This new, highly revved first model is Malkani Plc’s launch-vehicle into the cell-fiction market. Touted as the new-tech, Desi-Brit answer to the Scots I-Welsh Group’s classic, monster-selling Trainspotting TS1, this 343-pg medium-fat-boy comes with plenty of surface sass and shiny digit-beads.
It’s intriguing fun when you flip open the thing and dial up the first few pages: the language is rough, direct and straight from the mouths of West London desi delinquent youth: "Shudn’t b callin us Pakis, innit u dirrty gora." Growls one Hardjit as he turns a white kid’s face into keema without sullying his new sneakers, "Hear wat my bredren b sayin, sala kutta? Come out wid dat shit again n I’ma knock u so hard u’ll b shittin out yo mouth 4 real..." This semi-text, quasi-Afro-Carib, baghaaroed with Punjabi gaalis and ‘kuddiyaans’ and ‘munde’, is in the narrative too, not just in the dialogue.