Barua's new book a zany look on Facebook generation

Kaushik Barua's No Direction Rome is a zany take on the escapism culture of the rootless Facebook generation. And no, the Colosseum is not the metaphor of a grand past; it's a state of inertia.

Indian author Kaushik Barua received a lot of attention when he won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award for his debut novel Windhorse, that drew inspiration from the Tibetan resistance movement. Following the award, he was honest while talking about the emotional challenges of being a published writer. "Writing is a very personal act, and fraught with insecurity," Assam-born Barua told Khaleej Times in an interview in January this year. "So pushing one's work into the public domain is always an act of faith. Winning an award validates the risk."
We don't yet know if Barua's second novel - No Direction Rome - will fetch him an award. But it is obvious that he is pushing the boundaries of Indian writing in English. Barua's Rome is not the glorious city that attracts millions of tourists every year. It is, instead, a Rome inhabited by unstable characters, the ones who lurk in back alleys and lonely apartments, away from the touristy landscape. And the apparent uncertainty displayed by all the Italian characters is a nod to both an ageing population and the persistent economic slowdown in Europe.
Krantik is the protagonist - an Indian, working for a multi-national company in Rome, who is trying to come to terms with his fiancée Pooja's failed suicide attempt. For his part, he is too disillusioned with his own life to sing hymns to the Colosseum and the Trevi fountain. In one of his zillion rants, Krantik - also the narrator of No Direction Rome - even questions the Colosseum's significance in the 21st century world. "I didn't know what the Colosseo was still doing there. It had been around for two thousand years, its massive open mouth gaping at the skies like a toilet bowl.."
Employing a zany writing style, Barua portrays the absurdity of the Facebook generation. Krantik often gets paranoid about imaginary diseases, wanders from one short-lived relationship to another and bizarrely asks people for direction to places he has no intention of visiting.
In short, No Direction Rome is a symbol of the plot-less nature of modern lives.
Incredibly, and this is an unlikely plot feature, some of Barua's Italian characters in the book are in love with that Indian obsession - cricket. The writer seems well-versed with the intricacies of the sport. In one of the chapters, he describes how Sachin Tendulkar, he of the classical batting technique, executes the perfect straight drive. But if Barua were a cricketer, he would have been more inclined to follow in the footsteps of Virender Sehwag, a batsman full of dash and flair who never gave a hoot about textbook technique. In his heyday, the Delhi player was famous for playing the most outrageous shots with economy of movement, thanks to his incredible hand-eye coordination. As a writer of his generation, Barua has developed his own unconventional techniques. Like Sehwag, Barua is not afraid of taking risks and delightfully depicts Rome as a giant mental asylum which houses crazy people that roam the streets with no direction in their lives.
Being a football buff, my favourite chapter in the book is 'Listening to Bombs'. It's when Krantik meets the mysterious cult-leader Batukhan in a sports bar. They talk about all sorts of rubbish while watching a cricket match, but it's a football-style brawl that Batukhan starts with a bunch of rowdy Englishmen that will leave you in splits.
No Direction Rome never pretends to be a 'serious' book and the protagonist, instead of reflecting on the troubles in his own life, keeps distracting himself with superficial topics on Facebook. Krantik mirrors the social-media-obsessed urban youth who, despite the monumental changes happening in the world around them, prefer to worry about the perfect Instagram image or Facebook post. The slow pace of some of the chapters may test your patience, but overall it's a smooth ride, especially when you read lines like: "Life is a lot like Kim Kardashian. There's no reason to it. There's no point to it. But it's there."
rituraj@khaleejtimes.com

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