Kaayaa – Guruprasad Kaginele, Narayan Shankaran

Description

A skilled plastic surgeon is like a master sculptor whose material is the human body. That’s the credo the protagonist of this novel, Dr Bheem Malik, lives by. Among his clientele are the who’s who of Manhattan, keen to submit themselves to the doctor’s knife for the sake of fuller lips, sleeker jawlines, bigger breasts.

Dr Malik has it all: a successful career as New York’s topmost plastic surgeon, a beautiful wife whose body he
has sculpted himself and a mother-in-law, Kasturi, who is a senator. But when his name surfaces in a MeToo scandal, Malik’s life is turned upside down. His career is at stake, and so is Kasturi’s future in American politics. In order to emerge from this crisis, both must revisit their past and rediscover the true meaning of love.

A Kannada novel mostly set in the United States, Kaayaa (which translates to ‘body’) touches upon various
contemporary themes, from sexuality and disease to politics and marriage, and lays bare characters who are torn between their real and imagined selves, each chasing after their own version of the American dream. A searingly honest rumination on the old metaphor about beauty being only skin-deep, this novel by the acclaimed Kannada writer Guruprasad Kaginele is a satirical masterpiece that doesn’t lose sight of the underlying tragedy of being human.