Wani Nazir
Rohit Manchanda’s The Enclave (HarperCollins India, 2024) is a great example of current writing in that it tells a story and also makes the reader think about language and vision in a way that makes it aware of itself. The book doesn’t just tell a story; it makes the reader think about what stories are and how they work. Reading The Enclave is like walking into a maze where every turn gives you a new view, where words have hidden meanings, and where each line of reasoning leads to another question. The main character, Maya, is not shown as a static person, but as a fluid being—a figure who is always being written, rewritten, and redefined. She is the postmodern subject, lost in a world of lies and shallow things.
Manchanda has a background in computational neurophysiology, which gives his writing both a sharp mind and a poetic sense. The self-awareness and wealth of detail are similar to the styles of Nabokov and Updike. His universe is filled with folks who are dealing with their own problems, and it feels real and textured. The Enclavecontrasts the everyday with the deep as Maya deals with the absurdities of a government job in Mumbai, the anguish of a prior marriage, her search for her own identity, and the complicated appeal of writing. There is always a back-and-forth between longing and detachment, cynicism and earnestness.
“Irked with herself, bothered faintly by the cobwebby rain that by turns films her skin and peels off it, she hastens up the street.” It shows how well Manchanda knows how to use language. The rain is more than just a weather event; it keeps Maya from being herself and from experiencing the outside world. One can feel how unstable perception is. The Enclave fits in with other postmodern works that look at awareness, such as Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, where the lines between rain and pavement, body and city, and so on, become less clear. At the same time, it reflects the unique rhythm of urban India, like Arundhati Subramaniam’s poetry or Anita Desai’s novel, In Custody, where the self has a hard time finding a voice.
Maya’s story moves on through a sequence of moments that are both smart and emotional. “A sudden upcurl of music — no, not music, a species of muzak ubiquitous these days — causes her to start, then to misstep, her ankle turned into a Diwali sparkler of pain.” This quote shows how Manchanda may change the tone. The promise of music quickly fades into the dullness of muzak, and the pain is conveyed with fireworks. The irony runs throughout the book; The Enclave doesn’t take itself too seriously. Self-awareness softens every stressful moment.
Fredric Jameson said that the postmodern ego is still stuck in a cycle of irony. Maya, whose name means “illusion”, is a perfect example of this paradox. “Maya sucks in a sweet breath of relief. Touch-and-go, these moments, never otherwise. Razor’s twinkling edge.” The razor’s edge refers to Maugham, but in this case, it’s used psychologically to show how her life was always balancing guilt and freedom. “And it just won’t do to let him get the least whiff of this hugger-mugger, this alter ego that she keeps up on the side.” The words are both fun and thoughtful. The self is shown to be both many-faceted and performative.
Maya is like other postmodern figures, such as Anna Wulf from Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Still, she is very Indian and has to deal with gender roles and hierarchies in institutions. “The starchiest of a generally starchy lot, Maya thinks, our Task Force’s Convener. A stickler to his fingertips.” In a world full with arrogant males, her sharp and funny wit protects her.
The interactions in the book seem both real and strange at the same time: “‘Madam my eye. First place, I can’t do the main course in this hobbit kitchen of yours. Second place, I don’t want to catch whatever vile bug you’re cosying up with.’” The writing goes back and forth between official and informal, between the language of organisational officialese and Maya’s private thoughts. Manchanda’s writing is analogous to Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Chaudhuri’s A Strange and Sublime Address in that the English language changes to fit the Indian setting.
The Enclave also thinks about what writing is and what it can and can’t do. “In amidst all this, no point in even calling to mind her writing; the less thought of it the better. Mulishly, it persists in its state of limbo, refractory to all coaxing and wheedling.” It stubbornly stays in limbo, refusing to budge no matter how much you try to persuade it. Writing is something that frustrates and fascinates her at the same time, and she can’t give it up. Maya is like a postmodern artist who has lost touch with her work. Maya’s “poet manqué” self — “never quite giving herself a chance to make her mark” — echoes Eliot’s Prufrock, who feels alone and doesn’t do anything because he knows himself. The description of the room gives the reader a picture: “The room is awash in mahogany and in hues that flank it to this side and that, thickening here into ebony, lifting there into rosewood.”
The writer puts a lot of emphasis on texture. But there is a complaint underneath that. The mahogany room shows how Indian taste tries to copy colonial taste and how class works. Manchanda reveals that India’s modernity is just a thin layer of privilege. Manchanda criticises literary pretension: “Well, sighs Maya, here’s another of those that think the true mark of being a writer lies in producing Suitable Boy-thick books.”
The Enclave is more about consciousness than just telling what happened. The book draws references to other works of literature, such as Kamala Das’ ‘The Maggots’, which tells the story of women who stood up for themselves. When Maya reads her choice of poetry at a poetry discussion circle, it confuses people around her, just like how she feels in society. Literary references to Lolita, Fanny Hill, and Catch-22can be found. This means that The Enclave is more than just fiction; it’s also a critique of literary culture.
Manchanda makes fun of intellectualism by saying, “His door is unlatched, nonchalantly ajar. As is its wont: the man is enviably untroubled by thoughts of a break-in. A frame of mind he owes, as he puts it, to the happy fact that he possesses nothing worth making away with.” He says that the fact that he has nothing worth stealing gives him this state of mind.
The Enclave has a lot of emotional depth: “Today, casting back, she feels downright lucky he hadn’t been the corporally expressive kind; today, the thought of his touch makes her blench.” The book talks about how marriage can be disappointing, which is similar to Desai’s Fire on the Mountain. There are parts of the text that are incredibly poetic, like this one: “Pink, pink everywhere, the colour of everything nudged to a roseate version of itself. The grass and underbrush beside them wear an embarrassed flush; the clouds on high have assumed the dusty rose of a Goan beach at twilight.” The grass and bushes next to them are becoming red with embarrassment, and the clouds above them are taking on the dusty rose colour of a Goan beach at dusk.
Manchanda’s cityscapes show that something is wrong: “But whilst the eye is poulticed by Delhi, the mind’s unsettled. In Maya’s thoughts a sense of constriction pervades, brought on by the persona of the city: its enslavement to politics, the gargantua of its babudom, the boorishness of its civic spaces.” The criticism seems to be both societal and spiritual. The book ends on a calm note: “Then, if a riptide chooses to come along, well, let it come along, pull her out to sea again. She’s weathered that sort of ride before, she’ll weather it once more.” The ocean is a symbol of welcome. Maya’s giving up shows that she accepts that things don’t last forever.
The Enclave is like Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello. At the same time, it talks about living in Mumbai and the problems Maya has. Manchanda’s book shows that a novel can have depth without being too long. The Enclave is like Chatterjee’s English, August, Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie, and Roy’s The God of Small Things in that they all put ego before nationhood. Manchanda criticises linearity and replaces continuity with collage. Chatterjee’s Agastya makes fun of India, but Maya takes it to heart. Roy looked for transcendence in beauty, but Manchanda found it in sarcasm.
The Enclave is a book that feels both old-fashioned and ahead of its time. The novel serves as a mirror, reflecting the Indian identity: intelligent yet insecure. The book reminds us that living today is like walking on the edge of a razor.
Winner of the 2025 Kalinga Literary Festival Book Award for English Fiction, Rohit Manchanda’s The Enclave can be purchased on Amazon.
A postgraduate gold medalist in English Literature from the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, Wani Nazir, from Pulwama, India, is the author of the poetic collections, …and the silence whispered and The Chill in the Bones. Presently working as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education, Jammu and Kashmir, he has been writing both prose and poetry in English, Urdu, and his mother tongue, Kashmiri. Wani has poetry and prose in Kashur Qalam, The Significant League, Muse India, Setu, Langlit, Literary Herald, Cafe Dissensus, Learning and Creativity – Silhouette Magazine, The Dialogue Times, and elsewhere.
