It’s the early 2000s in Bombay. The air is damp, the streets are crowded, and hedonism abounds. The Enclave is Rohit Manchanda’s second novel, published long after the Betty Trask-winning A Speck of Coal Dust. It’s a propulsive, character-focused study of the growth of Indian liberalism that unwittingly sets a middle-aged woman, Maya, down a path of self-destruction. The novel is written in Manchanda’s signature style, reflective of the protagonist’s own interest in the diminishing art of “the cadence and classicism of early 19th and 20th diction.”
Maya is newly divorced, and her son—from whom she feels a certain distance—is off at a boarding school. She works as a copywriter at “the Centre”, a government-run academic institution seemingly modelled after the sprawling campuses of India’s well-known tech universities. Her days are mostly occupied by two things: the many affairs she indulges in and thinking about writing without ever actually doing it. Poetry is where Maya senses her true calling, but her attention towards it is passing (at best) and avoidant (at worst).
The novel is heavy in internal turmoil and relatively plotless, following Maya as she navigates a new India, one where corporate culture slips into academia and the Sensex (stock market index) creeps higher. A child of the late 1960s, Maya is entirely a product of her time; her financial assets increase in value as the economy inches closer to a tipping point, and her nights are spent at the new bars and clubs that are littered across Bombay, the kinds of spaces that blossomed as liberalism under Manmohan Singh spread. Maya is part of a generation that recognized India’s new freedoms, and yearned to indulge in it, having been denied these experiences in their teens and twenties.
Her principle companions include the socialist typographer Softs and the rich, mixed-race Santiago. All three are engaged in open polyamory, inducing maximum pleasure and messiness.
Of course, India was—and continues to be—embedded in traditional conservatism, as reflected in the views of the aunties that live in the same apartment complex as Maya. Upon seeing Maya bringing men home (who then spend the night, gasp!), the aunties, helming the apartment complex’s association, create new rules that no non-resident man can enter the building at night.
Yet Maya’s true crisis lies not in the pesky peripheral characters that surround her, but in her diminishing pleasures. Lovers that once seemed thrilling grow tiresome, and work that was easy, if not fulfilling, grows dull. Despite Maya’s diverse portfolio of investments—friends, drinks, lovers, and money—she finds herself unable to avoid waning pleasures. With enough money to buy the experiences she wants, and the freedom of being single and self-willed, Maya fails to extract joy and fulfilment. Maya’s solution presents itself as an exhausting uprooting; her job implodes, her lovers grow entangled, and the 2008 financial crisis rips through her material investments.
Though it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment, Maya’s descent into destruction perhaps began with the introduction of Soft’s dancer friend, Sayali. Unlike Maya, Sayali struggled for her art, scraping by until she reached a point of professional recognition and material comfort. For Sayali, Maya is a “kursi garam karne wale”, a mere seat warmer who leeches off the comforts of her job while accomplishing relatively little, the complete antithesis to Sayali’s dramatic and hard-earned rise to success. Maya is stunned by the crudeness of Sayali’s comment. At the same time, she is aware of the vast differences between the two: “The sobering thing, she’s come to realize, many who take the rough road do end up doing well for themselves,” while the relative cowards, such as herself, “have fallen by the wayside.”
In The Enclave’s significant absence of moralising, every character must be accepted, flaws and all, and no action is deemed noble or base. As Maya’s personal and professional life slowly implodes, she must face the bitterest truth of all, that all actions have consequences, and periods of indulgence must be followed by stretches of near asceticism, to start afresh, and build a safe enclave.