A strange, ethereal novel in which a woman’s life changes when she finds a stranger’s discarded underwear in her wardrobe
A woman moves into a flat in Kolkata and finds “a panty” in the wardrobe that, due to unforeseen circumstances, she is forced to wear. To her surprise, she “steps into another woman”, the original owner, whose sex life mingles with her own. So begins Panty, a strange, ethereal novel comprised of dream-like strands that branch off from and feed one another. The woman engages only with a few nameless characters and a homeless family. This Kolkata is dark and desolate, a sprawling limbo in which the woman’s loneliness is reflected. The writing, translated by Arunava Sinha, is unsettlingly direct and the book’s most erotic sections straddle the border between disturbing and beautiful (“you fit your mouth to her right nipple and suck out all her suffering”). Bandyopadhyay’s poetic style disarms, and events blend and combine organically. As the protagonist quietly unravels, the language becomes more uncertain (“perhaps the sun was setting”). Panty is an unnerving, ominous and beautiful meditation on the loneliness of modern life.
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