The concept of purity and extremism in society is not limited to a particular religion or ideology. They keep a section of people segregated from each other so that purity can be maintained. The world of Shalini and these women is one of abject pain and restrictions. This is a book that deals predominantly with women characters. While the men in most of these cases were also punished (Riz is missing and is probably dead Vasanthi’s lover was hacked to death, and another girl’s lover was made to drink poison), there is no purity camp for them. Prarthna because she married another girl Sonam who fell in love with a boy from the same gotra, Vasanthi because she wanted to marry a Dalit boy, Sana who started a campaign against the practice of khatna and gave herself up to the repeaters to save her family. Other women who inhabit the place are here for different, yet similar, reasons. Shalini too works as a peon in one of the government offices. Iyer and then get to serve the society through menial jobs. Women who lived dangerously, who did not follow the rules and were brought here by the repeaters – the moral police who decide what is acceptable and what is not. Alone, she now lives in a purity camp – a place for fallen women like her. Losing Leila and her husband is her punishment. Leila was taken away from her because they lived in a society which demanded certain rules and regulations be followed. She lost her daughter sixteen years ago and has no idea where she is.Īs the book progresses, we realise that Shalini did not “lose” Leila. We do not know, and neither does Shalini. It doesn’t take the reader long to figure out that Rizwan is no longer present in flesh. The novel begins with Shalini, and her husband, lighting candles for their daughter Leila’s birthday.

In this anthropological dystopia, Prayaag Akbar builds on what we know, as Atwood has done with The Handmaid’s Tale, and creates an exaggerated reality with that material, but one that touches and pushes boundaries but never crosses them.Īnd at the heart of this dystopia is the story of a mother in search of her daughter. And it is this familiarity, the sense of proximity that makes Leila, written by Prayaag Akbar and set in a future that looks very much like our reality, a powerful book.

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Prayaag akbar leila