‘Beneath the Veneer’: Sreya Sarkar’s Victims-turned-vigilantes Saga Treads Close to Reality of Suburban India
- Through suspenseful twists and turns, the novel navigates the lives of six women who turn into subaltern samurai.
Six women, from six different strata of society, come together to fight against societal forces as old as time itself, and win. Newly minted author Sreya Sarkar’s novel “Beneath the Veneer” grips you with its stories, characterization and the slow, unraveling of all six plots to their common denouement. A good who-done-it with some weighty class and gender struggle references, Sarkar’s first full-length fiction has exceptional twists and turns that’ll make it hard to put it down.
The plot begins in a fictional suburb of New Delhi, called Rangvihar, with its multi-dwelling apartments stacked in neat rows, with equally sprawling slums nearby for “serving and servicing” the multi-dwellers. If you have been to Delhi or indeed any large Indian metropolis, you can immediately identify the high-rise apartment culture, the daily grind, the ‘Residents Association’ politics, and the phone calls to each other’s homes, checking “if the maid had visited the apartment complex or did, she, in fact only gave your house a miss!”
This suburb is posh, a gated community with guards and proper check-ins. But beneath its lux veneer lurks an evil that afflicts the six women from different backgrounds, each with a different trauma, and hidden past. The characters Falguni, Kesri, Gunjan, Asha, Farzeen, and Rani’s lives intersect and change them forever. They become their own support system.
‘’Beneath the Veneer’’ skillfully navigates the tale of these six women forming an unlikely alliance fueled by their shared desire for justice. They are “linked by physical proximity and a shared struggle against oppression and crime.” Through suspenseful twists and turns, the author crafts a narrative that takes the readers on a journey through a section of the lives of these victims-turned-vigilantes. It provides a thought-provoking social commentary on the harsh realities that exist in the shadows of our society and the failure of the system to protect the weak and vulnerable.
The book weaves in and out of Delhi roads and localities that tells you the author is a Delhi girl. But she is from Kolkata, who came to Delhi for her master’s degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Great research right there when writing about a place not familiar to you from birth. The book was in the making since before the pandemic. In fact, “I finished the first draft before Covid hit us all. Took four years to complete and get it published by Alcove,” she tells me.
Every headline coming out of India — from female infanticide to human and sex trafficking, gender exploitation in virtually every field, especially sports, to abuse by known family members or friends, Shreya has paid keen attention to these stories and woven them into her characters in the book. The six women come together to look for Falguni’s missing teen daughter, and unexpectedly discover secrets lying beneath the suburban facade of Rangvihar as well as about each other. Newspaper clippings over the years helped evolve the characters in the book. “The thing about India is even though the system breaks down often enough, the people still manage to rise through it all,” Shreya tells me over the phone from her New England home.
This is a female-centric book with a larger theme that resonates with a wider audience. The characters have been inspired by Shreya’s “friends, colleagues, the women who came to work in our homes. To me, it was fascinating to see how in India, indeed everywhere, single women have struggled to find their space in a society riddled with difficulties, especially against women who want to just live by their own rules. These women can be found everywhere, but are also extremely alone in their individual battles,” Sarkar tells me. My favorite character in the book, Farzeen, is very righteous and ethical – but she also knows her stance is not very practical and thus takes up various other measures to cope, heal and help.
Sarkar is a public policy analyst, journalist, and author who contributes extensively to various Indian publications as well as here in America, including American Kahani. Originally from Kolkata, she spent her childhood in a civil service family surrounded by voracious readers and fervent political discussions, She currently lives in Massachusetts with her spouse and teenage son, and when she is not writing you will find her in the kitchen cooking up a spicy curry to fight New England’s icy winters. She enjoys recreating traditional Bengali delicacies using locally grown vegetables and inviting friends over for hearty meals.
‘Beneath the Veneer” is available on Amazon.
Kuhu Singh is a writer with an interest in social justice, cultural and political matters, here in the U.S., in India, and beyond.