

Identity Politics of South Asian Enclaves
45
culture (2006a: 5-6). At the same time, they make money secretly
and illegally by unlocking stolen cell phones and, later in the novel,
unknowingly become involved in some serious crimes.
If we may judge a book by its cover, the “desi” (from Sanskrit
for “countryman”), consisting of these rudeboys and other
characters who share an Indian diasporic cultural identity, may be
judged by their houses. Door decorations clearly reveal residents’
religious beliefs, as some houses “had got Om symbols stuck on the
wooden front doors behind glass porches,” others “had Khanda
Sahibs,” and still others “had the Muslim crescent moon” (Malkani,
2006a: 17). Furthermore, the first-person narrator Jas informs us,
when there is no symbol on the front door, “you could still tell if it
was a desi house if there was more than one satellite dish. One for
Zee TV an one for Star Plus, probly” (2006a: 17). These indicators
of cultural identity are visual and, to critics skeptical of the
practices of Orientalism in the West, these may appear as
superficial and stereotypical as the “daal an subjhi smell” that the
narrator believes “can tell if someone was home” (2006a: 17). And
yet, hearing from Jas, who has claimed to be a desi himself and
joined the other rudeboys in beating the white boy in the opening
scene, most readers may be liable to believe that these identity
indicators are adequately self-evident and authentic. The irony, as
the reader is surprisingly informed in the last three pages of the
novel, is that the narrator, Jas, is actually not a desi, but a white
British teenager who, while aspiring to a sense of belonging with
the rudeboys, is assimilated into the desi culture of Indian diaspora.
The constructed desi identity that the white narrator Jas performs
and plays with in the novel may thus lead one to question what is
an “authentic” desi identity. More importantly, Jas also serves to
challenge the policies of multiculturalism that, since their early
development in post-World War II Britain, “have then been built
upon, and are a response to, racial and other visible differences”
(Cantle, 2012: 77).
Interestingly, some reviewers’ criticisms of Malkani’s