Webbed Feat

The man can write. Within its first few pages, Transmission manages to charm the reader with the lucid wit of its language ("She...unceremoniously pulled the door open to reveal a waiting room filled with nervous young people, sitting on orange plastic chairs with the peculiar self-isolating stiffness interview candidates share with criminal defendants and people in STD-clinic reception areas"). And when writing about technology, former Wired correspondent Kunzru nearly reaches the crystal heights of Neal Stephenson: "When you write code, you are in control. You construct a world from first principles, drawing up the axioms that govern it, setting in motion the engines of generation and decay.... From this perspective, the real world possesses the paradoxical quality of not feeling real enough. Surely, of all things, reality ought to be transparent, logical. You should be able to unscrew the fascia and view the circuitry inside."

At its core, Transmission is about the twin forces mutating our 21st century world: globalisation and information technology. Men and women—bodies—cross international borders legally or illicitly as pawns in the planetary game of labour arbitrage. But the arteries of this world are also enmeshed in the invisible circuitry of another—a virtual universe where electronic impulses move at light speed in borderless inter-dependence: a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can actually set off a tornado in Texas. The impulses can be anything: sometimes they pretend to be money, sometimes sex, sometimes an epidemic.

Which is what Arjun Mehta, nerd from Noida and Bollywood fanatic, unleashes across the planet when he writes the computer virus leela01 and sends it out over the worldwide web. Arjun is not a terrorist. Like thousands of Indian engineers of his generation, he has been body-shopped to the US to be a cheap cyber-coolie. Friendless and disoriented in an alien culture, and finally sacked from a software security firm, Arjun writes the virus and plans to regain his job by also providing the antidote. But then things go hellishly awry.

Running parallel to Arjun’s story (I wonder if Transmission’s structure has been influenced by William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novels) is the tale of golden-boy-going-downhill-on-overdrive Guy Swift, as he desperately and increasingly coke-addledly tries to save his advertising agency—and his personal life—from imploding. Guy, as wonderfully written and as recognisable a character as Arjun, is a man who had put himself "ahead of the curve", for whom the present was "a provisionality...a non-destination space". But as he feverishly notches up business class frequent flier miles, Guy discovers his own world is as insubstantial as the branding gobbledygook he peddles to clients.

Arjun’s virus is named after Leela, Bollywood star and the object of his shy long-distance lust. Leela, shooting in Scotland for the underworld-financed Tender Tough, is close to a breakdown. Tyrannised by her monsterly mother, she looks for escape from the stockade of her stardom.

As Arjun, Guy and Leela hurtle towards disaster/salvation/transformation, Kunzru peoples their lives with credible characters—Arjun’s sister Priti, an engaging archetype of the young middle-class woman finding freedom and—paradoxically—identity in the call centre boom; Yves, starchy venture capitalist by day, wasted debauch by night; Signor Bocca, the melancholic infocrat who "had placed (his hands) palms down on the white tablecloth and was assiduously examining his long fingers, as if deciding which of them to sever first".

Kunzru is a storyteller, and his empathy—though often tinged with irony—for his characters is palpable. Transmission is finally a story about men and women tossed around by global forces that are beyond their—or for that matter, anyone’s—control, or even comprehension. It is this empathy, backed by deeply observant and lucent writing, that involves the reader; we actually care about what happens to Arjun, Guy and Leela. So I must admit I felt a bit let down by the ending, though the peculiar justice of Guy’s final destiny is deliciously reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, without Waugh’s bitter chortle.

I think I’ll give The Impressionist a go now.