The Fantastic Affair of Despair

As a newborn India wails into existence, a silent woman labours away in the cramped copy editorial department of a postcolonial magazine. Her days are fraught with the chauvinism of her male colleagues, sanctioned by the founder, Chief, who fancies himself a revolutionary. In the evenings, she returns to a near-peaceful cohabitation with her widowed, opium-addled landlady. But her monotonous life is suddenly interrupted by an act of extreme violence. Unable to continue living as she had been, the woman enters a self-imposed exile – first in the city of frescoes, and then in a Himalayan dharamshala. Here, she befriends Leela, the pregnant child-bride of an unremarkable godman. Intimately familiar with violence, she notices how it has seeped into every crevice of this valley haunted by the discord between humankind and nature. Even as a fierce storm razes an entire village and a man-eating leopard prowls the ruins by night, political leaders remain occupied with grand ideas of national development, ignoring the victims’ plight. All this while, the call of the wild emanating from the heart of the valley grows louder, and she cannot help but embark upon a treacherous trek across the mountainous expanse to answer it. What new twist of fate awaits the woman when she comes face to face with the beast? Exquisitely observed and deeply moving, The Fantastic Affair of Despair is a powerful story of self-determination in a world bent on endangering all that is precious about us and our surroundings.