Londonstani

Londonstani is a 2006 novel by author Gautam Malkani. It was Malkani's debut novel. The novel is about a young Londoner named Jas, who falls in with a group of rudeboys, a materialistic, machoistic subculture of Sikh and Hindu youths. Londonstani received considerable attention before its publication for the size of the advance Malkani had been paid, and considerable attention afterwards for how poorly the novel sold given the attending hype. The novel has also provoked much discussion over its frequent use of textspeak – slang spellings and abbreviations most commonly used in text messages – and how this either adds to the novels' character building, detracts from its readability, or both.

Londonstani takes place largely within the London neighborhood of Hounslow Heath, near Heathrow airport. Jas' identity is intentionally left rather obscure, although he self-identifies as Sikh, like many of his friends, and his father is spoken of as a good, presumably Indian businessman. Identity, in fact, lies at the heart of Londonstani, and intersects with the plot in various ways. One of Jas and his friend's most common insults to lob at other South East Asians, for instance, is that they are “coconuts” – brown on the outside, but (culturally) white on the inside. By the end of the novel, Jas' investment in policing ethnic boundaries becomes especially ironic and problematic.

Jas' scholastic life is not flourishing; despite his great intelligence, his priorities are social. Consequent to recent poor academic performance, he has to retake his exams to be able to graduate secondary school (high school). His new friends, Hardjit, Ravi, and Amit, however, are more interested in making money with their cell phone racket: they make money by illegally unlocking stolen cell phones for cash. Unconcerned about their own schooling, they hardly encourage Jas to focus on his. Their teachers criticize the boys for lacking discipline, to little effect. In particular, his former mentor Mr. Ashwood takes an interest in Jas' scholastic success, but isn't able to dissuade him from spending time with his problematic new group of friends. He does, however, eventually introduce them to wealthy Cambridge graduate Sanjay, thinking that by so doing he is introducing a positive role model into their lives. But as it turns out, Sanjay is not the role model he seems, and his influence over the boys – and their “business” – is far from positive.



Before long, Jas has developed crush on a Muslim girl named Samira Ahmed, and despite knowing very well that neither of their families would approve of the match, he decides to court her. He asks his new friend Sanjay for help wooing Samira. Sanjay gives Jas advice on how to talk to Samira, including what to wear, where to take her to eat – even what songs to play in the car when he picks her up. The car in question is also Sanjay's, which he lends to Jas for his date. Romance aside, Jas also becomes more involved in his friends' illegal activities, despite his fears over being caught, because of the promise of easy money.

An important subplot to Londonstani involves Jas' friend Arun. Arun is engaged to a girl named Veena, and the lead-up to their wedding is fraught with various difficulties – most of them familial in origin. Arun's mother, who is traditional and strict, makes planning the wedding an ordeal. Veena, for instance, buys herself some wedding day jewelry, and Arun's mother hates it. Jas witnesses her yell at Arun and his brother, and it isn't long after that that Arun commits suicide by overdosing on aspirin. Samira makes a comment about Arun's death that, alongside Jas' jealousy over her relationships with her male friends, leads to the end of their relationship. Jas spirals downward, alienated from one friend after another, until desperate circumstances lead him to steal from his own father's phone store. At the end of the novel, physically and emotionally broken, he is in a hospital, being yelled at by his outraged parents.

Londonstani has elicited considerable discussion since its publication for its bleak portrayal of modern urban Britain. The “rudeboys” that protagonist Jas hangs out with are members of a subculture whose most immediate influences are British-Indian (Desi) culture and American hip-hop, but whose exact identities change with the different social milieu in which they find themselves. This idea that identity is fluid and contingent is driven home by the “twist” at the end of the book: the revelation that Jas himself is ethnically white. His name is not short for “Jaswinder” (a common name among Desi boys), as is implied during one scene early in the book. It is, rather, short for Jason. How this contributes to, complicates, or makes a mockery of the novel's overall commentary on the importance of ethnicity to identity continues to be debated, with strong opinions on every side. Malkani himself argues, in interview, that “The book is ultimately positive about multiculturalism. As the book develops, you realize that the ethnic identity has morphed into a subcultural identity and, as such, the boundaries the characters erect are actually more porous than you first assume.”