The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction

The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction by Tarun K. Saint
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gratifying to read SF with a South Asian flavour – where else will one come across Keo Karpin hair oil, Old Monk rum, FabIndia?
The Gandhi story could have been titled “The Metamorphosis” – a bitter satire on the present-day political scenario.
In another vignette from bureaucratic realms, before Senior Inspector Matadeen sets off to solve police related problems on the Moon

He had placed one foot inside the earth-ship’s door when Havildar Ram Sanjivan came running. “Pect-sab,” he said, “the house of the SP sa’ab asks you to bring her a heel-scrubbing stone from the moon.”

In the future too the renaming culture persists e.g., Ghera Road, Sardar Patel International Airport, Bombain, Maratharashtra etc. However, it is IAF’s Sukhoi-30 taking on alien craft with indigenous Astra Air to Air missiles and not US F-16s.
There is a brilliant juxtaposition of animal extinction with a biting satirical take on the present vainglorious PM with his ‘broad chest’. The author grudgingly prognosticates that Mr Modi remains PM till 2034.
While dwelling on extinctions, it is 2087 and Parsis are extinct, according to the dying declaration of the last Parsi

The small causes courts and the High Court in Mumbai breathed the proverbial sigh of relief…When the famous case of Cawas Navroz Parsi Whiskeywallah versus the Soli Henahgir Single Malt Whiskywallah came up before the court…The vultures had come back to Mumbai in 2080, but the Parsis had disappeared.

There is a sharp tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Hindu right, squirmingly accurate in all details. The author cocks a snook at the Gandhis.

The Congress, in these 70 years, had not remained idle. The party was now headed now by the Vadrites. Like the Parsis, the Gandhis had vanished, the bestowers of patronage, propounders of the doctrine of the divine right od the dynasty had disappeared.

The collection ends with the inevitable future dystopian story due to climate change with the inevitable unrequited love

He’s lying in the sand, in the relentless heat. The sand half buries his old home in Lajpat Nagar

and

they’d aim a rocket at the moon and name it Chandrayan, they’d tap strange machines called EVMs full of symbols like lotuses, palms and cycles to bring other humans in whose ideas they believed to power, even when they had good reason to suspect that these humans were far from trustworthy

Immensely readable collection.

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