Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

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I appreciate these poignant social commentaries in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line—it would be easy to gloss over these harsh realities to portray a more wholesome image of India to readers, but Anappara doesn’t shy away from these truths in her book. Kudos, Madam Anappara, for shedding some light on the horrors of missing children. I trust many will find the pieces I could not in this novel and give you the praise you seek. What really makes the book though is the closing section – where the book takes a much darker twist. Firstly with the disappearances coming even closer to home for Jai and with secondly a likely (although still open ended) resolution of the terrible truth behind the disappearances.

Who Cares About One Missing Child in an Indian Slum? Another Who Cares About One Missing Child in an Indian Slum? Another

The novel also makes your mind boggle. India, the most populous democracy in the world. The clash of religion, the caste system. The seemingly infinite gap between the rich and the poor. The anachronistic feel of India, which at times seems to be a fusion of a third world country and a modern western country with all the perks of modern technology. The novel draws attention to the many children who go missing in India. Abducted and sold for slave labour, the sex trade, many stolen from their lives and never seen or heard from by their family again. EP: You’ve written lots of award-winning short fiction. What do you think are the main differences, apart from length, in writing novels as opposed to short stories? And which do you prefer? Like the lost children, like the legendary djinns, the smog is omnipresent throughout the text. The setting is such that spaces conveniently compress and bloat: there’s the basti versus the “hi-fi” flats which are close by, “but seem far because of the rubbish ground in between,” or the Purple Line metro, where “[t]he noise of the road outside streams into the station but the walls hush them” and where Jai says it feels “like we are in a foreign country.” Within the squashed-together, suffocating basti life, this makes eavesdropping on adult conversations, nagging neighbors, and stalking suspects easier. Anyone’s business is everyone’s business, and when a child goes missing, or the JCB bulldozers are a-coming, the community comes together in solidarity (before it is deeply divided, dangerously and violently, by rumors along religious lines).

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But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality cop shows, thinks he's smarter than his friend Pari (even though she always gets top marks) and considers himself to be a better boss than Faiz (even though Faiz is the one with a job). It’s based on a chilling true story: as many as 180 children go missing in India each day. Before writing her debut novel, Anappara spent years working as a journalist and learning about the disappearances firsthand. For its crucial yet overlooked subject matter and jewel-like prose, Djinn Patrol received widespread praise, winning the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Novel. — Laura Zornosa

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Penguin Books Australia Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Penguin Books Australia

Anappara’s]bright, propulsive prose. . . only accentuates the seriousness of her subject: the disappearance of children from villages in India, a real-life issue give intimate treatment here.” — Library Journal In these later stages of the novel it darkens more and more as it closes on the ending. I thought that this also was needed and felt it was a natural progression for the narrative. The reason why this method works for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is because this book isn’t designed for a foreign audience—this isn’t the poverty porn of Slumdog Millionaire. This book is very obviously catering to English-speaking Indian readers. The language and vocabulary that Anappara uses won’t be familiar to non-Indians. Nor does Anappara include footnotes or a dictionary for the reader. Will that seem alienating for non-Indian readers? I should hope not. You might find yourself googling a lot, but it won’t affect the reading experience. In Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, journalist and author, Deepa Anappara, has the reader firmly on the ground in an Indian basti, with its sights, sounds, and smells of the yummy food wafting through the neighborhood, and all of it is through the eyes of the lovable child narrator, Jai. When Anappara set out to tell the story of missing children, she might not have predicted how closely the Hindu-Muslim differences in her book would hit home. But that doesn’t change the fact that Djinn Patrol does, in fact, talk about the issues of religious intolerance that are so deeply ingrained in our conversations and actions that we don’t even stop to think about its repercussions anymore.In this transporting debut novel, three friends venture into the most dangerous corners of a sprawling Indian city to find their missing classmate. tutte tematiche che ruotano attorno e reggono il problema delle sparizioni di bambini in India dove se ne stimano all’incirca 180 al giorno!!! Anappara’s Jai is endearing, entertaining, and earnest; he keeps you on the edge of your seat. He is curious, courageous, cheeky, and unabashedly, unapologetically speaking his mind, and the truth: “The next India-Pakistan war the news says will happen any time now has started in our classroom.” Jai and Djinn Patrol are reminiscent of NoViolet Bulawayo’s 10-year-old protagonist, Darling (from We Need New Names), and her home, “Paradise,” the bitterly, ironically named shantytown, loosely based on Bulawayo’s Zimbabwean hometown. Both Anappara and Bulawayo stretch language successfully, and to similar artistic purposes. As for this author, she sits comfortably, and at ease, inside a child’s imagination — seeing as she does the world through his eyes. Djinn Patrol is a world of extremes and exaggerations. It is a world where inanimate objects come alive and a world of innocence, wit, and wonder. (“‘There’s nothing in this world I’m afraid of,’ I say, which is another lie. I’m scared of JCBs, exams, djinns that are probably real and Ma’s slaps.”) It’s also a world where spaces stretch and shrink, superimpose and segment (“The good and bad thing about living in a basti is that news flies into your ears whether you want it to or not”) and one which is described through a limited and limitless lexicon. Words twist and twirl, phrases trip over phrases, sentences play catch-up and turn cinematic. Zooming in and then out, Jai’s basti life bubbles, bustles, and bursts through Anappara’s figures of speech and punctuations — particularly personification and hyphens. My favourite parts of this book were the parts where Jai's friend, Faiz, would state that the djinn were stealing the souls of the children. Brought up casually in conversation, I think this served several important purposes. It added a supernatural air of mystery to the story and it reinforced our perception of these children's innocence, but it also created a beautiful metaphor for the true malignant cause of the disappearances.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Quotes - Goodreads Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line Quotes - Goodreads

Sono bambini che vivono una quotidiana indigenza e che non possono permettersi neppure nei sogni qualcosa di diverso perché neanche la scuola crede in loro. The ingrained sexual bias which ranges from career expectations to divisions of home labour to routine harassment

In an unnamed sprawling Indian city Jai (9 years old), life in the slums is consumed with watching the TV that is the centrepiece of his home, especially detective serials; fellow Muslim pal Faiz is a huge fan of the supernatural especially Djinns; and their female nerdy buddy Pari, is the one focussed on using her brains to escape the slums via education. The 'Djinn Patrol' comes into existence when led by Jai they seek to explore their city to try and investigate what becomes a series of missing children! The book draws attention to the large number of children who go missing in India daily. Did you know close to 200 children go missing there each day? Jai takes us along with him to school, among his small group of friends, within his home in the basti with his loving parents, and chachis who keep an eye on him, too, and in the local bazaar. One by one, children in the basti disappear, and everyone becomes more unsettled, rightfully so, seeking police help with little avail. The author’s insightful note at the end is a must-read for why she wrote the book and its importance to her.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones

WINNER OF THE EDGAR® AWARD • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE

In this coming-of-age story, sometimes children are mere children taking words too literally, words tinged with innocence, words as yet untainted with the evils of the world. Early on, when the first child vanishes, Jai confidently says, “Bahadur is our age. We aren’t old enough to die.” Later on, when that number rises, and the statistics and child-snatchers sneak their way into his own home, he asks: “What is a whole life? If you die when you’re still a child, is your life whole or half or zero?” Sometimes, children are wise beyond their years and have to grow up too soon. “I slide under Ma-Papa’s bed. I’m brave in the day, but my braveness doesn’t like to come out at night. It’s sleeping, I think,” says Jai, later on, as his courage crumbles under the cruelties of the world. Being a detective is “too-tough,” he confesses. For me, the most powerful chapters were “This Story Will Save Your Life” which were mostly stories of the djinns and other beliefs regarding wandering children. My favorite scene was when Jai and Pari went to the railway station. Because of the title and blurb, I have to admit that I thought a big portion of this novel would take place around the railway. However, there was only one big scene there in the beginning. I wasn’t too pleased with the ending, but I respect the underlying messages delivered to the reader through that conclusion. Racism rears its ugly head when it is realised that none of the children who have gone missing are Muslim, so naturally it is immediately assumed that the culprit must be a Muslim. The clashes between Muslim and Hindu, between India and Pakistan seem to be on a never- ending cycle in the news feeds and perhaps this is a jibe at the interminable confrontations. Jai’s] remarkable voice retains a stubborn lightness, a will to believe in the possibility of deliverance in this fallen world.” — The Washington Post