Illusions and Realities
Radha Chakravarty
MIRROR CITY by Chitrita Banerji Penguin/Viking, New Delhi, 2014, 408 pp., 499
October 2014, volume 38, No 10

At a key moment in this novel, the protagonist Uma reflects upon a Baul song by Lalon Shah, evoking the mysterious allure of Mirror City—‘a place that adjoins one’s home, yet remains forever unreachable’. This is also the feeling we get about the city of Dhaka as it appears in Chitrita Banerji’s debut novel, which derives its title from this song. A city in the throes of convulsive political change, a culture in crisis—yet a scenario experienced at one remove, for we as readers never quite feel the living pulse of the place.

In part, of course, this is because Uma is an outsider in Dhaka, a Hindu girl from India who refuses to change her religion after her marriage to Iqbal, a Bangladeshi she meets during her student days in America. Though warmly accepted by Iqbal’s close circle of friends, and absorbed into her new job with an international aid agency, Uma finds it hard to develop a sense of belonging in her new home in Dhaka. Her predicament is complicated by the machinations of Maqbool, a government official known to be close to the Prime Minister, and the dramatic appearance of the mystery woman Nasreen.

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