‘Chronicle of an Hour and a Half’: What if I become the mob?

When I was 50 pages into Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari’s debut novel Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, I decided the opening line of my review would be about how incisively he wrote about the events that unfolded in an hour and a half over the course of 200 pages. As I moved ahead a few more pages, I wanted to ruminate on the mob culture in India and how it often turns murderous. Some more pages in, and I wanted to dwell on the feelings of the mother and the lover who are left with a permanent void in place of the man they both loved. After a dozen or so more pages, I wanted to contemplate the inherent and violent misogyny that constitutes a society’s “morality.” By the time I finished reading the book, I realised none of these starting points could adequately express the horror of what I had just read.

Though it takes no more than 90 minutes to rip several families apart, the lynching of a young Muslim man is the culmination of years – perhaps centuries – of moral policing that has been implemented by self-appointed custodians to keep transgressors in check. But what makes for a “transgressor”?...

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