No Direction Rome

by Kaushik Barua

'Best Books of the Year', 2015
Sunday Guardian

'A voice I haven’t heard before in Indian writing in English.' The Hindu Business Line

'Kaushik Barua's latest book offers an insight into contemporary urban life.' The Week

'Barua indulges in the cartography of urban loneliness, and delivers a map of this terrifying experience with finesse... Barua is aware of his genre, of the lonely tower in which he wishes to see his reflection – a tower inhabited by the likes of Nietzsche, Joyce, Eliot and others who have explored the alienation of modern life.' Daily O

' Barua’s mastery of an exquisite prose, cultured in the inconsequential details of everydayness, architectured by the banality of ambitions, introduces a beautifully and artfully crafted piece.' Scroll

'A zany take on the escapism culture of the rootless Facebook generation... pushing the boundaries of Indian writing in English.' Khaleej Times

'No Direction Rome reflects some melancholic truths about our capitalistic, contemporary times through its dark but effective humour' The Pioneer

'An unflinching commentary on the aspirations and fears of today's social-media-obsessed youth.' Economic Times

No Direction Rome 'captures a zeitgeist of the merging of social media with actual society'. Asian Review of Books

'This is a funny novel but the laughter is often edged with a jaded, corrosive cynicism.' Indian Express

'Through the prose glimmers Joyce, Eliot and Nietzsche, and the author is well aware that he is treading in their footsteps' Asian Age

'No Direction Rome does not wear any badges of Indian Writing in English. It stands on its own, with a post-modernist tone. It's a slow read that grows on you and brings realizations and memories of classic prose, perhaps James Joyce or Jack Kerouac' Earthen Lamp Journal

‘Violently funny and epically tragic, Barua's writing is tragicomic genius. F***ing brilliant.’ Janice Pariat

From the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2014- the Young Writer Award from the National Academy of Letters.

A portrait of the stoner as a young man.

Krantik is cynical, jaded and utterly bored. He’s also a paranoid hypochondriac. An Indian working in Rome, he drifts aimlessly through a failed engagement with the assistance of several intoxicants and a short-lived love affair. Krantik's personal revelations and delusions of grandeur – exquisitely funny and devastatingly poignant -- expose the hollowness of social mores and the anxieties of a rootless generation. This is a clever, bizarre tour de force, part noir, part philosophical and entirely likable.

Kerouac meets James Joyce meets Harold & Kumar meets Jonathan Lethem in this wildly inventive love letter to a city that critically acclaimed author Kaushik Barua has lived in and loved for years.

Genres: India, Fiction

200 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2015

About the author

Kaushik Barua is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar award (the Young Writer Award from the Indian National Academy of Letters) for his first book, Windhorse, published by HarperCollins in 2013. His work has been translated into Italian.

His second book, No Direction Rome, was published by Fourth Estate/ HarperCollins India in 2015, and will be published in the US by Permanent Press in end-2017. No Direction Rome is a dark comedy and described as a narrative where 'Kerouac meets James Joyce meets Harold and Kumar'.

His writing has appeared in The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Guardian, Open Democracy and other Indian and international publications. He is currently based in Rome. He has worked over the last decade in the development sector, supporting development projects across Asia and Africa.

Reviews

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Krantik, the male protagonist of this novel, is in a city far away from home, although that does not matter. He is somewhat privileged, but that does not matter either. Not much matters, and the novel gains its value from the reader's vague knowledge that this matterlessness is the way it is for a lot of young people today.

Things have basically lost their weight for Krantik. He is a hideous Bartleby, the lonely 21st century worker who calls himself an expat but is actually in exile. But if Krantik is a type, he's not a type never approached before. I can think of two recent novels that had similar characters at their center - Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station and Joseph O'Neill's The Dog.

Apart from apathy, cynicism, and a propensity to take terrible decisions, lack of political concern is the strain common among the protagonists of these novels. They all seem to bemoan late Capitalism but are resigned to participating in it (like all of us, right?), and even though they are aware that the system is too big to make sense, they will relieve themselves by calling it stupid and absurd and move on to observing the next stupidity. They know they are trapped in a cage of irony, but that is only a little better than the rest of us, for they, too, don't know how to get out it. They will not even dare to think something Leftist. In this, they probably signify the neutralizing quality of global politics. Nothing is believable, nothing can save the world, or them. (Recall how there are serial bomb blasts in Lerner's Madrid and how that doesn't mean anything to the protagonist.)

But as a writer, Barua is not apolitical. His first novel, Windhorse, was about the Tibetan struggle. No Direction Rome (NDR) is thus also more interesting in how it gives us a new facet of Barua's talents and his development as a writer. NDR might beget a fresh conversation in Indian writing in English, by nothing more than challenging the 'Indian' in that phrase. With Barua, we probably have a writer who can ride both the boats: the fictions of purpose and the fictions of purposelessness. The results in the second case are certified good by this reader.

[Jigar Brahmbhatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a certain allure in a young man loitering aimlessly – the figure tracing back to Hamsun’s narrator in Hunger, and to the French tradition of the flaneur. The streets are a place of new discoveries. Everything is at once at scrutiny. Something is in the making, you’d think. Only that Kaushik Barua’s Krantik would apply a spin to it. He walks through the city of Rome at night, peculiarly asking strangers for addresses he already knows. He tells you that his fiancé has attempted suicide and wonders whether it has anything to do with him. That is the only thread of dramatic conflict you’d find in his life, quite neutralized before the narrative begins. He continues asking addresses to strangers. There appears to be some thrill in the possibility of conversation, more so with a girl. Krantik positively sleepwalks through his days, doesn’t pass judgements, and merely observes, holding onto a vague idea of self-control. Humour, droll and detached, keeps him amused. His name is a pun on the Hindi word Kranti, meaning revolution, but his inaction is jarring and makes up for a crisp, captivating first-person monologue, which is about… well, everything and nothing. Here is a short novel that is designed to digress.

Because he keeps things at surface level and doesn't allow us to deep-dive in his psyche, the reader must rely on the pop-info references he makes use of, and it seems that without these references it would be difficult to understand him. He is the post-internet guy. He observes his mucus and worries about having cancer. The hypochondria is not the only side effect of uncontrolled, unchecked information he appears to be loaded with. It is as if a spiritual core is missing. It is as if no amount of shopping or googling would make him realize what he truly wants. There is a hole he keeps filling with more information every day, like all of us. Krantik knows this and is in a way leading a post-awareness life. The result is that there is an indifference towards everything. So that when he talks about chakras, or Buddhism, or being like a Dalai Lama around Mom, there is a bit of mockery involved. But because he keeps mentioning them again and again, one would feel that he is in a spiritual desert. In a foreign city away from the middle-class Indian life that shaped him, he could easily step out of the solidified faith of his parents, but found only cynicism to hold onto. He describes football as “a spectacle brought to you by the monster advertising industry that endows superficial meaning to the sight of twenty-two men chasing a piece of leather.” You’ve read too much post-modern analysis to enjoy anything anymore, is what he hears back from a friend.

His routine is interrupted by thoughts of the fiancé; his step-brother calls him and lectures about standing up for the family and all. Krantik gets done with it the way one gets done with a business call, with make-believe submissiveness. There is pain for sure, even anger. In the cool flatline of the narration there are amusing spikes when Krantik blasts her in his thoughts, calling her “pull-out-last-minute Pooja”. It gives you a glimpse inside his heart, albeit a rare one. He doesn’t dwell much on the fiancé’s decision to end her life, or doesn’t tell us. The “not telling” is an important thematic concern here. The nature of Krantik’s pain and what he thinks about it are immaterial in a way. What is important is that he saunters on, in a plot-less universe, making a statement on our hedonist, unexamined lives. While on a short trip to India, he taps on his mom's shoulder instead of hugging her before leaving. Because there was luggage between them and he didn’t want to bother. It works in a strange funny way. The acquired hard-boiled attitude! You’d feel the novel is more about it than anything else. Then midway through the narrative, Krantik comes across a nun in a bus, wearing a “Christian-hijab”, and as is his wont he cooks up an anecdote for her: As a kid, she’d watch her father go out to sea, wait till he came back with lobsters, pincers tied but stupid eyes always open. You made it back? Yes, Saint Michael was kind. Who’s Saint Michael? Protector of the seas. Then why doesn’t he give you more fish? Because there’s only one man who could multiply fish. Who’s that: Felix who works at the factory? No, Jesus Christ. She didn’t get it, so she went to pick up shells and kill those worms that burrow into the sand with Pedro, who told her he had a worm in his pants as well. And now when she remembers that morning, she crosses herself and does the Hail Mary twenty times. I was tempted to share it in its entirety. It is one of the many fictitious scenarios, Krantik being a good people-watcher, that bares a tenderness he tries so hard to shield.

The prose is effortlessly smooth and achieves a sort of lightness that is only possible with the lack of antagonism. Between the banter on doomsday and Van Damme’s involvement in the ensuing crisis control, or the imagined philosophizing by pet tortoises, or the nightmares induced by Netflix, or a momentary decision to purchase plastic furniture, there is a lull Krantik never tries to come out of; never tries to change. There are others with him in this lull. And it echoes all the time, causing noises that keep them busy. Any attempt to write about this lull might sound like one big joke. But the lull is real. And Krantik is a template for something.

[Anant Prakash · Rating 3 out of 5]

What if in a war between evil and good, evil wins? He then will go on executing all the good people at mass gathering spots of his newly owned capital. Like Lord Ned Stark got executed at Kingslanding in front of thousands of people; this includes her daughter, some infants and his ardent followers. After all the executions done. He – the evil will start passing strict laws to strike down all the hidden enemies to his newly formed state. It will set more stages of public executions. People will cheer on seeing perpetrators’ head rolling on ground. They will fill the sky with religious slogans. Then the peace will fall. Years will start passing on. He will make sensible rules to prolong his rule on land he won. He won’t let some war mongers create war like situations out of nothing. Instead he will setup a group of analysts and spies who will get him sane advices to run the state where everyone can feel that they belong to the state and the land which has just been won belongs to them. So the land can become the motherland for their kids and to the kids of kids. So someday they can go on waging wars for their motherland, which was, a war ago, motherland to some other kind of people. The kids will hear glorious war stories that how their forefathers won that important war over good people. The meaning of good in that state will be bad. So they will cheer being called bad. Then who was bad and who was good. You get directionless and that’s Kaushik Barua’s latest book is all about.

Written in unconventional style, ‘No Direction Rome’ seems like a 189 pages long Eminem song. You see angst, aggression, hopelessness and a frenzy race in present towards future. But that so called future doesn’t seem coming and protagonist keep running till their lungs lasts. No Direction Rome’s protagonist Krantik is living in Rome and leading a life full of hopelessness. He works in a multinational company where he doesn’t find solace. Having a dead-end relationship with a daughter of an MP, he is trying to figure out where his life is leading him. On her fiancée request, he visits to Amsterdam where his fiancée Pooja tries to commit suicide. She then flies back to her family in India and here begins the unending rant that only ends in the final pages of the book. He goes on travelling alone, interacts with strangers, goes on stalking and talking to a girl standing alone in a corner then visits a place he has not prior intention of.

I doubt if dead-end relationship has anything to do with the psychologically upheaval lifestyle of the protagonist. He goes on dating a girl, he doesn’t familiar with and talks of crony capitalism on his first unannounced date. The real good thing about Kaushik Barua’s second book is its vivid descriptions. But I am reading him for the first time so I felt overwhelmed with the pace and bombarding of psychological rant. In one paragraph, he talks about having joint at his colleagues’ apartment and in second line he goes on telling that Rome is filled with crazy people. He says that the city is a big mental asylum where crazy people have been kept. Since relative of the inmates haven’t come to receive them so they have been let loose on streets like animals. And, to keep the streets safe they have been again locked up in their shiny offices. Then after few words he goes on saying he had three joints with his friends. He took orange juice and his friends got gin and tonics. In his long rants, he beautifully creates a window to interact with his readers to keep them engaged. While talking about the asylum rant, he says they had this asylum on the outskirts on the city, and then they had to shut it down, fiscal tightening etcetera (I like writing etcetera, it’s so much classier than abbreviation). With his small comment as an author, he reconnects with the readers. But what I seriously felt that this seems good as long as you have got good stuff to throw on your readers because in some pages the pace goes extremely slow and boring.

The cover has been designed by a London based independent book cover page designer Arati devasher. Arati has used small caps font for the book & author’s name on the background of a whirlpool of dust and smoke. And, sides are adorned with symbolic Colosseum building which is upside down like a scene in Christopher Nolen’s movie Inception. The whole design of the cover collectively creates directionlessness mood of the book.

Collectively, it’s like a record of human life where everything is being recorded. The spoken and unspoken words, private thoughts and privates acts, conscious thoughts and unconscious thoughts, dreams and inner dreams too. It’s like a Spiderman prose where writer jumps from this scene to that scene within words and five to six word long sentences. You can miss an important event if reading casually.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bob Dylan documentary was titled “No Direction Home,” but Kaushik Barua’s No Direction Rome offers a place that’s never quite home to a character unsure of the home he wants--a character who fills his urban life with directionless distraction. Outwardly successful, Krantik has moved from India to work in Rome. He imagines a future planned by others, and interacts with others via conversation starters lacking a follow-through. With his mind filled to overflowing by incidental worries (mostly concerning bodily functions), he hides from the one, well-hinted worry that defines his future. The result is an internal monologue combining zany escapades, well-timed observations, and poignant loneliness--none of which are, ultimately, as directionless as they seem.

Krantik needs his job, but his job needs figures disguised to deceive. Krantik needs a future, but family plans might deceive his imagined choice. And he needs to recognize where he’s been, before he can know where he’s going. Readers see only glimpses of the path, frustrating perhaps, but satisfying with that sense of slowly slipping behind the disguise, seeing the truth behind imaginations of turtles (maybe lemmings) and their faithless god.

No Direction Rome is not an easy read. It’s odd and oddly disturbing at times. It’s deeply personal, addressing the reader as “you,” but equally impersonal, with the protagonist carefully measuring what he allows himself to see. Set in the mind of a well-placed immigrant, the novel takes Krantik along a directionless road to companionship, through suddenly zany detours or serious turns, hiding snippets of social commentary behind the humor, while offering telling details of a young, successful insider on the outside of his business and his city.

“Fill me with numbers,” Krantik complains, later revealing the numbers and percentages of unhappy people wishing they were somewhere else. But numbers only define space and can’t fill it. Kaushik Barua’s novel reveals emptiness by filling it with jagged humor and poignancy, then drains it to an ending that doesn’t so much finish the story as reveal the light beneath. Here’s where the protagonist’s future begins, perhaps with a direction, and possibly even with a home in Rome.

Disclosure: I was given a preview edition by the publisher and I offer my honest review.

[Anupam Chakravartty · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Direction Rome is a story waiting to step out of Kaushik's study/room. And it did. Krantik is not a likeable character. I don't read to find inspiring characters from books, so it goes brilliantly who I decide to laugh with. No Directions Rome is a tribute to all that you laughed at when they were pushing you to become a sort of go-getter.

[Prithvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, dark and shamelessly bold, 'No Direction Rome' has a high density of profound, clever and quirky takes on life. Take any line from the book at random, and chances are you will be hooked. The voice is new, original and extremely imaginative. Yet a large cross section of millennials will find it intimately relatable.

[Rajat Ubhaykar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kaushik Barua’s Krantik seemed like Upamanyu Chatterjee’s apathetic IAS-trainee Agastya reborn in contemporary Rome as a mildly disgruntled corporate slave. Unfortunately, not as funny.

[Michelle D’costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

interview with the writer -

https://michellewendydcosta.wordpress...

[Ace McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Unadulterated misery sometimes gives me a hard-on.”

This tale is full of misery, emptiness, and disparate and the author does a fine job of paralleling this with the modern obsession with social internet. Empty lives, that’s everyone. Lives fill with meaningless actions people chose to interpret as ‘commutations’ and contact.

[WR · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather cynical look at modern life, of a person in a stranger’s land. Im not good with pop culture or social media, which probably explains why I couldn’t quite get into the spirit of this book.

[ASHISH KALITA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book by a writer who has written for this generation. NO DIRECTION ROME is a story which every youth or millennial living in this age of 'Social Media, Perfect Relationships, Dream Jobs, True Calling and Virtual Reality' can relate with. The prose does gets digressing and lengthy at times, but therein lies the beauty of this book - it sets a mood which is genuinely unique, and can be interesting even in multiple readings. The ending is one of the best I have encountered in contemporary novels.

[Sayantan Ghosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Barua may or may not have written this book under the influence of mood-altering drugs, but he sure OD'd on Bob Dylan throughout the process. The writing is often morbid and funny and the first-person narrative style flitting from one scene to another in short sentences is similar to Deepti Kapoor's January novel 'A Bad Character' (a much superior book). But Krantik, despite being an interesting protagonist, was never quite able to make me empathize with or loathe him completely. So even as he is preparing to undergo a painful colonoscopy procedure in the end having survived a series of unfortunate mishaps, I didn't give a rat's ass about him!

[Pramathesh Borkotoky · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If I meet the Buddha on the road, I'll send him a friend request."

A funny read.