Does overkill really kill the plot?

Book Review 

Sanghi, Ashwin & Patterson, James. (2014). Private India. London. Arrow Books. Pages: 470 (Genre: Crime Fiction) 

The first murder took place at Marine Bay Plaza a Mumbai five star hotel. The hotel called in Private India the Indian branch of Private, the world’s biggest detective agency. Marine Bay Plaza is Private India's regular client for investigative work as it did its job discreetly without the glare of publicity that inevitably followed when official investigation agencies were involved and which  is bad for business in the hospitality industry.

We do not know whether criminal investigations are outsourced to private agencies anywhere in the world except perhaps in crime fiction stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero, Sherlock Holmes described himself as England’s first consulting detective. He used to assist the official law enforcement agencies and while sharing the product kept himself aloof from the limelight and honours. Mumbai police agreed to work with Private India on the understanding that the company should keep it always in the loop and share progress with it regularly. The novel has another similarity with Sherlock Holmes stories. Private India’s head Santosh Wagh has his own band of urchins as informants à la ‘Baker Street Irregulars’.

What is even more surprising is Private India helped Indian intelligence agencies solve terror related cases! This brought it on to the radar of international terrorist organisations. The July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings which killed 213 people brought Santosh Wagh, an officer of  the Indian government’s external investigation agency, ‘Research and Analysis Wing’ more popularly known by its acronym, RAW into contact with Private’s Chairman, Jack Morgan, himself an ex US marine.

Two years later tragedy struck Santosh in the form of an automobile accident that killed his wife and son. As a grief-struck Santosh was on a loose end, Jack hired him to head his company’s Mumbai operations. In no way did the new assignment lessen Santosh’s grief as it is aggravated by self-guilt, borne out of the belief that it was his carelessness that caused the fatal road accident. He has been seeking to anaesthetize his pain-filled nightmares with drink.  

If Santosh thought it was one murder that he had to contend with he was in for a surprise. It was not only one murder after another but also Rupesh Desai, ACP in the crimes division of Mumbai police, a former friend turned villain in his life.

Private India not only employs the very latest in backroom technology — forensics and pathology lab, cyber technology for ethical hacking etc — but also employs gorgeous female operatives like Nisha Gandhe to conduct its investigations. The employees of Private India, it appears — at least attempt to — speak in epigrams. If Santosh cracks, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’; Nisha calls, ‘one woman’s hobby could often be another woman’s hubby’.

The murders pile up. Blackmail, revenge, religious symbolism, underworld-terrorist nexus and a terrorist plot are thrown into the mixer. All in all it is a challenge to the investigative acumen of Private India and its ace-detective chief, Santosh. As readers try to second-guess the mystery by following clues sprinkled throughout the book, they are upon the terror plot.

The book could have done with fewer chapters. It has 116, the last one containing all of four lines, an epilogue and an appendix. And there is so much of James Patterson. Well, does overkill really kill the plot?  

This review is part of the Book Reviews programme at Blogadda.com

Is there a ‘winning formula’ for writing a novel?

Book Review

Singh, Soumitra. 2014. The Child Of Misfortune. Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd. New Delhi. Pages: 327. Price: `350/-

There is a belief that more people bought Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History Of Time’ than read it. For although the good professor tried to simplify the mysteries of the universe as much as he could, there is so much science embedded in the subject that it is difficult for the ordinary reader to follow. Did the readers of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (2003) read it through without skipping pages? Had the book become so popular because of the controversies it created?

‘Catch-22’ has become a catchphrase so much so, it is possible many people do not remember that it is a book title. How many of those who bought the book, which is hailed as a ‘classic bestseller’, were able to read through Captain Yossarian’s adventures? Those who read it through probably include literary geeks interested in writing itself. In his preface to the 1994 special edition Joseph Heller confesses that initially it ‘won no prizes and was not on any bestseller list’. Reviewing it in The New Yorker, Mitchell Goodman tore into it, saying ‘… what remains is a debris of sour jokes …’ and, [Heller] ‘wallows in his own laughter and finally drowns in it.’ But a year after its publication something strange seems to have happened.

In Tipping Point Malcom Gladwell tells the story of the shoe brand ‘Hush Puppies’. The brand was all but dead by 1994 and its makers were about to phase it out, when it suddenly perked up. A few New York kids who wore the shoes to the clubs and bars in downtown Manhattan set the trend. Why did they wear them? They wore them because no one else wore them. Something similar happened to Catch-22. The book sold 300,000 copies in 1963 and the publishers had to go to the press eleven times in all in that year.     

The moot question is, ‘is there a ‘winning formula’ that makes a novel or other literary work a success? It is difficult to answer the question. But even the most popular of writers were tempted to repeat a winning formula they stumbled upon. For example, thematically, Geoffrey Archer’s novels Kane and Abel (1979) and The Fourth Estate (1996) have many similarities, although their plots and settings were quite different. Novelists like P. G. Wodehouse, Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace replicated winning formulae of their earlier novels many times over. The same practice may be seen in the publication of non-fiction books too. Spurred by the success of Is Paris Burning (1965), Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins published two more books in the same vein, history told in an easy to read, casual style: O Jerusalem (1972) and Freedom at Midnight (1975).

A favourite theme of novelists from the 2000s is terrorism. The Child Of Misfortune deals with terrorism in its early stages, but moves on to internet hacking, drug running and money laundering. The whole plot is set with chess as a substrate with the two protagonists playing their moves and counter moves as in a chess game. However, dabbling in too many subjects makes the novel muddled and complex.

The novel centres on three schoolmates Amar Singh Rathore, Jonah Michel and Maansi Agarwal. Amar the son of a ruling politician and Jonah an orphan French expatriate have a running feud throughout their lives, playing moves and countermoves as in a chess match and with Jonah often besting Amar. Maansi who ends up as a journalist with The Times Of India, is in love with Amar. Jonah lures Amar to Ladakh, where he murders a Buddhist monk resulting in Buddhist–Muslim riots. The Al-Qaeda steps in to destabilise Kashmir assisted by Indian Mujahideen volunteers. There are quite a few terror groups operating in Kashmir, but Indian Mujahideen? The plot meanders from Ladakh to Srinagar to Seoul to London with Jonah playing advanced chess moves and Amar and Maansi who has by now expressed her love for him, following. In Seoul they pick up an ace internet hacker, Kang, who joins the plot. He can, not only hack into any computer and website in the world to steal data, but can photographically trace the movements of the villains on his laptop. It is as if the whole world is wired, something the dystopian world of Nineteen Eighty-Four did for sound!

The novel abounds in ‘computer typos’ like her for hair and principal for principle. What is dividistic? Did the author mean divisive? Surely, those who have the runs cannot go for jogging! Does a ‘grassroots example’ mean every day or commonplace example? Is a ‘debate opposition team’ an opposing team in a debating competition? What is ‘second-kinds’? After a time one gives up noting errors in language, grammar and syntax. The novel could do with editing and thorough rewriting.  

Isn’t it a given that a novelist should not name existing political parties in the interest of strict political neutrality? 

This review is part of the Book Reviews programme at Blogadda.com

First Person Singular: ‘Thank You!’

This is to say ‘Thank you!’

VOXINDICA was voted BlogAdda’s ‘BEST POLITICAL BLOG IN INDIA’ in the Win14 contest.

This is to say ‘Thank you!’ to the eminent jury that voted VOXINDICA. 

This is to say ‘Thank you!’ to Blog Adda.  

But first and foremost, I would like to say ‘Thank you!’ to you, ‘Dear reader’, for your patience and patronage over the years.

A prime reason for starting VOXINDICA was the negation of space for the ‘right of centre’ views in the mainstream media.

As an aside, the word ‘mainstream’ is perhaps a misnomer. Indian Media, both electronic and print, is highly fragmented. Consider these statistics: India has 825 television channels which together command a television viewing universe of 500 million at an average of 6,06,060. Similarly, India has 82,237 newspapers, with a combined circulation of 329 million (2010-11) with a per capita of 4003. Each fraction of the MSM, at best, represents a partisan view, defined by a certain commerce-driven social and political code of conduct.

The reasons for the media to be dominated by the left-liberal crowd can only be surmised. John Storey’s observation that ‘cultural studies’ is itself grounded in Marxism might be true even in the Indian context.     

Here is an instance of how intolerant can the mainstream media be: During late 2011 and early 2012, I was contributing a series of articles for an English language daily. The Op-Ed page editor was all praise for my work and was insisting that I should contribute at least one piece every week. Indeed, he had published 12 of my articles in about three months, between October 11, 2011 and January 8, 2012. However, realization dawned on him that I was not one of those card carrying members of the left-liberal club, when I submitted an article on the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits. It was in the third week of January 1989 that the systematic cleansing of the Pandits in the Kashmir valley began. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to write a piece on their plight in the third week of January (2012). In my piece, I suggested that the humanitarian disaster that befell the Pandits was a genuine example of genocide, although the term genocide was used, abused and misused over and over again during the last decade with reference to the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. This was what I wrote:

Our intellectuals and media crib and caw about the settlements in West Bank and Gaza and the injustices done to the Palestinians, but not a whisper from them about the fate of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits. No group of prominent public figures had petitioned on their behalf; no celebrity authors cried in their defence. They were once the elite of the Kashmiri society. The community produced artistes and artisans, poets and musicians, doctors and lawyers of amazing wisdom. At the turn of the century there were about a million Kashmiri Hindus in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. At the time of independence the proportion of Hindus in the Kashmir valley was 15% of the population. By 1991 it came down to less than 1%. 

The word “genocide” has been worn out in popular usage during the last decade. It has been so freely bandied about in public discourse that it lost its original meaning. If ever there was a context for it to be justifiably applied, it was in the case of the Kashmiri Pandits. ‘Genocide’ means, ‘the systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of an entire national, racial, religious, or ethnic group’. This is what happened to the ethnic identity called the Kashmiri Pandits. 

I could not make out whether it was the first paragraph or the second or both that got the editor’s goat, but after the submission of the article he bluntly informed me that he would no longer publish my articles. He gave me some specious explanation as to why he would not accept the piece: ‘schools and colleges are reopening in Kashmir and the situation is returning to normal.’ Schools and colleges might be reopening, and the situation might be returning to normal but wasn’t it with an important segment of the society completely ostracized? I tried to explain the topicality and the human interest involved in the story, but he would not give me a chance to get in a word edgewise. He had already made up his mind. He dismissed me with the usual anodyne.

The newspaper later commissioned one of those dyed-in-the-wool left-liberal writers to write a weekly column on minority affairs. Aren’t Hindus a minority in Kashmir? Well, that is India’s mainstream media!

In his eponymous title, ‘Can We Trust The BBC?’, Roger Aitken pointed out that there is a tendency on the part of the mainstream media to screen out ‘inconvenient other versions of the truth’. This is what India’s mainstream media did in its coverage of the Gujarat riots of 2002. Quite a few readers of VOXINDICA were surprised to read in Gujarat riots and the ‘secular’ Galahads of justice that it was Eqbal Ishan Jaffri who precipitated the Gulmarg society seize by opening fire with his licensed revolver, killing two and injuring thirteen people.

VOXINIDICA debuted on June 30, 2005. Over the decade, a spectrum of issues and various genres were covered. It has a small, dedicated and - going by the comments posted on the articles - intelligent readership, not necessarily always agreeing with the viewpoints presented. Here is a comment posted anonymously by a reader. It points to the direction of reader expectations, especially from VOXINDICA.        

“I normally refrain myself from commenting on blogs … … … I am afraid I can’t hide my disappointment anymore over the fact that you have, of late, inclined more towards book reviews than commenting on current affairs.

At a time when there is a dying need for the articulation of the centre-of-the-right’s views on every issue, especially in the English language, we cannot afford to … digress and take the easier route of book reviews. I hope you find your zest once again … … … [to write] commentary on current media/political affairs … … …”

 

The comment was posted on June 7, 2012 on the article, Lies, Damn Lies & Reporting Gujarat.

I have posted several articles on the issue of M. F. Hussain’s paintings, which discussed the limits to freedom of expression and the secular polity’s selective demand for its application.

The articles, which quite a few readers disagreed with were, quite predictably, Indo-US Nuclear Deal Demystified, Foreign investment in retail, boon or bane?, Federalism and National Security and Temples, Toilets & Minority Politics. The four articles on the formation of Telangana, Telangana & Political Ploys, Formation of Telangana, Claims & Counterclaims, Murder of Democracy and Congress And BJP Gang Up To Derail Democracy, Shame Parliament quite appropriately evoked mixed responses depending on which side of the divide a reader is.

I take this opportunity to thank Mr. S. Kiran Kumar for contributing Gujarat riots saw many bloodier riots before 2002, the only article that was not written by me and one of the most popular posts on this blog.

U. Narayana Das