This Garden of Weeds by V Sanjay Kumar
My take on the book:
Maya is found dead in her house, and Police assume it is suicide and conclude Maya is a drug addict based on how they found her body and her house surroundings. However, Maya’s daughter Tara refused to accept that her mother could have killed herself, though Tara knew her mother was a bit eccentric and lived in her own world of art.
To find about her mother and to prove the police wrong, Tara travels to Baroda, and meets Varada the landlord who rented his place to Maya and her three friends in their younger days.
Salil Gupta came from a family of businessmen and lived with his extended family as a joint family in Delhi. From his childhood Salil was interested in art; though he turned into a Tech entrepreneur as an adult, his interest in Art remained strong. When his young daughter Nupur Gupta also developed interest in the art world, Salil and Nupur try to make a foray into the art world.
Their initial efforts to become art collector and art curator are met with disappointment in this restricted world of elite art, and hence Salil and Nupur come up with the idea of a reality competition for contemporary artists, offering a massive prize money. The constant surveillance causes envy and manipulation from the participants; does the reality show give the Guptas the access they were hoping for and how Maya’s life related to them, forms the rest of the story.
The story has a unique background of art that is generally not explored in Indian fiction. The author builds a fictional story around the elite art world while providing a commentary on how it functions in our society. This satirical take on the Mumbai art world is intriguing as the author blends his observations of artists and their behaviour into the story. The author’s subtle comparison of the art world to a garden of weeds slowly builds into the narrative.
The characters are very well developed by the author while keeping them realistic. The central theme of adding a reality show for artists is a fresh idea by the author, which helps to bring out the grey shades of the participants. The author also has a unique style of writing which feels realistic. However, the initial chapters are dedicated to establishing the characters and their back stories, so the actual story does not begin even after 50 pages.
Recommended for anyone interested in contemporary fiction that explores the inner details of the art world.
My rating:
4/5.