The sector walls, preserving the higher rungs of society while casting aside the scavengers and misfits, seemed to give physical form to an increasingly intolerant perspective. There were traces I recognised in the all-pervasive Council, with its thuggish Repeaters for eyes, ears and fists. ISBN-10: 978-9386797305 ISBN-13: 978-9386797308.īut when Leila and I did cross paths the second time around, my observations felt sharply aligned with the universe between its covers. First Published April 17th 2017 by Simon & Schuster India. 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. I sensed it in conversations with friends, in news reports, in my own heightened awareness. Expressions of dissent were still ubiquitous, but now somewhat tethered to caution. There was, it seemed to me, a new, mutating type of democracy in the country, a more entitled sense of street justice.

By then, I’d moved back to India, experiencing it from the inside but with the fresh residue of an outsider’s eye. I had the distinct sense that the time hadn’t quite come yet for me to read the book. I turned its pages and inhaled the woody scent of ink on paper. I picked it up, unwrapped it, and ran my thumb down the gold foil on the spine. 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. The book was on sale after a talk by Prayaag Akbar.

It was at a literature festival in Bhutan in 2017, by which time I’d lived away from India for nearly seven years. The first time I came across Leila, I hesitated. 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.

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