Build Your Own Bubble
Red Memory, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, Nonesuch and more.
We got elecshanked in West Bengal yesterday. By which I mean, felt gutted by the results of an election in which voters had to choose between a party with a track record of reducing the state to a broken mess and a party with a track record of reducing the country to a broken mess. After 15 years of Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, Bengal chose BJP. India now has a saffron cummerbund made up of BJP-ruled states running all across its middle.
A new dawn has broken today (following BJP workers reportedly breaking other things as they gleefully celebrated the party’s historic win by smashing anything that reminded them of TMC). It’s the first time the party has come to power in Bengal and the numbers suggest Hindutva is genuinely popular here. A lot of people had braced themselves to see rural pockets of Bengal vote for BJP, but the party also scored comprehensive victories in Kolkata, whose upper middle classes have long claimed their city is a bastion of cosmpolitanism and good taste. Yesterday, Kolkata picked jhal muri over biriyani. So much for good taste.
The Bengal results make plain how fed up the state is of Banerjee, but the numbers are also an uncomfortable indicator that the social fabric of Bengal is far more torn than most of us had realised. I coined elecshanked last afternoon while mourning chatting about the election results with a friend. BJP in Bengal was making headlines, Tamil Nadu and Kerala had their own shockers to report. We stared at screens, unable to decide whether we were witnessing democracy in action or democracy being reduced to a joke. My friend wrote to me, “There should be a name for this crushing feeling.”
Enter “elecshanked”:
verb;
from “election” (a decision-making process in which a population or part of a population vote to choose an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office)
and “shank” (to attack someone with a knife, slang) (a ball going in an unintended direction).
You’re welcome.
While I was protesting the election results by coining new words and eating beef stroganoff, men roamed the streets of my parents’ neighbourhood, yelling “Jai Shri Ram”. This warren of narrow lanes is home to a Christian cemetery, at least two mosques and many temples. It’s never quiet here and during All Souls’ Day and Durga Puja, our street becomes impossible to navigate by car. On a daily basis, we’re used to hearing honking cars and people standing on the broken kerb, having private conversations at full volume; azaan in the middle of the day and before sunset; the brass clamour of aarti at the Kali temple at 6pm. This morning at 6am, people were greeting one another with “Jai Shri Ram”. It seems this is the new normal.
So here I am, to counter the new normal with my old one. When the world feels invasive, bubbles keep us safe. Their transparency is less fragile than it looks. Bubbles are held together by what we decide to let in and all that we choose to keep out. And while they do have a reputation for bursting, my experience with bubbles is that so long as you keep culture-vulture-ing, they’re difficult to pop.
If the internet is to be believed, 2026 is the year of Chinamaxxing. For once, I was somewhere close to a viral trend. It started with a book I’d picked up without much thought at The Bookshop in Delhi’s Lodhi Colony. I’m very fond of this place. It’s got a wonderful selection and the space is perfect for book-bathing. Less pleasant was the realisation that they didn’t think Lightning In A Shot Glass was worth putting on their shelves.
Just like there’s a very particular joy that comes of spotting your own book in a bookstore you love, the disappointment of not making the cut is very particular too. That disappointment curdles into something a whole lot more explosive when you (read: I) see The Bookshop giving pride of place to books that were released around the same time as Lightning In A Shot Glass, and are terrible. But they’re written by influential people so there they were, and here I was, getting more livid by the moment and wanting to stomp to the cash counter to wag my finger at them ferociously. And then leaving without buying anything. However, I’m of the belief that readers are duty bound to buy books when they enter a bookstore, and I am first and foremost a reader. The Bookshop not selling my book wasn’t a good enough reason to abandon my principles. As a compromise with myself, I decided I would buy only one book. I also set myself a price limit.
The book that made the cut was Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan. If I could, I would shove copies of this book to every person who says “I like reading non-fiction”. Branigan’s book is about how the Cultural Revolution is remembered, which is not the same as how it has been recorded into history. Over a period of approximately 10 years, Chinese people were encouraged to turn on one another as part of a project to rid society of capitalist and traditional elements. The violence and chaos was horrific. It wasn’t particularly cultural, but it certainly was a revolution and the trauma it spawned is rarely discussed.
Branigan examines what roles those years have played in China’s national narrative. She’s got on record people who admit to having done terrible things (most existing accounts are of survivors who insist they were only bystanders and witnessed the atrocities, but didn’t participate in them). Red Memory a fascinating read and particularly interesting because this is non-fiction that pays attention to something as shifty, malleable and prone to being rewritten as memory. I think I enjoyed it all the more because at the end of 2025, I’d read Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (he of endlessly long-winded sentences — seriously. A sentence stretches across pages — and absolutely charming Nobel prize acceptance speech). They’re two very different outsider perspectives, of foreigners looking for truth in China.
From non-fiction to fiction: A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang. The novel is about a second-generation Chinese American Qianze whose estranged father shows up out of nowhere, saying he’s the bearer of a prophecy that concerns her. He looks ragged and sounds deranged. He’s also surviving on alcohol and cigarettes. The surreal and the historical weave into one another as Qianze discovers her family saga through her father’s hallucinatory episodes. She discovers how across generations, her family has survived by repressing memories and suppressing parts of themselves.
Yang goes back to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Cultural Revolution, all the while keeping one foot in Qianze’s cramped little apartment where father and daughter awkwardly share space. The many strands threaten to overwhelm the book as it slinks towards the conclusion, but that’s a minor quibble. Especially for a debut novel, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is an achievement. Great title, chilling book. I really liked this interview with Yang. One line in particular has stayed with me: “Just because something or someone shifts from prey to predator doesn’t necessarily make them more powerful.”
Speaking of the weaving together of surreal and historical, I fell in love with Nonesuch by Francis Spufford until I realised this is the first in a series. Now I have to wait till gods know when for the sequel, which is very upsetting because Nonesuch was a delight.
Set mostly in London during the Blitz, when the Nazis bombarded Britain, Spufford spins a magical tale about fascists who have sinister, supernatural weapons; a fiery young woman who won’t take ‘no’ for answer; and angels trapped in the architecture of London. Iris Hawkins (inspired by Spufford’s grandmother) works in a lowly job at an investment firm in the City, but she dreams big. Her curiosity and pride lead her to uncovering a plot to travel back in time and kill Winston Churchill before he rallied the British to fight against the Nazis. Along the way, Iris falls in love with Geoff, an engineer with the BBC, and literally brushes up against more than one angel. I should add that angels in this novel are nothing like what Christian art would have you believe they are. Also, Nonesuch has one of the best villains I’ve read in ages.
The fantastical elements in Nonesuch never feel jarring or stretch credibility. They have their place in this world that is teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Spufford’s London, which he describes in loving, meticulous detail, is a magical place with secrets and shadows and pragmatic-minded workers who forge ahead, navigating barriers of class and gender, to live the lives they want for themselves. The prose is some of the most beautiful you’ll read and Spufford has that rare gift of being able to make the paranormal feel as real as the historical. Basically, my only grumble with this book is that I have to wait for the bleddy sequel.
Coming back to my personal brand of Chinamaxxing, let me tell you about the C-drama, Pursuit of Jade. It’s on Netflix (with atrociously-bad subtitles) and has become mainland Chinese entertainment’s first truly global hit, thanks to the elfin beauty of its hero Zhang Linghe and the chemistry he has with the drama’s heroine, Tian Xiwei. The real credit should go to the show’s director and cinematographer because not only have they given that entire cast a serious glow-up, every location in Pursuit of Jade is gorgeously realised. The story isn’t half as clever as A Dream Within A Dream (one of my favourite watches from last year and available on YouTube), but I thoroughly enjoyed how Pursuit of Jade reverses the gender stereotypes without robbing either the hero of his masculine charm or the heroine of her feminine softness. K-dramas, be afraid.
Set in a fictional past, Pursuit of Jade is the story of Changyu (Tian), a young woman from a village in northwest China whose life changes when first, her parents are killed and then, she stumbles upon (literally) a handsome stranger buried in the snow. She brings him home and nurses him back to health. He tells her his name Yan Zheng and that he’s a nobody who was attacked by bandits. Actually, he’s Xie Zheng, one of the most powerful people in the imperial court and a much-feared military general.
Xie Zheng spends most of Pursuit of Jade lying around, looking beautiful and recovering from grave injuries. At key moments, he does the knight-in-shining-armour routine, but he’s happy to let Changyu do most of the heavy lifting. Literally. She keeps having to carry Zheng to safety after he’s passed out from the strain of defending her against enemies. Meanwhile Changyu prances around, saving the day repeatedly. It’s all tremendously good fun and I’m in awe of how clever and layered the show is despite the challenges and restrictions posed by Chinese censorship. I’ve also rewatched Pursuit of Jade twice and am *this* close to reviving my Tumblr to write detailed commentary of every episode when I do my next rewatch. Yes, it’s a “when”, not a an “if”. The last time I did this was after I fell in love with the K-drama, Run-On and I have no regrets.
While on Netflix India, a little indie titled Nukkad Natak left me feeling warm and fuzzy. This tremendously-earnest film is a coming-of-age story of two students at a premier educational institute. One is gay and in the closet. The other is a firebrand and determined to change the world, even if it means stealing from the college cafeteria. When Shivang and Molshri are expelled because of one of their antics, the director of their institute gives the duo a chance to redeem themselves. If they can enrol five kids from a nearby slum into school, the director will re-admit Shivang and Molshri. This mission leads to a crash course in social inequality for both the privileged kids. A lot of Nukkad Natak is clumsy, but it’s tremendously heartwarming. It also made me nostalgic for all the college theatre I did, even though the stuff we did was nothing like what is in the film.
Finally, if there’s one Indian novel you pick up, make it Railsong by Rahul Bhattacharya. It’s very rare to feel that all the moving parts of writing and publishing are getting it right, but Railsong is one where everything was in harmony.
Incidentally, I cheered so much while reading this very polite but very pointed rant by Somak Ghoshal on India’s English-language publishing.
Back to Railsong (what a perfect, perfect title too). The novel is a portrait of a newly-independent India, embodied by and seen through the eyes of Miss Charu Chitol. As a child, Charu haunted by the loss of her mother and the deprivations wrought upon them by famine. Beloved of her father, who works in the Indian Railways, and brothers, Charu feels trapped in small-town Bihar and as soon as she can, she makes a daring escape to the big city of Mumbai. There she becomes one of that pioneering set of young women who stepped out of the cloister of the home, and became working women.
Bhattacharya writes English that feels quintessentially Indian because of the way he harnesses the rhythms of our distinctive grammar and the song of our vocabulary. There’s nothing caricaturish about this Indian English, which is what makes it such a joy to read. Within a few sentences of reading Railsong, you can hear it in your head and every one has a distinct voice — the narrator, Charu’s socialist father, Charu herself, the bright-eyed flirt who wants to impress her, the imperious clerk in the government office, the in-laws who don’t mind their son’s wife working in an office but demand she do her bit of domestic labour and expect their daughter in-law to be “with child” as soon as possible.
Railsong is at its best when Charu is a child and as she grows into womanhood. Even as a young woman, Charu is charm personified as she makes sense of the world around her, armed with her innocence, determination and rough edges. The voice and storytelling feel more weighed down by intention and artifice as Charu grows older. On more than one occasion in the latter half of the novel, the grown-up Charu feels more like a narrative device than a flesh and blood character. As the plot progresses, episodes start feeling too pointedly like a chronicle of India’s political changes. The messiness of a lived life (palpable in the first half of the novel) gives way to a neatly-organised chronology, which feels important rather than immersive. However, this is arguably me being nitpicky because the first half of Railsong is perfect.
Right, I’ve got to go and venture into the Hindu rashtra that is Kolkata now, so I’ll sign off here. Before I go: While writing this, I remembered that as a kid, I’d read Macbeth and loved the three witches, but got confused with the words of their chant. So instead of “Double, double toil and trouble”, I kept thinking it was, “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.”
Evidently, even as a kid, I knew bubbles were the best counterbalance for toil and trouble.
Take care and thank you for reading Dear Reader.