The story behind "The Love Song of Luke Varkey"

The Love Song of Luke Varkey is a story about how a migrant to Bombay, Luke Varkey, who works as a space-seller in a magazine, falls in love with a beautiful girl, Renuka, in the course of a ride in a packed Bombay bus. Luke is in awe of the stunning Renuka. In the weird situation inside a public transport, he falls madly in love with Renuka, in what is an awakening of his deepest feelings for a woman. However, he is warned to keep away from an imminent love interest by the self-professed god man Goggle-sanyasi.

Later they meet and have a drink in the pub Mondegar, when Renuka tells Luke that she is not the person Luke imagines her to be. Struck by her candor Luke falls in love with her even more. The time is immediately after the riots in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

In a bizarre incident involving an attempt on his boss Satish Behl’s life, Luke loses his job. Luke then migrates for a job in the Persian Gulf where he works for a British Multinational in the kingdom of Registhan. He works under a depressed and worn out project manager, Philip Hudson, who contracts malaria. News reaches him that a riot is being planned in the Muslim kingdom against Hindus as retribution for the riots following the felling of Babri Masjid in India. 

The riot happens. His close friend and roommate, Bharatan, is nearly killed in it. The rebellion is engineered by a Chengiz Khan-like alpha male – Sheikh Razzak. Following the incident, the company repatriates many workers to India. Luke is one of them. During this time his love for Renuka, instead of subsiding, grows into an all-consuming obsession. He writes her several love letters, which aren’t replied. 

Luke comes back to India to work as a journalist in the financial magazine, Stock Investor, managed by the ruthless, Rudianna Ponnappa. He is obsessed about meeting Renuka again, but cannot find her in the teeming city. In Stock Investor he meets Padma, his muse, who hears his story and inspires him to write about it. He begins writing about Renuka and his love for her and how deeply he is committed to her. 

Disappointed by his futile search for Renuka, he is lonely and disenchanted, losing faith in himself and life. But all that changes when one day he sees Renuka as a prostitute on a Bombay street! She was trying to run away from a raiding police team. The god man Goggle-sanyasi and his deputy Leandro Misquitta have a hand in surreptitiously luring Renuka into prostitution. Desperate to win her love, he meets with her and persuades her to give it up, and finds her a hostel accommodation and a job with his friend Vikraman. 

Vikraman, the sexual predator, sexually harasses Renuka. In a perplexing turn of events Luke has a tiff with Renuka and slaps her. They drift apart. One day while cross from Churchgate to Victoria Terminus, Luke is mugged by two thieves. 

Following the mugging, Luke falls victim to one of Bombay’s periodic viral infections and spends days at home recovering. To his shock he reads in an evening newspaper that his love, Renuka, has committed suicide by hanging herself from the fan in her hostel room. She couldn’t bear Vikraman’s harassment. She leaves a suicide note that implicates Vikraman, who is arrested. Luke is devastated. 

At that time Luke is investigating an illegal deal by one of India’s top businesspersons Keshwani who stealthily takes over a company called Infocom. To compound his trauma Keshwani complains about him to Rudianna Ponnappa and he loses his job. He is jobless again. He wanders around Bombay and meets an art student and is attracted to her. But he can’t rekindle his burning passion for Renuka.  

In Luke’s wanderings around Bombay he meets the god man Goggle-sanyasi who has now become a celebrity. However, shortly, the god man is arrested when an orgy he organizes goes out of control and neighbors complain to the police. 

Once again Luke applies for a job in the Persian Gulf. He is selected and again immigrates to the Gulf. From there he mails Padma, his muse, the story he has been writing about his lost love for Renuka. This story, told in first person singular, forms the narrative of this novel, The Love Song of Luke Varkey. 

How "The Love Song of Luke Varkey" is different from other Indian Novels.