Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Product Information

Like the lost children, like the legendary djinns, the smog is omnipresent throughout the text. The setting is such that spaces conveniently compress and bloat: there’s the basti versus the “hi-fi” flats which are close by, “but seem far because of the rubbish ground in between,” or the Purple Line metro, where “[t]he noise of the road outside streams into the station but the walls hush them” and where Jai says it feels “like we are in a foreign country.” Within the squashed-together, suffocating basti life, this makes eavesdropping on adult conversations, nagging neighbors, and stalking suspects easier. Anyone’s business is everyone’s business, and when a child goes missing, or the JCB bulldozers are a-coming, the community comes together in solidarity (before it is deeply divided, dangerously and violently, by rumors along religious lines). We’ve been brought up to believe that children are only focussed on their games and food, unaware of the harsh realities of life. But that’s not entirely true, is it? Children have borne the brunt of religious intolerance for decades, carrying those scars well into their adulthood, just like the children in Djinn Patrol. But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. The children in my novel were very much inspired by the children I had interviewed as a reporter. Many of them were working, or weren’t able to study, because of their difficult financial or domestic circumstances. Despite this, they were often cheeky and witty, if not downright sarcastic. I drew from the memories of those interviews, and from the children I know in my life, to create the voices of my characters. However, the descriptions of the slum that Jai lives in has another purpose—to highlight the class divisions in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line. As the story progresses, we learn that Jai’s slum is a short distance away from an upmarket complex of apartments. A number of the parents in the slum work as caretakers, maids, or cleaners at the apartment complex. But the work isn’t for the faint of heart–Jai’s mother lives in fear of losing her job for even minor indiscretions, like being late to work one day.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones

Anappara] clearly has great knowledge of her motherland, a generous heart, and ability for empathy and a captivating literary style... A dazzling, wonderful book.” —Elif ShafakThe overcrowded school run more by school gangs than the teachers, but which still serves as a route to advancement via exam and escape from the basti; Anappara’s Jai is endearing, entertaining, and earnest; he keeps you on the edge of your seat. He is curious, courageous, cheeky, and unabashedly, unapologetically speaking his mind, and the truth: “The next India-Pakistan war the news says will happen any time now has started in our classroom.” Jai and Djinn Patrol are reminiscent of NoViolet Bulawayo’s 10-year-old protagonist, Darling (from We Need New Names), and her home, “Paradise,” the bitterly, ironically named shantytown, loosely based on Bulawayo’s Zimbabwean hometown. Both Anappara and Bulawayo stretch language successfully, and to similar artistic purposes. As for this author, she sits comfortably, and at ease, inside a child’s imagination — seeing as she does the world through his eyes. Djinn Patrol is a world of extremes and exaggerations. It is a world where inanimate objects come alive and a world of innocence, wit, and wonder. (“‘There’s nothing in this world I’m afraid of,’ I say, which is another lie. I’m scared of JCBs, exams, djinns that are probably real and Ma’s slaps.”) It’s also a world where spaces stretch and shrink, superimpose and segment (“The good and bad thing about living in a basti is that news flies into your ears whether you want it to or not”) and one which is described through a limited and limitless lexicon. Words twist and twirl, phrases trip over phrases, sentences play catch-up and turn cinematic. Zooming in and then out, Jai’s basti life bubbles, bustles, and bursts through Anappara’s figures of speech and punctuations — particularly personification and hyphens. In these later stages of the novel it darkens more and more as it closes on the ending. I thought that this also was needed and felt it was a natural progression for the narrative.

s Vanishing Children: Deepa Anappara’s ‘Djinn Patrol on India’s Vanishing Children: Deepa Anappara’s ‘Djinn Patrol on

In the second of the three living-saving stories, we’re told: “This story is a talisman. Hold it close to your hearts.” Toward the close of the novel, Jai, defeated and distraught, says, “I’ll never watch Police Patrol again […] A murder A magnificent achievement: the endeavours of the Djinn Patrol offer us a captivating world of wit, warmth and heartbreak, beautifully crafted through a child's unique perspective.”— Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society It starts to feel repetitive; the book follows a pattern: another child disappears, the basti reacts, the police are indifferent, Jai and his friends try to investigate (now staying closer to the basti but with very limited success) and we get a section from the viewpoint of the disappeared child (but with no real hints as to what happened to them). I’ll never watch Police Patrol again. When they act out real stories of people getting snatched or killed, it will feel as if someone is trying to strangle me. I just know it. A murder isn’t a story for me anymore. It’s not a mystery either”Discover the“extraordinary” ( The Washington Post)debut novel that“announces the arrival of a literary supernova” ( The New York Times Book Review),“a drama of childhood that is as wild as it is intimate” (Chigozie Obioma). In this coming-of-age story, sometimes children are mere children taking words too literally, words tinged with innocence, words as yet untainted with the evils of the world. Early on, when the first child vanishes, Jai confidently says, “Bahadur is our age. We aren’t old enough to die.” Later on, when that number rises, and the statistics and child-snatchers sneak their way into his own home, he asks: “What is a whole life? If you die when you’re still a child, is your life whole or half or zero?” Sometimes, children are wise beyond their years and have to grow up too soon. “I slide under Ma-Papa’s bed. I’m brave in the day, but my braveness doesn’t like to come out at night. It’s sleeping, I think,” says Jai, later on, as his courage crumbles under the cruelties of the world. Being a detective is “too-tough,” he confesses. The trio fast realize they are facing their unknown adversary alone. The police see the slum as a continual source of annoyance and threaten to bulldoze it to the ground. The wealthy people who live in a gated community of nearby high-rises couldn't care less. And with hysteria creeping in, the adults in the slum begin to turn on each other, causing a rift between the Hindu and Muslim factions within the settlement. With no help or resources, can Jai, Pari and Faiz solve this horrific mystery? Where the book is strong is in its authenticity (at least as far as I can tell) and in the way that we get a child’s view of a troubled society and a difficult life. The author was an award-winning journalist in India, specialising in the impact of poverty and sectarian violence on children (and their education). Since moving to England and taking a creative writing course, she has I think found in fiction a way to both articulate themes that her journalist bosses were not so interested in her covering; and to draw on the many slum children she interviewed as part of her research to capture something of their voice and spirit, something pure word count and style restrictions prevented her ever conveying in her journalism. a b Dutta, Amrita (23 February 2020). "For her debut novel, Deepa Anappara takes on the task of writing about poverty in a child's voice". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020 . Retrieved 1 October 2020.