The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat
The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam. Lawrence & Gibson (2024). RRP: $30.00. PB, 304pp. ISBN: 9780473725976. Reviewed by Cybonn Ang.
Brannavan Gnanalingam’s eighth novel, The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, is a witty, highly entertaining memoir of one Kartik Popat, a guy from Hutt Valley who manages to climb—nay, worm—himself into the Beehive in order to become one of its most potent, destructive tools.
It’s West Wing meets Flight of the Conchords. It’s Paul Auster on Saturday Night Live. It’s for those who like Chuck Palahniuk but wish he had a bit less of that American angst. I’d advise caution though. Really funny things sometimes do end up being painful to the gut. The book is a hit, in more ways than one.
Taking us through several of the most thrilling and bewildering times in modern Aotearoa New Zealand, from the delirium of the LOTR movies to the hysteria over ‘Jabcinda’s’ lockdowns, this deliciously funny novel is packed with a riotous cast of politicians identified only by their nicknames: Churchill, Donkey Don, Big Boss. We’re assured that none of these events are drawn from real life—although curious references to faeces-throwing and apologising for one’s masculinity might suggest otherwise.
Kartik himself is enthusiastically amoral, liberally apolitical and wields apathy like a superpower. Lazy yet optimistic, he rebounds from each setback, untouched by the kind of disappointment that he himself might consider emblematic of his so-called snowflake generation, if only he was possessed with that kind of self-awareness.
Born in Zimbabwe in 1984 to parents from two combating regions of India (Gujarat in the north and Bengaluru in the south), his family moves to New Zealand when Kartik is three years old. Rejecting his parents’ strategy of fitting into Wellington’s Hutt Valley society by means of molding themselves into upstanding members of the model minority, Kartik instead turns double—even treble—the misfit. He sinks his teeth into the problems of his complicated heritage by developing the heightened senses of an African hyena, an animal which often visits him in the form of a bizarre and false memory. He opts for strategies—cunning and opportunistic—that would leave his parents in a coronary crisis if they ever came to light, and thus he keeps the details of his life almost entirely a secret.
Kartik starts his memoir by disclosing that he shares a birthday with Charles Ponzi, ‘the Italian cottage Industrialist,’ therefore hinting at the kind of broad perspective that later endears him to the political class. As witness to both his parents’ Hinduism and his teacher’s Christianity, he concludes that atheism is more convenient: ‘I didn’t need to have a working knowledge of the theories of evolution of the eyeball or what existed before the Big Bang to have to believe in nothing,’ and never tries to defend his convictions: ‘I never made a big deal over actively disbelieving.’
In primary school, Kartik eschews his mother’s curry in favour of sausage rolls for his school lunches in order to divert the local bullies’ olfactory senses. His biggest problem as a child is not having any white friends to invite home for dinner. Although lonely, he avoids making Indian friends because ‘befriending my fellow Indians would seem like I’d failed’.
His life departs from a predictable downward trajectory when, as a uni student taking a double major in Accountancy and Film Studies, he miraculously meets a couple of girls who invite him to a pub meeting of the uni debating society. Suddenly, the sad nonentity that is Kartik Popat wins white friends. He learns to barbecue and throw parties. Most importantly, he gains access to the strange people wearing lanyards coming in and out of the Beehive, and discovers the tunnels under the city where they hide their secret lives from the rest of the citizenry. It is here, armed with a keyboard in the belly of the Beehive, that Kartik Popat—failed filmmaker and rejected Creative New Zealand funding applicant—becomes a dedicated civil servant and the ultimate weapon in a political psywar.
As if following George Costanza’s rules for life, Kartik learns that the surest way to stay afloat in this world is to say yes to everyone and to everything they demand. His initiative turns legendary. He can create a scandal at the drop of a hat or ease reluctant MPs into retirement. When a wealthy National Party donor hands him a handsome cheque for a night of unbridled joy, he feels he has made a substantial contribution to the country. He acquires things the model minority can only dream about: financial liberty, utility, even identity.
There is a droning quality to Kartik’s narration. He obviously likes the sound of his own voice, or perhaps his own tapping on the keyboard. Listening to his account is like being trapped in a pub with a bloke who will not stop talking until he’s kicked to the kerb with a mop at dawn.
Gnanalingam’s opening quote from Jaroslav Hašek, ‘I suffered the misfortune that I sat down at a table and started drinking one glass of beer after another,’ possibly alludes to Kartik’s experiences, or to the author’s, or what awaits us as readers. It may also be that Gnanalingam is advising readers to grab a drink or sit next to a well-stocked bar fridge. Just when it feels that Kartik’s sentences are becoming longer than Wellington bus routes as he crams every thought he’s ever thought from his infancy into one sentence, he suddenly delivers a brilliantly hilarious observation about life that gives you the urge to ply him with another instead of driving him out with the mop.
Part of the thrill of The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat is not knowing where Kartik will end up. Through the absurdity of his revelations, an unsettling sense of ominousness creeps in. At midpoint, the story reaches near suspense-thriller quality. I found myself looking up from its pages in a horrified pause, wondering, have we elected this weasel to Parliament? Did we do it in real life?
For when the Covid pandemic suddenly hits, the claustrophobic hyena that is Kartik Popat rails against his cage and develops a rabid appetite for power. Like an expert pilot, Gnanalingam lifts us from the stratospheric frivolity of Kartik’s early ambitions and lands us smoothly onto the concrete tarmac of 2020 where we witness his disintegration through a series of events which are perhaps still painful for the collective Kiwi psyche to relive. The isolation. The breakdown of law and order. The fraying of bonds. The shattering of trust. And finally, the encounter with truth.
It is brave for the author to choose a main character who is emphatically not ‘model minority’ material, who is spurned by his own South Asian community, who is The Other’s Other, and to use him to hold up a mirror to Aotearoa New Zealand society. Perhaps there’s an archetypal function to this persona. Perhaps Gnanalingam knows that it is only by presenting the truth through this hyena, that we might be able to face our own most secret appetites. That he manages to dish it in this truly endearing, humorous and disarming way makes Kartik an even more effective tool for reflection.
For all his escapades, and his stoicism that borders on psychopathy, one can’t help feeling sympathetic towards Kartik Popat. After all, he’s trying to understand his life by coming clean. By confessing to us all. By confessing to his parents. By confessing to me.
In the end, I as a reader fall victim to that spell of fiction, of believing all of it to be true. If only because I need a specimen under the scope in order to understand. I need someone to forgive. I need a scapegoat to carry my sins. Perhaps you do, too?
Cybonn Ang is a fiction writer and poet of Filipino heritage. Her most recent works can be found in adda, The Three Lamps, and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press). She has a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland and currently writes from Montreal, Canada.