I was a little apprehensive when I started reading Dreams For The Dying. My worry was what if I can not recommend the book. After all, C.K. Meena has been my teacher in journalism school. But a few pages into the book, I was hooked. The simple prose and the humour at seeing the familiar in unfamiliar ways, without flinching even in the face of a murder, is what takes the reader on a rollicking ride through the pages. Every thing and every body in the book is turned on its head, showing us aspects of people which we might not notice in real life, we might ignore in the urgency of the action in which they are involved. But Meena pauses, dwells on characters, brings out the nuances and breaks the stereotypes,all the while tickling your ribs.

Meena does not construct the humour, she does not even force it. It is just the way she looks at the world, with mirth and sensitivity. Set in Chennai, Kerala, partly in Bangalore and on trains, the book has a simplicity which reminds one of R K Narayan, and is a murder mystery, with the charm of Karamchand (the TV serial and character). For anyone who is familiar with Chennai, Meena brings alive the location: Sunrise Apartments on Subhashini Street, opposite Elite Hotel. For those not familiar, Meena paints an excellent, nuanced portrait of the place.

The story is apparently simple: on a Monday morning, a thirtyish woman, Uma, is murdered when she is alone in her flat. Uma, does not fit the image of the regular Chennai woman who works at an insurance company and comes back to a loving husband. Her office colleagues thinks she lives in a ladies hostel, while she really is living in with VK. VK is an already divorced, feminist, college professor in literature with a teen-aged daughter and also writes short stories and arranges poetry-reading meetings with friends over weekends. One of his incomplete stories, ‘Lying In The Flat’, starts with: she looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

Uma would take weekend trips to see her mother and on the train read Hrudayam; a magazine whose USP is forbidden love. Uma had figured out that no one borrowed Hrudayam with its masthead that showed ‘an apple shape heart sliced horizontally with a black javelin, the tip of which was a snake’s head with tongue extended’ and it was an effective question-repellent. Uma was a private person who watched Discovery channel when she had her meals. ‘She welcomed the company, sort of like fellow diners at the same table. One creature died so another could survive, strangled or ripped apart or swallowed whole or ingested inch by painful inch.’ In her diary she wrote about the predatory habits of insects and animals and reptiles.

U. Nathan shortened from Mr Ulaganathan, was walking the steps when he saw someone come to and leave the site of the murder. U. Nathan lived in the opposite flat behind a brass name plate – the kind with a little lever that moved to In and Out. The nameplate travelled with him over 15 years from his government job and rented flat in Chetpet to his one single-bedroom flat here.

We are joined by Magnum Magesh (Sub Inspector Mageshwaran) who stocks a year’s non-ordinary size refills for his multi-refill ballpoint pen – blue for text, red to circle, green to underline. Magesh tries to decode hints from Uma’s diary but most of the entries are about wildlife, interspersed with gory details and ghastly poems, and littered with other people’s names but no thoughts about her own self. Then there are numbers, some of which are encircled. The murder which seemed simple, becomes complex.

There are clues, and there are variations and spin-offs, and further connections. The case keeps getting layered, the texture of the novel changes from being simple humour with a close attention to detail to a surreal, a complex plot. What stands up is a vivid, complex, psychological world in which identities and personas get mixed up as the reader moves from witnessing the murder to almost peeking into Uma’s mind. The book moves from being one about the external world and its events to one which lays bare the recesses of the mind of those involved in the story.

Finally, like murder mysteries go, it is solved. When it is solved what we remember is the brilliant characters. Like Magesh thinks of Uma: ‘he doubted if he would encounter someone as interesting as her in all his life. And he hadn’t really met her. That was the problem with his job. Intriguing people, by the time he met them, were likely to be dead’.

The only difficulty with the book is its many characters. In chapter after chapter the reader is introduced to one character after another and it becomes difficult to keep track of them. As one reads on, most of the characters do fit and make sense, but the story could have been easier to grasp if some of them had been omitted. Also, the title of the book could have been crisper and indicative of a murder mystery than a poetic piece.

In a review of a murder mystery it is difficult to say more without revealing the plot or story so I will leave it to readers to buy the book and figure out the murderer. It is worth a quick read on a train journey, and unlike with <<Hrudayam>>, this time other passengers might want to take a look at the book in your hand.

Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Sepia Leaves (Rupa)