Milk Teeth: A tale of Mumbai in the ’90s

Little did a management consultant who had trained as an aeronautical engineer at IIT and Stanford know what was in store for her when she switched careers and took up writing: Rejections from 13 agents for her very first literary effort. “I stayed up all night crying,” author Amrita Mahale confesses, but the initial setback merely strengthened her resolve to attempt “one more rewrite”.

The outcome is Milk Teeth , a debut novel which has all the features the writer says she looks for in a work of fiction — a good story told well, offering a mix of psychological insight and cultural commentary, and involving characters you care about, however flawed they may be.

At first glance, it may appear to be a tale of little people and their unexceptional lives, but the novel’s explosive prologue, laced with the threat of danger, is a premonition of other forms of violence lurking beneath the surface of a city — Mumbai of the ’90s, where “there was plenty of anger on offer”. It could erupt in public or just as easily manifest at home in a flash of domestic violence. Anger was always waiting to be ignited wherever interests clashed, cultural norms collided, financial disparities and class divisions reared their ugly head and one’s very sense of self was threatened. All you needed was a crisis to catalyse it.

Set against this canvas enriched with interconnecting vignettes, Milk Teeth traces the evolving fortunes of Ira, Kartik and Kaiz, three young people who enter each other’s lives only to learn that love isn’t necessarily reciprocal and friendship can be betrayed. It is also the tale of a fast-changing metropolis — so vividly depicted and integral to the narrative that it could well be another protagonist — with a heterogeneous migrant population ready to close ranks against the vulnerable. The Babri Masjid-related communal riots are a thing of the past and life has returned to normal. But it is a tentative, unsettled normal, with the city still feeling its way around the new identity — Mumbai — thrust upon it. Meanwhile, the race for redevelopment is on, inexorably transforming more than just architectural contours, causing upheaval in the lives of many. Caught in the turmoil are the tenants of Asha Nivas, a crumbling, rent-controlled building facing demolition in the middle-class suburb of Matunga, because its landlord has no alternative but to cut his losses and erect a brand new building in its place that will bring him dividends. Among those beleaguered tenants are the Kamats, whose daughter Ira, a feisty “reporter on the municipal beat for a city newspaper”, binds the many stories together, including those of Kartik, the childhood friend she had once idolised and would rediscover as an adult, and Kaiz, the man she continues to love and lust for, long after he has chosen a life away from her.

Mahale has clearly worked on the plot line, to which the novel’s well-researched backdrop lends gravitas. Her eye for detail, ear for dialogue, sense of irony and unusual way with words (she describes goosebumps as “poetry in Braille”) are unmistakable. But her trump card is, undoubtedly, her characterisation.

Milk Teeth; Amrita Mahale; Westland/Contxt; Fiction; Rs 599

Even her cameos, crafted with insight and unflinching honesty, leave an impression, lending heft to the developments driving the narrative. Particularly memorable is her delineation of Kaiz’s friend Ananya Rajaram, mistress of the veiled barb and subtle putdown. You come away feeling you’ve known her forever. Of Mahale’s main protagonists, Kaiz comes across as believable, even likeable, despite his self-centredness and commitment phobia. The portrayal of Kartik, inspired, perhaps, by the author’s own brother, must have been quite challenging because of his sexual orientation, especially as his story belongs to a time when Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was not decriminalised. Despite the painstaking effort made, the segment devoted to this character seems less engaging.

Mahale’s touch is far more assured and her emotional investment evident in her depiction of Ira, who switches roles in the epilogue to become the first-person narrator, carrying the story through to its denouement. Warts and all, this earnest, sensitive, middle-class girl endears herself to us. We fear for her when her impulse throttles her good sense. Our heart goes out to her when she falters and fails. And we find ourselves rooting for her when she emerges more resilient from the betrayals life has handed her, shaken, yet undefeated, making a hard choice when a compromise would’ve been the easy way out.

Ira is special, because she believes in herself, reminding us of her creator, another young woman who dared to choose the more difficult path and has come up, despite the odds, with a work of fiction that makes an impact. If this is what Mahale can offer on her very first attempt, her tears were surely not shed in vain.

Mita Ghose is a Kolkata-based freelance writer and editor