Adman and blogger Arun Krishnan released his opus The Loudest Firecracker earlier this year and kindly sent me a copy. The novel is a deceptively simple coming-of-age story about a boy growing up in Pune during the rise of Hindutva. On the home front, Siddharth’s art filmmaker father toils away on his masterpiece after storming off a Bollywood set for refusing to compromise his artistic vision. At school, the boy is slowly drawn into a right-wing circle of friends, one who’s enthralled by the local anti-Muslim idealogue and a thuggish companion who’s more muscle than brain. After Siddharth loses his mother young, the wingnuts adopt his cause despite his dawning awareness of the evils of communalism.

Firecracker shares much with Kiran Nagarkar’s most excellent Ravan & Eddie. Both are tales of growing up in urban Maharashtra during the rise of the eject-Muslims parties. While Krishnan’s work is a quick, enjoyable read and meaty in the themes it tackles, it suffers in telling everything through the eyes of a young boy. Krishnan rarely resorts to the third-person voice, and so the prose and perception is simplified by necessity. I found myself yearning for a richer, more sophisticated narrative.

Siddharth is also a bit too black-and-white of a character; as the author’s voice, he’s never tempted by the blind rage of the wingnuts, always moderating the sentiment and injecting a strain of political correctness. When the villains are guffawing over cruelties, Siddharth’s moral clarity is comforting. But at other times, he seems a goody two-shoes like early Clark Kent, more a representation of a moral view than a real, flawed human being.

Drenched in the textures of Pune and Bombay, the book has its moments:

[Jajasaheb Baapre's] voice was so powerful that it lent most of the stature to the man, who was just of an average build and carried a thick black crop of hair resting on top of a gaunt, angular face.

–The Muslims must go back to Pakistan, Jajasaheb thundered… Do you know… that they are allowed to marry four women? And we are not! Not that anybody would want to marry four women. God knows, one is a handful…

[Abhijeet] showed Siddharth a knife that gleamed in the sunlight.

– Do you know what this is?

– A Rampuri?

The Rampuri was the only kind of knife Siddharth knew. All of the Hindi movie heroes used it freely when they had problems to solve…

– Jajasaheb, Siddharth lost his mother in a riot. The Muslims killed her.

Siddharth sighed audibly, understanding why Abhijeet had been fawning on him. He was a trophy, a prize artifact to be exhibited before Jajasaheb.

But I was far more enthralled by the father’s film described in the final scene, a powerful, Angry Young Man version of Falling Down, or a Dombivli Fast / Evano Oruvan that doesn’t suck. That scene has all the R-rated sturm und drang that the preceding text steers clear of as it bends to gentle Siddharth’s young voice.

Arun Krishnan… enjoyed a blissful state of existence for more than ten years in Poona… Arun has worked in the media departments of two advertising agencies in New York City. He has also worked for Concern Worldwide, an Irish international relief organization and IBM, an international for-profit corporation. Arun [produces] the number one Indian podcast on iTunes, called ‘Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies’… In his spare time, Arun voluntarily runs long distances along the East River and around the lake in Central Park. [Firecracker]

You can buy the book here. Here’s the official site.

Update: The author mentions that the book is aimed at young adults, which explains a lot. It’s actually a tribute to the book that it works as well for adults as it does. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

Also check out these lovely illustrations included in the book.