“Moth Smoke” is Mohsin Hamid’s first book. It is set in Lahore during the summer of 1998, when
both India and Pakistan had officially declared their nuclear prowess to the
world.
The book starts with a court scene. The protagonist, the
historically named, Darashikoh, is on trial. It then goes into a flashback mode
and shifts to Dara’s P.O.V. for the
major chunk. It has other characters who narrate some lengthy chapters which
help us get a well formed character sketch of Dara.
Darashikoh Shehzad is a banker who snubs a rich customer and
ends up losing his job. He has a boyhood friend, Aurangzeb aka Ozi, who has
returned from the States along with his wife Mumtaz and son Muazzam. Manucci,
with his Italian sounding name, is Dara’s man servant.
The disparity between Dara and his rich friends keeps on
growing because of his job loss. This leads to scathing social commentary. However,
Dara’s hypocritical nature is also shown by the writer when he describes the
callous way in which he treats Manucci. Dara slowly becomes a drug dealer and
his life goes totally out of control.
The anxiety on the streets of Lahore after India’s tests and
the jubilation after their own tests are described vividly. There are strongly
worded passages which talk about the sufferings of the common man due to
different scarcities because of the sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the
tests which hit the nail on its head without sounding pedantic.
This is a beautifully written book which captures the mood
of the people of the subcontinent during those heady days of 1998 perfectly. There
was a sense of euphoria and one-upmanship in the people of the two countries. However,
this was tempered by a sense of impending doom and it is in a pitch perfect tone
that Mr. Hamid writes about this
.
Mr. Hamid also wrote the much better known Reluctant Fundamentalist
which I had the pleasure of reading a few years ago. Comparison being
inevitable in life, I feel this is a better book with a more mature narrative.
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