disappointed. The story does not have the breezy format of a whodunnit, or a satisfying resolution in which the culprit is detected, apprehended, and punished. For those who live in islands of ostracization like Shonagachhi in the middle of the city, danger lurks everywhere, and the violence never truly ends. The story paints a heartbreaking picture of the precarious nature of the lives of the sex workers, yet it is not about their misery. These characters have agency, and even as Das’s mockingly witty tone describes the grit and grime, the small and big ways in which they rescue themselves are celebrated with unironic joy. Deepa, the social worker, is in a supporting role – she helps these brave and resilient women rescue themselves, even as larger questions remain unresolved. This is a refreshing change from the unidimensional ridicule that is often directed towards social workers in literary fiction, which seems to assume that contemptuous indifference is better than attempting to understand and change.
It goes without saying that when looking out for books on sex work, look for treatises written by people with lived experiences of it. But that said, Rijula Das’s book is well-researched, nuanced, and sensitive – a valuable read, as much for its themes as its powerful prose.
And if you do not choose it for any of these, – well, pick it up for the sheer love of the city and her many histories.
