‘The Centre’: How far can you go to save something as important and commonplace as language?

Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s debut, The Centre, is a dark, funny novel that taps into broader questions of language, politics, history, science, and womanhood in contemporary times. It follows Anisa Ellahi, a transcriber of Bollywood films for Netflix who is in her 30s as she bemoans the pointlessness of her life. She was born and raised in Karachi in a well-to-do family. She gets by just fine with her job in the UK because she knows she can rely on her folks back home to fill in the financial gaps.

However, her spirits are reaching an end to such complacency. She feels distanced from her native language – Urdu and her aspirations of becoming a translator. She is lonely – romantically and sexually – and craves a partner beyond her closest friend Naima.

The loneliness of language

Anisa bumps into Adam at a translation studies conference. Gradually, she discovers he knows more than ten languages and starts to feel ashamed of herself. Anisa deals with this by showing no interest beyond sexual gratification from Adam, which is a struggle in itself. He comes from a working-class background and has a series of childhood insecurities making it difficult for him to adjust to Anisa’s flighty, entitled personality. But one day, when Adam tells her about the Centre from where he learned the languages, something changes for Anisa and their equation.

Siddiqi’s commentary on language, especially in the Global South, or erstwhile colonial nations is powerful. She writes with an urgency on the slow disappearance of indigenous languages as one common language – that of the West – dominates culture. Anisa admits, “You know, I’d always assumed my mother tongue was Urdu, but maybe it is in fact English.” Through succinct and direct takes on cultural homogeneity and diasporic assimilation, Siddiqi narrates a story where the personal and political coalesce into each other.

The institution of the Centre mentioned in the novel is a place where languages are learnt through mysterious techniques. Siddiqi constantly emphasises its mystical nature, almost giving it a phantasmal quality. As much as this could serve as a clever technique of holding the reader’s attention, it also serves to address the impertinence of saving cultures in an age of rapid transformations.

The superbly written sections on Anisa’s experiences at the Centre make the story Murakami-esque. It’s lush beauty and secretive location with a series of doors. The inviting yet deceptive behaviour of the staff. The silence that haunts its premises. And the sense of deep revelation that the Centre promises to provide. These well-thought-out details add up to prepare the Learner like Anisa and the readers for an engrossing dive which is often evident in Murakami’s characters like Kafka Tamura from Kafka on the Shore, Tour Watanabe from Norwegian Wood, and Toru Okada from The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

The process of learning a new language at the Centre and the thought behind creating an institution of such calibre gives Siddiqi’s story its surreal quality. It raises a variety of questions, usually the consequence of reading Murakami. How far can go you to save something as important and commonplace as language? What power do human-run institutions hold in an age of increasing AI technologies?

One of the most promising aspects, besides Siddiqi’s take on language, is Anisa and Shiba’s relationship. There is a spark from the moment the two appear on the page. There is a tension that teases the reader unapologetically. Shiba is Anisa’s supervisor at the Centre. She is the only person Anisa can talk to.

Unlike Anisa, Shiba seems more settled and assured with her life at the Centre and the dreams she has for it. Shiba’s beauty, her professional aura and her friendly demeanour lure Anisa. Through their complicated equation, Siddiqi sheds light on the complex dynamic that emerges between women with different levels of power, the nebulous nature of India-Pakistan relations, and the ways in which such contrasts play out in a country alien to both.

While Siddiqi exercises a stunning hold over her reader’s mind, the writing, or the language of the story can be too literal, and in your face. The repeated use of the text message format and conversational tone to take the story forward can often make the reader wonder if it is a personal diary penned by a frustrated adolescent. While Siddiqi’s description of different cities like Karachi, and New Delhi are praiseworthy, the city of London, where the characters’ lives seem more occluded and ignored. The story ends on a rather obscure note, leaving the reader wanting and confused.

Nonetheless, in a time when anxiety over indigenous language has only increased, Siddiqi’s novel comes as an important reminder to work towards saving it. Whatever ways humans devise to survive, language is at the heart of existence. The novel, more than anything, is an ode to language and the sense of belongingness it offers.

The Centre, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, Picador.