Beyond The Wall

Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel Leila forces us to recognise the walls we’ve built, both in our minds and in our societies, and ask ourselves honest questions about why we guard them so tenaciously.

- Poonam Ganglani

The first time I came across Leila, I hesitated. It was at a literature festival in Bhutan in 2017, by which time I’d lived away from India for nearly seven years. The book was on sale after a talk by Prayaag Akbar. It stared at me from a wooden table beneath a tent, the sturdy black walls on its bright orange jacket foreboding, and vigilant of the two figures walking past. I picked it up, unwrapped it, and ran my thumb down the gold foil on the spine. I turned its pages and inhaled the woody scent of ink on paper. And then… I put it back down. Not yet, friend, not yet. I had the distinct sense that the time hadn’t quite come yet for me to read the book.

Leila found me again some time ago. By then, I’d moved back to India, experiencing it from the inside but with the fresh residue of an outsider’s eye. There was, it seemed to me, a new, mutating type of democracy in the country, a more entitled sense of street justice. Expressions of dissent were still ubiquitous, but now somewhat tethered to caution.

I sensed it in conversations with friends, in news reports, in my own heightened awareness. Perhaps these things had always existed and had merely reached a certain point of conflagration; maybe my time away had also caused my own sensitivity to flare.