A review of my novel The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole on Scroll left me bewildered about whether the reviewer was motivated by the spirit of striking a blow against “bad” literature or by displeasure about a book that was not to her taste. Unfortunately, the reviewer ignored the craft and story-telling tools used in the writing of this novel.
For one thing, there was the insinuation framed in the question “Is the character a perverted creep or is that the author’s own view of women and sex?” This was prompted by the novel being written in the first person, a literary device I used to liberate the narrative from any kind of objectivity and tell a wicked, sadistic, twisted old man’s tale in his own wicked words, which includes his views on women and sex. In conflating the character’s views with the author’s, the reviewer appears to suggest that authors are incapable of writing anything but their own views through characters.
My book is a veritable collection of nasty characters – both men and women – and only one woman becomes a murder victim. The majority of those who face Gajanan’s wrath are men. “Sex” hardly figures as a leitmotif in my book, and yet the review returns to it repeatedly.
The sheer absurdity of the scenarios depicted and the plot – the tagline of the book is “a wacky tale of disproportionate vengeance” – represents a specific vein of writing. Dark and disturbing stories are usually written with a lot of seriousness because crime and violence are grim subjects.
What I attempted was to create a black crime-comedy of a meek man who transforms into a wanton murderer, told from his warped point of view. The crime genre worldwide is rife with such experimentation and ingenuity in efforts to break free of hackneyed narratives to surprise, entertain and intrigue readers.
With The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole, I felt the approach that would work best was to make the villain pose and preen like a heroic protagonist, avenging himself on those he holds petty grudges against. Why? Because every baddie is a hero in his own eyes! The challenge was then to create a character who repulses us – and yet readers develop a sneaking sympathy for him because he is a worm who has turned. Ridiculous rationale, sinister humour and a diabolically comic sense of self-righteousness are the engines of the story. To analyse such a novel on the basis of moral judgement does not do justice to its intent, and appears to be little more than a puritanical view of a work simply because it appears to offend the reviewer’s idea of literary morality.
Salil Desai is a crime fiction author, columnist and screenwriter.
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