Book Excerpt: Deepika Arwind's 'Good Arguments' Celebrates Art & Belonging

In her debut novel, Good Arguments, Deepika Arwind tells the story of Delphi, a 20-something woman in Bengaluru, who discovers theatre, diving into a lively and messy new world. While learning how to take up space on stage, she is also negotiating the practical demands of her personal life. As the city's theatre scene anticipates the launch of a new performance space, Delphi appears poised on the edge of a future she has chosen for herself. 

That sense of possibility is abruptly unsettled when the nation is shaken by widespread protests following the brutal 2012 gang rape. Suddenly, the questions Delphi has been wrestling with in rehearsal rooms and performance spaces spill into the streets and into public life.

Who gets to speak? Whose experiences are represented? And who ultimately gains from these acts of telling?

Book Excerpt: Good Arguments

The first ready shack of the season came with mosquitoes, a toilet with a flush that didn't work, and high vulnerability to wind. It could, at some point, fly off to reveal the naked, indisposed bodies at night. It reminded me of the Goa play I'd written. It would be eerie to reverse the process: write the play and then have the shack disappear as a result.

Palolem was not my idea. I was grateful for it. For a not-good swimmer, this beach was a gentle endless pool, the floor gradually extending into the water for what seemed like half a kilometre. V said, it depends on the tide, give or take three-hundred metres.

Left to me, I would have picked Calangute or Anjuna. They were now no-nos, commercial hells of Goa trance and Delhi boys wearing long shorts in the water.

V had been to Goa many times before, with school friends, with his engineering college gang, then again with Arun for a start-up boy's trip. I noted, never with a girlfriend. Alone.

That's when Arun and he discovered the calmer, more chill south, and told me about Palolem. As long as it was Goa (and not with Asha), I was ready. My eagerness tore through my voice. Не was super chill; he'd done this so many times before. For him it was just a question of checking dates, figuring money etc. Let's see, let's see, D, he said.

— — —

I'd gone back to Asha's, to pick up some stuff. I chose Friday afternoon, around 4 pm, so she wouldn't be home. She tended to stay late-until six or seven-especially if the next day was a second Saturday and the bank was closed. Diligent Asha, finishing incomplete paperwork, organising her desk, and chatting with her colleagues while drinking tea behind the shutters of the National Bank.

She was home that Friday afternoon. In fact, she was in her floral nightie and sitting in front of the TV that I heard at the gate. The door was locked from the inside. I had to ring the bell a few times. She appeared after a considerable amount of ringing.

The flowers on her nightie had been unidentifiable since my teens. They were generic garment-flowers, emblematic of this nebulous socioeconomic spectrum called the middle class. I wore one too till I was twelve, and then it was time for shorts and a T-shirt. I could leap classes symbolically at least.

On this day of the 4 pm-excessive bell-ringing, the flower on her nightie resembled jasmines. I said hello and went into my room quickly in case she exuded that specific air of suspicion since I'd started to stay with Su.

I pulled a few things out from my cupboard. I didn't feel cagey doing it since all the controversial stuff was at Su's house. The swimsuits one one-piece (Su had outgrown and washed and washed), and one bikini (maroon, that I bought from Tibetan Market for, like, four-hundred rupees in total for the top and bottom)-were in my bag for the Goa trip already. I still had a week, but I wanted to make sure I had everything.

- How is it at Su's?

- Good, Asha. These days she spends time with Gogo, and I am working a lot.

She is repairing the marriage?

- Who knows? He's a-

I caught myself wanting to say he's a fucking dick.

No need to be so angry also Delphi. Concentrate on your own problems. Come back home if Su doesn't need you anymore.

She didn't sound as fervent as she used to. On closer look, in the two months I'd been gone, Asha had aged. It would be arrogant to think it was me.

- What happened, Asha?

- Means?

-You're looking damn tired ma.

The 'ma' came out without me intending for it to and the effect of the unconscious word (the eternal quest of the actor to make dialogue come out from the inner-inner mind etc) was that Asha sat on the bed with a gravitational force she'd been resistant to so far.

- I am not tired.

I'd learnt to never argue with Asha about her physical body.

When she was sick, she wasn't sick, when she was tired, she wasn't tired. When she'd walked too long and her knee or ankle hurt, she hadn't walked too long and the knee was fine and the ankle was 'just heavy' and hot water with salt in the bucket could solve all problems if they were not organ-related, but who knew? Maybe Jesus. Definitely Asha.

Where are you going now?

First rehearsal, then Su's.

- You have enough clothes at Su's. What are you rehearsing for these days?

- We have a children's play with Jeevan. It's Arun's-V's friend's aunt's school, so she gave the project to us. But also because we're good.

- I see.

- The pay is okay. Good enough for the work.

-You're able to handle small children?

-V is also there. And they're twelve and thirteen.

She was blank even as I invoked him. V she said, repeating to remember.

- I got specs.

Finally, Asha.

- I couldn't read anything at the bank. Divakar got me a discount.

Do you know how much progressive costs?

- To be progressive or the glasses?

I found my joke automatic, scathing, and untimely. Asha didn't react.

- When will you come back, Delphi?

Soon, ma.

Her eyes were droopy, the bags underneath them, dark. I wanted to know what was going on with her, and I didn't too.

I continued to fold clothes with a new precision. I was replicating what we called 'business' on stage. I'd learnt that doing the task could brighten the interaction it was done in the midst of, if done with conviction. If you acted it', it was hollow, if you 'did it', it became the chore it was meant to be, an incidental activity in which the rest of the scene was held.

I applied the same thing to the scene we were in: Mother, daughter, bedroom, early evening.

Extract from Good Arguments by Deepika Arwind, published by Simon & Schuster India.