A quirky look at the average, domestic life of a pre-liberalised India

THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE is set in pre-1991 Madras, when India was not shining and Madras was the name of a 17th century town rather than a modern metropolis. Joseph says in his acknowledgements, “It is where I spent the first 20 years of my life. I am grateful it was not a paradise.” It was rather a place where “all husbands are managers, women are housewives, and all bras are white”. That is Joseph’s Madras—miles and years away from being the metropolis of Chennai that it is today. The main protagonist is Ousep Chacko. Ousep is a journalist by day, and neighbourhood drunk by night. His wife, Mariamma, has a postgraduate degree in economics, nurses fantasies about killing her husband, and regularly talks to the walls. They have two sons—Unni and Thoma. Unni, the elder, is the one whom everyone loves. It seems there is nothing he can not handle, from his classmates to his mother’s delusions, his father’s drunken antics to his brother’s anxieties. A gifted cartoonist, he’s the one person in the novel who isn’t burdened by the mania for academic excellence. Unni is the last person anyone expects would have a great fall, but one day, inexplicably, he does. For the next three years, Unni becomes Ousep’s study and the father’s project of unconquerable will is to figure out why Unni lost his will. Mariamma continues to stretch the family’s money, raises her remaining boy, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasises about Ousep dying. Meanwhile, younger son Thoma, missing his brother, falls head over heels for the much older girl who befriended them both. Haughty and beautiful, she has her own secrets. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story. The Illicit Happiness... is a witty, unforgiving but deeply affectionate look at life in pre-liberalised India. There is none of the acidic contempt that can be found in Joseph’s first novel, Serious Men. It is fun, despite all the unhappiness and angst that riddles it. Joseph’s characters are peculiar. Their stories are told with an empathy that is intelligent enough to note all absurdities without reducing anyone or anything to a caricature. The author has no sympathy for the blinkers that old India clapped on itself, but even as his scathing critique stings painfully, Joseph’s sense of humour makes it impossible for a reader to not grin while reading the novel.