India Ink

Charles Benoit

When I told my friend Jyoti that I was writing a mystery set in India, her first question was which India I meant.

If I had never been to India, if all I knew about the largest democracy in the world was what I had picked up from the TV news, then I would have been confused. India was the big triangle-shaped country, I would have said, the one with all the poor Hindus who worshiped cows and bought convenient stores when they moved to the West. What other India could there be?

But India is a place I love to visit, and, while I am far, far from an expert, I understood what my friend was saying – and I knew that I wanted my mystery to reflect that incomprehensible diversity.

In Out of Order , I send a young paper-pushing office worker, Jason Talley, on a quest to deliver a sari to the mother of a murdered friend – a son’s final gift that people seem willing to kill to get their hands on. But Jason likes things neat and by the book, so India is a special challenge. On his first day in the country, he’s lured off his step-by-step package tour by Rachel, a train-mad compulsive liar. Together they set off across the country, meeting old acquaintances of his murdered pal, some willing to help, others blaming Jason for the sins of his friend.

One friend who seems willing to help is Narvin Kumar. A computer wiz who made his fortune adding special effects to Bollywood films, Narvin invites Jason and Rachel to stay at his Mumbai home where, at breakfast, Rachel watches Narvin’s girlfriend devour a ham and cheese omelet with a side of bacon:

      “I remember reading somewhere that people in India were vegetarians.”

      “Depends on which India you mean,” Laxmi said between crunches. “Do you mean the Hindu, Muslim, or Christian India?”

       “Or perhaps the Sikh, Jain, or Buddhist India?” Narvin added.

       “Don’t forget the Jewish Indians. Or the Zoroastrians.”

       “I guess I thought I meant the Hindu one.”

        “Fine,” Laxmi said. “Now which version? There are eight hundred thousand to pick from…In Hinduism you are free to develop your own relationship with God …”

       “Or gods,” Narvin cut in.

       “…choosing the form of expression and set of beliefs that you determine is true for you. You want to worship Lord Vishnu? Go right ahead – and hundreds of millions will join you. You prefer to seek the assistance of a black-skinned goddess with a necklace of skulls? Have at it, friend. Are your spiritual needs best met by an elephant-headed man with four arms? Ganesh awaits. And when it comes to forms of worship, well then the options really open up. In a temple, on a mountain, in a river, alone, with a thousand others, wearing your richest finery or hanging around with the lads, nude but for a fresh coat of dust – you name it and I guarantee someone in India does it.”

  Narvin is quick to point out Laxmi’s oversimplification of the systems of faith usually lumped together under the word Hinduism, but when the conversation shifts from food to economics, it’s Narvin’s turn to take on the stereotypes:

      “The world seems most comfortable with the poverty-stricken, dhoti-wearing, non-violence spouting Indian, happy as a clam behind his spinning wheel. They are not as comfortable with high-tech Indian millionaires and nuclear weapons. For some reason they can grasp the concept of three hundred million people earning less than a dollar a day but can’t fathom the idea of a hundred million middle class Indians.”

     “Or the seventy thousand millionaires,” Laxmi said, pointing her fork at Narvin.

But the reality of India is much more complex, as Narvin concedes:

     “I’m not saying India doesn’t have its problems – half our population can’t even read about our space program in the papers, our drug manufacturing plants ship world-wide while people die from the same diseases not fifty meters from the factory gates. It’s a crazy, chaotic madhouse but it works. We spend far too much energy trying to define India and not enough just accepting it.”

Although I could have set Out of Order in the slums and ghettos that are found everywhere in India, or, more predictably, within the massive expatriate community, the people I chose to have Jason meet are predominately middleclass Indians – highly educated, multi-lingual and as computer savvy as next year’s college graduates. This is the India that Thomas Friedman describes in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century , an India that is already playing a larger role than most people in the west realize.

And just as India is emerging as an economic world power, I believe it is about to emerge as the setting of choice for mystery and thriller writers. Deserts, snow-capped mountains, rain forests, farmlands – you name the landscape and you’ll find it in India. If you prefer a urban setting, India has some of the world’s busiest and most overcrowded cities, as well as tens of thousands of villages and hamlets scattered over a country a third the size of the US. Few places enjoy such a rich and diverse cultural history as India, the Times Square of the world for two millennia. Unbelievable poverty exists next to unimaginable wealth, ancient traditions alongside tomorrow’s technology and while less than ten percent of the population speaks English, that’s still more than the number of English speakers in Canada and the UK combined. And how can any mystery writer resist the expansive, generally efficient and always interesting rail system, complete with overnight sleepers, Victorian train stations and different classes of accommodations?

Curry outsells fish-n-chips in England, CBS News called Bollywood starlet Aishwarya Rai the most beautiful woman in the world, and the odds are the last time you got help fixing your computer it was from some call center in Bangalore.

India’s not arriving, it’s here. It’s time for mystery writers to add some Indian spice.