Of Music and Mayhem: Nadia Akbar's Freddie Mercury is a disaster heaped with misogyny

It’s very hard to figure out how to review a book this pointless when the characters themselves admit that they are, in fact, completely pointless. Have do you criticize something for being blah when they are so self-aware of their extreme blahness? 

“I’ve been thinking stuff. Things feel different. It’s not normal, the way we live our lives, you know? All the drugs and booze, the endless parties. We don’t do anything worthwhile.”

There are very strong Mohsin-Hamid-Moth-Smoke vibes here: in the slow, steady destruction of our protagonists, in the drug-and-booze obsessed society they live in, in the utter lethargy and worthlessness they exhibit. But unlike Moth Smoke, this story doesn’t manage to get right that feeling of things falling apart spectacularly. Yes, bad things are happening, but that horror and helplessness that prevents Moth Smoke from being utter crap doesn’t exist in this novel. Which is quite sad, since there was so much space to do things right.

An important reason why this book can easily be skipped is because the author has chosen two of the most useless characters ever created to be her protagonists. Nida, a twenty-one year old college student desperate to escape her conservative family, starts a relationship with Omer (the son of a powerful political figure) on her summer vacation. Part of her new boyfriend’s gang of friends is Bugsy, an RJ who gets involved in political turmoil because of an old acquaintance. In theory, they could have been great as the proponents of this narrative, but in execution what we were left with is a pretentious and spoiled hero in Bugsy and a directionless heroine in Nida.

Sure, the story tries to keep it relevant by mentioning drug and alcohol use as well as lots of sexual content, but what you end up with are side characters who feel stereotypical, and protagonists who don’t feel like they exist outside of the stories being told. Nida spends the majority of her time hanging out with Omer, partying and taking drugs and generally having very little to contribute to the story. Supposedly she is falling apart after the death of her brother two years ago, a fact that is tearing her family apart, but because we never spend enough time with her family (the parents barely make an appearance), it’s hard to feel the repercussions through this story. It is implied that it is Nida’s brother’s death that acts as a catalyst for her entry into the word of hedonism and her utter carelessness about what happens to her, but we never discuss the brother or the pain caused by his death enough for it to feel significant. It is the same with Bugsy, who does a favour for a friend who barely enters the story after almost a quarter of our pages, and whose past with Bugsy is explained within a single rushed page. It makes no sense why Bugsy would bother doing the favour, and the fact that Bugsy’s instincts tell him not to but he does it anyway makes him less selfless and more stupid. 

“What kind of envelope, yaar?” I say, breaking out into an instant sweat. My internal alarm is going off, but I’m trying to ignore it.

I guess the only redeeming quality Bugsy has is that he has at least some semblance of agency, in which Nida seems to be completely lacking. Not only does she exhibit a severe lack of motivation, she also suffers from a too-pure-for-this-world syndrome because nothing she does can convince our hero that she is, in fact, an abominably useless person. When forced to read the conversations trying to pass as banter between them, Bugsy would be swooning, and I would be rolling my eyes. There were horrible flashbacks to the time I read Twilight for the first time, with my rapidly increasing bafflement over what, exactly, Edward found attractive in Bella. In romantic love interests that I read, I don’t want to have to resist the chemistry, much less why it exists in the first place. And I’ve read too many excellent pairings to bother having any patience for couples whose attraction to each other is based on, well, god knows what. 

I snatch a quick look at Nida. She looks hot. She’s holding an empty glass and her face is flushed, her eyes bright and glassy, her lips wet and red. Her black shirt is low-cut and tight, curved cleavage on full display. She gives me a huge hug, tripping a little over her heels. 

I wouldn’t even have minded if Bugsy’s sole purpose was to get Nida in bed, because it wouldn’t be lying to the reader about his intentions. But to pretend that he’s so charmed by her, besotted, really, is then tantamount to so many levels of ridiculous. The book ticks all the wrong boxes in trying to explain why these two like each other: most particularly when Bugsy settles on the particular vomit-inducing statement ‘she’s not like other girls’.

“I appreciate that she doesn't pretend to be shocked or scandalized, something most desi girls feel obligated to do when they hear anything related to sex, balls, dick or pussy… She's nothing like the giggly annoying girls that are endemic to Omer's parties.”

This misogyny on our hero’s part seems to be embedded in the DNA of almost all our characters. As a personality trait in a few odd people here and there, it makes sense for a richly populated world to have sexist people to balance out our hero and heroine and their hopefully mature sensibilities. Unfortunately, in this book Nida and Bugsy are just as bad as the rest of the slut shaming population that they choose to hang out with. 

“You girls have it so easy. No job pressure, no money tension. All you have to worry about is what colour contact lenses you’ll wear at your wedding.”

I could even accept the ridiculous ways in which women are objectified, ogled at or talked about in disparaging terms if the book itself did not take that tone. But because we spend the entirety of our time reading from the point of view of two ridiculously ill-informed, baseline misogynistic characters, it is hard to give the author the benefit of the doubt. Not only are they this hateful towards women, everyone they hang out with seems to suffer from the same germs. 

“She’s some paindu ex-model who married him for his money. I’m sure she’s not too pleased with the downshift. If she wanted to travel economy she would have married her pimp.”

In fact, not only are they misogynistic, most of the people in this novel also happen to be pointlessly mean. I understand characters being disdainful and haughty if they are, say, superior in intellect, or very famous, or at least better in some recognizable manner. But our protagonists have no talents, no spark of intelligence, nothing that makes them stand out from a bunch of other equally unremarkable characters. Which makes it mostly insufferable how they look down on everything and everyone.

He points a finger and clicks his tongue like some idiot, like he’s memorized some shitty movie on how to be an investment banker. A chutiya in a shit brown ill-fitting business suit.

They’re spoilt, privileged little brats, almost all of them, even the ones who could have had some space to become something interesting. Omer, the guy Nida is dating, is from a powerful political family but manages to retain all the one-dimensional personality traits that the author seems to be obsessed with; not only is he mostly drunk and horny, he also has all the intelligence of a mollusc. Sometimes, accidentally, the author will give him some colour, but then he will quickly revert to being an atrocious monster. 

He fails to mention why his house has steady electricity, why there’s no load-shedding for him. I’ve noticed that Omer never uses the word ‘corrupt’, not when we talk about the government, or the state of our country, and definitely never when discussing his father.

In fact, pretty much the only thing the book seems to get right is the politics of the country. Even though the concept of fictional portraits of real-life political figures has already been tackled before by Omar Shahid Hamid and so reading about a caricature of Imran Khan (Mian Tariq in this title) doesn’t feel very exciting. Still, the reality of politics in Pakistan, that level of euphoria in a rally or helplessness in everyday trivial matters when faced with corruption and laziness, are very well-drawn. 

“How do you fix something that everyone wants broken? I’ve come to realize that the real power, the real money, is not in fixing things, but in keeping them broken. On the promise of repair, not on the actual process itself.”

Commentary like this, which focuses primarily on the society, on the culture of the big city and the rich folks, is pretty much the only part of this story that I loved. Unlike Hamid’s tale, which used the social observations as the back drop in which the plot could thrive, with Akbar’s writing it was the city itself that drew me in. I’ve mentioned it before, how Pakistani authors treat cities as characters, and it’s true for this novel as well. I love how Lahore was depicted, with so much personality: the staying up late, the food, the sense of alienation, the demographics, the politics, everything was so well done. For each useless character or scene, there is always a paragraph of smart observations that draw the reader in. 

In fact, I could confidently admit that Nadia Akbar writes really well. There is clearly great command over language, a substantial vocabulary, and lots of confidence in the way she handles her narrative. Unfortunately, it was a narrative about characters I didn’t care about, or else I might have loved this book. I obviously have my issues with the random and completely inane italicization: I mean, someone explain to me why phrases like paindu and jaali are left unitalicized? What even is the editorial policy being followed here? As an editor who goes through hell working in a desi country producing books in English, this fight is a daily battle, so I go crazy trying to figure out what other publishers are doing, and frankly this book is a mess from all angles. Still, if you aren’t bothered by formatting, there’s great writing here. About idiotic characters, no doubt, but compliments where they are due should definitely be mentioned. 

Recommendation:

I know they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the cover for this title is gorgeous. So pretty. So many points to the illustrator Shehzil Malik (who also designed the brilliant cover for Amal Unbound), and for the publisher for deciding to go with this one. I still wouldn’t recommend you pick this up though. If you feel really inclined to read about things in the same vein, go check out Mohsin Hamid instead.