Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Enter Jai, a Hindu school-boy, who at nine-years-old loves to watch “Police Patrol” and “Live Crime” on television and seizes an opportunity to play detective himself when children begin disappearing from his community, a smog-filled Indian slum at the end of the Purple Metro line. He enlists the help of his friends Pari and Faiz as his assistants and together they draw up a long list of people to interview and places to check out within their sprawling city. Jai believes he has power to find the missing children but as the plot progresses, he becomes more aware of his vulnerability and the dangers he will face as he navigates his world. Along with Jai’s realizations, the author presents the voices of the victims as they go missing which creates a more intense and heartbreaking story.
Deepa Anappara’s inspiration for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line derives from her work as a reporter in India for more than a decade. When investigating child disappearances (she estimates 180 in that country daily) she found that in poverty areas, if vanishings made the news at all, the focus was on the perpetrators of the crimes, not the victims. So, she began to study previous interviews she conducted with children in Mumbai and Delhi, many of them who worked as scavengers in junkyards or begged for money and food on the sides of busy streets. She was struck by how smart the children were and she wanted to tell their stories. The author has stated that not only was this important to her; it was also crucial to depict that their lives unfolded within a resilient collective or community (basti). In this story, Ms. Anappara has succeeded in skillfully depicting the thoughts and belief systems of the children she represents and creating a warm and resilient community in which they live. This is not to say that the author ignores or sugar coats the challenges of the basti and its residents. She clearly addresses the problems of ill-equipped government schools; children living on the street who hope that good djinns will protect them; sex offenders; child trafficking; huge wealth inequities, squalor in the settlements, sexism, superstition, police corruption and inefficiency, power politics, and religious tensions and division.
One of the great strengths of this novel is the brilliant way in which the author depicts the children’s voices. The glossary at the end of the novel provides translations of terms and phrases but I was able to determine meaning through contextual clues and repetition. This quote from Jai occurs in the story as he and his friends Pari and Faiz investigate the disappearance of a member of their community named Aanchal. As they are running to their next interview, Pari notes Jai’s tendency for distraction.
You’re distracted so easily,” Pari says. “No focus. It’s ekdum-true, what Kirpal-Sir says about you. You get bad marks because you look at a question and then you see a fly or a pigeon or a spider and you forget you’re sitting for an exam.”
Jai tells the reader why he doesn’t reply and then reflects on how he’s dressed.
“I don’t say anything because I have to save my breath for running. No detective on earth must have had to run as much as me. At least I am dressed for it. Byomkesh Bakshi fights crime wearing a white dhoti, and dhotis are the worst because they can slip off easily, leaving you in your chaddi in the middle of a bazaar. Everyone will laugh at you then, even the criminal you’re chasing. My trousers may be short and old, but I don’t have to worry they’ll bunch up around my feet if I ever get into a fist fight with bad people.” [Kindle Version, p. 146]
