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The Hindu
a day ago
- Business
- The Hindu
The Tiger's Share: Keshava Guha's Sharp Tale of Property and Privilege
Published : Jun 22, 2025 15:37 IST - 4 MINS READ It is difficult to resist a novel that Amitav Ghosh, in one of the three heavyweight endorsements paratexting it, attributes to 'an astute and insightful observer of contemporary India'. This comment mostly holds true, although I would have preferred to say 'Delhi' instead of 'India'. Keshava Guha's The Tiger's Share is a consciously 'Delhi' novel, and for me that is a point in its favour. Another thing in its favour is the novel's engagement with family property. Now, at least in north India, the two topics that come up most often in conversation are property and the state of one's stomach. Despite Indian English fiction being full of foodie segments, it seems to leave out any extensive narrative on 'gas' and related matters that north Indians discuss frequently on trains and buses. More surprisingly, family property—as a perennial matter of contestation and litigation—is also mostly missing from Indian fiction in English, though there is hardly any middle- or upper-class family in north India that does not have a torturous story to tell about it. The Tiger's Share By Keshava Guha Hachette India Pages: 256 Price: Rs.699 The Tiger's Share is about two families where property does raise its divisive hydra-head, at least initially. Tara, the narrator, is a successful Delhi lawyer and has little sympathy for her younger brother, who has been doing the kind of floating writerly and cultural degrees abroad that seem to have become permissible in upper-middle-class families now. When their father, Baba, who has made a small fortune for himself as a meticulous CA, decides to retire and implies that his five houses might not go to the two children, Tara is not overly concerned. But her brother—who has, as they used to say, expectations—is bothered, and both the brother and the mother suspect Tara of legal subterfuge in the matter. Also Read | Eyewitness to a withering republic Around the same time, Lila, a potential friend who gradually turns into a real friend, approaches Tara with her own problem. Lila's father, a refugee from Pakistan who had become extremely rich as an astute businessman, has just passed away. Lila has a brother, Kunal, adopted, who now wants to take over the father's mantle, which means having the women in the family look up to him as the (alpha) head. This Lila refuses to do, leading to property-related tensions. Unfortunately, though, this rich promise of a real property-litigation novel, narrated from a gendered perspective, is not fully redeemed. It does not disappear but recedes into the background, with Tara and Lila opting for different solutions. Then Baba's mysterious retirement decision takes centre stage towards the end of the novel. It is an intriguing decision, though it further defuses the property aspect, which seems to be in keeping with the narrator's—and perhaps the author's—position. The conclusion should not be revealed, but I have to say that while it is interesting from an existential perspective, it is also comfortable from a propertied and political one. Nell Freudenberger, in her rave blurb, notes the 'shocking conclusion' of the novel, and probably the conclusion is shocking to Western readers. But without revealing the conclusion, one needs to add that Indians who are familiar with the Boddhisattva story about the tiger with two malnourished cubs, and who are aware of, say, Parsi funeral customs, might be able to anticipate the conclusion by the fourth quarter of the novel. Immaculate narration This is a gripping novel, narrated immaculately and at a fast clip. It contains female characters who strike one as refreshingly contemporary and independent, which is a relief, but too often talk in an identical fashion, which is not. The most interesting characters of the novel are the two men (alas) who do not fully 'belong' to its elite classes: Baba, who has struggled his way up and managed to do so with exceptional success, and Kunal, whose adoption has not eased his own struggle to shape himself in the new India of old 'traditions'. Baba is narrated with awed love by Tara, and Kunal with a degree of class-educational dislike—both these aspects leave many questions unasked, adding to the under-narrated fascination of these two characters. Also Read | Wings of desire There is a kind of brisk confidence in the narration, which fits the narrator but can also sometimes turn irritating. I am not sure if this is intentional. If it is, then it remains underdeveloped in a novel that is usually gripping, always readable, and quite often humorously perceptive about the Delhi cocktail circles being surveyed. Not to mention the smaller characters in those circles, such as Wojciech Zielinski, the desperately popular, uber-fit cultural attaché, or Vicky, the perfectly groomed cultured millionaire heir with an entitled attitude to sexual exploitation. Tabish Khair is an Indian novelist and academic who teaches in Denmark.
Indian Express
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Khushwant Singh litfest makes Oxford debut with message of peace across borders
The Khushwant Singh Literary Festival (KSLF), now in its seventh London edition, made a stirring debut in Oxford with a strong message of building bridges in times of global unrest. Bringing alive many of Khushwant Singh's enduring passions — heritage and ecological preservation, cross-border ties between India and Pakistan, and the shared poetic legacy of South Asia — the Oxford edition was hosted in collaboration with the University of Oxford and the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, among other partners. This year's theme, 'Humanity Across Borders,' framed the entire discourse as a tribute to the prolific and iconoclastic author's values. The opening session featured novelist and literary agent Keshava Guha, who discussed his second book, The Tiger's Share, with Somerville College alumna and novelist Francesca Kay. The novel delves into the complexities of contemporary Delhi society, unspooling themes of ecological crisis and familial tensions. Another highlight was the discussion between science writer Matt Ridley and infectious disease epidemiologist Dr Sunetra Gupta on Ridley's latest book, Birds, Sex and Beauty. The two examined recent developments in evolutionary theory with wit and depth, before turning to a contentious debate on the origins of the Covid-19 virus. Ridley, grandson of British architect Edwin Lutyens, spoke of his family's links with Khushwant Singh's father, Sir Sobha Singh, while defending the lab-leak theory—a position Gupta firmly challenged. The Oxford edition also deepened the bond between India and Somerville College, whose historic connection includes early Indian women scholars like Princesses Catherine and Bamba Duleep Singh —daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and pioneers in the suffragette movement — as well as Indira Gandhi, who studied at Somerville before becoming India's first woman prime minister.
Scroll.in
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Not ethical questions, but aesthetic ones': What's on Keshava Guha's mind while crafting a novel
Keshava Guha was born in Delhi and raised in Bangalore. His debut novel, Accidental Magic, was published in 2019 and his most recent novel, The Tiger's Share, was published in 2025 Besides novels, Keshava Guha has also written short stories and essays on politics, culture and sport. He is also a journalist and was previously a senior editor at Juggernaut Books. The Tiger's Share revolves around two women protagonists. After having dedicated her life to achieving professional success in Delhi, Tara is everything her brother isn't: steadfast, independent, thriving. Meanwhile, Tara's friend, Lila, has it all: the great job, the lovely home, the beautiful family. But when her father dies, Lila's brother wastes no time in claiming what's his. Together, Tara and Lila are forced to confront the challenge that their ambition and success have posed to patriarchal Delhi society. In a conversation with Scroll, Guha talked about why he wanted to write about the conflict between different notions of inheritance, why the novel is a love–hate letter to Delhi, and why as a novelist he is more concerned about aesthetics than ethics. Excerpts from the conversation: The Tiger's Share is filled with characters who are intelligent, conflicted, and more often than not, a little out of step with their times or families. Could you share with us what drew you to exploring the inner lives of people who are both privileged and deeply uncertain about their place in the world? Inner life is fiction's particular and exclusive realm; it's what novels and short stories can do, and journalism and cinema/television, on the whole, cannot. That's one reason why the claim, so popular a few years ago, that 'prestige TV is to the 21st century what novels were to the 19th' was a load of nonsense. Indian fiction in English is, more or less by definition, an elite activity – and yet there can be a certain hesitancy about the non-satirical portrayal of English-speaking elites themselves. The notion that in a poor, unequal society literature ought to be 'progressive' – highlight injustice, advance noble causes –has meant that Indian writers, not only in English, have stayed well away from Henry James/Edith Wharton territory. I saw an opportunity, therefore, to write about a world that I knew and that hadn't been fully explored. The feeling of uncertainty you refer to has two sources: one, moral confusion brought on by the pace of social change, and two, a more specific anxiety about the place of the English-speaking elite in today's India. Throughout the book, there is a quiet but powerful commentary on what it means to 'inherit' – not just tangible wealth like money, jewellery, property, land, etc, but also values, identities, even moral burdens. What do you think Indian families today are truly passing down to the next generation? You are absolutely right that questions of 'inheritance' – not only in the material sense – are at the heart of the book. I wanted to write about the conflict between two notions of inheritance that seemed to me to define life in this part of Delhi. First, the idea that wealth belongs to a family, not to individuals, and that means that future, unborn generations too have a stake – this is often cited by rich Indians as a justification for not giving money away to those who actually need it (or, implicitly, as a justification for tax avoidance). 'It's not my money', they say, not mine to give away. One the one hand, this 'Patek Philippe' approach to inheritance – you're not an owner, just a custodian – on the other, an approach to nature which says that all that matters is to accumulate and consume as much as possible right now, and to hell with future generations and giving them a city or planet fit to live in. So Delhi parents hope to pass on physical property, even if that property is in an ecological hellhole. But a question that animates my novel is, what nonmaterial values are they going to pass on? Brahm Saxena's ambition – to pass on, not only to his children but to anyone who will listen, an awareness of what humans have done to our environment and why we have done it – is a throwback to an earlier era, that of the freedom struggle, in which parents might bequeath idealism as well as apartments. As someone from Calcutta who moved to Delhi for work, I often find myself caught in a love-hate relationship with this city. In that sense, one of my absolute favourite aspects of your book was its deeply vivid portrayal of Delhi. It wasn't just a backdrop – it felt like a living, breathing, even rotting organism, thick with unbearable heat, tangled politics, and lingering memories. How did your own experiences of the city shape the way you wrote it into the novel? Like you, I did not grow up in Delhi, and moved there primarily for professional reasons. Very little in the book is directly autobiographical, and I chose to write from a perspective quite different from my own, in that Tara has lived in Delhi all her life and, except as a student or tourist, has known no other city. The novel is, to appropriate your own phrase, a love-hate letter to the city. I hope that enough of the love is evident. I made lifelong friends in Delhi and found it a much more welcoming place than it is sometimes reputed to be. But the balance sheet of love and hate does not even out – it was ultimately too difficult for me to look past the reality of class segregation, patriarchy, materialism and ecological catastrophe. As Brahm Saxena implies right at the start of the novel, Delhi ought to have been the greatest city in the world. You have also subtly been able to interrogate masculinity, especially modern Indian masculinity, through characters like Rohit, Kunal, and even Brahm Saxena to an extent. What were you trying to uncover about how men relate to legacy, failure, and self-worth? Rohit and Kunal are not meant in any sense as representatives or exemplars. There are many kinds of Delhi or Indian masculinity – look at the evolution of someone like Virat Kohli, who used to be thought of as the archetypal macho West Delhi man, and ended up as perhaps India's most influential advocate of the importance of fatherhood. I wasn't trying to uncover anything about men, or Indian men, in general, through Rohit, Kunal or Brahm. Kunal and Rohit are responding to what they see as threats – the threats posed by their sisters, and by the values of feminism, as well as (although this is explored less directly in the novel) the potential threat of men from less-privileged backgrounds who are more driven. India is more unequal than ever, but the English-speaking south Delhi elite is in some ways less protected than it was before 1991. At some point in the book, Brahm Saxena's character and narrative arc made me wonder: Can someone be good without being useful? And in a deeply compromised world, is moral clarity enough? Were you also consciously grappling with these kinds of ethical questions while writing the novel, in how you shaped your characters, what they stood for, and the story you wanted to tell? These questions are above the pay grade of not just this novelist, but of novelists in general. We dramatise ethical dilemmas, but the point is to show life is or might be lived, not to arrive at generalisable moral claims or precepts. Interviews – and, increasingly, reviews – tend to focus on the moral and political content of novels, to mine them for lessons or controversy. That's appropriate to the form of the interview, which, after all, is meant to be of interest to someone who hasn't read, and may never read, the book in question. I don't mean to diminish the importance of these matters – but they tend not to be top of mind, at least not for me. What is top of mind are not ethical questions, but aesthetic ones – matters of form, above all, prose. Prose is of such primary importance to writers – but we find ourselves reviewed and interviewed with almost no reference to style or form. That is not a complaint; just a reflection on how different the experiences of writing a book and talking about it are. Staying with Tara for a moment, I found her perspective to be particularly fitting for the story you've told. At the same time, I couldn't help but notice how she vocal she is on being self-righteous and yet her actions, such as distancing herself from 'feminist lawyers', activist causes, amongst others, often seem to fall short of the ideals she claims to uphold. What does this ambivalence say about the pressures on women who 'succeed' within the system but are also expected to critique or resist it? I'm not sure that I agree that Tara is 'vocal on being self-righteous'. She certainly can be self-righteous, but at the same time, as her father's daughter, I suspect she would reject the label. Her decision not to become a certain kind of lawyer is down to her awareness of trade-offs. Again, she would disclaim the label, but many people would say that Tara is in fact ambitious. I see her as someone who is morally serious – that is to say, she thinks seriously about moral questions – but not as any kind of earnest 'do-gooder' who, when confronted by a trade-off, always takes the high road even when that means giving up something of value. To your final question – Tara, as I see her, is more committed to succeeding within the system – on her terms – than to critiquing it, except in private. Many moments and instances in the novel seem to resist a resolution as characters choose uncertain paths, and readers are left sitting with open questions. Is this refusal to tie things up a conscious choice? Do you see ambiguity, much like our lives, as a more honest form of storytelling? I don't know if it is more honest, but it is what I prefer, both as a writer and a reader. I love the fact that fiction is a collaboration between writer and reader – that every reader can make up their own mind about whether or not, at the end of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer is really going to go back to Osmond. In the case of The Tiger's Share, some of the lack of resolution has to do with the fact that lives are not lived, and ethical questions not resolved, in the abstract. Tara decides that she cannot choose based on moral principles alone, but has to also consider what her choice means for her relationship with her mother. What conversations do you hope this novel sparks – in families, among readers, or in public discourse? If you had to sum up the message in one sentence, would would it be? This is, as your previous question implies, not a didactic novel: it has no message. Of course, I'd be thrilled if it sparks conversations about inheritance, or how to recover idealism, or how to stop and begin to reverse the destruction of our ecology, but it is a novel, not a work of social and political commentary, and I hope it is read that way.
Deccan Herald
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
Siblings and strangers
Kudos to Keshava Guha, author of The Tiger's Share, for showing in minute detail the ruthlessness of siblings when they imagine their inheritance is at stake.
Scroll.in
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘The Tiger's Share': In Keshava Guha's second novel, a family man does the unthinkable
It is inheritance, not love, that is a tale as old as time. If Jane Austen is to be believed, marriage, now notorious as the 'culmination' of love, only began to bother with love in the late 18th century. Most of Austen's men, like the imperious Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, are comfortably off. If, God forbid, they are a little beggared, either through disinheritance, like Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, or because of sheer bad luck, like Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, born into nothing, they still end up with a living. Wentworth, in fact, wins a lush fortune through prize money and the navy. Anne Elliot marries him only after he is flush, of course. 'A man without a family, without evident roots, is no one's idea of a son-in-law, whatever his achievements,' says Tara Saxena, the protagonist of Keshava Guha's second novel, The Tiger's Share. Tara's maternal family, however, could hardly afford to be choosy. Her grandfather, having lost a case in which he tried to claim ancestral land he 'believed his brothers had diddled him out of', was left penniless, having spent what he had in a bid to acquire more. The situation was so dire that his legal fees exceeded the value of the 'putative share of the land'. Just as he resigned himself to 'housing a daughter who would grow more spinsterish with each year', a deus ex machina arrived: a man. The novel opens many years later. The man, Brahm Saxena, now a retired chartered accountant who managed to enter the ranks of elite society without a pedigree, convenes a 'family summit' to tell his children they will inherit nothing. Arguably the cruellest thing a wealthy man ever told his progeny: '…now that my duties are done, you can expect nothing from me,' he declares. In dispensing with his family's inheritance, Brahm sets in motion a chain of events that diagnose contemporary India as a selfish, often crass, and acutely unhappy society. Contemporary novelists in India have taken on the laborious task of writing these diagnostic novels, and many publishers' lists abound with books that are partly, if not entirely, about Caste, Climate, and the Cabinet, as if these three capital C's are the only imaginable way to meditate on the country. And imagine they must, for none of the Cs truly affect them; if they did, they'd hardly have time to write these 'theme' novels. As Walter Benjamin warned, '…the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.' Posterity, by any good measure, is inconceivable for theme novels, for they are catered to contemporaneity. There is perhaps an exception in Guha's The Tiger's Share. The haves and their have-nots In a country as poor as India, love comes second to inheritance, even for the idealist. 'All his life, my mother's brother worried about the prospect of other people's claims on his money,' tattles Tara, an accomplished lawyer who sanctifies work as if it were therapy, adding, 'That might be why he has never made any.' Tara's brother, Rohit, and her friend Lila's adopted brother, Kunal, don't earn much either. This, despite everything that has changed in the country over the generations, despite all that has suddenly become possible. Like millennial men of their generation, they're frazzled by the self-evident apocrypha of their victimisation. One hides behind so-called art and apathy, reading only to impress women or imitate white auteurs. The other, a contrarian in khadi, founds a media company named 'Adhimukta Bharat', dons a 'Modi jacket', and invokes monarchist wisdom without irony. What surprises them less than their own inadequacy is that their sisters, who couldn't afford to bemoan the lengths they had, went off and became the very people they had aspired to be. If they weren't so moneyed, we might pity these men. Even after all that supremacy, they're men in stagnant infancy. After her businessman father, who 'spent most of his time at the Delhi Golf Club', dies of a heart attack, Lila texts Tara, telling her she needs her 'as both friend and lawyer'. By now, we understand the theme. Inheritance. Like many 'theme' novels where characters and their concerns stand in for modern India, a gig worker here, a liberal, progressive woman befriending an activist there, Guha needed something recognisably national in scope. He chose the so-called last citadel of the elite. Capital. Most of it, of course, is untaxed. Lila doesn't need the money that could come to her on the conveyor belt of time. 'Nor do I feel entitled to it,' she adds. 'But, my concern is with justice… I don't begrudge him his share. But he's not going to bully him out of mine.' It wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to say that Lila perceives herself as self-made, even while residing in a family house in Golf Links and flitting between America, the UAE, and India at will, making motherhood appear effortless with her entourage of aides. So feckless a character by any moral measure, she makes Tara appear sinless. These characters are instantly recognisable if you've ever had the misfortune of knowing someone who owns a house in Lutyens' Delhi. To trust the ballots is to trust that its residents, who have only ever rented abroad, are citizens this country seems resolute in loathing. Perhaps because they wield all the power, even as they remain convinced of their pyrrhic fate. In a novel of unbeaten sisters and unbuilt fortunes, where sons season protein shakes with their father's ashes and interns moonlight as spies, Brahm Saxena seems positively sane. Tame, if not puerile, in his wish to 'serve other duties' now that he's ticked every box of a family man's life, except leaving behind a will anyone actually wants. The mirrors we live in Although Tara is second-closest to Brahm after his brother Vikram, she knows little about her father, having acquired his history 'piecemeal', turning the novel into an odyssey of learning about her parent anew, one who philosophises like a character from an indie film. He takes Tara to the kachra ka pahar, literally a mountain of trash, a dumping ground in Ghazipur next to a government hospital, and muses on human arrogance; he keeps a framed photograph of Bhagat Singh and another of a brother and sister, two children, the girl he calls his 'leader'; he proffers his sophomoric philosophy, adding that she shouldn't hate anyone. Kunal accuses Brahm of being 'clinically insane'; Rohit alarmedly tells him, 'Daddy, you've gone full Greta'; and Tara's friend is almost grateful that he sees at least one of the two 'principal' projects/targets of India's 'collective sadism': the environment and Muslims. Even if Tara takes him seriously, Guha does not insist that the reader must. Brahm's clinical, sometimes grandiose declarations never quite dispel the charge of senility, and his corporatised deportment with his ménage can seem loveless. After all, to think of care as duty is a precarious endeavour. The cynical reader will dismiss Brahm's ecological concern as a geriatric reflex, a riposte to the ever-nearing collision with fatality. Much of what he proclaims carries the affected, maudlin diction of a countryman newly learning to care, disclosing the charade of naïve incrementalist politics that feigns trouble is far away. For a risible character, Guha still manages to build Brahm as an enigma. He is the only character who startles us, just as we are surprised to have cared about him at all. No one in The Tiger's Share is easy to like. Even Tara, who often insists on her affability, flails as a moral character with her righteousness. When she rejects a client accused of rape, it is not only because she knows he is guilty, but because she refuses to be a 'woman lawyer', having worked hard to avoid the kismet of one: 'For eighteen years I had fought to avoid becoming one of them, and I was closer than ever to winning.' The respectable don't come off well in Guha's world, but neither do the indifferent. Everyone gets what's coming to them, even if it's just a mirror. He has spared no one, not even us, his readers. Until now, the gaze of the so-called theme novelist has been directed elsewhere. At someone who warns us of our complicity, our indifference, the casual ease with which we trade material reconstruction for identitarian politics. The Tiger's Share does not risk taking anyone lightly. Perhaps the enemy of our enemy is not our friend, especially if they still have capital to spare.
