Overturning a world with the middle finger
The Middle Finger By Saikat Majumdar Simon & Schuster, 2022 Rs. 599 Saikat Majumdar writes charming ascetic prose. It has the power and lightness of a dancer's musculature and flows limpid and deep like a poem. And it delivers shocks of recognition in shafts of soft, evocative light. I have read the novel three times and felt refreshed with each reading. In fact the opening chapter, which initiates the reader into a world of slaughter, death, survival and loneliness, possesses the wholeness of a standalone story. But then it is strategically positioned in the complex structure of a larger narrative that traces a sphere around a layered labyrinth. The fragile, fearful world of the opening chapter will upend another world, a world of privilege and self-assurance (howsoever tentative). With a mere middle finger, a whole world will be overturned. Subversion is the beating heart of the novel. But it is no easy thing, much less an easy obvious theme. It is complicated work, defia