Book Review: The hopes and despair of migrant lives in 'Super'

SUPER BEGINS WITH an announcement of death. On an ordinary day in Brampton, a white man stabs a Punjabi immigrant. From here on, we read the story as the chronicle of a death foretold. Those looking to relish a whodunit will only court disappointment. For author Lindsay Pereira isn’t engineering a mystery; he is assembling a series of life stories behind what could be another news headline about a hate crime.

Pereira’s third novel and fourth book of fiction travels far from Mumbai, where he was born and raised. The city has been its own character in his earlier novels, Gods and Ends and The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao. With Super, he embarks on a transcontinental journey from Jalandhar in Punjab to the Canadian city of Brampton following his characters in their pursuit of ease of living and prosperity, big homes and cars, as promised by cousins, Punjabi rappers and Instagram.

This promise of utopia fuels Sukhpreet, a village boy who feels at sea even in Jalandhar but is ready to cross the oceans to get to Canada. Forged documents and admission into a “fake college” will get him to Brampton where his cousin Dan is waiting. Dan aka Deepanshu is eager for his cousin to join him but isn’t entirely truthful about his life as a delivery boy coping with a hyper-competitive gig economy, his meagre income and the fading possibility of returning home. Sukhpreet isn’t prepared for what awaits him but he is willing to take his chances.

The large number of Punjabis moving to Canada has been fodder for memes as well as the subject of a serious discourse as the socio-political response to immigrants has changed over the years. Even as immigration policies grow tighter, people’s reactions become more charged—and not just of those who are Canadian by birth. Look online and one finds rage and resentment percolating through Reddit sub-groups against Punjabis whose hooliganism is harming the reputation of other Indian immigrants in the country.

Framed within this bigger picture, Super—set between 2015 and 2019— explores what compels young people to leave their land and families to settle for so little. Sukhpreet may imagine sailing boats beneath blue skies or tasting snow on his tongue, but what drives his decision is the prospect of earning in dollars and extricating his family from a lifetime of debt. Dan’s life in Canada is a long con, leaden with the hope that he and his cousin can jointly improve their condition. Ultimately Sukhpreet hopes for the same, as he tries to convince Harneet—a Jalandhar girl he hopes to marry—to join him in Canada.

In Harneet, Super gets its biggest sceptic. To be in Punjab is a “death warrant”, as one character says, with little hope beyond poverty, violence and substance abuse. For young women, the challenges are greater. But something ominous looms, Harneet thinks, in the unspoken words of friends and kin who move away and return with stories of their happy lives.

Pereira also gives voice to the opposing perspective in Maynard Wilson, a middle-aged Canadian man with a dog. As inflation and lack of jobs eat away at his life, he spews vitriol against immigrants online. The anger is deeply misplaced especially because if Maynard ever spoke to Sukhpreet or Dan, he would discover that their daily anxieties are hardly different.

Set in a bleak world in which the most ordinary living seems out of bounds, there are no winners in Pereira’s novel. Its most decisive individual actions, even murder, are shaped by forces beyond one’s control. Yet, people are made of hopes and dreams—the endless yearning to make life better or, as Sukhpreet says, super.