Inspector Gowda’s Divided City: Space, Inequality, and Crime in Anita Nair’s Bangalore Novels

Abstract

Bengaluru/Bangalore, the capital city of the Indian state of Karnataka, has played a vital role in the advancement of communication and technology across the globe. Following the progressivist logic of neoliberal urbanism, the city evolved from the quiet, placid ‘Pensioners’ Paradise’ into the bustling ‘Silicon Valley of India’ at an accelerated pace. Bangalore’s sudden growth into a global cyberpolis has motivated its recent entry into the realm of crime fiction in English. The current paper draws on this connection and proposes to offer a spatial critique of the crime novels in Anita Nair’s Inspector Gowda series, Cut like Wound (2012) and Chain of Custody (2016), set in Bangalore. To map the transitions in the spatial structures and social relations of this rapidly changing city, it uses interdisciplinary approaches of geocriticism and the postmodern social theories of space. Also, by analysing the representations of residential segregation in Nair’s novels, the paper intends to foreground how social inequalities, gentrification, and ghettoization have contributed to the raging scenario of crime and violence in Bangalore.