by Abhai Maurya

This is a macro-novel, covering an encyclopaedic span of Indian life in the last quarter of the 20th century.

The narrative revolves around the rise of an idealistic hero, a firebrand revolutionary.
Then the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ had a great fall!.. He devised innovative theories of doing it the socialist way – ‘squeezing big sharks and feeding small fish’, ‘robbing a robber’.

The plot is woven around multi-strand characters, meandering through the eternal predicaments – love and hate, sublime and sinister, loyalty and treachery, sincerity and perfidy.
Numerous ontological questions haunt the characters as they charter out their life’s path. What is the Occident and what is the Orient? Where does the happiness in life lie? Is it in sex as a divine power? Is it in hallucinatory world of opiates? Can the godmen, cultmen, TM… lead one to happiness?

The story takes the characters through the Emergency, reminding them of the Stalinist repression.

Questions tease one inexorably. Who rules the society – teachers with no rating in marriage market? Justiciary? Bureaucrats? Businessmen? Journalists? Politicians? People?…

There are glimpses of how the two B’s – business and bureaucracy work in tandem and how they are system neutral, country neutral.