From the high priest of the wild and the wacky comes a new novel that is, if possible, even higher in the wackiness quotient! Taking the reader on a breathless spin down its 200-odd pages, Mumbai Roller Coaster by Rajorshi Chakraborti lives up amply to its title.
It is evident at the very onset that this novel boasting of an all-juvenile cast of characters is aimed at a teen-aged readership. A couple of middle-aged characters (in the form of parents) drift in and out of the plot but they are clearly superfluous. The novel begins on a high-octane note with the protagonist hanging from a parapet by his finger-tips, making an undignified descent to ground level soon after and running for his life even as he escapes a bullet by the skin of his teeth. And thus begins a madcap caper across the city of Mumbai with a fair-sized chunk spanning across to faraway Berlin.
The two main characters, Rahul and his girlfriend (and later reluctant partner-in-crime busting) Zeenat, are high-school students who like to spend private moments in an abandoned building in suburban Mumbai. So far, so good…. Arguments on very conceivable topic, erupt aplenty between the couple but they are of a trivial nature.
Thriller
On a day of romantic rendezvous, Rahul suddenly finds blood spots on his shirt. Climbing up the dilapidated building to investigate, he discovers a still-warm corpse. As he rushes away from the site of crime, a car comes cruising along the road and Rahul locks gazes with the driver. Convinced that the driver is at the heart of the murder, he manages to flee but not before setting off a chain of mind-boggling events. These involve all manner of things from donning a lungi and walking with an upturned boat on the head as an elaborate form of disguise, squishing in Mumbai's filthiest areas of sewage down to nearly stepping on sleeping donkeys in the dead of the night. Zeenat has her own share of surrealistic experiences as she passes through nameless unmanned airport terminals and even witnesses phantom trains heading for mysterious destinations.
The news reports in the newspapers and television reveal the corpse found in the crumbling building to have belonged to a cop and Rahul is convinced that the whole affair is an inside job. As he hops from one ill-conceived plan to the next in an effort to crack the case, dragging Zeenat along, the reader can only marvel at the sheer foolhardiness of the juvenile protagonist, a trait that in due course of time splits apart the couple for a while. Zeenat (along with her parents), meanwhile, is abducted by a mysterious but thoroughly affable stranger, taken to a deserted airstrip and flown out to Berlin where an astonishing international conspiracy is waiting to embrace her. The two plots run tantalizingly close and parallel before colliding with a great deal of combustion towards the climax.
Rahul as the brash, bumbling teenager who thinks nothing of blundering into areas where angels may fear to tread is all too identifiable as is the practical sober Zeenat with an academic bend of mind. Though this novel may be reminiscent of an Enid Blyton mystery story with a dash of teenaged romance thrown in for good measure, at its core is the now-off now-on love story of Rahul and Zeenat. Mini-skirt clad bombshells alighting from buses and accidental smooches at a party (with the wrong person) lend the right doses of hormones to this adolescent caper. Chakraborti's little heart-to-heart asides at the deplorable ways of his young characters are hugely entertaining and draw the reader into the author's personal circle of warmth. The roles of parents and friends in the lives of a young couple are well etched and the entire novel, despite the early presence of a corpse and a bloody end, has a feel-good quality to it. Familiar landmarks, a generous use of local lingo and passing references of Hindi films give a very Mumbaiyya feel to the novel but Chakraborti chooses to gloss over rather than unveil the true soul of this great city.
Breezy read
The plot is a veritable mosquito-net; too many holes and too little fabric. But in spite of this, it is impossible not to get carried away by the Chakraborti brand of madness and audacity. The novel captivates from the beginning to the end, though at all times it appears to totter dangerously on the edge of sanity. Anything and everything can happen here and anything and everything does! A light breezy read, it is not necessary to switch off phones or the television in order to absorb the contents with single-minded concentration. It might be advisable to disconnect the intellect and the rational hemisphere of the brain, however, and indulge in a spot of willful derangement if one plans to board this roller-coaster ride of sheer lunacy.
