The Country is Going to the Dogs, penned by Anurag Mathur is a thriller novel, which accounts the life and change of a septuagenarian and his wild journey in the underbelly of Delhi. The Indian society has a notion about women and their sexuality, which has been aptly represented in the book through a story of a seventy four year old man who turns sleuth when the sex siren of sin city, Miss Fifoo goes missing.
The author of 'The Inscrutable Americans' has spent three years in the United States, yet again he has come up with an idea which browses the enlightening divergence sandwiched between the two communities, which, in accordance with his perspective is the "conflict between our conservative, traditional upbringing and the new India." Mathur has been mainly inspired by P.G.Wodehouse and the literary works of Joseph Heller.
In the book, the author has put his opinion and which is the reality of the present day through various comments in the book that has been remarked by the seventy four year old man, Radhey Radhey Kumar, who, while gazing at the All Saints Women’s College girls just across the road of his office says ‘chee, chee, chee’. He utters glancing at the young female species in their contemporary clothes.
His boring life takes a 180 degree change with the disappearance of Miss Fifoo.
Mathur's novelties are joke intended and the hilarity is ingeniously integrated though it and tends to elongate a bit at the end where you leave caring about Miss Fifoo and go missing and just want to meet head-on with the protagonist, Radhey with his double-standard sopinion and his unremitting ethical policing. Radhey feels aghast with women wearing tight clothes, but is an immoral man himself reflecting the prevalent and common outlook of Indian men at some level in their life. The author affirms, "We tend to look at women as either sisters or Sita. For any woman outside that, there is a predatory kind of barely disguised passion."
The author states his comments on being asked if he looks towards the Indian society as if it can ever progress towards moderation and in the book the author has subtly given a hint in his novel, he says, "We're being dragged into liberalism by the forces of modernity. Films, television, the Internet, the media in general, travel, industrialization, increasing affluence and the spread of education, are changing us in ways we can barely comprehend, much less control. There are repeated violent backlashes, but the changes are irresistible and irreversible. There are too many modern people today. India will cope."
He avers that he has drawn motivation for the characters "partly from reality and mostly from imagination. When I meet people, I often ask the question, 'How would this person behaves in a different situation'. It's not unique to me; it's a writer's disease."
As a result, the novel manages to emphasize fascinating characters ranging from the poetic pimp who's an English honors graduate to the ingenious journalist Anwar who gets things done promptly. However, Radhey Radhey's character could have been brought out better by demonstrating his renovation rather than his biased thinking solely. By stepping out of his comfort zone and interrelating with a different stratum of the society.
Get this book from lelobooks, an online bookstore in India and clear the cloud of backwardness and discrimination in the modern India. Indulge in online book shopping and avail attractive discounts.
No comments:
Post a Comment