How is “The Love Song of Luke Varkey” different from other Indian novels?

The well-known writer of Indian origin VS Naipaul said that he found most of Indian writing inward looking and circumscribed by narrow boundaries of limited and self-centered experiences.

I tend to agree. Most Indian writing is confined to the domain of middle and upper middle class and elitist. These experiences do not include in its ambit the wider and coarser realities of India existing, say, in slum colonies, immigrant housing quarters, shady sex cubicles above restaurants called "family rooms," etc.

Writing has been confined to the sanctified environs of public school "old boy networks" and to those privileged few who travel abroad on holidays and live in a circumscribed milieu that do not even acknowledge the realities of the red light districts and poor immigrant sections.

In “The Love Song of Luke Varkey” I deal with people you will find at the street level. CP Surendran in his foreword to my novel says that the Luke Varkey, the protagonist, lives a “close to the floor” existence. Yes, he does, because he has immigrated from a rural area and lives a subsistence-level existence in Bombay. 

The novel also makes a germane statement of about the status women in Bombay and in India. Girls are prone to all sorts of dangers and therefore the preference for boys. Girls are brought to cities with promises of marriage and are sold to cage-like brothels where they live as virtual slaves. There is no escape from these cages, and once committed to these inhuman cells they live there and die there. 

No wonder women are increasingly militant and are dominating new technology jobs in the booming outsourcing industry in which they excel. "The Love Song of Luke Varkey" thus talks of a feminine revolution in the offing where more and more women will occupy supervisory and managerial positions.

My protagonist, Luke Varkey, struggles against the same monsters that I struggled against while living in Bombay. I have seen the struggle of the hardworking people who lead a marginal existence and to compensate drown their sorrows in addictions.

Luke Varkey’s efforts to save his love Renuka from the clutches of the flesh trade shows his unusual courage when faced by heavy odds. Yet he deals with the situation with courage, strength and fortitude. He risks his job and his life for her.

Needless to add, “The Love Song of Luke Varkey” is the first novel of its kind in India that digs deep and brings up the dregs that the common denizen of India's teeming cities cope with.  

That is my novel “The Love Song of Luke Varkey’s” uniqueness and appeal!