‘Fieldwork as a Sex Object’: Meena Kandasamy’s angry new novel is ever so slightly overcooked

What happens to Amy Chaturvedi in Fieldwork as a Sex Object is every woman’s worst nightmare realised – a sextape gone viral. Worse still, a deepfake sextape. Unlike real sextapes that could once be monetised and become a shortcut to celebrityhood, a sextape today can be made and circulated so easily that they are only good enough for faceless social media trolling. A sextape is no longer a novelty and millions float around on pornography websites as “homemade movies”, so when one does go viral, best believe that it was made to go viral. The intentions are nefarious – to disgrace an outspoken woman, get the manosphere all charged up, and, in a country like India, to reinforce beliefs that nothing good can come from women’s liberation.

Breaking news

So when Amy’s deepfake sextape goes viral and quite literally breaks the Indian internet, she knows she is done for – this is unlike any crisis she’s handled before. She is well aware of the treacherous landscape of reposts, shares, likes, and comments but until now, only her words have been attacked. The scrutiny of her face and (morphed) body is entirely new, and there’s no one else she knows who has faced anything remotely similar. Her vociferous online Communist activism has earned her plenty of haters and even the physical distance from India (she lives in London) cannot afford her anonymity. The sextape, which was first released on Twitter, metastasises to take over Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms and eventually begins to be played on loop on news channels.

The second-most affected victim is her mother, who is immediately criticised for her parenting. Everyone swoops in on her, conveniently ignoring her father who is as much Amy’s parent as her mother. Despite her hysterical tendencies, her mother urges her to tackle the problem in a practical way. The other woman who comes to her rescue, no questions asked, is her friend Nimmi, whom Amy is unabashedly in awe of. A woman of luminous beauty and intelligence, Nimmi is Amy’s blissfully offline counterpart. She is unfazed by the online vitriol and reminds Amy to focus on the IRL – she stocks up her fridge, cleans her apartment, and advises on the legal routes they can take.

The merciless scrutiny gets to Amy, and she describes her condition as thus: “If these trolls are to be believed, I am a leading member of the tukde-tukde gang of academics who want to balkanise India. I am on Pakistani payroll. I am funded by George Soros.” For any of us who have spent some time fighting the good fight on social media, we know exactly what Amy is talking about. From the top Congress leaders to a school student questioning the Modi government’s shortcomings, everyone is an “anti-national” funded by evil foreign powers whose energies are concentrated on orchestrating India’s fall, despite the venerable Prime Minister and his loyal followers’ tireless efforts to restore the nation to its former glory.

Trouble at the doorstep

Amy’s identity as a London-living, Brahmin Marxist woman is rage-inducing enough and the sextape provides the perfect outlet for Indian incels and bhakts to parade her through the virtual town square.

But Kandasamy’s protagonist isn’t limited by her online humiliation. As shit starts to stink and rot, Amy’s lonely hours in London are usefully utilised to contemplate her sexuality and sleep with a friend’s boyfriend. Amy’s commitment to equality – at least online and in her immediate social circles – is at loggerheads with the privileges of her identity. She’s the crème de la crème of Delhi society; her father is a hotshot lawyer, her Brahmin surname is an airbag protecting her from all the shoving and jerking of the world. When shit truly hits the fan, she knows and Nimmi reminds her, that she’ll be protected, perhaps not exactly in the way she’d have liked, but the outcast(e) status is temporary. Any problem in the world, and especially in India, can be taken care of with some money and the right surname.

Kandasamy’s new novel bears her trademark angst, and there indeed is no other way to address an issue that has become a pressing fear for so many women. Her Brahmin protagonist allows her to examine the duality of misogyny and caste power, and how, in India, the two, even if at first, feed each other, can still join forces and negate an undesirable situation at hand. Exploitative solidarity is still solidarity.

But, like many online novels of our times, Fieldwork as a Sex Object also suffers from the immediacy of themes and language. The references to Andrew Tate, Burnol ointment, V for Vendetta profile pictures, George Soros and the tukde-tukde gang might appeal to the reader today, but how well will they hold, let’s say, 50 years from now? Moreover, what do Soros or Tate mean to a barely online reader or a reader who inhabits a completely different online sphere than the rabid, right-wing corner? The overdependence on these references may not only confound certain readers but also, in the ever-evolving landscape of online language, soon become entirely outdated. It is a novel that is, unfortunately, limited by its own language of the fascist witch hunt. The story is entirely straightforward – the reader’s mind cannot conjure plural meanings.

Fieldwork as a Sex Object is a pertinent chronicle of the here and now and the always-online. However, it falls short in examining the greater malaise of the rot.

Fieldwork as a Sex Object, Meena Kandasamy, HarperCollins India.