Book: Dangerlok by Eunice de Souza

 (As published on LinkedIn)

Some caveats before I write about what I thought of the book - Eunice De Souza was the Head of Literature in St. Xavier's College, where I studied. I was a Sociology student and did not take up literature because I believed that academic rigor would rid me of any fondness I had for the subject. Still, I would watch Eunice enter class, talk to a group of adoring students, plan Ithaca (the lit fest) blowing a plume of smoke and arranging for funds and logistics with the wave of a condescending hand - and I would wonder if I had made the right choice. Once, the head of my department, a boisterous, dynamic lady (also the mum of a TV journalist and wife of an erstwhile cricketer), reviewed an article I had written for our Sociology magazine. She said it had 'no teeth' and was 'too studied'. She said that the Sociology magazine had no use for articles such as mine but maybe this kind of fluff would be accepted in the inhouse gazette of the Literature department. (There was a whole lot of semantics as part of that powerplay - magazine here, gazette there, zines for the Anthropology department, periodicals for History, . etc. Of course the department that never had to worry for any money at all ever - Economics - called it whatever it wanted. ("We have sponsors." End of argument.) Anyway, my Sociology teacher had passed it on to Eunice and she had reviewed my article. She called me one day to the staff room where she was having soda and was wearing a beautiful black and white printed cotton sari. She told me that the theme of Ithaca was different from what I had written about. (I had written about casteism and cars.) But my writing that the crude naivete of an earnest child that should be represented in Ithaca. She told me as much. I was elated after spending the 15 minutes of our conversation holding my breath. (She was quite intimidating.) She told me, "Your work is nether perfect not professional. But it is personal in way that you would not have if you studied literature."

It is something of an interesting study that what was said of my writing decades ago can be said of my corporate communication today - not perfect, not professional, but pure in a crude, amateurish sort of way. (Or one can hope.)

Anyway, back to the book.

The book is kind of a self-story centering around Rina Ferreira who teaches literature in an elite 'town' college. She is middle-aged and single. She has pet parrots and a bai who tells her of the weird kind of people who populate Bombay ('Dangerlok' - dangerous people. In colloquial Mumbai Hindi, would use the word 'danger' as an adjective to describe a place, a person, or situation. Like "Dharavi bahut danger hai." or "Sheela danger ladki thi." Dangerous people, in this book, are called Dangerlok - not 'log' the way we would say in Hindi. In Mumbai Hindi dialect, people will sometimes say 'slik' instead of 'silk'.) She owns a small flat in a society called 'Queen's Diamonds' and enjoys a cigarette and junglee tea ever so often when Bombay life wears her out.

Rina has a few friends who she meets in the Bombay joints of the early 2000s - Sundance and Yacht Club and all that. There is a reference to a lost love, David. There are references to sleazeballs whose attention is thwarted. But it's generally a recounting of a life that is lived in quiet flamboyance. Rina counsels her friends, talks to her neighbors who gossip about a 'kept woman' in the floor upstairs, wonders (or worries) about a degenerate generation, and attends panel discussions with alacrity.

To be honest, when I started reading, it felt like someone's blog in a paper format. I was not wholly taken in by it. But I am in the throes of a tough project now. So I was surprised by how much succour I was getting from these pages where nothing much is happening beyond a taxi strike. It could be that I was transported back to y college days because I know of the places and events that Eunice writes about (the Kosovo crisis). But what also held me was the sweet sprinkling of other literary giants - like Tukaram's poetry or Ezekiel's badly written autobiography.

In a way, the pages held the tenacity of tedium - something we do not regard as important today.

It's a nourishing read. Not perfect or professional. But personal in a way that points to high caliber considering it comes from someone who taught literature.