Vanity Bagh- Anees Salim

The second novel of Anees Salim won the Hindu Prize for fiction 2013 award. As the name suggests the book is about a residential area or a Mohalla titled Vanity Bagh. The residents are prominently Muslims. Through the experience of a nascent gang called five and a half men who romanticize a life of crime as a quick shot to fame, the book encircles around the tussles of the Mohalla. Pitted next to a Hindu locality, the interaction of the two is a resonance of the larger communal tensions. Written in a very comical style it questions popular stereotypes with Islamic fundamentalism. How Muslims in India relate to Pakistan but in a rather harmless way, the kind of relationship Muslim men have with their wives as opposed to popularized ideas of women being mute victims is very interesting. Revolving around an incident of serial bomb blasts to which the gang of young boys became ignorant accomplices, it gives a peep into how young gullible men are often enticed to indulge in crimes they have no idea about. The group gets caught and languishing in jail the protagonist Imran named after the famous cricketer turned politician of Pakistan, realizes that he can read from the empty books that he binds. Its his nostalgia that makes him read about his locality in empty books. The best thing about the book is the everydayness of the characters and their mundane concerns. It makes the community which is often stigmatized humane and vulnerable with worries and woes which are often on the verge of banality. If nothing else it shows the taken for grantedness of stereotypes that we attribute to Islamic fundamentalism.