The LURU Review: Deepika Arwind’s Good Arguments

It’s the early 2010s. Delphi Rodriguez, a twenty-something resident of Cooke Town, Bangalore, fresh from college, signs up for a sought-after theatre intensive, playing the lead in a production of Antigone. Observant and wide-eyed, she is in awe of her mentor, the seasoned actor–director Laila Saldana, and in a part-romantic, part-business alliance with her sort-of boyfriend, the ambitious and clever V. She lives with her no-nonsense single mother, Asha, who works at a bank and hopes her daughter’s tryst with theatre is nothing beyond an investment in “good personality development.” But Delphi, eager for experiences wilder and richer than a sensible master’s degree or a job at the local newspaper, is in it for the long haul.

A cast of quirky supporting characters rides along in her journey of self-discovery, a selection of mostly old-school rock hits forming the background score. There is Dhananjay, the wealthy multi-hyphenate with a sprawling apartment and a keen interest in the theatre (and its leading ladies); Shom, the revered, unlikeable director; Romi, the epitome of high culture and co-founder of Navarasa Theatre; and Naina, the unfortunate aspiring actor born with a silver spoon but lacking in talent. Then there are Delphi’s off-stage companions. Of note is her childhood best friend, Su, in an uphill battle to save her marriage, and John, a fellow intern at the local paper and Delphi’s Marxist moral compass. Delphi and V decide to start a theatre company together. The launch of Navarasa Theatre by Romi and other stalwarts of the arts is a promising moment in the duo’s fledgling careers, giving hope to their plans of writing, directing, and performing before hordes of adoring spectators. But reality comes knock-knock-knockin’ (on heaven’s door). Opportunity, Delphi discovers, is hard won.

The highs and the lows

The five-part narrative plays out in episodic waves, many of them breaking in a drunken haze on a couch or in a bar as Delphi navigates her relationship with her heritage, her romantic desires, the city, and the theatre, for which she holds a simultaneous wide-eyed fascination and an ironic self-awareness. Deepika writes in abundant, unabashed Bangalore slang, rendered in first-person narration as well as in the repartee between the novel’s younger characters.

In one Antigone rehearsal, Delphi struggles to find a “natural” gesture in an argument scene between Antigone and Creon. This Bangalorean vocabulary reappears in a gesture only too familiar to most South Indians: “knuckles pointed forward and thumb upward,” the hand moving “up and down at a vigorous speed” the way “people did when they got into a fight on the street… generally saying something like how dare you, do you know who my father is, or how could you take this U-turn, are you blind, what’s wrong with you, you idiot strand of pubic hair?” The hilarity of this “local” gesture in the production of a Western classic is lost on Delphi; after all, she wonders, if the costumes allude to some kind of Indian-ness, why should the gestures have to be removed from their context? Slowly, earnestly, she starts to see the “colonial leftovers” not just in theatre, but also in daily life; Delphi and V want to tell stories about their reality. She begins to write sketches closely resembling her life—arguments between best friends, a mother and daughter, and a girl and her boyfriend—as she chews on themes of misogyny, power, and privilege.

In December 2012, when the news breaks about a brutal gangrape and murder in Delhi, Delphi’s art and life are thrown together in unexpected ways. The optics of elite theatre-making, and its preoccupation with the performance of political correctness, contend with her impulse to write from lived experience, to appease neither critic nor audience. She seems stumped by the fact that her much-awaited opportunity for recognition, when it arrives, is a direct consequence of gendered violence: “That didn’t sit right. It didn’t sit wrong, either. It just sat.”

Art and artifice

This novel is an ardent effort to reckon with the place of theatre, and those who practise it, in contemporary urban life. Rather than providing broad social commentary, it positions the reader as a fly on the wall among characters playing at being the country’s cultural influencers. It hints at the frailty of contemporary art in post-colonial India, where the Anglophilic “landed gentry” who call the shots declare, despite themselves, “We can’t change the world with theatre.”  

Good Arguments presents a bubble within which the old guard of educated, upper-middle-class Indians proclaim progressive politics but fall prey to self-interest in an already struggling arts economy. The youth band together, but—because of their personal ambitions, relationship battles, and their arguably comfortable social positions—it remains to be seen whether they will shift the status quo. This clash of generations somewhat mirrors their production of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Delphi is astutely aware of this resemblance between theatre and life; it is this knowledge that gives her her sense of reality, at once hopeful and cautious.

Despite their ups and downs, the relationship between Delphi and her mother is heart-warming. However, the theatre luminaries at times feel flat, their conflicts (and resolutions) somewhat forced; for instance, the arc of the lovelorn Dhananjay appears to have been cast aside despite the character’s potential to alter the direction of the plot. Similarly, another character’s climactic actions (don’t worry, I won’t say whose) risk painting them in one shade rather than allowing the reader to see them in their fleshy wholeness. In contrast, Delphi’s journalist friend John brings the most heft to the plot, his transformation making room for genuine reflection about youthful idealism and pragmatic, adult action. V, the boyfriend-ish, makes for a sometimes endearing, sometimes frustrating accomplice, his heart in the right place even as he approaches his dealings with a familiar Bangalorean startup-boy energy. In the end, it is Delphi who must make choices to have a voice in a world she treads with equal love and trepidation.

The closing argument

Pick up this promising debut for its humour, for the sheer delight of seeing local English on the page, and for some cogent arguments on belonging. Expect music.

The details: Deepika Arwind’s Good Arguments is out on Simon & Schuster India. Price: INR 599.

Anishaa Tavag is a Bengaluru-based writer, editor, dancer, and certified teacher of yoga and the Alexander Technique.