This book comes at a time when its relevance can hardly be debated. Madhav Tripathi’s thriller-fantasy touches a chord especially in these days when free speech and liberal values seem to be under attack in India. It addresses issues of religious fanaticism, farmer suicides, lopsided development, attack on freedom of speech and spiritual crisis of the educated elite.
The beginning has a Kafkaesque feel to it, as Madhav Tripathi, the young, bright bureaucrat, finds strange things happening to him without any reason. He loses his way and ends up in an unfamiliar part of the town. People look strangely at him and a policeman takes him away. When Tripathi awakes, he finds himself in a room facing a man who claims to have abducted him. The man is a small-time journalist he once met at a party. Tripathi is flummoxed that somebody he hardly knows would want to harm him.
Hereafter, Tripathi finds his life getting complicated and weirder. A long-lost school friend emerges from the past as some kind of a madman hell-bent on showing him the reality. His ex-girlfriend, Nisha, resurfaces and takes him to the slum where she lives and works as a washerwoman. And then there is a mysterious person wants to kill Tripathi and people close to him including his present girlfriend Shivani, who loves to dance. As the story unfolds, the mystery deepens further. The threads of the narrative appear to get entangled. In fact, portions in the story will leave the reader totally confused and exasperated. But then, like with all thrillers, the urge to move on to know the truth is very strong.
What Sudarshan does brilliantly is to weave pertinent issues into the story. Like that of ecological degradation and land rights. Then there is widespread poverty and corruption. And towards the end, when the Secretary, his boss, and Tripathi are in Paris hiding from their tormentors, they voice their concern about the “religious fundamentalists, guardians of morality and self-appointed censors” who are responsible for their present state.
Tripathi’s persecution happens at various levels. At one level, it is the physical persecution when he is chased by an army of mutated people crying for his blood. Then, there is psychological persecution when he lives in fear of being killed and his girlfriend Shivani harmed. At the emotional level, his former girlfriend makes him realise his betrayal. Tripathi is repeatedly made conscious of his guilt, both at a personal and professional level. And it’s not just him who is being persecuted. Even the assailants represent the persecuted lot of common people who have been deprived of their basic rights or subjected to harassment by an apathetic bureaucracy. The story is as much about Tripathi’s misfortune as it is a searing attack on the lassitude of bureaucrats who forget their duty towards the common man.
Sudarshan writes effortlessly and that makes it easy reading but the concept and the many layers can get confusing at times. Since it’s not like the usual thrillers, it gets tough to keep the interest intact. But, overall, it is a book that tells a story with a familiar resonance and addresses the crises that society faces today. It’s definitely a brave attempt to weave in the modern-day concerns into this thriller.
