Future Imperfect

In this particular domain served by manufactured “Drones” and guarded by packs of vicious “Boyz”, the General has managed to get rid of almost all the women, including the little girls — which is why it is so important that Meiji, the young female protagonist of the novel, should be safely taken away from this land. Her protectors, the

“Uncles” — Eldest, Middle and Youngest — have managed to keep her existence a secret until now — but with the General growing increasingly suspicious and frequently inviting himself for dinners and entertainment, it is time for Youngest to lead Meiji on a hazardous journey across the Great Waste and out to another world where she may yet have a chance of survival.

On their journey, they meet other travellers making their lonely ways across the harsh landscape. Such as Windseeker, one of the last of the gypsies, whose people have chosen not to be regenerated because they would rather be forgotten than regenerated by means of animals kept in cruel conditions and discarded later. They meet the Station Master, who, despite being illiterate (“All that nonsense of reading and writing belonged in the past”) maintains a lonely vigil in the station that his father left for him. They meet life, and death, and loss. But the most important discoveries that Meiji and Youngest will make on their journey, looking for another world “where life goes on as usual, where men and women live together”, are about each other, and about themselves: Meiji, about her newly acquired identity as a young woman, and her sexuality; and Youngest, about the desire, and the love, that he feels for her. Their interactions have always been affectionate; but they now acquire a renewed sense of humanity and gentleness that had almost been lost to this world. They don’t seem to know it yet, but they are rediscovering the language of hope. 

But even as we follow their adventure across the devastated terrain, we are not allowed to forget the dark philosophy that has brought things to this pass. Extracts from a series of interviews with the General appear at regular intervals in the novel. The General begins to suspect that his interviewer is a woman. “Yes, I am a woman,” says the interviewer bluntly. “Do you wish to terminate this interview?” No, replies the General: for, to his single-focused mind, it matters only that his message reaches the listeners. The interviewer probes on, finding little gaps and inconsistencies in the responses. She even scores a success here and there: on the General’s repeated use of the word “vermin”, she announces firmly that if he uses the word once more, she will terminate the interview. Accordingly, the General rephrases his reply, using the word “females”: “The existing deficit of females in our world enormously aided our task.”

And at this point, again — as at so many other points through the novel — we stop to think about this “deficit of females”. We think of the declining child sex ratio in India, down to 927 in the 2001 Census from 962 in 1981. We remember the thousands of foetuses that are aborted solely because they are female. And we wonder where we are going as a society where the girl child is often not allowed to be born. Where, even after birth, so many girls suffer neglect and discrimination, brides sometimes have to be “imported” from poorer regions of the country, and women are harassed — or killed — for dowry. In some ways, the dystopia that Padmanabhan’s novel warns us of may not be so far away.