Book Recommendation: Real Life by Amrita Mahale

Hi Readers! I read a fascinating book last month. Even after finishing it, I couldn’t quite stop thinking about it, especially the brilliance of the prose. Yes, I had read the story. But, after reading it, I randomly recollected different layers of themes that I hadn’t realised before. The same thing happened when I read Amrita Mahale’s first book Milk Teeth, and now here I am again. I feel as if this writing ingenuity is a specialty of the author and I will continue to be amazed by it every time she has a book out!

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

In the remote Mahamaya Valley in the Himalayas, wildlife biologist Tara has vanished. Hunting for answers, Tara’s best friend Mansi sets out to retrace her whereabouts in the days before her disappearance. The prime suspect Bhaskar sits in police custody, his obsession with Tara laid bare, his testimony a labyrinth of contradictions and half-truths. As the investigation deepens, the valley reveals its own mysteries—a backpacker paradise where the timeless and the ephemeral collide, where technology and nature clash, and where a woman’s voice can be silenced in countless ways.

Rendered in exquisite prose, Real Life is a gripping mystery that transforms into a masterful exploration of love and loss, visibility and erasure, AI and surveillance and the never-ending tussle between individual desires and societal demands.

In an age of surveillance and enforced conformity, what does it mean for a woman to seek a more authentic, real existence?

~~THOUGHTS~~

Real Life is a story told in three parts, by Mansi, Bhaskar and Tara. Tara goes missing in Jora while on one of many of her research field trips in the Himalayan region. No one is able to find her for over two months, after which her family and best friend Mansi have to believe the fact that she has died. Starting off from this point, we see Mansi leaving behind her entire life to go to Jora to feel closer to her best friend, to understand if she was at fault, to understand if Bhaskar was at fault, to simply understand how to be in a world where her best friend was no longer alive.

Part one, written in first person, is all about Mansi and Tara’s friendship. We see glimpses into the past from how they became friends, how their friendship changed when they were in college, how it evolved further when Mansi got married and Tara was not in favour about the groom Sid, and several instances over the 20 or so years which also showed how their friendship grew but not without its ups and downs. I loved reading these flashbacks as they made me remember the times I spent with my childhood friends too. In parallel to this, we also have the ‘now’ storyline where Mansi is trying to manoeuvre a life without Tara in a place where Tara spent about 8 years of her life. We see her contemplating her grief through waves of helplessness, sadness and guilt.

The first part is excellence in itself. It brought about a perfect balance in cementing the foundation of their friendship while also going into the nuances of loss, grief and guilt. And, in addition, it also brought about the toxicity of Sid, aka, the man child and her in laws, in the way that patriarchy, fat shaming and more is written throughout.

Part two, written in third person, is all about Bhaskar. He was Mansi’s collegemate and later when they had a chance occurrence, Mansi led him to Tara. He is an AI researcher, who has just returned from the US for a peaceful break, which is why he had chosen to go to Jora, of all places. What started innocently as friendship between them turned into a situationship which soon turned into Bhaskar’s obsession over Tara. The way that Bhaskar’s catphishing trauma from his college life led him to become an obsessed, creepy and at all times a psychopathic self-confident character is written amazingly. The only inane parts in this section were those revolving around AI. We read enough about it elsewhere, so seeing the same thing in a fiction novel was off-putting.

Finally, part three, written in third person again, is all about Tara, specifically everything that led up to her disappearance and death. It’s a small segment as compared to the previous two. Perhaps, it is because by now we know and love Tara for all she is and all she stands for. Her parents were a driver and a cook and she went on to become an ambitious, self-assured, confident, brilliant and courageous woman who was pursuing a PhD. We got to love her, don’t we? The only time where I was bored is when there was a lot of talk about her research topic around ecology, wild dogs and such, which was actually quite a lot.

While I knew that Real Life was a haunting literary mystery, I never once expected it to be a core mystery. Having read and loved Amrita Mahale’s Milk Teeth, I knew this book would be more on the literary and less on the mystery, and I was glad that it was! So many themes were unpacked in one book that it makes sense it took 6 years to write it and such kudos to her on that feat. While I have already mentioned themes revolving around loss, grief, guilt, obsession, patriarchal bias etc, I also liked the political social commentary around caste reservations, people’s rights in Kashmir, sexism in all fields of work and how we are but infinitesimal to the nature. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. I have rated Real Life by Amrita Mahale at 4/5 stars!

Until next time,