Early in The Complex, the third novel by Karan Mahajan, a character reflects on the dynamics of the large family she married into and concludes, “No one was friends in any family. It was just another network of power masquerading as a nest of love.” This doesn’t apply to most families I know, but Mahajan’s gripping work illustrates that it’s most certainly the case with the Chopra family of Delhi, India.
The book’s title refers to A-19 Modern Colony, the unglamorous and cramped apartment building that houses 30 descendants and in-laws of the late SP Chopra (not to mention their servants). A fictional figure who helped create India’s constitution after the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, SP Chopra left behind a big family — but far from a harmonious one. The novel’s prefatory chapter, set in the 2010s, begins with the news that one of Chopra’s grandsons is being released from prison after serving a 25-year sentence for killing his uncle, Laxman.
A henchman in the Hindu nationalist movement at the time of his death, Laxman is adored by the family when the novel begins. His portraits line the walls of the complex, and he has replaced his father “as the foremost member of the clan.” The news of his murderer’s release brings tension and gossip to the complex and anxiety to the novel’s narrator, Mohit Chopra. The son of Laxman’s killer (and SP Chopra’s great-grandson), Mohit receives comforting words from just one family member, his aunt Gita: “he committed a crime but the man he finished was also a criminal,” she assures him in a text message. She knew that better than anyone.
After this 21st-century set-up, Mohit turns the narrative to the Gita’s life in the early 1980s. Living in America with her husband, Sachin (who is also Laxman’s nephew), Gita visits India for a wedding and is raped by Laxman. She and Sachin had already been struggling to adjust to life in the United States and were frustrated by their inability to have a child; the rape, which Gita keeps a secret, makes everything worse. Sachin feels underappreciated in his job designing squishy ketchup bottles, and Gita grows restless at home, which leads her to find a job and a lover. Shockingly, the latter does not help her marriage. Torn between the comfort of the U.S. and the customs and kin of India, the couple eventually returns to Delhi but is immediately confronted with the backstabbing and betrayal of life in the complex. You can’t go home again — especially when your family reneges on their promise to make room for you.
A family this unhappy may remind readers of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as will other plot elements. Mahajan has also acknowledged the influence of V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas. Like Naipaul’s masterpiece, The Complex features Hindu characters in arranged marriages and close quarters, at each other’s throats, struggling to find space for themselves. “Real estate was fate,” Gita realizes in a most Biswas-esque moment, “it was one’s life.” But space is hard to come by at the A-19 Modern Colony, and the lack of comfort and privacy aggravates the tension and resentment among family members. And of course, there’s Laxman.
Having established the damage Laxman wrought on Gita, it is especially daring of Mahajan to devote much of the novel to Laxman’s perspective. (He did something similar in his previous novel, the National Book Award-finalist The Association of Small Bombs, which delves into the life of a terrorist and the families he ruins.) This technique does not make us feel sympathy for Laxman — he’s still a sexual predator, still a loathsome brute — but he develops into a more interesting, conflicted, and troubled character. Not satisfied with assaulting one nephew’s wife, Laxman finds a more willing partner in his sister-in-law, Karishma. The two carry on a brazen relationship for years: they consummate it in a spare bedroom above a temple that Laxman sponsors and proceed to carry it out under their spouses’ noses. It becomes an open secret in the complex.
Mahajan deftly depicts the lies and betrayals the couple commits to continue the affair, the insecurities the relationship breeds, and the distance it creates, even after they and their spouses start a homeopathic balm company together. Karishma is an especially compelling character: she seems confident and self-assured — what could possibly attract her to the crude Laxman? She is cold and selfish and neglects her children to carry on her affair. But she seems to grow aware of her mistakes, to regret them, and move toward changing her life. “Light and dark were mixed together,” she realizes, “both strands of existence were coiled up in each other, and she never knew which one would overpower her on certain days.”
As the narrative proceeds through the 1980s, it tracks the emergence of Hindu nationalist politics and the rise of Laxman Chopra. Recognizing the public desire for a Hindu nationalist party that pushes back against “the blankening boot of Islam,” Laxman becomes a political entrepreneur and helps organize events for the burgeoning Bhartiya Janata Party. Meanwhile, Mohit goes to college and experiences his own political awakening, protesting the government’s decision to implement affirmative action programs for lower castes and accidentally participating in an act of self-immolation.
Laxman is not the smartest, nor most successful — that’s probably Sachin, whose ketchup innovations eventually litter the property around the complex — nor most virtuous, nor kindest member of the family, but through his inexhaustible energy, he replaces his dead father as the suitable patriarch and figure of public renown. It even seems like Laxman is approaching something akin to personal growth. When anti-Sikh riots erupt after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, he protects his Sikh neighbors from violent Hindu nationalists. Has he become a better person? Has he matured? Another moment of sexual violence answers those questions and leads to the novel’s most tragic events.
REVIEW: AN OILMAN MEETS HIS MAKER
Don’t let the novel’s size or unfamiliar setting intimidate you. Mahajan provides ample context regarding India’s religion, culture, and politics. When he uses a Hindi term or expression, he will often explain it — quickly and unobtrusively — in the next sentence. And yes, there are 107 chapters, but they’re all short, some less than a page long. Mahajan does not address modern Indian politics directly, but that Laxman is a founding member of Narendra Modi’s BJP is hardly a ringing endorsement of the man who has been prime minister since 2014. On the other hand, it is clear that the lack of opportunity the Chopras endure for much of the work results from socialist policies.
The Complex is a sad, transfixing, and, yes, complex novel. Even the most likable characters are often selfish and cruel; none of the marriages are happy, few of the parents are loving, and the siblings are rarely supportive. You won’t wish you were a member of the Chopra family — yet you will surely feel affection for some of them even as you witness how their selfish and violent acts deform each other’s lives.
Christopher J. Scalia is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read).
