I download the video. I mute the audio before replaying it frame by frame, in dread, in desperation. I watch it four times. It is not me. It is my fucking face. Amrita Chaturvedi goes by Amy. Amy identifies as a communist on Twitter (her bio omits a cameo on reality TV and millionaire daddy who runs the show at Delhi High Court). When a deepfake porno of her ‘forwarded many times’ by WhatsApp aunties goes viral, the truth finally catches up. On her birthday, Amy, and allies – a Dalit, a consenting adult code-named the Child Solider, and white trustafarian India – battle a stoning in the digital town square that could cancel even Kim Kardashian. Her executioners? An unhinged cartel of virgins styling themselves after V for Vendetta – except these anonymous keyboard warriors are on a merciless crusade to eradicate desi jezebels and Make India Hindu Again. A literary provocation about incels, influencers and AK-47s where the online turns offline turns bloody, Fieldwork as a Sex Object is not a novel you read but a novel that reads you. It invites every one of us to ask ourselves how much we’re prepared to risk for our principles.
