Kajol Isn’t Even the Murderer! Why Ravi Subramanian Disappoints

Spam mails worry CBI officials; in Subramanian’s world there is no difference between secure official IDs and Gmail.

I began reading with very modest expectations, hoping to at least be entertained in a way that I’d expect from, say, an Abbas-Mastan or a Rajiv Rai film.

(Photo Courtesy: Amazon/Image altered by The Quint)

I still remember reading Five Point Someone all those years ago, and finding it fairly entertaining, completely unaware that this would be the book that would become the tipping point for the phenomenon of premiere Engineering/B-School graduates churning out campus memoirs and popular fiction in industrial quantities.

Aided by rapid economic growth, a youth increasingly at ease with the basics of the English language, affordable pricing and the rise of bookstore chains dependent on fast-moving inventory, the market for these books burgeoned over the next decade.

Fortunately though, in recent years, the euphoria appears to have tempered down – and of the dozens of these authors, only a handful have survived beyond a second book.

Ravi Subramanian – 9 novels in 10 years – belongs in that handful. He is said to have said that he would like to be remembered as the John Grisham of banking; whether he will succeed, or whether that is even a worthy ambition, I do not know.

His latest work In the Name of God published by Penguin, is his first I have read, mostly because nobody offered to pay me to write a review for the ones before.

Three Threads: Where Do They Meet?

Along the way, a handful of people die, many leads appear and disappear and massive amounts of CCTV footage are sent to forensics.(Photo: iStock)

Now, I was aware I am not the target audience for the book. I knew it would be unfair to expect beauty in the language or depth in the characters. So, I began reading, with very modest expectations, hoping to at least be entertained in a way that I’d expect from, say, an Abbas-Mastan or a Rajiv Rai film.

There are three main threads in the story – stolen artefacts from a temple in Kerala, a heist in a mall in Dubai and a series of blasts in Mumbai.

They are, of course, all connected – which is hardly a revelation – though the blurb on the cover poses the question ‘Could they be connected?’ Why else would they be in the same book, I ask?

All three threads are introduced early on, and the action moves back and forth for a while after which, Subramanian – clearly unequipped to deal with his own story’s ensuing structural complications – almost completely ignores Dubai and Mumbai. The focus of the book is thereafter restricted to the temple in Kerala, and the impression one gets is that nobody in the CBI or the government is particularly bothered about the blasts in Mumbai. The Spirit of Mumbai takes care of itself, presumably.

Along the way, a handful of people die, many leads appear and disappear and massive amounts of CCTV footage are sent to forensics.

Each time somebody checks email there are a bunch of Spam messages (official emails of CBI operatives, mind you; in Subramanian’s world there is no difference between secure official email IDs and Gmail), and the protagonist – one Kabir Khan from CBI – has to frequently feel miffed for being refused entry into temples.

Kajol Isn’t Even the Murderer...

All the problems, however, would be forgivable, if the book were to whole-heartedly embrace the camp and the farce.(Photo: iStock)

The names of N Srinivasan and Sunanda Pushkar are thrown around a few times for no apparent reason, and after nearly 80 chapters in which there is no reference to dates and times and such, a chapter starts with ‘On the next Monday...’. While on the subject of chapters: Subramanian’s understanding of them appears to be that they are like scenes in a screenplay, and each time a scene ends, his chapter ends too.

Consequently, there are over a 100 of them in a 400-page book, and I think I can safely state that Subramanian is not Milan Kundera. I imagine if one were to just add scene headings like “INT.HOTEL ROOM – NIGHT” at the beginning of each chapter, one would have the script for a film ready to roll.

There is one moment of inspired bizarreness. In a complete reversal of convention, the good guys have the bad guys boxed into a corner and proceed to provide an explanation of their masterful investigation. This includes the identification of a crucial piece of evidence, which are the contents of a phone of one of the bad guys present – at which point the bad guy promptly takes said phone out of his pocket and proceeds to erase everything. Right there. Right then.

All of these problems, however, would be forgivable, if the book were to whole-heartedly embrace the camp and the farce. Sadly, that is not Subramanian’s intention, and he lets you down in the crucial aspects. The dialogues are bland. Nobody is in it for one last job before ‘getting out’. There are no chases, no ticking bombs. There are no scenes in a rundown bar where an item song may be placed.

And in the end, Kajol isn’t even the murderer.

That, I could read.

(Kushal is a Bengali, brought up in Ahmedabad, and earning his daily bread in Mumbai. He travels and writes when he finds time away from selling SIM cards. He has also published for The Mint and rediff.com)