Drunk and In Search of a Story: Sagarika Ghose’s The Gin Drinkers

This is another oldie – but I won’t claim it’s a goldie! – from my journalistic career. It appeared first in The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, and I recall hearing an anecdote about it subsequently from a Delhi journalist friend. At the launch of the novel in New Delhi, it seems someone, possibly Renuka Chatterjee of HarperCollins, read out my entire review before the assembled literati. And, if you believe such things, the author Sagarika Ghose was reduced to tears.

Now, despite my erstwhile reputation as an ‘angry young columnist’, I never intended to bring tears to anyone’s eyes, Ghose’s or anyone else’s. But I have to admit, I was a bit bemused. What in this review was scalding enough to make an author cry? Frankly, I’ve received worse reviews myself, and yes, while I did shudder and look longingly at the bottle of rat poison on the top shelf of my kitchen, I promptly overcame the impulse by taking the newspaper or magazine in which the offending (or offensive) review appeared and put it to good use in my bathroom, by assigning it a purpose which simultaneously saves precious water and recycles newsprint successfully. I’m sure Shekhar Kapur and the BMC would approve.

Anyway, coming back to the review. I’ve reprinted it here just as it appeared – although I have no idea what headline and captions HT used at the time – and still feel that while it does tear into the book’s vitals somewhat strongly, it also lavishes generous praise on the writer’s talents. And this from an author-reviewer who candidly insists that I myself have no talent at all, just a very good keyboard…

THE GIN DRINKERS by Sagarika Ghose

After socialite wives, failed actors and salacious celebs, it’s the turn of the reporter. A spate of newsdesk faithfuls have turned to their keyboards and begun pounding out longer, much longer copy. Perhaps the most successful has been Pinki Virani, whose three non-fiction books are well researched, professionally written and have sold extremely well. But unlike Virani, most byliners aren’t satisfied with the gritty respectability of book-length journalism. It’s the glamour of fictional stardom they seek. Or lit-fic as I call it, short for the new fashionable ‘literary’ fiction that seems more ubiquitous than pulps ever were.

Sagarika Ghose is the latest name to leap off the masthead and onto the front cover. Being completely un-hip about such things, I scanned the author bio on the inside back cover of this book to find out a bit more about her. She cleverly leaves out her journalistic c.v. (all the better to mold a new image as a novelist, my dear!) and mentions only that “since 1991 she has worked in New Delhi as a journalist”. I seem to remember that she had some truck with the newsmagazine Outlook, but if she’s ashamed to admit it, why should I give the game away!

But she needn’t be ashamed of this novel. As a first novel, it’s more than creditable. The Gin Drinkers is extremely well written, in an unsentimental yet generous prose style. Ghose has a sure touch with the language that makes you want to read on, enjoying the sips of detail she squeezes out effortlessly. Her flagon is a familiar one: the Delhi world of socialites, mediapersons, literati, the politically connected, and intellectually superior Oxbridge types. Her sure eye for character detail and tropes suggest she’s been to a lot of parties and brought home something more than just a hangover.

The novel is aptly titled (and beautifully edited, adding yet another shiny green feather to HarperCollins’ Chief Editor Renuka Chatterjee’s crowded cap). It’s very comfortable, easy reading, flowing from character to character, circumstance to happenstance. Over its 345 pages, a mosaic of detail constructs itself bit by bit, leaving you with a very lush portrait of Delhi intellectual life. Somewhat like an oversized Seurat mural, Sunday in the Park with George, or perhaps even the enormous Mario mural in the Mumbai shopping mall, Crossroads.

On another level, The Gin Drinkers is at the far end of the spectrum from less fully realized novels such as say, The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra, another byliner turned prose-grinder. What Romantics, and indeed most Indian English novels suffer from most is a kind of ‘kanjoosi’ that leads to a strange sterility when it comes to describing the emotional and inner life of characters. Ghose is at her best with the solitary narrative monologues of characters such as Madhu alone in her hotel room with her baby, reminiscent of the best writers anywhere.

But having said that, here’s the problem: The story. There isn’t one. Not one worth reading at least, let alone writing, editing, and publishing between the covers of a very elegantly designed and produced hardback. This is sad, because Ghose displays such a virtuosic talent that you keep waiting for the point when the book will finally “move on”. Sadly, that never happens. She remains mired in the nuances and details of her characters. And they just aren’t interesting enough to sustain 345 pages of ‘nothing on’.

In fact, this flaw is more than just a book-flaw. It’s an author-flaw that seriously begs correction. As a former newsie, Ghose is clearly lost without a subject, a story or a theme. If she finds Delhi socialite and intellectual life so stimulating, it would be better to live it than write about it. It’s boring enough to observe; why on earth would anyone want to pen a whole book about it? If she’s trying to tell us something here about the people whose lives interweave with that milieu, then she fails completely. Except for occasional vignettes that appeal, she never achieves a full connection in the sense that Forster meant when he cried out ‘Only connect’.

The Gin Drinkers comes off as a beautifully written and observed Delhi novel of manners that seems concerned only with a small insulare universe of a few thousand persons, all apparently ivy league graduated, Anglicized, media-savvy, jean-clad thirtysomething. Since this group is also the main audience for lit-fic in India, it’s a savvy marketing idea.

But Ghose’s talent is superior to such an insignificant exercise. She has what it takes to vault the wall and soar with the best, if she can only find a story that grips her powerfully enough to awaken her best journalistic instincts. This is a perfect example of the kind of trashy non-novel journalists tend to reel out in a desperate attempt to prove they’re ‘real writers’. Sagarika Ghose can do much better. And must.