Title: Age of Vice
Author: Deepti Kapoor
Publisher: Juggernaut, 2003
Pages: 548
If you want to meet some of the
vilest characters in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice
is just the novel for you. The novel opens on Delhi’s Inner Ring Road in the
year 2004. Five pavement-dwellers have been run over by a Mercedes car at 3 o’clock
in a cold February night. The man found in the driver’s seat, Ajay, is not the
real killer. He is a convenient proxy for carrying a rich man’s sins.
Ajay is originally
from Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the crime-hub of India. Back in 1991, when Ajay was
only an eight-year-old boy, his father was killed by the goons of the
upper-class landlords who rule the roost in the villages. Ajay was sold by his
mother as a slave. The boy reaches Himachal Pradesh. A few years later, he
finds himself in Goa from where Sunny Wadia takes him to Delhi as his
right-hand man. Delhi – the city of “con men, criminals … ugly and dirty … no
good, (where) only rich people do well, everyone else suffers.”
Sunny is a
playboy who has everything that most Indians cannot even dream of: chic cars,
silken girls, posh mansions, exotic foods and drinks and the whole-hearted
support of con men, criminals as well as politicians. His father, Bunty Wadia,
is the lord of a whole kingdom of those con men, criminals and politicians. And
a whole business empire as well. Bunty’s brother, Vicky, is a dreaded criminal
in UP. Vicky is no ordinary criminal. He is like God: nothing escapes his eyes.
He is omniscient, and omnipotent too.
The Wadias
are the real winners in India where the game is inescapably rigged and the
rules are stacked. These winners make the rules and the politicians ratify them
in the state assemblies or the central parliament. The rules are not for
ensuring the welfare of all Indians; they ensure the welfare of a few select Indians.
These select Indians will do some good too in order to look good in public.
“I was never a goonda,” Vicky says.
“I forget,”
Bunty smiles. “You were a God-man.”
The author
has panache. She carries everything with elegant ease: crime, irony, style,
philosophy, plot, suspense, drama, punch dialogues – you name it. This novel is
as gripping as a Shah Rukh Khan movie. Sunny Wadia possesses all the charms and
elegance and apparent innocence and not-so-apparent cleverness of SRK. He can
adopt a simple Ajay as his protégé and gunman at one time and then make Ajay a
scapegoat when that is convenient for him and still continue to the hero of the
movie – sorry, the novel.
This is
Delhi. Only a few privileged ones can be real winners. The rest are lucky if
they can break even; the majority are losers.
In the end
you are not sure who the real winner is, however.
In a world
that does not have even a single good character, there cannot be any real
winner. There is a character who initially promises to be a good heroine: Neda
Kapur, a Delhi-based journalist. But she gets caught in the shifty charms of
Sunny Wadia and eventually leaves the bad world of the Wadias and reaches
London, funded by Sunny Wadia.
You read this
novel as if you are watching a mega-hit Bollywood movie. You move from action
to action with a lot of anxiety about what is going to happen next. Deepti
Kapoor can keep you hooked to her story. What a style too! Sample this:
Ajay’s mother, Rupa, is
pregnant again.
His elder sister, Hema, tends
to their goat.
This is Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Nineteen ninety-one.
The foothills of Nepal rise in
the north.
The moon is visible long after
dawn.
Before Ajay
took a breath he was already mourned.
Staccato.
I loved this
book and I hated everything in it. It is written in a seductive and gripping
style. It is almost unputdownable. It shows the dirty side of India clearly,
too clearly.
Too clearly –
perhaps therein lies its fault. This is a thriller. So that’s not a fault
really. It’s just that I would have loved to get deeper insights into the heads
and hearts of those three Wadias.
PS.
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Hari Om
ReplyDelete...a page turner, then? YAM xx
Indeed
DeleteSOunds interesting. Will see if I can get hold of it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, no doubt.
DeleteNever heard of this book.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on and stay safe.
This book has been reviewed by the western press quite extensively.
DeleteNot my cup of tea...
ReplyDeleteI can understand.
DeleteI like the way you reviewed and left the choice on readers.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it.
DeleteOk I will read that novel.I love to read good journals like The Rookie Retiree.
ReplyDelete