Book review: Like Being Alive Twice by Dharini Bhaskar
Love in dark times
This inter-religious love story set in a dystopian unnamed nation packs quite a punch. It is an intense exploration of what it means to love in a fractured world.
Priyamvada (Poppy) and Tariq are in love. When we meet them, Tariq intends to propose, and Poppy intends to say yes. In the alternating chapters that follow, the author cleverly plays with form and style to give us two versions of their love story. In one version, The Yellow Door, we are shown the reality as it is. In the other, The Blue Door, it is as it could have been. In the common denouement that both reach, one question stands out starkly: do our choices matter when the world we live in will dictate the outcome?
This book, like the television series ‘Black Mirror,’ imagines a very dark future, specifically in the way that technology can be and is used. There is meticulous world-building here of people and places, as well as the description of a Tally Card. The Card assigns points based on a whole host of things like religion, identity, marriage and lifestyle. The points dictate where you can live. Those with lesser points are denied entry into the posh, guarded, gated residential enclaves. There are many pushed to the margins, the Door Mohalla where both air and land is foul. The Card clearly works to exclude, to ‘other, ’ to control the life you lead. Infidelity, marrying the wrong kind of man, not having children within a stipulated time, all invite punishment. The Tally Card is Big Brother watching you.
Gaming the system
It is in such a distressing world that Poppy and Tariq’s story plays out. In one version of it, they are married but soon flailing. In both versions, compromises are made to survive, to achieve a better future and game the system but of course, all of it takes its toll. There are strong women characters ; Poppy’s mother is one. There is a similarity in the double life that both mother and daughter lead and the choices they make. The men both love pay the price for the decisions that these women make. Tariq’s mother too, comes across as someone steady and sure. She turns out to be prescient in what she says will happen with regard to the Card and the points it assigns. She lives abroad and Tariq in one version of the story wants to immigrate. Poppy considers this a form of cowardice. The author does not indicate whose side she is on. It is upto the reader to decide.
The poetry of American poet Linda Gregg is woven into the book and they are all uniformly beautiful lines. The title of the book is a line of her poetry, too. What the story makes you ponder over is that nobody is safe in an authoritarian, divided country. Everybody is vulnerable. Then again, when the political is so oppressive, the personal, to fall in love with somebody ‘unsuitable, ’ is also a resistance of sorts.
Like Being Alive Twice by Dharini Bhaskar. Penguin/Viking Books. 324 pages. Rs 599.
This ran in the Literary Review of 8 September 2024.
Sheila Kumar • September 9, 2024