A Burning: A Read with Jenna Pick

Finished reading this new novel 'A Burning' by Megha Majumdar. It is a powerful novel. The story exposes the ugly underbelly of India, this once great nation. This was a story waiting to be told and how well does this young author tells it! It is hard hitting. Relentless. Unsparing. The hatred, the intolerance, the relentless persecution of the vulnerable. The wretched politicians out to feed on the hatred. Their machinations to grab power. One of the characters in the novel refers to such a manipulator as 'a bathroom cockroach.' Not to his face but only in her mind of course. Even that is an inadequate invective to refer to such characters. Jivan, the young protagonist undergoes so much hardship and injustice. The other two characters- the eucuch named Lovely, and P T Sir choose to further their own careers rather than take the side of Jivan. They leave her to the mercy of the government and its officers. I recall a line from the fascinating American novel The Sellout by Paul Beatty(2015) - "Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it's fear." Maybe that line applies very well in the setting of this novel, India of today too. Truly, writers are our conscience keepers. There is a lot to feel sad, grieve and feel shame about the way things are. As this novel hits home on so many fronts. As a leading Indian academician commented last year that "we are becoming a nation of resentful hearts, small minds, constricted souls". Plato so wisely and prophetically observed all those years ago- " Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those affected."