Mar 11, 2009 11:54 AM
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(Updated Mar 11, 2009 11:59 AM)
Kala bandar is the mood of the season.Oops I am not talking about our faces colored with black colors but talking about our black hearts covered in white dresses….
After watching Delhi-6 and capturing the black monkey in my heart I found a book named “The peacock Throne” by Sujit Saraf. When I saw it for the first time, what hold my attention was the cover and when I turned the book(to the last cover page), I was more amazed to find this great Delhi novel(better to call the Great Chandni Chowk Novel), an epic that shows the spirit, culture and ethos of our Delhi, in the same way as Shantaram and Sacred Games describe for Mumbai.
Plot:The Peacock Throneis a spiky lampoon on modern Indian politics. Through this novel Sujit Saraf intensely renovated the havoc and disorder, violence and stink of Indian metropolitan life.
The Peacock Throne begins with the assassination of Indira Ghandi in 1984 and is set in Chandni Chowk, the famous market in the center of Old Delhi, India. Through the life of Gopal Pandey a chaivala, a tea vendor( a common man without ambition) Sujit tells the story of Indian politics over the course of the next fourteen years, where he finds a large sum of money which instigates him into the intricate world of modern Indian living and politics. In the progression, he comes across numerous people reflecting the profundity of India's past and its plunge into the modern world. He encounters orphans, prostitutes, thieves, politicians, gangsters, businessmen, journalists, and feminists, and his intersection with their lives eventually results in the manipulation of his life and political fortunes.
Gopal Pandey truly illustrate an Indian soul without any veiled schema apart from the one we all have—which is to try and make do as best as we can with what we are given. The plot is a bit contrived but moves briskly acting as a mere tool to portray the characters and events.
The best thing about this novel is the waySaraf combined the corruption, idiocy, egotism and inhumanity with unadulterated warmth and altruism. Definitely a smart take on the dark side of Indian politics.
