The Illicit Happiness of Other People is a book of many pleasures, one which perhaps can be misread as just a breezy satire based on that ingenious title. But this is a story which while light on prose machinations, deals with some weighty themes, as life, death, the meaning of life, happiness etc. You get the drift. And it does it immensely well too. This book was the follow up to Manu Joseph’s acclaimed and controversial first book, Serious Men, which I haven’t read yet but hope to catch the movie adaptation starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui soon.

The story takes place in the late 1980’s in what was then Madras, India. The unassuming Balaji lane is filled up with nondescript apartment buildings, with nondescript families going about their mundane lives while hoping their sons will crack that all important IIT entrance exam and find a way to the USA and a green card. Nonconformity is not appreciated here and at times it feels like Ousep Chacko’s Malayali family is as non-conformist as can be. Ousep is a failed journalist, a once promising feted young writer whose words and life seems to have dried up. Coming home drunk to a fiery wife, Mariamma, who herself takes out numerous past grievances on the walls of the house where she holds imaginary conversations with foes, he is a source of irritant deviation for the residents of the block where he lives. There is a tragedy which happened a couple of years ago which he is suddenly re-invigorated to take up the threads of. This is the suicide of his elder son, Unni, who, one fine day just prior to his eighteenth birthday, took a haircut, ambled into his building and then went to the terrace to throw himself off it. After three years of dormant brooding, a package he comes across forces Ousep to once again start his search into Unni’s death; he painstakingly follows up with everyone associated with Unni to glean something, anything from them which would point a window into his son’s charismatic mind.

By all accounts, it appeared that Unni was a remarkable boy; not adept in the Sciences and Mathematics that his whole class of society worshipped, but an existential thinker who had the ability to hold a spell over others. Most of his father’s enquiries result in disappointment with people either not willing to be forthcoming with information or providing information that doesn’t do much to help. But Unni was an artist who was working on his own graphic novel that may have provided clues to his mental state. One strand of which involved his mother’s mental travails, the roots of which may have been in an incident in her childhood. But aside of his quest, Ousep hasn’t exactly been a model husband or father, doing his best to make the neighbors ostracize his family, especially in the wake of Unni’s death, while also miring them in virtual poverty, with Mariamma having to do with handouts and charities to keep the hearth burning. There is also Thoma, Unni’s disillusioned younger brother who, while loving towards his brother, always felt he was never as good enough to surpass him. Thoma’s growing pangs are exacerbated by his growing feelings for the older Mythili, the neighboring family’s daughter, who was extremely close to Unni before the untimely incident.

Unni is the focus of the book, yet he is hardly actually in it. It is through the lens of other people’s reverence, friendship or prejudice that his character is brought to life and it is a fascinating mind that the author leads us into. While Unni himself maybe a boy struggling with delusions or other psychiatric issues, this investigation into his reasons opens up the failings of others. None more so than his father who, in the throes of a disappointing afterlife to his once acclaimed promise, has turned into a bumbling, irreverent wreck of a man, leaving most of the duties of running the household to his wife, the long suffering Mariamma. But Mariamma herself is no pushover, and her grief at her son’s demise is also tinged with the guilt that perhaps something she said may have contributed to it. And what of Mythili? Does she have a secret up her sleeve? Or does it have something to do with his elusive friend, Somen Pillai, to whose house Ousep keeps returning to hoping to get a glimpse of the boy.

One thing which cannot be doubted though is Manu Joseph’s scathing eye towards the lower middle-class households described here. His scabrous pen doesn’t let anyone off the hook, whether it is the holier than thou priests or the parents who populate the cult of mediocrity and drudgery in their kids minds. While I may not agree with all the criticism, having myself seen the wonder of everyday living that a hard-working commoner is capable of, one cannot deny the remarkable acuity he brings to many of his observations. It’s a fascinating piece of work from a writer of whom I hope to read more of in the future.