A Techno Tale - Review of Labyrinth by Shyamala Narayan

A Techno Tale

Arunabha Sengupta's novel Labyrinth is set during the years of the computer boom, when hundreds of young Indians found work on the Y2K problem. It gives a vivid picture of their life in a huge software company, interwoven with a tale of young love. In some respects, it parallels Chetan Bhagat's novel, 'Five Point Someone'. Bhagat presented the life of three young men who join the Indian Institute of Technology, after tough competition. 'Labyrinth' shows these brilliant young graduates caught in the labyrinth of a huge software company.

Two principal characters of the novel, Kiran Arothe and Vikram Gupta, resemble the young author. Vikram Gupta, like Arunabha Sengupta, has a Masters degree in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta and joins "Adieu Consultancy Solutions" straight from the campus. The author worked in Tata Consultancy Solutions initially. The vivid dislike of anything to do with Chennai, the food, the weather, the work atmosphere, and the longing to get back to Calcutta to his mother and dog, reflect the young author's own life. (The blurb informs us that Sengupta currently works for Cognizant Technology Solutions and lives in Kolkata with his mother, wife, daughter and a Golden Retriever - the four girls in his life to whom the book is dedicated). Kiran Arothe is a senior software engineer who has joined ACS because they promised to post him in Bombay after the initial orientation.

ACS is shown as a soul-less company, interested only in profit. When it comes to recruiting young people from the college campuses, they paint a rosy picture of their future career; once they have been inducted, they are made to sign a three year bond. But youngsters still leave, in spite of this. So, the Vice President, Digambaram, and Dr. Nageshwar, head of the Human Resource Department, get the brilliant idea of making the youngsters submit their original certificates. How Vikram manages to outwit the company and get justice for the young employees and Kiran Arothe forms the plot of the novel.

Vikram Gupta is a refreshingly different protagonist; he does not suffer from any deep-seated anxiety, or worry about the clash between modernity and tradition in India, or any such highly philosophical predicament. His peculiar sense of humour, love of practical jokes and irreverence for authority enables him to take on the corporate might of the software giant.

ACS has an unduly high opinion of its training programme :

"L1M12 was having their final class. "Effective Presentation". This was the class where in eight hours the instructor was supposed to remove all the habits and mannerisms that people had developed for over two decades and make each and every one a fantastic speaker. They were even shown video recordings of speeches by great orators. Vikram's batch had been shown the speeches of John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr."

He is the enfant terrible who asks embarrassing questions. "At the end of it all, Vikram had asked whether there was any special reason for showing videos of speakers who had all been assasinated."

There is a wide variety of characters. There is no attempt to present all managers as villains and the young recruits as angels. The author understands the psychology of the young people well.

The novel presents a true picture of the Indian workplace - differences based on region are there, but the difference in terms of individual characteristics is greater. This novel reveals the vitality of Indian English fiction. The language does not draw attention to itself, the novelist is primarily interested in spinning a yarn. It is confined entirely to metropolitan India; but no work can encompass the whole of India, and the software professional and the metropolis are as much a part of India as the farmer and the village.

Stereotypes, whether in terms of characters or situations, are avoided. Probably, the only cliche in the novel is the title.
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Shyamala A. Narayan is Professor and Head, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi.