An intriguing political potboiler
It’s a surprise at every turn as the court transcript unfolds. A fast-paced page-turner, a potboiler that has you riveted to a world of political intrigue. You are taken into the nooks and crannies of the jigsaw puzzle.
It is a place whose founder was an Ismaili, its president Shia, its prime minister Sunni, its bureaucrats Muhajir, its scientists Ahmedi, its peasants Hindu, its workers Christian, its teachers lazy, its doctors greedy, its labourers hungry, its politicians corrupt, its biryani Sindhi, its naan Afghani and its youth still hopeful.
Into this brew, throw some untamed Jihadis, a box of exploding mangoes, a Mr Ten Percent and a Permanently Pregnant Prime Minister and the pace is set. You find yourself in a place where death doesn’t knock on the door before entering, it comes unannounced. A bomb blast, a bullet gone astray, a blow in the head and before you know it, boom! The life has gone out of you. Cooked, as they say here in the city. Dynastic politics catapults Rani Shah into the Prime Minister’s chair where ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely!’
The story unfolds through the eyes of Nazo or Nazneen Khan. It’s a tale of cloying friendship between two ambitious women to whom loyalty and deception are like a game of chess. A game of high-level state corruption and political machinations, where public welfare is reduced to a monkey climbing a greased pole—two steps up and three steps backwards. And it’s not just the PM’s husband who is corrupt. Everyone gets into the act: the army, the nuclear scientists, the schools, the Jihadis and Nazo too. At the court, the prosecutor lays down the charge in the first few pages.
‘Miss Nazeen Khan, commonly known as Nazo, has been accused of conspiring to assassinate the country’s first female Prime Minister, Madam Rani Shah. Although the body was charred in the explosion, new evidence has revealed that her death was not due to the suicide bombing as was previously believed, but by a bullet shot at close range. Almost as if by someone seated next to her….’ Though stretching credibility is the unfettered manner in which almost the entire populace, from the Jihadis to the dam protesters; from journalists to household help walk in and through the PMs residence. Of course I’m presuming that in a country wracked by violence the level of security would make it next to the impossible to throw tomatoes at the windows, no matter how much you want to do it.
Squished between the Jihadis and the ‘Big Brother is Watching’ army, it is small wonder that the common man, willy-nilly, finds himself recruited as a card carrying member of the JohJitaUohDeyNaal Party or where the winner takes it all. Generally a good read with a well-crafted twist in the end. And so does the book! A good read.