The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay

The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay by Varun Thomas Mathew
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This starkly Orwellian yarn is set in 2041 in a dystopian rain-starved India – the result of climate change. There are allusions to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - bhaashafish, gay prosecution, the outcast Moosahaars of Bihar, venal and fanatic politicians viz., the present dispensation in Maharashtra and Delhi. There is a damming indictment of the much vaunted IAS, a sly dig at BJP and an uncalled-for criticism of AADHAR. The plot is a little too preposterous – the story would have been more readable if the characters and context were more plausible.
An accurate description of present-day Mumbai

Newspaper boys lined the pavements, pushing advertisements for computer repairmen into the sheaves of the morning newspapers. Vendors pushed their carts along the sea-facing roads, heavy with fresh vegetables that would become lunch for the now-sleeping millions. Dozens would take their morning dump by the rocks along the shore and wash themselves in murky salty water, the ideal liquid for nether-cleaning. Street sweepers would sit on their haunches and drink tea and tell each other about the strange things they found on the street the day before. Rat killers would carry their nightly catch in a blood-stained sack to deposit it at the corporation offices. These were the elves of the city: invisible, yet without whom the city would cease to function.

In contrast to a future Bombay

Indeed, they have robbed you of your agency, snatched away your sense of history, confounded your idea of what a nation should be - to the extent that the Constitution of India is now nothing more than a few lines of software embedded into the Bombadrome's operating system.

It’s fine to have differing views – that’s what a democracy is all about, but this is positively secessionist

…we have a Supreme Court that is for sale. But you really don't really care. You are content with your lives, happy to violate your wives each night and bow down before idols to heal your gay children, and tomorrow you will gladly put a blogger in jail. So go ahead, play your patriotic songs and buy your little plastic flags from children at traffic signals. Rejoice in whatever way you can, for this country of yours is one year older. As for me, I hope that your neighbour in the east devours you, while your sister in the west swarms you with her children. I hope that your glaciers melt faster than ever before, that your tectonic plates shift and consign everything you have built to the bottom of the earth, and that the seas rise up and wash away all memory of you from this land. It is a miracle that this country has survived so long despite being populated by the likes of you, and perhaps that single accomplishment is in fact deserving of the celebration that will be in plentiful supply tomorrow. In fact, why not? Let me give it to you now. With a full heart, allow me to wish you all a very happy Republic Day, though I would much rather tell you simply to take your accursed flag and go fuck yourself.

The author is obviously a member of the tukde, tukde gang – a self-aggrandizing group of traitorous left-leaning ‘intellectuals’

That life in this country, as it exists now, is absurd. That people are arbitrary, and society is run by chance. So the truths that you fight for in court don't matter.
I know now that I'm not really a Kashmiri or an Indian, but just a human being. I do not believe in a motherland or a chosen race, which are concepts that can destroy lives. Nationalism is one of the worst creations of men.

I wish he was more circumspect with his poison-spewing quill.

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