Review: Peacocks of Instagram by Deepa Rajagopalan
These 14 interconnected stories set in Kerala and Canada probe motivations, highlight conundrums and explore where desire and diaspora collide
To Orhan Pamuk, stories are a function of time. However, the mechanics of storytelling doesn’t dictate that time flows in a single direction. If a literary piece is engaging and purposeful, it can move on different axes of time. This is the principal, defining characteristic of Deepa Rajagopalan’s collection of interconnected short stories, Peacocks of Instagram that was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2024.
In the titular story, we meet Kala Ramesh, who makes a “good living” selling “peacock accessories on the internet”. But for the past 17 years, she has been working at a coffeeshop, too, where she makes it a point to wear her “peacock earrings or bracelets” as they are good conversation starters that also lead to sales. She’s always baffled that people “pay ridiculous sums of money for anything handmade”. However, this is the case only with those who have surplus income and are excited by the authenticity of a product. Money grants them the power to judge the credibility and worth of things. Kala’s products pass the test. Originally from Kerala, she met her husband when he was “studying peafowl at a sanctuary in Idukki”. This acutely detailed story elevates the charm of everyday travails and transactions in the contemporary capitalist world in a way that the reader almost gives up looking for a conflict in the narrative. But the author adroitly introduces one; it enters the coffee shop in the form of “twenty people wielding placards”. They were there — in Toronto — to protest against the Indian state’s crackdown on farmers from Punjab, staging a dharna against farm laws near Delhi. As one of the 20 was trying to explain to Kala’s colleague, Celine, about why they were protesting, he was quietly “looking for camaraderie from [the] fellow South Asian”. Kala, that is. But she “simply said, ‘Here’s your medium double-double.’”
A few readers may judge this moment, but the treat is in the culmination of the story. When the protestor persists with his attempts, signalling how terrible it is to call farmers terrorists, Kala inadvertently blurts out that back home, her father was a “black-pepper farmer”. He latches on to this without knowing what is in store for him. But when the punchline is delivered, he feels disarmed and begins seeing Kala in a new light — a person who had to build her life from scratch, for often life doesn’t offer much to people like Kala, as they’re repeatedly faced with the choice to either resign to fate or to attune themselves to their circumstances.
Cake, which is about what occurs in most workplaces, is a revenge story. It reminded me of the Neeraj Ghaywan-directed short Geeli Pucchi from Ajeeb Daastaans (2021). It also made me recall Debroah Levy’s observation in The Cost of Living (2018) that women are often nameless to men in the larger scheme of things; their identity is always secondary. One of its memorable moments has the protagonist Rania Ali, who wants to be promoted to Housekeeping Manager, thinking: “I thought about the name tag, and the cost of it.”
In Whatever Happened, Happened for the Good, eight-year-old Raji is telling the story of getting her mother a new kidney. Rajagopalan’s strength lies in manoeuvring the direction of her pieces and here, the narrative unfolds in a shocking way. From the moral underpinnings of everyday life to its philosophical undertones, Whatever Happened… is rooted in harsh Indian reality.
Live-In features a discussion on Raji, her cousin Unni, and fleetingly mentions Rania Ali too. Principally, though, it is about old grievances: How to make your parents understand about the generational gap and the new world order, especially when it comes to relationships? But towards the end, the reader’s assumption of older people’s capacity to change their outlook is challenged. More importantly, this story alludes to something about Raji that experienced readers will immediately catch. The cue is in this sentence: “I professed my love for her, and she said she liked me a lot but was confused about what she wanted, who she was.”
This confusion is also explored in A Thing with Many Legs, in which desire and diaspora collide. Set against the havoc caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and underlining who’s getting richer and who’s getting plundered, it is also about the tiny moments that lovers are able to share even as they are locked inside their homes. How the protagonist Mohak’s manager treats South Asian associates at the workplace (his panic over Raji’s unavailability, in particular) demonstrates yet another facet of the contemporary work environment where profit is preferred over employee well-being.
In Rahel, we meet one of the strongest female characters in this collection, Rahel Varghese, whose affair with a married man, Freddie, is narrated with finesse. At its heart is urban loneliness and the need to find a partner who arouses both the body and the mind. How Rahel deals with betrayal is what makes this a great read. Kala Ramesh, the pepper farmer’s daughter, features here too.
A taut and mesmerising work, Maths Club explores tensions between teenagers in school — and especially with their overtly easy-going teacher, Nair Sir. However, here Rajagopalan’s calculations seem to have gone wrong: If Devi Vijayshankar is 10 years old, then she has to be a prodigy to be in grade 9, which typically has 14-year-olds!
One of the author’s gifts is her ability to reach the depth of her characters’ minds, as she does with the neurodivergent Surya in Surya, Listen! She probes motivations and highlights conundrums in this collection that moves between Kerala and Canada. In Morningside, she presents the dynamics of a failing marriage through dialogues. I was wondering if the collection would ever touch on the side of life that one cannot be divorced from in India: caste. Rajagopalan weaves in this too with maturity and alacrity in Singing for the Gods. From outlining young people’s relationship dilemmas to larger issues, these stories display the right amount of narrative tension. This is a terrific debut.
Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.
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