#devika rege

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Is she a monster for falling out of love with a good man? And is he all that good, and was it ever love?

Devika Rege, Quarterlife

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Quarterlife: A Novel by Devika Rege (Divya reads Asia #6)

This is one hit close to home - in many ways. I can imagine myself in parts in multiple characters but also people and life around me in too many ways. If I were not intentionally isolated and apathetic in the last few years, and actually stayed friends with people I've encountered, built a life in cities I've been in and had continued to engage in situations I've put myself in - I can easily picture being an embedded part of the conversations and scenarios of the book. It made me uneasy because of how real it was, but I am so happy someone, relatable but more engaged, went through the effort of pulling this work together, putting it down and releasing it out.

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O Bappa, he thinks, his grip tightening on the window frame, Bappa, I believe every word I speak, but there are nights when I have no religion and no politics, I have only desires.

Devika Rege, Quarterlife

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I just finished Devika Rege's Quarterlife (2024) last night. It's her debut novel and about a group of Indians (and one white usamerican) in their late 20s/early 30s around early Modi era; the inciting action is a former Wall Street dude moving back to India after about a decade in the U.S. and the other characters are all somehow connected to him and his younger brother. Anyway the point of this post is that I think Rege does a really good job of crafting characters who feel very real in their convictions and subjectivity, even when their politics are odious. Sometimes the dialogue feels a little too stilted but the internal thoughts of the characters are very believable. I think it can be hard to render right wingers in a three dimensional way—it's so easy to just caricature them, and some of them probably do not really believe anything and just care about themselves, but some do truly believe they are righteous. Even the white woman on a humanitarian fellowship who somehow spends months in India without knowing what "Dalit" means is more than an easy stereotype. Easy to ridicule these people but unfortunately they have real power and influence and so they must be taken more seriously. Reminds me of the post about historical fiction that I rb'ed yesterday (I think?) about how writers often transpose their own ideologies and mindsets when they don't actually make sense (in that I think Rege avoids doing this.)

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For Gyaan, this is a disagreement he can referee. For her, this is a crisis. She breathes over her frustration that her partner of two years can’t comprehend the source or depth of her despair as he convinces himself that he is a better man than Naren. But the conversation at the Agashes has betrayed their limits as a couple; it has brought her to the irrevocable knowledge that their frames of reference differ in fundamental ways. For a moment, she feels a cold, pure hatred for Gyaan. It soothes him to set her down safe when she is angry, to play caretaker and pacifist. She will not give him that satisfaction.

Devika Rege, Quarterlife

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The only images of real value, she thinks, are the rejects – outtakes overwhelmed by the sun or blurred by dust, cropped edges with chaotic lines and broken faces – for the only honest composition inspired by such rupture is one that fails.

Devika Rege, Quarterlife

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Maybe it’s the natural progression of any kind of love. You get so carried away at the thought of total acceptance … you think if there’s been no limit so far, there is none, so you are freer and freer until it socks you in the face: the point beyond which to be entirely true to yourself is to give up any hope of being loved. It is our excitement at the things we have in common and our faith that we’re equal stakeholders which warps our judgement when we go in, and by the time we get out, the unbearable thought that the role of cultural difference is overstated, and that I might be uniquely insufferable.

Devika Rege, Quarterlife

[kammartinez]

The Poetics of Democracy: A Conversation with Devika Rege

“This novel is about a collective, but that collective is not the nation. It can only allude to the nation without becoming it.”