An interesting read but nightmare inducing

I do not usually delve into surrealism. It is not my cup of tea.

When I read the blurb for Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan, I thought it was a compilation of short stories about the life of non-Arab people living and working in the Gulf countries. There is probably no Malayali family that does not have a Gulf connection of some sort. Some immediate or distant relative has probably worked in a Gulf country. At one point, three of my uncles and an aunt and her family were in different Gulf countries and I reaped the benefits in dresses and chocolates. I had no idea, however, about the reality of their lives there. I still don’t. So, I was keen to read Temporary People.

Unusual read

It was not the kind of book I was prepared for. Yet, I read it with the kind of wide-eyed fascination that I usually reserve for slow-motion videos on Animal Planet that show herbivores being ripped apart by cute leopard cubs. And I discovered why surrealism is not for me. There is something terrifying, at least to me, in the juxtaposition of the familiar with what the mind knows is irrational. What it does to me is to forever endow the familiar with a hint of terror. Talking cockroaches that adopt human languages and mannerisms, for instance, formed part of my nightmares last night.

This is not to say that I regret reading Unnikrishnan’s book because it is fascinating. As one reviewer describes it “Temporary People is thus an attempt to ‘take note,’ to provide narrative and figurative shape to pasts, bodies, tongues, and homes that conditions of temporariness dismember and render spectral.”

Its style was so unfamiliar though that I had to read some more about the book and the author to help get some semblance of order to the thoughts zipping across my brain. I found this review by Gautam Bhatia wonderful for my purpose. If you want to determine if Unnikrishnan’s book is for you, I would suggest reading this review first.

The product of a city like Abu Dhabi  

The book won the 2016 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the 2017 Hindu Literary Prize. It is layered and complicated and definitely not a one-time read. The author acknowledges this in one of his interviews: “I wanted someone to read the book and not know what to make of it. Because when a book comes from a place like UAE, there are expectations that the reader has, especially if they haven’t been here. Expectations of what the place and the city are like. What doesn’t get talked about as much, and it’s a shame, is the kind of artist that gets produced in a city like Abu Dhabi.

I want someone to pick up the work and have questions and return to it periodically and figure out what the writer is trying to say. Because the book is also about me trying to figure things out. It’s not a book that has answers but rather certain questions that the writer has been grappling with.”

Language

As a Malayali who also speaks English and Hindi, the language of the book was familiar to some extent. But as Unnikrishnan reiterates in almost every interview, language is his focus and he manipulates it with purpose: “Ridiculous and wonderful things can happen to words, especially in Abu Dhabi. Part of the reason is that Abu Dhabi is a genuinely surreal place. That’s what the book is also about. I do not want it to be just another narrative about the place, because I think any reader approaching this book deserves to be surprised.”

You will definitely be surprised. The surprise is engineered through a brilliant imagination that makes you uncomfortable. It is a book that I hope to be able to re-read someday. But I think I am going to steer clear of surrealism in general. Men who become suitcases and swallow a plane whole, people whose tongues detach and take a hike (see image above) and women whose grandsons can unscrew their heads give me nightmares!

Have you read Temporary People? How did you like it? Is surrealism appealing to you? I'd love to know why.