The Light at the End of the World and Dream Language
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The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb is about India, colonialism, violence, climate disaster, historical tragedies, futuristic technology, and supernatural marvels. It encompasses four different timelines, but I'm going to talk about the opening section, which is set in a slightly futuristic Delhi and follows Bibi, a disillusioned ex-journalist, who sets out to find a colleague who has disappeared.
There's a lyrical dreaminess to the prose that I'd like to investigate.
But when Bibi emerges from the underground station into Connaught Place, she is the one who is an alien, a mermaid tentatively exploring the upper reaches of an infinite but incredibly cluttered sea. The neon signs of the shops, lit even during the day, have a blurry sunken glaze to them. Above them, the white buildings tower, like fragments of a ship glimpsed in a foggy ocean, adrift without functioning navigation instruments, endlessly circling the concentric rings of Connaught Place in the hope that its distress signals will be answered, its position traced.
First, it's a beautifully strange image: city as ocean, buildings as ships. But it's also constructing a different sort of reality through the description. We have words like blurry, glaze, foggy, and adrift. These pull us away from certainty, into the halfway world of mist.
I think the structure of the sentences contribute to this feel. Their sequential clauses don't pin down facts, but pile up imagery, drifting further and further into the space of the uncertain. By the time I reach the end of the passage, I have almost forgotten that the sentences are describing buildings in a city–I am lost with the ship in the ocean.
And what is the (ostensible) purpose of this ocean? What is the purpose of describing the buildings as a ship? It's to extend the metaphor of Bibi as mermaid. But we move so far from that idea about Bibi that we are as alien and lost as she is. When we get to those concentric circles, it feels like we've moved away from Bibi in a spatial sense as well as metaphysically. She's just emerging from the station, but we're circling far from her–in Connaught Place and also in a vast ocean.
There's the drift of narrative distance, as well. The POV is a third-limited that aligns with Bibi, but also stretches in a way that can feel like Bibi's imagination taking over or like a separate voice that knows more than she does. The voice zooms deliberately, so that we gradually move away from certainty and into dream and speculation. Our feet are on the ground but then they are washed from beneath us as the water pulls us out and away.
These sentences work through a particular logic of linking. We don't stick to a central idea, but reach further with each clause, connected only to the previous moment. That's how dreams work too. And it's how one becomes lost.
But it's also a way of reaching a different truth. The thoughts aren't stretching randomly, but circling an idea. They give us fragmentary glimpses of a mystery that can't be looked at more directly, and thus evoke something stranger and more true. This sense is intensified by the direct mention of concentric rings and endless circling.
We're meant to feel lost–like Bibi feels generally, like that ship is specifically. But there's a productive contradiction there, as well. The lost ship circles as if searching for something, but the hope is the reverse–that somebody else searches for it. Soon Bibi will be both searching and sought. But which is desirable? A moment like this might complicate the reader's response to such a question.
The passage describes a ship that is whole but appears in pieces because of a fog that blocks the complete view. Still, my mind captures literal ship fragments, floating independently–maybe that's why the equipment is broken, I think! The fragmentation creates an even greater sense of isolation, of alienation, and of being lost.
Also of note, the mermaid only explores the "upper reaches" of the infinite ocean. Why specify that unless you want us to think of what might be hidden below? It's another way to gesture to the unknown or unknowable.
There's additional strangeness within the dreaminess. What we do glimpse is off kilter. A tentative mermaid, for example, feels like a contradiction because so many stories depict mermaids as curious and carefree. Another image that holds opposing forces is the idea of lights that are on during the day. And something as vast as an ocean is somehow capable of being cluttered. I both question the idea of that and accept it as true, helped along by phrases like "incredibly cluttered," which feels cluttered with its abundance of syllables and the sharpness of the repeated hard c.
Most important, this language isn't just lovely; it's connected to what is happening in the book. When the story opens, we learn that Bibi has been sleeping an exorbitant amount–both physically and metaphorically. A few pages after the passage I've examined, we get the following:
The stories she has read urge Bibi to wake up, to begin paying attention again, to realize that the haze around her obscures what otherwise would be quite obvious. A gradual dissolving of the boundary between the fantastic and the real is in progress.
And so here we are.
Although the elegance of the prose continues, a bit of the dreamy haze lifts in the chapters that follow. Bibi becomes more awake, and the world becomes a bit more clear–though no less strange.
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