At first I scoffed, but this book changed my mind. Seemingly aimed at readers with poor pectoral strength (“How often have you wished for books that ... don’t have to be lugged around?”) and similarly atrophied mental capacities (“books that don’t weigh you down with complicated stories”), Penguin’s newly launched Metro Reads series has in its midst at least one neat little sparkler of a book.
As befitting a book designed to be read on the Metro, Dreams in Prussian Blue is a racy read that can be accomplished in one sitting, but it’s not banal or hopelessly formulaic. Don’t be fooled by the drivel on the front and back covers, which boast a silly B-thriller tagline (“When Love Kills”) and perhaps the most unremarkable bit of dialogue in the book (I am not reproducing it here due to my trichotillomanic tendencies).
The story revolves around a rather wretched pair – Michael “Mad Genius” Agnelo and his masochistic live-in partner, Naina. The book starts with Naina trying to charm the manager of an art gallery into considering Michael’s paintings for exhibition. This while her “make believe husband” has a tantrum over the phone and refuses to budge from their hovel.
This vignette reflects the story of their lives together. Naina donating her time and energy like Mother Teresa on a charity bender and Michael carrying on like a three-year-old preparing for reform school. Uttam does a great job exploring their exasperating interpersonal dynamics and their grim little household, and these are some of the most enjoyable, if infuriating, parts of the book.
This time as she meets the gallery manager, however, Naina decides to take a stand. She’s finally sick of working borderline-menial jobs to pay the rent and feed Michael while he pretends to be Jackson Pollock. The author seems to be trying to work the rather pedestrian metaphor of love being blind here, but I can’t be arsed to get into that. What does happen, however, is that Michael actually does go blind.
He gets into an accident on his way to the meeting with the gallery guy after Naina threatens to dump him if he doesn’t show up. Naina goes on the mother of guilt trips and blames herself for the accident and goes all Florence Nightingale. Enter the couple’s old pal from art school, Abhinav. Once sweet on Naina, he helps foot the hospital bill and lends a shoulder to cry on.
Uttam deftly weaves together a tale of desperation, deception and blackmail from this point on.
It’s impossible to not feel a little sick with pity and fear for Naina. While Michael decides to become the Stevie Wonder of painters and to top his own record as the greatest a**hole of all time, Naina struggles to meet his demands for expensive paints and canvases. She flips burgers for a living and scrounges around decrepit chawls for a new place for them to live, while he rants and raves and moans and bitches. God, I hate Michael.
But just as you begin to expect Naina to douse him in linseed oil and set him ablaze, Abhinav lends her his helping hand yet again. He has a big box of oil paints, he says, except they’re all one colour. Prussian Blue.
And this is when the twists and turns truly begin. Naina, in a way, gets her revenge on Michael (though I wish the author had let her enjoy it more), but not without a horrible price. Perhaps Uttam included her attempts at concrete verse (eg. “polythene packets and pepsi cans bob inafeverishfrenzyofsuicide”) as an attempt to minimize the sympathy factor, but you can’t help cringing as the plot hurtles towards its denouement.
To say more would be to give too much away, but this Metro read is one bumpy ride. In a good way.