Jessica Lal, Manu Sharma, Sanjeev Nanda, Salman Khan, Barkha Dutt, petty-criminals from UP, the 'Page-three' celebrities, the Underdogs of Indian Political System - What you get when you combine these pieces together? Vikas Swarup's latest - Six Suspects - adds these together (in a fictitious sort of way) to give yet another piece leading the reader into the nooks and corner of India which we daily witness, discover and revel.
In this one too, Swarup presents a style similar to that in Q&A, in that the story looks back from a particular event and then uncovers its way to describe the present. As the title goes, Six Suspects revolves around these six (of course!) characters, distinct in every way, each of their stories compelling enough with whodunnit at the core. One thing they all have in common is Vivek aka 'Vicky' Rai - complete playboy industrialist and bollywood producer - who is killed on the eve of his birthday party at Number Six, his famous farm house at the outskirts of Delhi. And as a matter of fact, our six protagonists happen to be at that party, and some of them with the intention of killing the casanova! So while the book takes us through the journey of these unique individuals, it goes way beyond 'who killed Vicky Rai'.
So who are these six suspects?
1. An American tourist whose tales take us through the realms of being cheated by the 'Indians', the country's call centers in Mumbai to the peak of terrorism in Kashmir and above all, his 'Americanism' in between all that. About to marry his 'pen-friend', he lands into this 'inscrutable' country not knowing what likes ahead; oh and he also happens to share his name with the Google entrepreneur - Larry Page.
2. An indigenous tribal from Andaman whose travelog involves cutting through the gritty regions of the 'non-tribal' India that he is bewelidered by and somehow this character makes the reader realize the facets of India not known to its own people.
3. A corrupt bureaucrat who serves on the board of Vicky Rai's company and by a sheer accident of sorts, is amusingly transformed into the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi that leads him to Gandhigiri in splits.
4. A Bollywood starlet for whom Vicky Rai has a special inkling, an indecent proposal of sorts, that she reluctantly accepts. Maybe, there is a hidden motive there?
5. A small-thief caught in the angst of rich versus poor, love versus hatred; whose fate leads him into a situation that is beyond what he could fathom.
6. Finally the father of the deceased and also the home minister of UP - Jagannath Rai - who has very strong inclination in having his own son dead.
With a gun found from each of these suspects at the scene of the murder, the book takes us through a roller-coaster journey into the lives of these individuals (and those that link them all to Vicky Rai) from the partially-narrative eye of an investigative journalist, Arun Advani.
Having read Indian authors the likes of R.K.Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie and Shobha De, they all provide diverse outlooks on India, its people and the culture that defines them both - be it the rural authenticity of Malgudi Days or the Sunderbans described romantially by Ghosh, the mythical fantasies associated with Rushdie or the upper class turbulences by De. Infact, Swarup does none of that and when you read this book, it sems like an expose of characters taken from those we see through our rear-view mirrors. He brings to life an intermix of people, culture, race, religion all derived from one mass, and yet so distinct!
Not many may approve of his style of writing wherein the characters are not succinctly defined or the fineness in the plot but in my opinion from his two books, both the language and the outline are gripping and total page-turners. Fast-paces dialogues make it surreal and extremely entertaining but maybe not from a literary perspective. It is said that too many ingredients (or is it cooks?) spoil the broth but this one spices up some bizarre twists of fiction and weaves them together with a vast breadth of information thus making it totally worth a read.
In this one too, Swarup presents a style similar to that in Q&A, in that the story looks back from a particular event and then uncovers its way to describe the present. As the title goes, Six Suspects revolves around these six (of course!) characters, distinct in every way, each of their stories compelling enough with whodunnit at the core. One thing they all have in common is Vivek aka 'Vicky' Rai - complete playboy industrialist and bollywood producer - who is killed on the eve of his birthday party at Number Six, his famous farm house at the outskirts of Delhi. And as a matter of fact, our six protagonists happen to be at that party, and some of them with the intention of killing the casanova! So while the book takes us through the journey of these unique individuals, it goes way beyond 'who killed Vicky Rai'.
So who are these six suspects?
1. An American tourist whose tales take us through the realms of being cheated by the 'Indians', the country's call centers in Mumbai to the peak of terrorism in Kashmir and above all, his 'Americanism' in between all that. About to marry his 'pen-friend', he lands into this 'inscrutable' country not knowing what likes ahead; oh and he also happens to share his name with the Google entrepreneur - Larry Page.
2. An indigenous tribal from Andaman whose travelog involves cutting through the gritty regions of the 'non-tribal' India that he is bewelidered by and somehow this character makes the reader realize the facets of India not known to its own people.
3. A corrupt bureaucrat who serves on the board of Vicky Rai's company and by a sheer accident of sorts, is amusingly transformed into the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi that leads him to Gandhigiri in splits.
4. A Bollywood starlet for whom Vicky Rai has a special inkling, an indecent proposal of sorts, that she reluctantly accepts. Maybe, there is a hidden motive there?
5. A small-thief caught in the angst of rich versus poor, love versus hatred; whose fate leads him into a situation that is beyond what he could fathom.
6. Finally the father of the deceased and also the home minister of UP - Jagannath Rai - who has very strong inclination in having his own son dead.
With a gun found from each of these suspects at the scene of the murder, the book takes us through a roller-coaster journey into the lives of these individuals (and those that link them all to Vicky Rai) from the partially-narrative eye of an investigative journalist, Arun Advani.
Having read Indian authors the likes of R.K.Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie and Shobha De, they all provide diverse outlooks on India, its people and the culture that defines them both - be it the rural authenticity of Malgudi Days or the Sunderbans described romantially by Ghosh, the mythical fantasies associated with Rushdie or the upper class turbulences by De. Infact, Swarup does none of that and when you read this book, it sems like an expose of characters taken from those we see through our rear-view mirrors. He brings to life an intermix of people, culture, race, religion all derived from one mass, and yet so distinct!
Not many may approve of his style of writing wherein the characters are not succinctly defined or the fineness in the plot but in my opinion from his two books, both the language and the outline are gripping and total page-turners. Fast-paces dialogues make it surreal and extremely entertaining but maybe not from a literary perspective. It is said that too many ingredients (or is it cooks?) spoil the broth but this one spices up some bizarre twists of fiction and weaves them together with a vast breadth of information thus making it totally worth a read.
