Rajesh C. Oza’s debut novel, ‘Double Play On the Red Line,’ examines America’s social justice system through a touching story of two men of color.
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Double Play On the Red Line
Authors, especially first-time authors, tend to borrow from their own lives when they create fiction, which often veers towards the autobiographical.
Rajesh C. Oza, whose debut novel, ‘Double Play on the Red Line’, is out this month, has, by his own admission, “a lot of worlds to pull on,” including Mumbai —where he was born in 1960, Canada — where his family migrated when he was six, Evanston — the suburb of Chicago he moved to at nine, and California — his home since the 1980s.
His book, which is a work of historical fiction, tells the story of Ernie, a Black man who is wrongfully convicted of murder, and his friend Ratan, an Indian immigrant professor who makes it his mission to uncover the truth.
Baseball, a major theme
The title ‘Double Play on the Red Line’ alludes to baseball, a major theme in the novel, and to Chicago’s public transport system. It has been published by Third World Press, a Chicago-based press that has been publishing Black and African-centered literature since 1967.
As the story unfolds, the reader is confronted with several anthropological realities of the East and the West, like racism, colorism, caste, immigration, and misplaced nationalism. To Oza, India and America — each embodied in his protagonists — are both flawed yet endearing nations.
“They’re forever projects,” he said in an interview with India Currents.
The friendship between the two characters also makes one think hard about racial amity; mixed-race friendships, especially between Black and brown men, are still not very common.
The epicenter of the novel is Wrigley Field, a well-known baseball stadium in Chicago, which becomes the scene of the crime for which Ernie is convicted, ultimately laying waste to a potentially glorious baseball career.
To Oza, Wrigley Field represents all that is great about America — “the pastoral beauty, the game, the fact that communities come together to root, the fact that two immigrants can sit next to each other and compare notes” — and, in equal measure, that which is toxic about America — most prominently, racism.
Early experience of immigration
Oza’s own early experience with immigration clearly has influenced his writing. “When I moved to Canada, there wasn’t a single person of color in my class; everyone was snow white, except me and my siblings,” said Oza. “When we moved to Evanston, the classroom was 60% white, 39% Black, one Hispanic guy, and one Indian (Raj himself); and that really informed my sense of what this character (Ratan) is about. He’s trying to make sense of this American world… since I was nine years old, I’ve been trying to make sense of this.”
Today, at 65, he’s still trying to make sense of issues like racial inequity and social justice. “This novel is a big part of the sense-making,” he said.
The idea for the plot of the novel came from ‘The Innocence Project,’ a journalism program his daughter Anupama participated in as an undergraduate at Northwestern 18 years ago.
Inspired by the works of Ray
Inspiration also came from the work of Satyajit Ray, who famously said his movies have no villains, only humans with grey shades. “I’ve tried to carry that spirit in my novel,” he said. Outside of the American social justice system, which is perhaps the proverbial bad guy in the context of his novel, there are no heroes or villains in the story.
Among the authors he admires are names like Saul Bellow — with whom he shares a Canada and Chicago connection — R.K.Narayan and writers who speak to the Indian experience outside India like Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, and, in a more obtuse way, V.S. Naipaul.