‘Maya’ and the monoculture

I recently reviewed a novel titled Maya: Seed Takes Root, by Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon, for The Hindu. Excerpt: As with novels, the first symptom is the writing, which is conspicuously aphoristic. Lines like “If dreams inspire hope, nightmares inform vigilance” are peppered throughout the text. Of Maya’s three protagonists, Yachay is the anomaly, Kshar is predictability and control manifest, and Ayn represents the alternative path. Gandhi and Memon explore Maya’s concepts of choice through this trio, but it’s not at all messy. It’s fine for Yachay, Kshar, and Ayn to arrive at different ideas because of who they are, yet all three also seem conveniently able to utter polished philosophical propositions. At one point, it’s possible to sense the authors writing. When it doesn’t falter, Maya is quite enjoyable, with a breezy flow and a mythos that could prove generative for Indian readers looking for sophisticated fiction that’s also culturally familiar (albeit to one specific slice of…