A post-pandemic dystopia: review of Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore

You need to take a deep breath before plunging into the “velvet underground” that Tabish Khair has laid out in the guise of a novel. Or as he asks: “What if the doctors of your society infect you with the virus?” The Body by the Shore Tabish Khair Harper Collins ₹399 In the current scenario, Khair moves into a post-pandemic dystopian world in what we are told is Denmark in the 2030s, a bland approximation of a welfare state where everyone is welcome but no one belongs. Khair himself teaches at Aarhus University in Denmark and presumably was involved in a seminar titled ‘Mind, Body and Soul : The Cognitive Sciences and Religion’ that forms a reference point for exploring different ideologies. To some of us, Khair may take off from where Carl Sagan left off when he proclaimed shortly before his death, “We are made of star-stuff,” or that we are children of the stars out there in the vast galaxies whose range and depth we’re only now able to tentatively probe. While interviewing a Maoist living amongst the tribal people of Odisha, she stumbles upon his motto: “Everyone has a share in the good.” As the French might say, Le microbiome c’est moi!