The first thing I did after finishing this slim tightly-paced novel within a span of two hours was look up the title – Legal Fiction.
The original Hindi novel written by Chandan Pandey, and first published in 2020 is titled Vaidhanik Galp, An English translation of the novel by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari, was published in 2021. For those interested in the original text, the title literally translates to the English title, Legal Fiction.
For a reader, not educated in the intricacies of law, the title was intriguing and demanded exploration.
Legal fiction, I found out, is a rule that assumes something is true even when it is clearly false. It is a falsehood with purpose, a useful lie, that allows complex systems to work smoothly. I wasn’t sure if I had been able to capture the technical nuances of this specific legal concept, but as a reader, I could sense how the author has masterfully woven this concept as a social metaphor to anchor the plot and characters of his novel centered around the post-truth narratives of a small town in India. Through this gritty social narrative, Chandan Pandey explores the ways through which political interests and “parallel systems” blur the lines between what we know as truth, and what gets labelled as the truth
The novel begins with a provocative disclaimer:
Everything in Legal Fiction is fiction. All that is fiction is fiction, of course, but even the truth is fiction. If the people, stories, places and incidents at any point appear to be true, it is our collective misfortune. We advise you to consider it a fault of the imagination and move on.”
Set in the fictitious town of Noma, that the author describes as a “a mofussil town of less than 25000 people”, this is a novel fashioned as a political thriller. However, as you follow the plot, it turns out to be a devastating existential enquiry into the social, cultural, and political machines behind the erosion of our collective moral fabric as a society.
The plot unfolds over a period of three days, through the eyes of a protagonist who is unflinchingly introspective about his own moral ambivalence.
Noma is a town situated on the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar border. It is no “Malgudi” replete with romanticism and nostalgia. Noma is a “settlement-like town” where the air is thick with “foul smells” at night and the dust never quite settles. Its bombastic hoardings with garishly painted proclamations are a testament of the performative nature of the power brokers in small-towns India.
One hoarding announced a pilgrimage to Kailash–Mansarovar… A huge image of Lord Shiva was printed alongside… To the right of the god, almost as big or perhaps bigger, was a photograph of a young man whose entire manner seemed calculated to convey humility and sincerity…’.
The descriptions of the city and its denizens are meticulously detailed. This is a place of clever imitations (such as a store named “Bigger Bazaar“) symbolizing a society that is constantly pretending to be more modern than it is, even as its social structures remain medieval. It is a “paradise for smugglers and criminals” where borders between states, and as the plot unfolds, between legality and illegality, are creatively blurred.
The novel’s plot is set in motion by a late-night phone call from Anasuya, the protagonist Arjun’s ex-girlfriend, whose husband Rafique Neel has gone missing. What follows is a compelling critique of the systemic forces that define and govern the laws, administration, and portrayals of social structures in such a setting.
Arjun, the narrator, is a fascinatingly flawed and morally ambivalent protagonist. A writer living in Gurgaon, he initially resists going to Noma, held back by past incidents and a general “habit of running away from the present”. When he arrives, he is not a hero but a man who grovels before the law or the lawlessness of those in power.
The social reality of the town is one where “jobs were more precious than lives”. Rafique is an ad-hoc teacher, a position that leaves him vulnerable to the whims of those who yield power. Pandey succinctly exposes the plight of the contractual academic, showing how Rafique’s dedication to theater and literature (specifically the works of Jon Fosse and Mayakovsky) is viewed with suspicion rather than respect by the town’s “intellectuals”.
A harrowing image of police brutality and the dehumanization of women serves as the novel’s moral anchor, where a constable pokes his lathi into the pregnant Anasuya’s belly, asking menacingly, “How far along?”
Arjun’s internal struggle is a mirror for the middle-class reader. He worries about his Facebook image even while a woman’s life is in danger. Perhaps his most ambivalent moment is when he uses Anasuya’s pregnancy as a “weapon” to convince her to leave, realizing that:
“Mankind left no stone unturned in transforming this natural gift of a woman into a curse”.
Despite its taut, thriller-like pacing, Legal Fiction is deeply concerned with the psychological depth of grief and disenfranchisement. Pandey portrays Anasuya’s sorrow not as a singular event but as an “ocean that one cannot fathom,” where “copious tears” hang from eyelashes “the way raindrops hang from a clothesline”. The book is also a meditation on the enduring impact of memory. The shared code of remembrance between Arjun and Anasuya symbolize their inability to truly escape the past.
From a critical standpoint, the novel’s pacing in “Day Three” feels significantly rushed compared to the slow-burn atmospheric build up. While the sudden disappearances of a few more characters heighten the tension, the hurried pace leaves little room for the reader to sit with the intriguing plot points already developed in the previous two days.
Furthermore, while Arjun’s moral cowardice is a deliberate thematic choice, his social-media-centric perspective occasionally borders on the repetitive, detracting slightly from the visceral horrors of the physical setting.
The novel’s ending remains open to interpretation. The hints at the desperation for a save “evacuation” underscores the terrifying idea that for some, the only way to find truth is to leave the “jungle” of the settlement behind.
Legal Fiction is a devastatingly sharp look at the darkness in the heart of the Indian heartland. Chandan Pandey has crafted a story that is an elegy for lost idealism and social principles. It challenges the reader to look at their own “fault of the imagination” and ask: in a land where truth goes missing, what role does a writer, or a citizen capable of independent thought, really play?
About Author
Ananya Mahapatra is a psychiatrist and an alumnus of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. She is also a writer. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in anthologies by Readomania and Kitaab International, USAWA Literary Magazine, Quillmark Magazine, and The Hemlock Magazine. She has been Shortlisted and published in prestigious literary prize anthologies – The Bristol Short Story Prize 2022, Deodar Literary Prize 2024.
She also conducts therapeutic reading and reflective writing workshops that harness the psychological depth of literature and the healing potential of expressive writing practices. Through her intersectional work between literature and mental health, she hopes to examine how language and storytelling can become not just a form of expression, but also a means to reclaim one’s identity, emotions and narrative in this world.
The Anatomy of a Disappearance: A Review of Chandan Pandey’s Legal Fiction
Dr. Ananya Mahapatra (M.D Psychiatry)
Bhumika Indulia
The first thing I did after finishing this slim tightly-paced novel within a span of two hours was look up the title – Legal Fiction.
The original Hindi novel written by Chandan Pandey, and first published in 2020 is titled Vaidhanik Galp, An English translation of the novel by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari, was published in 2021. For those interested in the original text, the title literally translates to the English title, Legal Fiction.
For a reader, not educated in the intricacies of law, the title was intriguing and demanded exploration.
Legal fiction, I found out, is a rule that assumes something is true even when it is clearly false. It is a falsehood with purpose, a useful lie, that allows complex systems to work smoothly. I wasn’t sure if I had been able to capture the technical nuances of this specific legal concept, but as a reader, I could sense how the author has masterfully woven this concept as a social metaphor to anchor the plot and characters of his novel centered around the post-truth narratives of a small town in India. Through this gritty social narrative, Chandan Pandey explores the ways through which political interests and “parallel systems” blur the lines between what we know as truth, and what gets labelled as the truth
The novel begins with a provocative disclaimer:
Everything in Legal Fiction is fiction. All that is fiction is fiction, of course, but even the truth is fiction. If the people, stories, places and incidents at any point appear to be true, it is our collective misfortune. We advise you to consider it a fault of the imagination and move on.”
Set in the fictitious town of Noma, that the author describes as a “a mofussil town of less than 25000 people”, this is a novel fashioned as a political thriller. However, as you follow the plot, it turns out to be a devastating existential enquiry into the social, cultural, and political machines behind the erosion of our collective moral fabric as a society.
The plot unfolds over a period of three days, through the eyes of a protagonist who is unflinchingly introspective about his own moral ambivalence.
Noma is a town situated on the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar border. It is no “Malgudi” replete with romanticism and nostalgia. Noma is a “settlement-like town” where the air is thick with “foul smells” at night and the dust never quite settles. Its bombastic hoardings with garishly painted proclamations are a testament of the performative nature of the power brokers in small-towns India.
One hoarding announced a pilgrimage to Kailash–Mansarovar… A huge image of Lord Shiva was printed alongside… To the right of the god, almost as big or perhaps bigger, was a photograph of a young man whose entire manner seemed calculated to convey humility and sincerity…’.
The descriptions of the city and its denizens are meticulously detailed. This is a place of clever imitations (such as a store named “Bigger Bazaar“) symbolizing a society that is constantly pretending to be more modern than it is, even as its social structures remain medieval. It is a “paradise for smugglers and criminals” where borders between states, and as the plot unfolds, between legality and illegality, are creatively blurred.
The novel’s plot is set in motion by a late-night phone call from Anasuya, the protagonist Arjun’s ex-girlfriend, whose husband Rafique Neel has gone missing. What follows is a compelling critique of the systemic forces that define and govern the laws, administration, and portrayals of social structures in such a setting.
Arjun, the narrator, is a fascinatingly flawed and morally ambivalent protagonist. A writer living in Gurgaon, he initially resists going to Noma, held back by past incidents and a general “habit of running away from the present”. When he arrives, he is not a hero but a man who grovels before the law or the lawlessness of those in power.
The social reality of the town is one where “jobs were more precious than lives”. Rafique is an ad-hoc teacher, a position that leaves him vulnerable to the whims of those who yield power. Pandey succinctly exposes the plight of the contractual academic, showing how Rafique’s dedication to theater and literature (specifically the works of Jon Fosse and Mayakovsky) is viewed with suspicion rather than respect by the town’s “intellectuals”.
A harrowing image of police brutality and the dehumanization of women serves as the novel’s moral anchor, where a constable pokes his lathi into the pregnant Anasuya’s belly, asking menacingly, “How far along?”
Arjun’s internal struggle is a mirror for the middle-class reader. He worries about his Facebook image even while a woman’s life is in danger. Perhaps his most ambivalent moment is when he uses Anasuya’s pregnancy as a “weapon” to convince her to leave, realizing that:
“Mankind left no stone unturned in transforming this natural gift of a woman into a curse”.
Despite its taut, thriller-like pacing, Legal Fiction is deeply concerned with the psychological depth of grief and disenfranchisement. Pandey portrays Anasuya’s sorrow not as a singular event but as an “ocean that one cannot fathom,” where “copious tears” hang from eyelashes “the way raindrops hang from a clothesline”. The book is also a meditation on the enduring impact of memory. The shared code of remembrance between Arjun and Anasuya symbolize their inability to truly escape the past.
From a critical standpoint, the novel’s pacing in “Day Three” feels significantly rushed compared to the slow-burn atmospheric build up. While the sudden disappearances of a few more characters heighten the tension, the hurried pace leaves little room for the reader to sit with the intriguing plot points already developed in the previous two days.
Furthermore, while Arjun’s moral cowardice is a deliberate thematic choice, his social-media-centric perspective occasionally borders on the repetitive, detracting slightly from the visceral horrors of the physical setting.
The novel’s ending remains open to interpretation. The hints at the desperation for a save “evacuation” underscores the terrifying idea that for some, the only way to find truth is to leave the “jungle” of the settlement behind.
Legal Fiction is a devastatingly sharp look at the darkness in the heart of the Indian heartland. Chandan Pandey has crafted a story that is an elegy for lost idealism and social principles. It challenges the reader to look at their own “fault of the imagination” and ask: in a land where truth goes missing, what role does a writer, or a citizen capable of independent thought, really play?
About Author
Ananya Mahapatra is a psychiatrist and an alumnus of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. She is also a writer. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in anthologies by Readomania and Kitaab International, USAWA Literary Magazine, Quillmark Magazine, and The Hemlock Magazine. She has been Shortlisted and published in prestigious literary prize anthologies – The Bristol Short Story Prize 2022, Deodar Literary Prize 2024.
She also conducts therapeutic reading and reflective writing workshops that harness the psychological depth of literature and the healing potential of expressive writing practices. Through her intersectional work between literature and mental health, she hopes to examine how language and storytelling can become not just a form of expression, but also a means to reclaim one’s identity, emotions and narrative in this world.
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