Skip to main content

Prophet of Love


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community for Indian Bloggers


Book Review

Book                : Prophet of Love
Author             : Farrukh Dhondy
Publisher         : Harper Collins India, 2013
Pages               : 314
Price                : Rs 299

Religion is an interesting subject of study and it can be studied from many different perspectives such as psychology, sociology, spirituality and literature.   For the vast majority of people none of these perspectives matters apparently.  For the vast majority, religion is an illusion or a placebo that provides the much needed solace during times of turbulence and anguish.  There is a minority who seek and discover genuine spiritual meaning with the help of religion.  There is another group of people who make religion the source of their livelihood.

Farrukh Dhondy’s novel is about the last group primarily.  Mr Bhavnani and Ms Shanti are the typical commercial agents of religion.  They know how to sell religion.  They make wealth out of it, and nothing less than fabulous wealth.  The protagonist of the novel is Bhagwan Saket and he is not trying to make wealth.  He is superficial both emotionally and intellectually.  He has read much and was even a teacher of philosophy for some time in a college.  But his knowledge remains untouched by the profundity that only life’s experiences can provide.  He has no experience of love; he had been separated from his mother as an infant.  He lived in a monastery in the Himalayas till the age of 7.  Later he obtained education with the help of scholarships.  He never dreamt of becoming a godman. Mr Bhavnani and Ms Shanti catapult Rahul the loafer into Saket the godman.  Saket possesses a charm and an eloquence which can draw a lot of wealthy Westerners as disciples.  Saket eventually becomes the wealthiest godman in India owning a fleet of luxury cars gifted by his devotees.

There is enough hint in the novel that Bhagwan Saket is modelled on Bhagwan Rajneesh who later became Osho.  Saket’s empire is also situated in “a quiet suburb of Poona.” 

Dhondy succeeds in portraying vividly the dark underbelly of a godman’s empire.  Godmen like Bhagwan Saket found cults which become “the religion of the lost children.”  The words “lost” and “children” are significant.  In the case of Bhagwan Saket, the people who flock to him are those who lost their moorings in their original culture and religion, mostly because they seldom cared to discover their roots.  They are also quite childish in their yearnings for love and attention.

There is another godman in the novel who is put to death by his commercial managers when he is no more able to deliver lectures and thus rake in the moolah.  The followers of that godman are mostly widows and old men who are not wanted by their children.  Religion is the refuge of the lost people, people who fail to discover themselves clearly.

Prophet of Love is a suspense thriller at one level.  At another, it throws ample light on the world of certain godmen and other similar frauds.  The world that Dhondy throws open to the readers is so bizarre that it may seem incredible and improbable in many places.  That is a drawback of the novel. 

The novel arouses the reader’s curiosity right from page one and sustains it to the end.  How far the reader will be satisfied will depend on his/her religious inclinations, intellectual proclivity and literary tastes.  Those who are not familiar with the world of religious fraudsters but are interested in a ringside view will find the book highly rewarding.  



 Acknowledgement: Thanks to Harper Collins India for sending me a free copy of the book in association with the Book Review Project of Indiblogger.
Labels:

Comments

  1. NjkinnySeptember 26, 2013 at 11:09 PM

    Wow..Brilliantly reviewed...I will surely read the book now.. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 27, 2013 at 7:46 AM

      All the best. I'm sure you'll find it a provocative book. I had visited Osho's ashram in Poona in the early 80s. I could revisit it now through this book!

      Delete
  2. desi TravelerSeptember 26, 2013 at 11:57 PM

    Interesting and timely considering the once again a godmen has been proven to be fraud in real life...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 27, 2013 at 7:47 AM

      Most godmen are after wealth and opulence. There are exceptions. Dhondy presents a godman whose interest is not in wealth and opulence which he gets as mere byproducts.

      Delete
  3. UnknownOctober 8, 2013 at 1:53 PM

    Seriously, one day you will make me broke with the reviews of all these books :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 8, 2013 at 9:57 PM

      I only wish for more time to read more books, Pankti.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...
6 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 comments
Read more