The diagnosis is made albeit with
cynicism and yet the tale lands with a hope. Like the Bollywood response to
corruption, here too what is obvious is that extreme situations require extreme
responses. The whodunit is also a whydunit and is more a story of
contemporary India that has lost its moorings rather than a long winding
autobiography of a nation that has lost its sanity. In fact the entire saga is
backward engineered to the diagnosis of the lack of sanity in the polity.
Karri Sriram’s Mad Nation starts of in the very recent past and swaggers around
a decade or more and is perhaps indicative that civilizationally this is the
time when the collective lost its sanity and the polity its credibility. Though
there are instances where reference is made to the distant past and snide
comments on a PM speaking at midnight hour on freedom in stylised English.
Fortunately, the writer does not toe the line and quickly returns to a treatise
on various facets of a nation that increasingly is loosing its balance. It is
not difficult to be critical of India in recent times. However what makes the
tale extremely absorbing and worth reading is the adaptation of a formula that
Rand used so well in Atlas Shrugged. Its reverse was well established in the
Indian polity when the left leaning centralists joined the Smt. Gandhi
bandwagon. The basis of the John Galt plan is executed in the Indian context
and with tremendous understanding the of the skill of writing and storytelling.
Very often he leaves the reader with the feeling that he could have been far
more detailed and told us the laity in greater detail the nuances of a polity
that is skewed up.
The book is unabashedly and justifiably vitriolic. ‘The Mad Nation’ is a
repeated usage and every time is a time bound alarm to those who have not read
the writing on the wall, yet. Where does fiction depart from reality? In fact,
truth and fiction constitute the inseparable warp and woof of the script. He
hides nothing. In fact, not even his self-assessment. “I could be the
best of my generation, if only I can get my book published” .
The work is extremely well crafted not something that flows effortlessly. It
has multiple high points as a result even some good passages seen mediocre in
compare.
From the word go where Karri refers to collectives ‘We the People’ as a fake
collective, he minces no words, saves no punch. To quote him “Strange how
political stances impact vocabulary“. True and the work is full of
contemporary usages that have specific flavour of the country and the city of
Hyderabad. Also a veiled prep as a B Plan for failure Karri is at his best when
he says “The success of the stupid and failure of the profound; they both
lie at the mantle of the soul of the nation, which does not run deep”.
The author leaves no room for debate. He admits: “I am often challenged
by friends who think I am too harsh in judging nations and societies”.
Me thinks he has not been harsh. He has been legitimately conscious of the
times we live in and the issues that plague contemporary India – give or take a
few decades. The book is not just though provoking. It plods you, nay even
pricks you to react and stop being in slumber. Notice some brilliant flashes
that come in the form of questions that catch you unguarded. Just two samples: what’s
the point in life if you can become the President of a country but have not
read Salinger? and Is it compulsory to be secular in a secular country.
To me it is benumbing to believe that we – the author and we the readers walk
the same author. The amazing story of how the nation has lost its moorings and
the expanse of its vistas is told with a kind of honesty that is unparalleled
and makes for compulsive reading. The sting flows and often tells rather with
raw honesty an India that we all can surely put in Naipaul’s Wounded Civilization
though the author seems more caught up contextually and thematically with
Rushdie – who he needlessly compliments. He deals ruthlessly with a nation that
has come to pass. You were the ones who were given a free India a value you
perhaps did not deserve from a generation that was noble fierce and picture
worthy. You were the one who chose to pass on to us a devalued rot
because you looted for decades a mother you chose to bring down to the level of
a whore. Karri goes on to deal with why and how civilizations collapse
and how it is after all justified for the anarchist with a plan to take over.
The idea, the ideology, the theme and the solution are all worth a serious
debate and not just cursory reading. That is the greatest strength of a book:
an idea that gets you thinking. The Rand influence in thought is visible. I
wonder if there was a conscious effort to duck the style!! A must read. A
strong prescription without frills or needless gloss. Take it.
L. Ravichander.