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Whether or not you will like this playful novel about Indian superheroes depends largely on how much you like its distinctive voice. Here’s the opening paragraphs:
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In 1984, Group Captain Balwant Singh of the Indian Air Force’s Western Air Command had dangled his then three-year-old son Vir off the edge of the uppermost tier of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, nearly giving his gentle and hirsute wife, Santosh Kaur, a heart attack in the process. With the mixture of casual confidence and lunacy that is the hallmark of every true fighter pilot, Captain Singh had tossed his son up, caught him in midair and held him over the railing for a while, before setting him down safely.
His son’s future thus secured, Balwant had turned to shut off his wife’s uncanny impersonation of a police siren with the wise words, “Nonsense, foolish woman. See, my tiger is not afraid at all. He is born for the sky, just like me. Vir, say ‘Nabha Sparsham Deeptam’.”
Vir had not been in the mood for the Indian Air Force motto at that point, his exact words had been, “MAA!”
All these years later, Vir still remembers that first flight with astonishing clarity: the sudden weightlessness, the deafening sound of his own heart beating, the blur of the world tilting around him, the slow-motion appearance of first the white dome of Sacré Coeur and then a wispy white cloud shaped like Indira Gandhi’s hair behind his flailing red Bata Bubble-Gummers shoes. His father had said that moment had shaped his destiny, given him wings.
But his father isn’t here now. Flight Lieutenant Vir Singh is all alone in the sky.
#
Vir, like the other superheroes, got his powers on a commercial flight to Mumbai; why and how this occurred is never explained and doesn’t matter. The powers derive from the characters’ deepest desires, so Vir, an all-Indian hero, became Superman; Uzma, a British-Pakistani aspiring actress, is loved by everyone she meets; Tia, a discontented mom who wishes she’d made different life choices, gets the ability to generate copies of herself. (One guy gets the power to control weather based on the condition of his stomach, but exactly what this power means to him is not explored.)
The characters’ knowledge of superheroes and the fact that most of the superheroes they know of are not Indian provides a lot of the comedy and social commentary of the book, as they discover that all the good superhero names in English are taken, and the Hindi alternates are incomprehensible or unpronounceable to a global audience. (Vir’s suggestion, based on the highest Indian military decoration, is shot down due to no one who isn’t in the Indian Air Force having heard of it.) And is a giant superhero battle with lots of property destruction the inevitable climax of any superhero story?
The characters are lightly but vividly sketched. They’re types rather than well-rounded characters, but they’re fun types. My favorites were Uzma, who just wants to be famous, Tia, whose power is more badass than it sounds, and the super-baby, or rather the hilariously bonkers cult following attracted by the super-baby. But the wry narration was my favorite part of the book, tossing off quips and references like a never-ending shower of brightly colored confetti.
There is a sequel, which I will definitely read, but this book ends conclusively. I think the sequel takes place several years later and mostly involves different characters.
Turbulence
#
In 1984, Group Captain Balwant Singh of the Indian Air Force’s Western Air Command had dangled his then three-year-old son Vir off the edge of the uppermost tier of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, nearly giving his gentle and hirsute wife, Santosh Kaur, a heart attack in the process. With the mixture of casual confidence and lunacy that is the hallmark of every true fighter pilot, Captain Singh had tossed his son up, caught him in midair and held him over the railing for a while, before setting him down safely.
His son’s future thus secured, Balwant had turned to shut off his wife’s uncanny impersonation of a police siren with the wise words, “Nonsense, foolish woman. See, my tiger is not afraid at all. He is born for the sky, just like me. Vir, say ‘Nabha Sparsham Deeptam’.”
Vir had not been in the mood for the Indian Air Force motto at that point, his exact words had been, “MAA!”
All these years later, Vir still remembers that first flight with astonishing clarity: the sudden weightlessness, the deafening sound of his own heart beating, the blur of the world tilting around him, the slow-motion appearance of first the white dome of Sacré Coeur and then a wispy white cloud shaped like Indira Gandhi’s hair behind his flailing red Bata Bubble-Gummers shoes. His father had said that moment had shaped his destiny, given him wings.
But his father isn’t here now. Flight Lieutenant Vir Singh is all alone in the sky.
#
Vir, like the other superheroes, got his powers on a commercial flight to Mumbai; why and how this occurred is never explained and doesn’t matter. The powers derive from the characters’ deepest desires, so Vir, an all-Indian hero, became Superman; Uzma, a British-Pakistani aspiring actress, is loved by everyone she meets; Tia, a discontented mom who wishes she’d made different life choices, gets the ability to generate copies of herself. (One guy gets the power to control weather based on the condition of his stomach, but exactly what this power means to him is not explored.)
The characters’ knowledge of superheroes and the fact that most of the superheroes they know of are not Indian provides a lot of the comedy and social commentary of the book, as they discover that all the good superhero names in English are taken, and the Hindi alternates are incomprehensible or unpronounceable to a global audience. (Vir’s suggestion, based on the highest Indian military decoration, is shot down due to no one who isn’t in the Indian Air Force having heard of it.) And is a giant superhero battle with lots of property destruction the inevitable climax of any superhero story?
The characters are lightly but vividly sketched. They’re types rather than well-rounded characters, but they’re fun types. My favorites were Uzma, who just wants to be famous, Tia, whose power is more badass than it sounds, and the super-baby, or rather the hilariously bonkers cult following attracted by the super-baby. But the wry narration was my favorite part of the book, tossing off quips and references like a never-ending shower of brightly colored confetti.
There is a sequel, which I will definitely read, but this book ends conclusively. I think the sequel takes place several years later and mostly involves different characters.
Turbulence
