A full English of expected shenanigans can be found in Dhar's account of a zombie apocalypse set in North India.
A group of disparate people, a Navy Seal (and no 'Aap Indian hai?' business!), a Delhi teen boy (who unsurprisingly knows how to use a gun) and some Aunties are united by fate in their attempt is to survive an infective apocalypse.
The mayhem is the result of some sort of American bio-weapon, stolen through an international network of converts and accidentally activated by a drone strike on Mullah Omar and al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan.
A harrowing journey is undertaken to escape the 'biters'. Dhar's monsters are Hollywood zombies v2.0 and are not happy to merely groan and stumble about. They are particularly conscientious about attire, wrap turbans of black cloth around their heads the moment they reanimate and point to the living groaning, 'kaaa-fir'.
Phew! Scary, but more for the form of prejudice the monster becomes a metaphor for.
Surviving conversion requires cunning, gumption, making alies, scavenging for supplies and fighting off marauders. From New Delhi, the escape is to a military facility near Leh but, along the way, the Delhi hard boi finds a fanti.
Himalayan Buddhist settlements serve as Indian military outposts and many can be motored to from the plains. The highway that bends its way slowly, ever upwards and more unwinding, to increasingly sparse and precarious heights is one that adventurists, especially motor sport enthusiasts and purveyors of the black and sticky fine, are inordinately fond of. If ever there were a zombie apocalypse, the fortresses and dzongs are the most likely to mount a resistance and provide safe haven.
Most Indians will be aware that the Hollywood zombie, that has such a hold on global imagination right now was once invented, like everything else, by Indians. Tthere is even a Bollywood film now, Gone Goa Gone.
The zombie is as much inspired from the vampire as the ghul, known in English, as the ghoul. The monster was transmitted to Europe by the Moors via the Arabian Nights fairytales, not unlike coffee and mathematics. There are indeed other inspirations in the Hollywood zombie, like Richard Matheson's technological riffs on Bram Stoker's magical vampire, and the folklore of Haiti.
The Arabs had been inspired, in turn, by a monster they had encountered India. It was the cousin of the bhoot and known as the the flesh-hungry pret. Pret usually live in haunted places like gnarled banyan trees in ancient forests and harass lost travellers. Think no further than Vikram and Betal. Pret-lore of this variety is most richly preserved in Buddhist scriptural art and sculpture- the monasteries where such knowledge is housed are most likely to survive an apocalypse.
Dhar (who started his writing career out of IIM authoring well received economic history text-books) employs carefully curated geographical knowledge. The description of military kit, especially of the US special forces is much appreciated essential detail. For the aficionado, there is a very clever reference to Haiti in Chapter One.
The patient zero scene is on an Emirates Flight to Paris from Karachi via Dubai. The doctor is summoned to examine the young man convulsing in the aisle mid-flight. The man was once a directionless impoverished French youth but unknown to his fellow passengers, a radicalised young revolutionary who had ingested some toxic fumes at the site of the drone strike. The doctor declares, 'Il est Mort.'
The undead, in the French creole spoken in Haiti, are also known as the morts-vivant. Unlike the Hollywood zombie, the Haitian zombie is a slave metaphor but that is another story. From this general discussion, we can conclude, the zombie is as much French and African in ancestry, as it is Buddhist, Muslim and American.
***
A reader may expect much of the imprint founded by old YA and speculative fiction hands, Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu, Duckbill (with support from Westland). This wallaby from their stable does not disappoint. However, I have one small objection to the premise of the plot.
Axiomatic simplicity, and this is only a novel aimed at young adults, is good. It lends credence to plot. However, blithe Islamophobia by authors, even unconscious, puts this novel in Shakespeare's Jew in Merchant of Venice territory.
India is a country where people feel entitled to take offense on a hair-trigger and this is a debilitating atmosphere for writers to work in. However, if you are going to re-invent a monster, one that was a slave metaphor, and seep in religious extremism- the premise needs some strong counter-balance through action. You cannot be so lazy as to pretend, like one young Indian politician suggested in an election speech, that Muslim names should be scary by themselves.
The liberal Muslim in the story doesn't do enough to re-balance this bias of global jihad as self-perpetuating ideology. The unobservant Hina, the writer who has nothing to live for since she's old, single and a whisky-drinker is a place-holder for some representation of syncretic Turkish or Shia Islam- the kind of person, Hindus and others, desire Muslims to be. In a world where Islamophobia is increasingly socially acceptable, a political cause and an influence on public policy, we have to ask, why this kolaveri di?
The liberal Muslim becomes the noble black dude of this edition of Scary Movie. FYI: It is not acceptable, for the same reasons, to follow a racist statement by saying, 'I got black friends' to say, I can have jihadi spawn because there was an important and noble liberal Muslim character.
The reader should be warned that the social vision of the novel arises from that same political space where American conservative jingoism overlaps with Hindu nationalism and is presented as a form of unimpeachable economic science/administration. Economies of several nations, put social utility ahead of human rights and this form of cultural generalisation reminds me of an observation about Indian liberalism. Maulana Mahmood Madani, a Member of Parliament, who infamously told Pervez Musharaf to take a flying f**k to his face noted that we assume a person wearing a beard and a skull cap cannot be a supporter of secularism, democracy or for that matter, any enlightened thought. Hence, as Varun Gandhi only observing what we all think said, their names scare us.
'You forgot the impact of 9/11,' commented the evaluator on a paper I wrote on zombies and the geo-politics of fear.' I had then thought hers a typical American's over-sentimentalisation of a terrorist attack. Why would 9/11 change anything for Indians- people who suffer at least two mass casualties a year, which originate in a wide variety of hateful ideologies?
A group of disparate people, a Navy Seal (and no 'Aap Indian hai?' business!), a Delhi teen boy (who unsurprisingly knows how to use a gun) and some Aunties are united by fate in their attempt is to survive an infective apocalypse.
The mayhem is the result of some sort of American bio-weapon, stolen through an international network of converts and accidentally activated by a drone strike on Mullah Omar and al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan.
A harrowing journey is undertaken to escape the 'biters'. Dhar's monsters are Hollywood zombies v2.0 and are not happy to merely groan and stumble about. They are particularly conscientious about attire, wrap turbans of black cloth around their heads the moment they reanimate and point to the living groaning, 'kaaa-fir'.
Phew! Scary, but more for the form of prejudice the monster becomes a metaphor for.
Surviving conversion requires cunning, gumption, making alies, scavenging for supplies and fighting off marauders. From New Delhi, the escape is to a military facility near Leh but, along the way, the Delhi hard boi finds a fanti.
Himalayan Buddhist settlements serve as Indian military outposts and many can be motored to from the plains. The highway that bends its way slowly, ever upwards and more unwinding, to increasingly sparse and precarious heights is one that adventurists, especially motor sport enthusiasts and purveyors of the black and sticky fine, are inordinately fond of. If ever there were a zombie apocalypse, the fortresses and dzongs are the most likely to mount a resistance and provide safe haven.
Most Indians will be aware that the Hollywood zombie, that has such a hold on global imagination right now was once invented, like everything else, by Indians. Tthere is even a Bollywood film now, Gone Goa Gone.
The zombie is as much inspired from the vampire as the ghul, known in English, as the ghoul. The monster was transmitted to Europe by the Moors via the Arabian Nights fairytales, not unlike coffee and mathematics. There are indeed other inspirations in the Hollywood zombie, like Richard Matheson's technological riffs on Bram Stoker's magical vampire, and the folklore of Haiti.
The Arabs had been inspired, in turn, by a monster they had encountered India. It was the cousin of the bhoot and known as the the flesh-hungry pret. Pret usually live in haunted places like gnarled banyan trees in ancient forests and harass lost travellers. Think no further than Vikram and Betal. Pret-lore of this variety is most richly preserved in Buddhist scriptural art and sculpture- the monasteries where such knowledge is housed are most likely to survive an apocalypse.
 |
| Ra'as Al-Ghul from Batman- who enjoys perpetual re-animation by using a Lazarus pit. He has nothing to do with the present review. |
Dhar (who started his writing career out of IIM authoring well received economic history text-books) employs carefully curated geographical knowledge. The description of military kit, especially of the US special forces is much appreciated essential detail. For the aficionado, there is a very clever reference to Haiti in Chapter One.
The patient zero scene is on an Emirates Flight to Paris from Karachi via Dubai. The doctor is summoned to examine the young man convulsing in the aisle mid-flight. The man was once a directionless impoverished French youth but unknown to his fellow passengers, a radicalised young revolutionary who had ingested some toxic fumes at the site of the drone strike. The doctor declares, 'Il est Mort.'
The undead, in the French creole spoken in Haiti, are also known as the morts-vivant. Unlike the Hollywood zombie, the Haitian zombie is a slave metaphor but that is another story. From this general discussion, we can conclude, the zombie is as much French and African in ancestry, as it is Buddhist, Muslim and American.
***
A reader may expect much of the imprint founded by old YA and speculative fiction hands, Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu, Duckbill (with support from Westland). This wallaby from their stable does not disappoint. However, I have one small objection to the premise of the plot.
Axiomatic simplicity, and this is only a novel aimed at young adults, is good. It lends credence to plot. However, blithe Islamophobia by authors, even unconscious, puts this novel in Shakespeare's Jew in Merchant of Venice territory.
India is a country where people feel entitled to take offense on a hair-trigger and this is a debilitating atmosphere for writers to work in. However, if you are going to re-invent a monster, one that was a slave metaphor, and seep in religious extremism- the premise needs some strong counter-balance through action. You cannot be so lazy as to pretend, like one young Indian politician suggested in an election speech, that Muslim names should be scary by themselves.
The liberal Muslim in the story doesn't do enough to re-balance this bias of global jihad as self-perpetuating ideology. The unobservant Hina, the writer who has nothing to live for since she's old, single and a whisky-drinker is a place-holder for some representation of syncretic Turkish or Shia Islam- the kind of person, Hindus and others, desire Muslims to be. In a world where Islamophobia is increasingly socially acceptable, a political cause and an influence on public policy, we have to ask, why this kolaveri di?
The liberal Muslim becomes the noble black dude of this edition of Scary Movie. FYI: It is not acceptable, for the same reasons, to follow a racist statement by saying, 'I got black friends' to say, I can have jihadi spawn because there was an important and noble liberal Muslim character.
The reader should be warned that the social vision of the novel arises from that same political space where American conservative jingoism overlaps with Hindu nationalism and is presented as a form of unimpeachable economic science/administration. Economies of several nations, put social utility ahead of human rights and this form of cultural generalisation reminds me of an observation about Indian liberalism. Maulana Mahmood Madani, a Member of Parliament, who infamously told Pervez Musharaf to take a flying f**k to his face noted that we assume a person wearing a beard and a skull cap cannot be a supporter of secularism, democracy or for that matter, any enlightened thought. Hence, as Varun Gandhi only observing what we all think said, their names scare us.
'You forgot the impact of 9/11,' commented the evaluator on a paper I wrote on zombies and the geo-politics of fear.' I had then thought hers a typical American's over-sentimentalisation of a terrorist attack. Why would 9/11 change anything for Indians- people who suffer at least two mass casualties a year, which originate in a wide variety of hateful ideologies?
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