The Village [Paperback]

Nikita Lalwani's `The Village' opens with Ray Bhullar, the main character, being watched by three security men. It is the first instance of a recurring motif: who is watching whom, and what does each see? Ray has come to Ashwer, an Indian open prison, to direct a documentary that promises `a non-judgmental' approach. She and her fellow crew members, Serena and Nathan, are the ones doing the observing and the framing through the camera's viewfinder. But it gradually becomes apparent that they in turn are being observed - and judged. The shifts in perspective unsettle the protagonist, and with her the reader, by revealing the frameworks through which each subject views its object and vice-versa. Ray wants to capture the complexity of reality on camera, in the belief that Ashwer's life-affirming example can `spread light, not darkness'. But for her colleagues, and for her boss in London, the reality of Ashwer must be manipulated as it lacks the drama that television audiences are presumed to crave. Soon enough, Ray is looking through the viewfinder and secretly altering the exposure set by Serena because it would `blast all the layers of light and shadow out of the scene'. And yet, inevitably, Ray too becomes entrapped by conflicting pressures until she finds herself in a moral quagmire. Her final response defines who she is.

A key theme of the book is authenticity. The descriptions of the Indian settings and characters are vivid and memorable, devoid of nostalgia or stereotype, and all dialogue rings true. Ray's perceptions, narrated from a close third person point of view, are unflinchingly realistic, making her emotional journey believable and gripping. She is torn between worlds - the India of her roots versus the Britain in which she has always lived; and the media's potential for good versus the brutal consequences of its transactional modus operandi. Ray has to traverse a moral maze to be able to discover what she values and therefore what her authentic self is made of. In the process, media ethics are put in the dock, as trust - on which Ashwer's success is based, and which the television crew was to honour - is thoroughly betrayed.

The open prison is no mere convenient framework for the action, but another key theme. At the most obvious level, the book presents an eloquent case for reappraising the conventional monolithic approach to punishing crime, by pointing to the ways in which traditional prison systems fail to prevent re-offending. Lalwani deploys the concept of the open prison village also as a metaphor for the culture which any individual lives in and is shaped by: she shows that to relate authentically to oneself and to others, one may first need to perceive the invisible bonds and boundaries that characterise any given society or milieu - including work environments, in this particular case the media. Only when Ray has moved from looking to seeing through this more demanding viewfinder can she remain true to timeless human values - no longer naively but from a wiser vantage point.

This is an intelligent and moving novel which deserves and rewards close reading. Its imagery and characters live on in the memory.

The Village is a haunting morality tale of our time, about what happens when a British TV crew descends upon an open prison in India, to make a documentary. It brilliantly portrays how the interests of film crews are often at odds with those being filmed and chillingly describes the desperate, often duplicitous techniques TV producers use to get their subjects on side.

The story is gripping from start to finish and the characters and scenes feel so authentic, that they must have been based on real experience. I would recommend The Village to anyone. It's a stunningly written, beautifully crafted and highly original story.

From the first page in The Village we are taken into an unknown world, one which we want to learn about. The journalists who arrive from England to make a BBC documentary about the open prison in India have their own ideas as to what they want to do, and soon conflicts between them arise. But there are also conflicts between the inmates, and between the inmates and the journalists and also between the cultures. The climax is shocking and disturbing. It would not be possible to look at a TV documentary again without questioning its ethics and its purpose. This story is an exciting thought provoking read.