A Burning

 A Burning

By Megha Majumdar

The literal burning of the title happens late at night at a train station, where shadows of men are seen

fleeing while one after another train car is lit ablaze. More than a hundred are left dead. 

Meanwhile, in a nearby slum, a young woman named Jivan is pondering this atrocity. When her previous Facebook posts on the incident fail to garner enough likes as she wanted, Jivan reposts a video of a weeping woman who declares that police were at the seen and failed to act and so isn't the state just as much a terrorist as the people who lit the flames in the first place.

Jivan, it is clear, is striving, hoping for more. She has dropped out of school for a clerk job at a fancy clothing store, where she brings home her family's first steady income in a long while. She wants to be seen, to be somebody. 

But, it seems, in modern India, Muslims are not destined to be somebodys.

Because, due to her post or some other motivation, Jivan is arrested for the crime that she has nothing to do with. The poor, Muslim girl becomes a scapegoat for the nation, a charade of justice that fools enough people. 

Along the way, Jivan's fall allows others to rise. There is her former physical education teacher, PT Sir, who parlays testimony as the accused's former teacher into a plum job with a rising nationalist political party. And Lovely, a hijra -- which, based on some quick research, I think is an Indian term for someone who is transgendered --  follows a similar path to a starring role in a new movie. Both make the conscious decision to quicken injustice for Jivan for a better life for themselves. 

There is a cruel irony running in the background. The nationalist political party to which PT Sir belongs, and which wins election amidst Jivan's trial, preaches service to the state, subordinating the self for the good of all. But is self-service that leads party leaders to doom Jivan to what they know is an unjust fate. It is a commentary not just on India but the facade of the zero-sum game that many seem to think they must play to get ahead throughout the world.

As a reader, I will say this was a difficult but mesmerizing one to get through. You are sympathetic to each character in their striving. But it is Jivan with whom your loyalty lies, and it is hard, at the outset, to imagine anything but justice coming her way. That it doesn't is a gut punch that will be a bit hard to recover from.