Book review: 'Jimmy the Terrorist'

Title: Jimmy the Terrorist
Author: Omair Ahmad
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

The setting is the fictional town of Moazammabad in the ’60s where, like everywhere else in India, Hindus and Muslims co-habit. But it is no utopia. And you’d figure as you see a gradual unrest unfold. Rafiq Ansari is a man from a middle-class background with the sole aim to position himself among the town’s elite. He’s a misfit amongst his own family members, as he strives to be part of Shabbir Manzil — a mansion symbolising power and status. Rafiq is reborn as he is initiated into its hallowed doors. Soon, he marries Shaista Shabbir. But just as he begins to discover love at the hour of his wife’s death, his sense of false pride begins to crumble. And when Rafiq finds his voice,  he’s ruthlessly cut off from the umbilical cord — Shabbir Manzil.

Rafiq finds himself jobless with a son to look after. There is of course that anticipated turn of events — Shabbir Manzil’s reputation wanes, as Rafiq rises from the stature of being a ‘mullah’ to a ‘doomsday prophet’.

While Rafiq voices his anger at the plight of the Muslims, son Jamaal chooses to remain a social outcast, even as his Hindu classmate accuses him of theft. Instead, much like his father, he immerses himself into the world of Shakespeare, Byron, Keats and the Quran. Yet father and son fail to communicate. Sadly, Omair spares no time on Jamaal’s transformation to Jimmy. The boy doesn’t even seem to be aware of how he earned that nickname. Jamaal, the non-entity, resigns to class divisions knowing he’d never have the guts to challenge a hierarchical society. But Jimmy, the terrorist, walks alert on the streets with a knife in his sleeve, fearful of being subjected to stray encounter killing. It is really a story about the making of a terrorist, of religious fanaticism, of self-discovery, of several society-made Jimmys who find escape and liberation only in oblivious deaths.