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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
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Literary Fiction
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For fans of Vikas Swarup and Charles Yu, the story of a starry-eyed cinephile who leaves his rural village in Punjab to pursue his dreams - a formally daring debut novel set against the global migration crisis.
In a rural village of Punjab, India, a moony young man crouches over his phone in a rapeseed field near his family's cabbage farm. His name is Happy Singh Soni, and he's watching YouTube clips of his favorite film, Bande à Part by Jean-Luc Godard. In fact, Happy is often compared to a young Sami Frey by the imaginary journalists that keep him company while he uses the outhouse. Pooing, as he says, "en plein air." When he's not sleeping among the cabbages and eating his mother's sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy roles—sad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. There are macho leads and funny boys en masse, but if you're looking for depth and vulnerability, you must make your own heroes.
Then comes Wonderland, an eccentric facsimile of Disneyland that steadily buys up the local farms, rebranding the community's traditional way of life. Happy works a dead-end job at the amusement park, biding his time and saving money for a clandestine journey to Europe, where he'll finally land a breakout role. Little does he know that his immigration is being coordinated by a transnational crime syndicate. After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions over a debt he allegedly accrued in transit. But his daydreams grow increasingly at odds with his bleak reality, one shared by so many migrant workers disenfranchised by the systems that depend on their labor.
At turns funny and poetic, sunny and tragic, Happy is a daring feat of postmodern literature, a polyphonic novel about the urgent, lovely coping mechanisms created by generations of diasporic people. Set against the enmeshed crises of global migration and the politics of labor within the food industry, Celina Baljeet Basra's luminous debut argues for the things that are essential to human survival: food, water, a place to lay one's head, but also pleasure, romance, art, and the inalienable right to a vivid inner life.
Prologue
I am Happy. Happy Singh Soni.
A Punjabi currently based in Italy, I am working full-time on Europe's largest radish farm.
I am well experienced in all tasks related to radish farming: i.e., sowing radish seeds, transplanting radish sprouts, tending to the growing plants, injecting weed killers most expertly, spraying to death the ugly ones and caring for the beauties. By eradicating all uncer- tainty, the harvest is bountiful, always.
First and foremost, my labor is a labor of love.
I feel confident that I have reached a level of excellence in European radish farming. Hence, I want to widen my skill set and actively seek new challenges by exploring other aspects of farming in Italy. This is why I am applying for the open position as a shep- herd on the island of Sardinia.
Also, I have to admit, my back would thank me if I were able to work in an upright position once more. The constant kneeling amidst the radish patches is killing my spine. I often catch myself these days musing among the vegetables, stretching my back, unable to recall who I am. For a brief moment, I exist in a blank space: a white cube smelling of lemony cleaning agent. Time expands and contracts. I pull myself back into reality by looking at my hands, greenhouse dirt underneath surprisingly rosy fingernails. The sight of my skin roots me. Brown skin with tiny pink injuries from tiny radish shovels.
What are the long-term effects of constant spine bending? Is spinelessness the desirable state after all?
I am empathic, flexible, and resilient. The journey from India, crossing deserts, mountains, walking through a vast forest I cannot name, and arriving via boat in Bari, certainly did take its toll. However, I am still alive, and I am at your service, or rather at the service of your black Sardinian sheep, pecore nere.
I can drive a tractor and a truck. I have never taken a taxi in my life, nor have I boarded a plane. I am excitable and impatient, char- ismatic, and single-minded. I anticipate, always. I look ahead. I identify the problem before you even know you have one. I am per- petually hungry, and I always need a snack. I miss pakoras. I miss my morning tea. I miss my mother. I tend to suffer from diarrhea more often than from constipation. My metabolism is as fast as my mind. By jumping two steps ahead, I tend to fall back three, ending up behind the starting line. But I always get back on that horse, as one should. Though I cannot ride a horse; I've only ever ridden a camel—once, at a fair, and I threw up right after. I am a Hypersensi- tive Introverted Extrovert. I did a test online. My love language is Words of Affirmation. I did that test, too. Most of the workers here are Sikhs like me, but, still, it tends to get lonely. I cannot say that I am happy, but I am lucky to be here, in Europe.
Strictly speaking, and I don't want to beat around the bush, my status of residency is not legal. Illegal? You may very well say so, but I couldn't possibly comment. I am currently in between nationalities, but I am certainly doing my part for the European people: providing them with the cheapest, crunchiest, reddest, and raddest radishes, bulbous and disproportionately huge, to be chopped up into European salads and to decorate European sandwiches. Let's forget about the taste for a moment, watery, carrying a faint sharpness, just a memory of its ancestor radish's sapid glory: earthy and spicy, delicate in flavor. According to my research, radishes were domesticated in Asia prior to Roman times, growing happily for a long time in what is now China, Myanmar, Vietnam, and India.
I admit, I care too much. On a frosty night in spring, I was caught sleeping with the fledgling radish sprouts, covering them in Indian scarves and blankets. Some might say I cross boundaries; I say I am passionate about my job. Leave your emotions at home? I say bring them to the workplace. That's the only way to get the job done. Crying is fine. People who cry at work are better ...
Excerpted from Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra. Copyright © 2023 by Celina Baljeet Basra. Excerpted by permission of Astra House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
A child's name is often a blessing from elder relatives for their future. Happy Singh Soni's siblings were all given proper Punjabi names: Fatehpal, "victorious one"; Davinder, "leader of all gods"; Ambika, "moon goddess." Born ten years later than his next youngest sibling, Happy speculates that when his parents chose his name, they were feeling "fancy" and, wanting him to have international success, picked the most international name they could think of. With a name like Happy, how could a child not be destined for greatness and joy on a global scale? Hoping to make that destiny a reality, Happy leaves his rural village and parents' cabbage farm in India to chase his dream of becoming a famous actor known for melancholy, pretty-boy roles. But first, he must pay off his debt to the international syndicate who has arranged his travel to Europe, landing him in Italy. Happy, separated from his mother's beloved sugar rotis and contending with his "irregolari" immigration status, is employed by the mysterious Coordinators to work off his debt, first in a kitchen at a Roman fried fish restaurant, then as a radish picker on the outskirts of Lazio. Along the way, he meets an assorted cast of characters and maintains an unbelievably chirpy spirit that will stay in your head long after the book is finished.
Celina Baljeet Basra's debut novel is a postmodernist work, characterized by unreliable narration, a non-linear structure, and grappling with relevant political and social themes of today. Happy is a dreamer who sees the world through rose-colored lenses. So rose-colored that he is fundamentally untrustworthy. Excitable, impatient, charismatic, single-minded, he is "unable to distinguish the important from the unimportant," and others "seriously question whether he has a firm grasp of what is real and what is not" (from his third-grade teacher in response to his essay on "My Future Profession"). When he first moves to Italy, our main clues to the harsh conditions of his daily life are not through his narration, but his Italian vocabulary lists interspersed between sections, such as in the phrase "Questo è il pane di ieri? Io faccio volentieri" (Is this yesterday's bread? I'll take it gladly).
He is willing to scrounge for leftover bakery bread, but doesn't explicitly tell us so. He also describes sharing a bed spot with an unknown irregolari who works nights, but focuses on the vivid imaginary persona he has created in his head for this character — Igor from Hungary, who makes a top-notch ragu worthy of international renown. Other times, Happy wanders off into a reverie of what it's like to be a pigment of color in a classical work of art or reminisces about the martial arts showdown of Bruce Lee versus Chuck Norris in the Colosseum, rather than focus on how lonely or hard his current life is.
Happy's narration is interrupted with vignettes in other characters' voices. His sister Ambika gives practical, hard-won advice before he leaves home (whatever path you decide to take, commit, and don't look back). Zhivago, Happy's best friend at the radish farm, organizes to protest the inhumane conditions, and there are vignettes from fellow workers about the past farms they've worked on as well. Other voices serve as a more realistic counterpoint to Happy's outlook on his new life and highlight the sobering conditions of starting over abroad: uncertainty, homesickness, pressure to succeed and support loved ones at home, and a system stacked against immigrant workers.
Because the story is told through a series of multiple voices, there is no true narrative structure, though the path of the story (and of Happy's movements) is not difficult to follow (village boy with big dreams grows up on parents' cabbage farm, boy leaves farm to chase dreams, boy ends up in bad situation). In fact, I enjoyed the almost abrupt section breaks, as characters and thoughts are introduced that seemingly have no relation to what is currently going on with Happy's geographic travels. This is how we meet his family members and also how we learn of his vivid daydreams, such as his interviews with imaginary journalists while he is taking a poo ("The Loo Interviews"). Each of these breaks is short and offers comical respite in moments when themes of intercontinental development and capitalist exploitation of human workers become gloomy. This format also allows the author to show us, right in the very beginning, Happy's mad gamble to get out of radish picking: his job pitch letter to become a future shepherd to the black sheep of Sardinia. Because the story starts with this letter, we already know that Happy is unhappy. He is a tragicomic character, fighting hopelessly against forces he does not understand. For this reason alone, I felt a sense of doom throughout, despite the text and voices being humorous and the structure whimsical.
Overall, I found this a compelling, quick read and ambitious novel. There is an element of dark humor in the contrast between the pithy voices with the darker content. And I found myself genuinely interested in Happy's journey. He is a character you won't soon forget.
Reviewed by Pei Chen
Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends
Megha Majumdar, Whiting Award winner and bestselling author of A Burning
Rated 
of 5
by dinda
Reading it really makes us happy
I'm sure that reading this novel broadens our horizons, there are many things that can be learned when I read this. I discovered a lot of new vocabulary and it increased my knowledge. Thank you to the author for producing extraordinary work that can be useful for others. Hopefully in the future we can continue to produce useful work. Honestly, when I read it, I was quite carried away by the atmosphere and became calm and relaxed. It is very useful to fill free time by reading while increasing our literacy. plus the neat choice of words and the colorful cover image make it attractive. words that can be understood make it easier for people to read them. it's easy anytime and anywhere. suitable for entertainment.
A radish farm worker in Celina Baljeet Basra's Happy relays a tale of injustice at his previous job: a group of exploited immigrants, an attack, and an uprising. This story is one we might imagine to be derived from a compilation of worker mistreatments, but the specifics are based on a true story of immigrant fruit pickers in Rosarno, in southern Calabria, Italy, where racist attacks by locals in 2010 sparked an uprising of hundreds of workers. One of these workers, Suleiman Diara, left Rosarno and moved to Rome, where he and a business partner founded Barikamà ("resilience" in Bambara), a workers' co-operative. "I had to find a way to stop being exploited while being financially independent," Diara said in an interview with FairPlanet.
Barikamà started with artisanal yogurt production, then moved into organic vegetable production. The co-op's warehouse is headquartered in Pigneto, a historic working-class neighborhood of Rome, and its production facilities are based at Casale di Martignano, a farmhouse around 22 miles outside of the city, where the group entered into agreements with the owners to rent yogurt production machinery and farm the property. In 2020, the co-operative was producing 200 liters of yogurt per week and cultivating about 15 acres of land. Barikamà also played a unique role in supporting the local community during the pandemic lockdowns. The co-op workers took on home deliveries in addition to selling at local markets, feeding people during a time of fear and uncertainty.
The proceeds go towards the co-op's expenses as well as revenue for members, which was 500-700 euros per month in the second half of 2019. Though this is not a far cry from the 20 euros per day workers earned picking fruit in Rosarno, the conditions are better and they all have ownership of the final product. Future goals for the group include, according to the Guardian's summary of comments from Cheikh, another co-op member, "to gain more autonomy, extend distribution and increase wholesale sales."
The group has also helped bridge the divide between workers and local Italians, with member Sidiki Kone remarking, "[b]y touring local markets I've learned the language and met many nice Italians…[b]efore, I thought there were no good people in this country," speaking of his time in Rosarno. The co-operative also employs Italians with Asperger's syndrome.
Italy is arguably a country particularly well-suited for workers' co-operative movements. The Marcora Act of the 1980s seeks to protect those whose workplaces are in bankruptcy crisis, and has provided a framework for worker buyouts of organizations (including farms). The European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises credited the act as "instrumental in facilitating employee buyouts, primarily by providing a framework that enables collaboration among all of the various stakeholders involved in the process, and also by making available financial support schemes." We may see the creation of more Italian worker-owned co-operatives in the future.
The Pigneto neighborhood of Rome, location of the Barikamà warehouse
Photo by Davide Costanzo (CC BY 2.0)
Filed under Society and Politics
By Pei Chen
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