Achala Moulik's
novel "Rogues Among the Ruins" is not a fictional novel, in case the
synopsis gave you such an idea. It is essentially a pure non-fictional tale in
the guise of a fictional novel.
PLOT
There isn't one
single plot. It is basically an amalgamation of a few incidences from our
country's history, beginning from pre-independence era to post-independence
era. The focus here is on how corruption invades all forms of professions and
all strata of the society.
The novel
begins with an archeologist named "Elangovan" describing in first
person his experiences during the British rule. Later on, Elangovan's son Raman
carries forward the account in first person how he experienced the various
events during his tenure and experiences of his colleague. There are a lot of
familiar names during this phase – Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Jaitley
& Ram Jethmalani (Towards the end), and you really enjoy watching the
proceedings through Raman's eyes.
POSITIVES
Achala Moulik
has terrific control over language. She is exceptionally to-the-point with
equal dallops of sarcasm and humour at places. This is one aspect where the
novel scores the maximum.
Secondly, I
loved how much research must have gone especially in the entire archeological
sequence – regarding ancient history, etc.
Thirdly, there
were a few sequences which were very good – the gardener's son sequence, the
sequence of Souhrab and Elangovan – both of them written very nicely and with
an emotional touch.
NEGATIVES
As I stated
earlier, this is a work of non-fiction in the guise of a fictional novel. And
hence there are portions of the book which aren't particularly interesting or
happening. Very honestly, it was pretty tough to complete the first 100 odd
pages which described in detail (A bit too much, perhaps) about the
archeological survey of India and its working mechanism and its various chiefs.
Despite all the efforts of the author and interesting incidences in between, it
still remained a pretty dreary and dry subject, one that was pretty difficult
to navigate through. However, once that sequence is done with, the rest of the
book is pretty interesting for any kind of reader.
OVERALL, "ROGUES AMONG RUINS" is a well
written novel which exposes a lot of corrupt practices in various strata of our
society. These practices aren't always limited to work. Even relationships are
corrupted here. While this novel may not be everyone's cup of tea, it will
definitely find its own niche audience who loves such political non-fiction
work.
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