A Guardian & A Thief
Megha Majumdar
penguin random house
Rs.699
Pages 205

This disturbing novel recounts the global reach and politics of climate change leaving the reader with a dark sense of foreboding

New York-based author, Megha Majumdar’s second foray into fiction, A Guardian And A Thief (her first novel was A Burning, 2020), has put her once again on short and long lists of international prizes for fiction.

This story is set in Kolkata, a city familiar to the writer, where she had a few decades back grown up and lived. The time-frame however is speculative, transporting one into a grim future, when climate change has affected this ancient metropolis. The spectre of misery in tropical heat translates into drought, acute food shortages, leading to hoarding, black marketing and a food scarcity that is famine-like. Life is hard and the physical impact of the dystopian environment changes human behaviour and destroys trust, and reverse morality prevails.

The book weaves in this impact of a changed landscape, that guides the narrative and characterisation which is minimalistic and stark. Two family stories, one urban middle-class, the other rural and poverty-stricken, counterpoint the perspectives from which life is lived and judged. If we take the two-year-old girl Mishti to be the central figure in the first story, it is her Ma (who is technically the protagonist) and Dadu (maternal grandfather) who think it is imperative to migrate to the US as ‘climate refugees’, to join Mishti’s father in Ann Arbour, Michigan. The absent father is characterised through the cross-continent telephonic conversations that he has regularly with Ma and Mishti.

The middle-class diasporic dream of leaving the country for greener pastures in America, is an exciting prospect. After the much-awaited passport with visa is collected from the consulate, the dream is unexpectedly interrupted when a food thief enters their home that night and steals provisions and Ma’s purse, and the coveted, crucial passports to a different world, are gone. The thief, caught on neighbour Mrs. Sen’s security camera, is wearing a Scooby-Doo T-shirt that eventually helps to identify him.

The plot that unfolds over a week, is energetic and taut, with choices made by characters ameliorated by extenuating circumstances. The ‘thief’ pursued is Boomba, a boy who grew up in a tide-torn hamlet close to Kolkata, where it was normal for homes to be flooded. The boy grew up with dreams of adventure, of exploring a new environment devoid of rivers smothered in tides and crocodiles, of living in a “perpetually dry house” with his parents and brother Robi, 16 years his junior. Childhood experiences of poverty have instilled courage and adventure mixed with responsibility to take care of Robi. When he comes of age at 18, Boomba resolves to escape and undertakes an adventurous journey to look for opportunities in the city.

Negotiating an unknown cityscape and population, learning hard lessons, moving from crisis to crises, Boomba finds shelter in a home for the homeless managed by Ma from which position she is about to retire to leave for the US. Coincidences intertwine the stories of the two families leading to dramatic, unforeseen consequences and tragic endings. The intersection of events — the theft, the wild search for the passports, paying for and acquiring fake duplicate documents, the unexpected return of the originals — are engaging, even if somewhat contrived, narrating a story of hope and desperation.

The subterranean identity of the city stares citizens in the face. Boomba blackmails Ma who had surreptitiously stolen food and money from the shelter. He holds her hostage and demands permission to move into the shelter with his family from the village. Who is the guardian and who is the thief — becomes an intriguing question. Legitimate aspiration for a modestly better life transforms into hope that is mean and snarled — an aspiration necessitating vicious cunning and deception.

Like a fast-paced thriller, the story moves forward when Boomba kidnaps Mishti for a day, to participate in a pre-wedding celebratory feast at the billionaire’s hexagon, a palatial home on an island-like fantasy destination, accessible only by ferry. The fairy tale setting, abundance of food, breathtaking greenery, seems an “unreal oasis” in the midst of widespread poverty and deprivation. The denouement is inevitable — a stampede and looting. Boomba and Mishti somehow make it back home, but Dadu in a fit of rage beats up and throws out the kidnapper.

What follows is a series of setbacks when the futures of all the characters introduced in the narrative turn out very different from what the readers would have anticipated.

The novel is unsettling as it raises questions that have no resolution. Violence and brute force legitimise actions that are fundamentally unethical. The tragic turn of events in the end, is extreme, even melodramatic. However, empathy is a human quality that emerges, possibly erasing a fraction of guilt that the reader is likely to experience when reading about the deeds of people isolated from community and environment.

Even the prospect of Dadu, Ma and Mishti being accepted as climate refugees evaporates when “some Americans” protest against flights bringing in climate immigrants. The global reach and politics of climate change as recounted in this disturbing novel, that weaves the strands of speculation and reality together and leaves the reader with a dark sense of foreboding.

Jayati Gupta