A premature harvest

Hurda or tender green sorghum is cherished in Maharashtra in the winter months when it is harvested and eaten freshly roasted Hurda partiesmdashwhere the sweet millet is savoured alongside banter and barbeque firesmdashare cherished too especially by city residents seeking an lsquoorganicrsquo rural experienceIn journalist Atharva Panditrsquos hands the hurda party is a plot point that perplexes the characters of his debut novel named after the millet Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury India set in the fictional village of Murwani Here the authoritiesrsquo urge to solve a crime and the fellow villagersrsquo empathy towards the family affected by it is no match to the years of grief it spawnsPanditrsquos haunting story of the aftermath of the rape and murder of three young girls has occupied his mind for a decade At 16 when he began to take an interest in news he was roused by a veteran reporterrsquos sensitive investigation of a similar case in Maharashtrarsquos Bhandara village ldquoI still have a cutout of the twopage spreadrdquo he says ldquoI couldnrsquot stop thinking about the case for days I remember being sleepless and wondering how someone could do this to children Therersquos something deeply wrong with us as a society if we canrsquot be empathetic towards young girlsrdquoHis singleminded focus to write a novel about the misogyny that allows gruesome gendered crimes to occur and be forgotten compelled him to visit Bhandara a few years later by this point the Andheri resident had already attempted to write a draft Panditrsquos novel is a lesson in giving oneself the benefit of age and experience to do a job well particularly when the subject commands it ldquoI thought writing about the series of events was the best way to understand them In 2013 I was naive but in later years I realised that the telling of such a story must come from a genuine placemdashto truly know why the crime happened and why crimes like these continue occurrdquo he saysThe novel in its current form was born when Pandit 27 pursued the South Asia Speaks fellowship and was mentored by author Prayaag Akbar Murwanirsquos world is a welletched one which gives the reader a deep look into each character and their motivationsmdashfrom a police officer who is adept at shooting stones to make the fruit fall from mango trees to the midday meal cook at a local school who has come to terms with her own fate in the village but hopes its girls will find better futuresPandit presents the everyday misogyny that women encounter the markers of masculinity that men boast of or fail to possess and the patriarchal outlook that permits the villagers to fixate on 14yearold girlsmdashfrom their choice of clothing to the ways in which they attracted the wrong kind of attention Against this backdrop it is hardly surprising that a single mothermdasha widow whose husband dies of an illnessmdashis accused of black magic murder and allowing her daughters to stray ldquoIrsquove noticed people speak of village life in two distinctive waysmdashthe nostalgia and simplicity of it or its wild and untamed side Chitranshu the reporter from Mumbai who visits Murwani to cover the story and who may be expected to be decent or respectful exhibits the same misogyny that we see in the village I wanted to capture how men in urban and rural settings tend to perceive young girls and women the same wayrdquo the author explainsIt is Panditrsquos style that draws the reader in especially the sections written like a reporterrsquos transcriptions which convey the overwhelming conjecture and gossip around the girlsrsquo deathsmdashsupplied even by those individuals who knew little about them He uses repetition to great effect repeating words to bring emphasis to the details that matter in a story where the search for truth and fact makes no progress The author infuses the charactersrsquo linesmdashparticularly their more emotional disclosuresmdash with Marathi phrasesldquoIrsquove always been fascinated by novels teeming with characters such as Roberto Bolantildeorsquos The Savage Detectives or Marlon Jamesrsquo A Brief History of Seven Killings The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy brilliantly plays with form I attempted to experiment similarly I also wanted to see how Marathi and English could be fused such that it sounds like the English spoken by Maharashtrian characters through voice and tonal shiftsrdquo Pandit saysPandit evolved across drafts but he was certain from the start that the novel should be titled Hurda A poetic choice given hurdarsquos significance in the plot but also the evocation of a tender crop harvested early in its life cyclemdashthe wiping out of a life that was yet to be lived