Manil Suri's The City of Devi is probably the first Indian dystopic novel.
It imagines an India in a post-apocalyptic globe; however, the forces that have plunged Suri's world into chaos are the hackneyed forces of terrorism.
Alas, Indians, even when they imagine destruction, imagine it in terms that are no longer considered that hip or relevant.
Anyhow, India and Pakistan are on the brink of a nuclear war in the post-apocalyptic world of Suri's imagining.
Amidst the (same old) communal riots (between Hindus and Muslims) that convulse India, the heroine, Sarita searches for her physicist husband, Karun.
Their year-old marriage remains unconsummated and Sarita sets out to look for Karun with a pomegranate in her hand, hoping to reignite Karun's libido once she finds him (horror!)
Karun has yet another lover who also yearns for him and wants to win him back to herself.
Seems like the sought-after Karun is a Bollywood hero and lo and behold, there it is--the key to the secret of why Suri's plot sounds so garish and gimmicky: It's Bollywood stupid!
According to the New Yorker Magazine:
Suri's take on apocalypse is broadly satirical: a flashy Bollywood superhero ignites the conflict; class lines are firm, even in the dim confines of a bomb shelter; a religious zealot holds thousands in thrall to a gilded beggar girl with a birth defect.
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