BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into this neighbourhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world. It is an engaging, amusing tale, powered by Jai’s ebullient personality; at the same time it is an insightful portrait of the underside of 21st-century India. Her work has won several awards for journalism, including the Developing Asia Journalism Awards, the "Every Human has Rights" Media Awards, as well as the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line: Discover the immersive novel

We’ve been brought up to believe that children are only focussed on their games and food, unaware of the harsh realities of life. Chhota Pakistan’ might be mere words for Jai, but it holds the weight of decades of religious intolerance and prejudice that continues to cast a gloomy shadow over all of us. Violence is never the answer, but as long as the violent people have the loudest voice, the real issues of India will never get solved. Through market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn’t let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. There’s an almost Harry Potter–ish vibe to the relationship among the three intrepid kids, and Jai’s voice is irresistible: funny, vivid, smart, and yet always believably a child’s point of view.Anappara seduces us with tastes and smells, reminding us that even within this environment, where pollution weighs heavy in the air and scavenging from the local landfill is commonplace, there is still beauty and enjoyment in food: “Ma gathers ginger and garlic slivers and throws them into the pan, followed by a pinch of turmeric and coriander and cumin powder. But they are also just children: Jai watches TV and plays cricket in dusty alleyways; Pari dreams of getting a scholarship so that she can become a doctor; Faiz works at a café to help his parents make ends meet.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara - Waterstones

The world-building also adds to the tension of the story—the smog hides the children, making it easier for them to disappear, be kidnapped, or taken by djinns, which is Jai’s prevailing theory. Storytelling at its best—not just sympathetic, vivid, and beautifully detailed, but completely assured and deft. Jai, a devil-may-care nine-year-old obsessed with TV cop shows, decides to turn detective and begins investigating the disappearances of his schoolmates and neighbors with help from his two best friends—wise-beyond-her-years Pari and feisty Faiz. Reality collides with fiction: children whose more innocent fears focus on the spectres of the novel’s title are also confronted with the grinding hardship of India’s poorest societies, where girls are expected to grow up and become wives and mothers, and Muslims are ostracised.It seemed natural that Jai would be inspired by what he watches on TV; popular culture in the form of TV and Hindi films do exert an influence on daily lives.