Never fit in.”Ī society reliant on building more boundaries between caste, class and gender, Leila’s story offers many nuances on what constitutes privilege and the layers of grey underneath it.Ī widowed Shalini is an acute victim of surveillance systems. Parents like you, she would never see the value in our way of life. “Your daughter will be raised by the council. There is no negotiation possible with this group. A party she throws is interrupted by the Repeaters who assert, “Purity for All”. Shalini (a fairly privileged mother)’s, choice of “liberal” parenting in the East End comes under increasing suspicion as Naz (Riz’s brother) fails to convince her of the brand of conservatism he follows.
Some years ago, the Repeaters had taken away the daughter of an inter-religious relationship, that of Shalini (the narrator), and her husband Riz (who is killed). They ensure that localities remain “self-enclosing”, and real estate listings are like matrimonials: Brahmins-only, Yadavs-only and so on. They’re the saviours of a pure community and work for the Council - another fishy group of the politically powerful. The city is ravaged by the armed (often without uniform) scrutiny of a “loose band of men”, known as the Repeaters. The nomenclatures in Leila’s premise are significant. Akbar’s work stands somewhere in between it isn’t about technological doom as much it is about cultural policing.
The city is a spectre, where technocratic aspirations give way to a kind of madness deemed necessary for survival. Robert Laing who, while eating a dog, reflects on unusual events in the apartments. Its opening lines have a chilling description of Dr. Ominous visuals gradually swallowing up residents also feature in JG Ballard’s High Rise (1975). In Appupen’s 2015 graphic novel Aspyrus, we’re shown a winged beast that lures/traps a forest boy chasing the dream of a vertical city. Leila imagines the cruelty of a space where walls and towers have consequences beyond the physical Akbar shows us the cognitive affects of living in a very precise kind of insularity in Leila and it’s hardly a surprise at a time when urban dystopias are making a big comeback across media. Right from the tall, dark towers that make up its futuristic cover, it takes a sharp look at verticality as an idiom in our society, particularly in the context of upward mobility. Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel Leila has at its heart an uncanny sense of urban architecture.
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