‘Liberal Hearts’: This fun and frothy campus novel is reminiscent of old-school Bollywood

The young adult genre seems to have been on a downturn (or it is possible I am older). But as a teenager, I would consume any and all books placed in the category I could lay my hands on. Perhaps my reading habit developed not out of consuming serious literature but from also learning how to consume fun, unserious things that cater to specific aspirations. Like reading a love story set in college as a yearning 14-year-old.

Among those, the genre of the trope-rich romance novel set on an idyllic university campus – the one that has a meet-cute, a little bit of obstacle and finally ends with them together – definitely appealed to my sensibilities then. But tropes have acquired something of a negative connotation now. More subversive art forms have taken over, hyper-aware of the standard depiction. You are always on your toes, the narrator keeps breaking the fourth wall, and escapism is dead.

Out in the world

Still, when used less formulaically, tropes can often generate fun, light reads that afford the reader a form of escape. You can finish such a book in a single setting. This and more is what Liberal Hearts accomplishes. Nayantara Violet Alva’s debut novel is set in an elite university in rural Sonipat, Haryana. It is not hard to imagine the inspiration of this book – the author herself is an alumna of Ashoka University, a not-for-profit institution set in, surprise surprise, Sonipat.

My initial interest in the book was piqued less by its contents and more by the social media buzz linking it to my alma mater. Since I have spent my own formative years at Ashoka University, my predispositions and understanding of the place had already led me to an instant opinion of the book – that perhaps the novel would depict the experience of living in a place like this rather than focusing on the characters. I was proven wrong very quickly.

Liberal Hearts revolves around Namya – a first-year undergraduate student at Maurya College of Liberal Arts (MCLA). She is rich, privileged and is mostly estranged from her parents, who are divorced. She is plagued by self-doubt, is lost in the sea of self-assured rich kids, and largely seems to have no sense of self as the book begins. Our protagonist lucks out with a quirky roommate, Pari, who soon becomes her confidant, and a close friend, Mehreen, who takes on the role of being her support system. The male lead is Vir Kumar Yadav, a promising student from Sonipat who studied at a fancy school on a scholarship, but, owing to extenuating circumstances now sells illicit alcohol to the students at MCLA to make ends meet.

The book has a couple of palpable themes – perhaps the most prominent being cultural and class politics. What happens to the village when an imposing college espousing liberal values makes this unlikely location its home? As the villagers and students interact through numerous chapters, we come to find a complicated web of socio-political forces at play. Liberalism turns on its head as both groups grapple with their respective value systems. Within the university, too, students struggle with notions of freedom and how these become inextricably linked with privilege and entitlement.

But it is also true that these seem to be hyper-specific to this particular environment. Context-setting is something that the author could have done better, so as to make it more universal. Sometimes it felt like I was in on a big inside joke that many others may not get.

An entertaining caricature

The book’s strength, however, is its ability to caricature in a way that is entertaining. If you are someone who has studied at one of these universities or knows someone who has, it is not hard to find their character in this book. There are the loud-mouthed, so-called progressive boys who sleep with girls and then discuss them loudly and lewdly in the canteen with their friends. There are the uppity students in the classrooms that take up so much space that even the professor retreats into the background. There are the fashionable, put-together girls wearing their Janpath jhumkas and their FabIndia kurtas attempting to reverse inequality in the world one English class at a time.

There is the sexual fluidity, the polyamorous relationships, the nice queer man, the hot senior you cannot stop looking at, the man who read Dostoevsky once but will never stop talking about it – the list is endless. The book plays in your head like a movie. Much like the narrator who seems to have taken Jab We Met to heart, the book is fun, frothy and coming of age and the character arc is very similar to Aditya Kashyap going through the motions – ending with an explosive denouement, which I have no intention of spoiling.

Perhaps readers aching for a serious revelation about their own experiences at college may not find this book interesting or fulfilling. But if you are fourteen and watched Student of the Year for nothing but the Kukkad song, this is your book. I finished Liberal Hearts in one sitting, it is fun in all the right ways, just like old-school Bollywood is. Reminiscent of Rocky and Rani Kii Prem Kaahani’s success at the box office, this book will, if nothing else, keep you hooked to the very end, if only to check whether our protagonists get their happy ending or not.

Liberal Hearts, Nayantara Violet Alva, Penguin India.