Book: TheOutraged… Times of Ferment
Author: AdityaSudarshan
Publisher: Rupa
Pages: 358
Price: Rs 395
Shall I call it a ‘creative coincidence’ or ‘artisticsynchronicity’ that a few days ago I was reading Vijay Nambisan’s These Were MyHomes, (published by Speaking Tiger). Lonavala-based late Vijay Nambisan wrotepoems that bespoke the angst and ferment fomenting in his restless self. Theauthor Aditya Sudarshan has evinced the same degree of creative and socialvolatility in his book The Outraged: Times of Ferment. The thrust of this bookis detonation of gurudom or babadom in Indian parlance. The urbane youth thinklike Ahishor, who’s writer’s expressionist or amanuensis in the novel. One maypeep into William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity and zero in on IntentionalFallacy that Aditya thinks like Ahishor. But that will be an assumption.
The god and godmen have been two recurrent themes in thebooks across the world that started to hit the stands since the advent of thenew millennium. The whole shebang of godhood or godliness is something that hasbegun to be questioned by the writers with grey cells and a cogitativecapacity.
This book also explores the same theme along with sub-plotsthat serve as plinths to the structure of the novel. In Indian context, wheremost of the people are religious and unquestioning about the ‘divinity’ ofbabas and existence of god, even an oblique reference to spiritual gurus andtheir surreptitious activities is seen as a sacrilege. In such a regressive setup, Ahishor denudes Navy Baba and exposes his (baba’s) fraudulent ways andsanctimonious character. This needs courage because people in India are steepedin religious superstitions and their esoteric irrationalities create suchbabas.
The book is an account of strugglers in film community ofBombay. Their camaraderie, bonhomie and idealism are the spices that spruce upthe novel. The Outraged vivisects beliefs, principles, ideals and how to retainor reject them for new vistas and avenues.
Whether Maithili, Sasha, Mihir, Anamika or others, everycharacter has a say and is well-crafted by the author, whose ability to buildand shape up characters is really admirable. From linguistic perspective,Aditya deserves kudos. His English is praiseworthy and his transliteration-skillsare accurate. Here’s an example: Tum bilkul theek ‘kah’ rahe ho. (you areabsolutely right)…The semantic and orthographic carboning (a term in modernlinguistics that connotes the retention of the same sound) of Hindi in Romanscript is hundred percent correct.
Otherwise, most of the people nowadays right: thik (in lieuof theek) or keh (instead of kah). Those who erroneously write: Papa kehte hai(it ought to be hain) must learn how to transliterate Hindi into English fromthe author of this book. To cut the matter short, it’s a beautiful book thatmakes an impact on the readers and compels them to think.
