Book Review
Deva, Mukul, 2012. RIP.
Westland. Chennai. Pages 286. Price: Rs 200/-
RIP
is the story of the India of our times. It is the story of corruption of our
politicians and civil servants. It holds a mirror to their vulgar greed that
makes them stop at nothing including eliminating whistle-blowers, and even
partners-in-crime if they were thought to be a 'security risk’. In spite
of jumbling locations and people, the scams and the dramatis personae the
novel depicts are too recent to be missed. The names were thinly disguised. Then
there is the dowager, ruling party president who inherited the mantle from her
dead husband, a former prime minister.
From Bofors to
Adarsh Society, (through fodder, 2G, CWG et al.) the
book weaves every scam and political persona involved in them into its
intricate, riveting plot. It includes Anna Hazare’s ‘Indians Against
Corruption (IAC)’ movement too. The only surprise perhaps is the title. It
does not mean, as one would have thought ‘Rest in Peace’, but ‘Resurgent
Indian Patriots’. ‘RIP’ itself may be a take-off from Anna Hazare’s IAC.
But unlike Hazare’s docile, middle-class followers who abhor violence and are
not given to direct action, Deva’s ‘Resurgent Indian Patriots’ do not
baulk at taking direct action and meting out exemplary punishment to the
guilty.
The theme is not
entirely new. Venality and corruption, or rather meting out vigilante justice
to the venal and corrupt in public life has been the subject of several movies.
The Hindi movie, Aan, Men in Action portrayed the politician-civil
servant-underworld nexus and to some extent the issue of corruption. Movies
like Bharatiyudu (Tamil, Telugu and Hindi), Aparichitudu (Tamil
and Telugu) and Tagore (Telugu) dealt with the subject of corruption and
vigilantism. It was in Aparichitudu, Bharatiyudu and Tagore
that retributive justice in a violent form was mooted as an antidote to
corruption. If Bharatiyudu and Aparichitudu had one-man vigilante
armies, Tagore mooted the idea of an anti-corruption army named ‘Anti
Corruption Force (ACF)’, similar to the ‘RIP’ in the novel. The
success of these movies reflects the public mood. If the viewing public cheered
and approved a violent form of vigilantism it was because they were vexed and
saddened by their impotence to rid the society of the scourge of corruption.
In RIP, a
team of former army commandos sets out to purge corruption. The corrupt politicians
hit back by setting the official law enforcement agencies (isn’t the CBI to do
their bidding?) and another set of former army commandos to chase them. Therefore
the first set of (vigilante) commandos have the second set of (mercenary)
commandos and the official CBI on their back, as they pick and choose targets
to strike. Then there is the beautiful woman who links the two commanding
officers as they vie for her charms. From the caveman to the modern man, men
have been vying for beautiful women and a story which has this element never
failed to charm readers. The female protagonist in RIP is a beautiful
television anchor, fighting for her divorce, and by chance caught between her
former husband and new beau.
The book is peppered
with a large number of idioms – disproportionately large number – and appears
to be a laboured attempt to write idiomatic English. It is however not
devoid of jumbled expressions (calling it a night) and borrowed jargon
from SAS, the elite British army commando unit (break a leg).
Mukul Deva strikes a
chord with the clichéd common man when he says that his book was ‘[…] born out of an extreme sense of anger and shame.
Anger at the appalling, naked greed so shamelessly displayed by the Indian
political class. And shame that they happen to be fellow Indians.’ He
certainly resonates with a majority of our countrymen (and women) when he says
he would ‘certainly not condemn anyone who rid
our country of such leaders.’ The book is definitely worth a read
and not priced very high either.
