Review: The Krishna Key

‘The Krishna Key’ is the third book written by Ashwin Sanghi, after having written The Rozabal Line and Chanakya’s Chant. Without giving out any detailed spoilers, I will give you a gist of the story as part of the review.

The driving character of the books is Ravi Saini. He is a mythology & history teacher who is on the run to clear his name in the murder of his childhood friend Anil Varshney. Before his death, Varshney found an object that with his theory can change how we know history. However before he can do much about he murdered by a man who calls himself Taarak Vakil, whose name when you play with spells out ‘Kalki Avatar’. However he is not the bad guy like You-Know-Who but a man who believes himself to be tenth avatar of Vishnu (Kalki Avatar) and must vanquish the wrong and bring forth the light.  Now Saini must prove himself innocent while not getting in the hands of Taarak who is trying to kill him as well and save himself from the cunning and competent inspector in charge of hunting him.

The book is in three layers. Layer one is the main story of Saini and Vakil and how their individual quests progress and sometimes merge like the branches of a river. Layer two is the back stories/ flashbacks of the characters which serve to add flavour and show their individual motivation. Layer three is Krishna telling his own story to the reader. Of the three layers I personally liked the second layer the most as it provides the background of the canvas against which the main story is being drawn on while Krishna’s words serve as the frame for the painting.

The book has been told by some be India’s answer to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Now I don’t know how to react to this statement, but yes the book is indeed of the same genre. A mixing of the past and the present, murder and mystery, facts and wishful thinking and some conspiracy theories. The plot has its fair share of surprises and predictable moments. I believe each reader will react differently to the book depending on the number of plot twists they are able to predict or be fascinated by.

I have not read his first book, but have read Chanakya’s Chant with much delight multiple times. Chanakya’s Chant also had two layers, one of the fictional retelling of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya’s lives and the second of the lives Chandini and Gangasagar in the present. The two layers were in perfect balance with one leading into the other stream lessly. Just like a well made lasagna or Danish pastry. The Krishna Key however lacks such finesse and at times the plot seems to be pushed ahead instead of progressing. I once wondered that this book had been written before and Chanakya’s Chant after assuming that as the author matured his way of balancing the layers did as well. It seems however Sanghi is a victim of the success of his previous work that I and others have compared this book to those before.

The book is however still a good read and I must appreciate the amount of effort and time put in by the author in the research required to write such a book.

This review is part of the Book Review Program by BlogAdda. Wherein members of the program can receive free books as long as they commit to post a review of it. Due to my own lack of energy owing to some projects I hadn’t blogged for quite some time. I knew that a review would be required when I got in to the program and my lack of energy is no excuse for the review to come so late that BlogAdda had to follow up on me. My sincerest apologies for that. 

Reading

There are advantages of having friends who share your passion for reading and among other things you never run out of good great things to read. Today one such friend Ritu shared an article on facebook (which she was kind enough to tag me in).  It is “Which kind of book reader are you?” by the Atlantic Wire. The article goes on to describe different types of readers and their reading habits. Are you the one who will purchase books and then end up with a backlog or are the one who has them only to display them? And so on...  What about me, do you ask? (Well you are reading this, and should you continue to read this entry I gather you are interested in it.)

I have picked up books for various reasons. Quite a few of these books are in my cupboard because Landmark (the book store) is exceedingly close to my apartment. So every few days I find myself strolling in to the store because I ran out of stationery supplies, or need something for work, or am drawn to the large number of books there.  If there is a sale I pick up some of the books I have been wanting to read and since there’s a neat deal I stock them in my cupboard. Sometimes it is because I visit the store out of boredom or habit, and flipping through the books I find something that amuses or touches me. Then of course there are the recommendations from friends.

This has lead to a huge backlog of reading for me. Books that have been read for only a few pages before they were put on the table and then inside the dark forbidding chambers of my cupboard because I got busy with something, or found something else to read. Evil, I know. This is not just fiction but books on engineering and science that I picked up because I enjoyed reading about the subject, some management books that I refer when work gets boring and philosophy for my desire to study more upon it.

Right now I am reading ‘Krishna Key’ because I got it for review (yeay) from Blogadda.com. Since I am to post a review on it for receiving said book, ‘Fifty shades darker’ has been put on hold along (because I enjoyed reading ‘Fifty shades of Grey’, and wanted to continue the story). There is also ‘The Toyota Way’ which I am reading to learn different approaches that I can use at work. There is ‘God is not Great’ lying on the table as well which I had picked for light reading (and mom got scandalized).

Then there are a select few unique books that have not been completed for particular reasons. I received ‘The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest’ as a gift from Ishaan Lalit, and I read the first three chapters before I felt that there was too much a back story being referred to. Wikipedia enlightened me with the fact that since it is book 3 of a trilogy I got the feeling of missing the story. Although I thought the story would be revealed in detailed flashbacks, I have kept it aside for after I finish its chronological predecessors. There is ‘Love, Loss and Acceptance’ by Shail Di which I am keeping aside for reading when I can do its verses justice.  And finally there is Thermodynamics because I can’t wrap my head around the change in heat of the room when an air conditioner is turned on while a draft exists on the other side of the room. The AC is on, it is cooler, I am thankful, please get lost. Maybe It has also to do with the idea that I flunked the subject the first time I took it in college.

And before signing off for this, I would like to tell you about this little thing I have. I just love caressing and smelling books. Sometimes I pick up books and ruffle through the pages and smell the air as the pages flip by. The rustling noise and the sight of the pages go by is just so wonderful. I don’t do it all my books, but one day the mood strikes to do so and it always manages to make me sigh.

Same Pinch

I take the company bus to work every day. Well every day that I wake up on time that is; otherwise I have to request one of the senior managers who live around to give me a lift in their car to which they comply. My stop is at a Domino’s near my house where I catch the bus from. The other day I got up particularly early and instead of spending time in the bath tub or sleeping I got ready, made myself some green tea and left early so that I could wait at the stop and catch a read.

So there was a group of kids nearby standing outside their school (on the way to my stop) and since I didn’t have my ear phones on as I usually do I could hear what they were talking as I passed. One of them ended up doing a ‘same pinch’ to the other. To those of you unaware of it, this is what you do when someone has something same as you do or does something same. Should you call dibs on it, you can pinch the other person and say ‘Same pinch’. Kids in my time used to do that often. I was in one of my better moods and the following conversation came to my mind and I thought that I should you know, give it a shot.

Me: Hi, How are you?

She: Fine, you?
Me: So far so good. Do you have a boy friend?

She: Umm.... No, why do you ask?

Me: Neither do I... Same Pinch (in a voice of glee)

She:

Now I have spoken of this to only two of my female friends, both on chat, and they both LOLed at it. This could be however for the fact that we were on chat, and they were probably staring at the screen with a wonder as to why they haven’t gone offline or invisible yet. Or maybe they just share my sense of humor. I gather it’s that and that in person they wouldn’t beat the crap out of me.

On the way to work in the bus, I could think of two other ways how this conversation could lead to

Me: Do you have a boy friend?

She: No, why do you ask?

Me: Neither do I... Same Pinch (in a voice of glee)

She: Ah... Do you have a girl friend?

Me: No, Same pinch?

She: No, but now you know why you don’t

And the other one:

Me: Do you have a boy friend?

She: Umm.... No, why do you ask?

Me: Neither do I... Same Pinch (in a voice of glee)

She: ... Do you have a girl friend?

Me: No

Together: SAME PINCH

I dream of death

Everyone dreams, and some dreams are more memorable than other. I dream loads and some of the most wonderful stuff (though not of genies, not yet that is).  While there are dreams that are older and more memorable, I will however share with you one that I had today in the morning as it one of the few dreams that I was able to do things in; a lucid dream of sorts as I could talk and move as I pleased in some cases.

I was sitting in Landmark that is close to my place in Baroda. I was comfortably seated on a couch and reading a book I had just purchased while a cup of coffee lay on the table. Now I know that this landmark doesn’t have a coffee joint in it anymore, but hey it’s a dream and I didn’t want to nitpick on free coffee. I notice this man walk past by me towards the washroom. I couldn’t help but think that I had seen him a couple of times before. He was wearing a fedora hat and that is a rare thing, in India for the least. So the dream me tries to remember, and has an image of him walking by my mom’s house while I stood outside in the veranda talking to a neighbour. After he comes out of the washroom I go and ask him if we have met before since he seems familiar to me. The man nods and says that he is the angel of death and that we have met a couple of times before.

“Huh, angel of death? What are you doing in a book store then?”

“Doing my job, taking people off my list to see that they die.”

“Is it now, you must show me how it works then.” And he stared at me for a moment as if I had told something that he couldn’t understand.

For future reference if you’re in my dream, and if I tell you to show me how something works, you will show me how it works. You’re in my dream, and well that is how I dream. I will extend the same courtesy to you should I ever come in to your dreams. Although I don’t know how it works if you dream of me. Would I be lucid too? But you know I lose all memory of it once you wake. Anyway, moving on...

“Ok, I have names in my book as part of a list that I must ensure die.”

“So how do you do that?”

“I strike their name of, and think of a way they must die and they die.”

“Oh, like that anime Death note I saw on Animax?”

“Manga too, they pretty much got the concept right.”

“Teach me, how it is done.”

“See that woman over there? Her name is Radha Varma. Now this is her name on my list, and I strike it off. Now I want her to buy a DVD for her grand kids and watch it with them over a good meal. When she sleeps she must think that it is just some indigestion, but it will be a heart attack instead.”

And then there was a montage of us going around take people off his list. So while we were sitting in a place and I was going through his book, I saw my name on a page with an ellipse around it.

“Tell me, why my name is written here like that. What does it mean?”

“A circled name means that I was supposed to knock off the person, but didn’t”

 “So why did you let me go that time.”

“Six times in all, I had orders from up top that told me not to do so.”

“Like a close shave you mean? But I don’t remember six instances like that.”

“Only two, others were orders. A word of advice, you really need to start working out.”

“Dude, what the hell?”

And then he smiled and I woke up from my dream. It was around 0830 in the morning because I check for my mobile and spectacles when I get up. I called for mom and she was in the other room sweeping. So I told her that I dreamt of a ‘Yamdoot’ (the closest Hindi translation of an angel of death I could think of) and that he was told to let me off six times so far, and that he asked me to work out. She looks at me (probably thinking why of all possible kids, she had to get me) and tells me that I will listen to a Yamdoot, but not her. I had a sassy reply ready but seeing the broom in her hand, I did not push my luck for a seventh time.

Now I wonder if I can write my training as angel of death on my CV. 

Journey

I have a higher purpose in my few visits than to meet you. It is the journey itself that is more exhilarating than the end destination.  Time becomes flexible in my travels to meet you as I think of the time we have spent together. Not the conversations we had, but how they make me feel & how I hope they would make you.

People say that love is blind, and that when in love people don’t see other things. I never could understand it, and it never happens to me. I become conscious of everything around me. Of the wind that blows across my face as I sit near the window of the train and how I remember you adjusting the windswept bronze hair away from your eyes. Of the road on which the car runs and our drives on it while your body jerked when there were potholes while your bosom which reminds me of parabola and its equations jiggles on such roads. Of the bread that you ate, and how your lips spread into a smile of delight after they contorted themselves on it while you nibbled on the bread in glee.

My face betrays the high that I feel when I see your face for the first time on our meets. It makes me think of how obvious I become and wonder if you notice it. I like to notice things when we meet. The motion of your lips, the force with which you grip the spoon while you eat, the angle your legs make, and the curves of your body. How the expressions in your eyes change when I say something that makes you laugh, how you grip the handle of the door when you want to open it and clench your fingers about it. Gentle, yet determined. As if the door becomes an extension of yourself when you touch it, and there is no effort that you are applying to open it more than the effort you would take to move a step ahead yourself.

I like it when you start describing about what you do at work. How you can get lost in explaining something because of how much enjoyed being part of it. Part of creating something, of discovering something that was till yesterday unknown to us and how you unravelled it. The joy of being good at it, and not being sorry but passionate about it because it is what you want to do and how you want to do and that no other reason would suffice. Makes me think of how I feel like after a particularly tiring and productive day at work gets done. That I would want to be with you and talk to you about it. I wouldn’t want to teleport to your side to do that, no it would be too quick. I had this idea once that I would have something like Tony Stark’s armour as part of my case, which I would wear and fly up to meet you. Or maybe a blue lantern ring, that I could use to fly so that I can even feel the wind blow across my face while I fly to meet you.

One of these days I would like to take up one such trip to meet you, and then not meet you at all. I would just enjoy the journey and go to one of the places we would have, and sit all alone and amused at the possibilities the moment presented. I could continue sitting there, and over a cup of coffee write something like I am writing right now, or maybe through a stroke of chance you would come in and see me and call me stupid for not telling you that I had come.

I think of the moments just before leaving you. Of how I wish that time actually were that flexible, and I could hold on to that moment when we both embrace the finality of it, that we would both have to leave. I gather that since neither of us have such a control over time, we continue to appreciate such moments.

I. You.  

Riches

I was not born in to a poor family, but yet I know what it feels like to be poor, and rich. Well it depends upon on what time of the month you’re talking of.

I was never brought up in poverty, it’s just that things were either worth spending on, or not. So if something was needed it was bought, otherwise it was not thought of. The family consists of only mom and me, and back then she was the only earning in the family. Some time before college started she resigned from her job. It was a combination of the commute, work issues and her ailing health that lead to the decision. Besides, she had put in enough money in savings to put me through college. So it seemed like a sensible decision. Now that we look back, it still is. Even in college there was this certificate course I took up for learning Pro/E (which now that I think didn’t teach me any more than what a friend who knows how to use it), but I remember talking to mum about it and saying that it would add ‘weight’ to my resume (Sigh, pity) and the next day she asked me how much it was worth and gave that much to me and told me to pay the fees with it if I was interested in doing it. Similarly when it became necessary for me to purchase a laptop, she bought me one. Although I do remember, for the lack of a better word, nagging her for a new phone shortly after college started. I ended up purchasing a Nokia N72, a good phone, but a bad way of acquiring it.

So after I got my interview cleared and before job started, I thought that when salary starts coming in I should divide it in five parts. One part would be my own allowance and I spend it how I want without answering anyone. Second part would be an allowance for mom and likewise no questions asked on what she does with it. Third part would be for the expenses of the house and fourth would be saved up for something like a future education or a car or a house, whatever would catch my fancy. The fifth would go towards an emergency fund for those unforeseen times. If you look at it, the so called planning makes sense. It started out well, before as the use of past tense suggests, it went to nothingness. I have touched on this before, but soon I developed more expensive tastes and lesser inhibition. So my love for coffee would find me making daily visits to Barista for multiple cups of coffee (oh and they make some great coffee), cheese burst pizzas, gym to burn off the pizza and so on. Soon it developed in to a habit, and month ends would be accompanied by a decreasing availability of funds.

Sometime last year I got in the inevitable discussion of finances, and seeing my state of things and some of the poor decisions I had taken she asked questions that I could not properly answer as to where all that money really went. It was of course a not so neat discussion (forgive my use of the euphemism). Of course some time afterwards, better sense prevailed and I religiously siphon off money every month for saving. Sometimes it is not as much as I would like it, not as much as mom would want it, but then again I am now ‘richer’ than I was a year ago.

My so called improved habits are however a result of deliberate and conscious decisions. Some of them every day. Do I still want to go and have loads of coffee, pick up every book, movie and game that has my fancy? At the back of my mind I do, and it is a decision with the thought that “No, that money must be saved for something else. Something larger”

Indecent

He was standing near the hospital entrance waiting for the rains to stop. The sudden rains had brought things to a jam in the city. Since he hadn’t brought an umbrella he couldn’t walk and the traffic was too slow moving to take a cab. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and the lighter. Out of habit he ran his fingers along the length of the stick before inhaling it in before flicking the lighter open and lighting it up. He hadn’t been smoking for a while, but today he had remembered to pick up the pack and lighter from the drawer in the office up in the hospital. He was feeling tensed, scared for himself and for her. He half had a mind to call her up to check up on her, but he had already done that a couple of minutes back.

The ambulance came in to a screeching stop near the entrance, and the orderlies rushed towards it as two patients were brought out of it. It was a young man and a woman both seemed to be in their early twenties. Both seemed to have been beaten up pretty bad. The boy had bruises and assault marks all over him and seemed to be bleeding from his mouth. His shirt had been ripped apart half way through and he winced every time someone touched him to support him while he was being moved on a stretcher. The girl seemed to have had it worse. She was beaten up as well, but had bite and scratch marks all over her naked body. It wasn’t that she wasn’t covered up, there was a sheet covering her body but her clothes were missing, and the sheet slipped when she was lifted to be put on the stretcher. One of the female nurses stepped back when she was being wheeled through along with him to the emergency room. He threw the half smoked cigarette and put on his apron as he ran through with the stretchers, ordering the orderlies to prep the room and the supplies he would need.

He and the team tried to work the best they could through the two hours that followed, but the girl did not make it through. Apart from the marks visible on her body, she had suffered two broken ribs, severe trauma on the head and her vagina. She had been raped. Gang raped, brutally. She had tried to put up a fight like anyone would do defend themselves, but was over powered by the men who had gone down on her. Turn by turn. The boy it seems had tried to intervene to help her but was beaten up brutally by the same men. He would however go on to live. He was standing still standing there in room slightly taken aback at the condition of the two. He was pulling of the gloves off his hand to wash them when a man came running in. “Please doctor, please save Riya. She is the only daughter I have.  She has been through enough for a life time. Please doctor, please save her!” He didn’t know what to say. Almost robotically he started “I am sorry sir, but we did all that we could. I am afraid the injuries she has had are far too severe.  She has had too much blood loss and I am afraid there is nothing we can do to save her.” 

The father kept on speaking as he tugged at his scrubs. He didn’t hear a word of what was being told, but could only see the expressions on his face as it contorted with pain, anger and helplessness. An orderly came in and lead the weeping father out. He walked out after them. A group had gathered outside the room, probably friends and family of the two. He kept hearing while he stood there. It seemed that the boy and girl were engaged, and had gone to a bar in the city to celebrate. They had run in to a rowdy group of men when they were leaving the bar. The same group proceeded to beat them before proceeding to rape the girl. He couldn’t stand there anymore as more people tried to ask him if anything could be done for the girl. He changed into his clothes and took a cab to home. It was early morning now, and she was still sleeping when he came in. He did not wake her up but just lay next to her and kept staring at her till he dozed off to sleep. When he woke up in the evening she was predictably not there. She would have gone to her shift in the hospital but he still called her up to check up on her. He felt a sense of relief when she answered. She had come to know of the case too, and asked him to come and check up on the boy was sleeping now.

He took an hour to get ready, had a long hot bath to come to his senses before he left for the hospital. The police were there in the boy’s room with both the families when he entered.
“Yes officer, I had kissed her before the three of them started calling names at us.”

“What time was it? Were you drinking?”

“It was slightly past eleven, I remember paying the bill around eleven. We had been drinking, yes, but only a beer or two while the match was on.”

“Any other description of the three people who raped her?” He winced when he heard that word. “No, all that I remember of them I have already told the officer who came in just before you.”

“Very well, the bar has a CCTV camera near its entrance where you were attacked; we will try to pull up some useful footage from it. I am deeply sorry for your loss. I understand that you were recently engaged, and you have my word that we will try all we can to catch the men responsible for this. Doctor, will you please come with us, we need to just go through your statements as well.”

He left with the cops to give his statements in a different room. The officer had the presence of mind to not take his statements in front of the families thinking that they would it hurt them even more. He went down to her section to meet her once. He waited for her to come out of a patient’s room. The two of them did not talk much, but just sat together for a while before she went off on her rounds again, and he to the boy’s room.

“Why were you drinking and kissing her on the street? Have you no sense of shame, how to behave decently?”

“Decency, you ask me to behave decently father? So it was indecent in kissing her as we walked out of the bar? Just a small innocent kiss. Yes, that was indecent of me. Do you know what they did to her?”

“Of course I do.”

“You weren’t there when it happened. The three of them were drunk silly. They called us names, and when we walked away, they ran after us. We called for help but there was no one nearby.

They beat me first while one of them held her. She tried to fight as well, but the guy holding her, he pulled her hair and kept slapping her. When they were done with me they went on to rape her. She fought, but they bit her, punched her and one after other raped her.

I had only kissed her, but they stripped her naked and beat her before raping her on a street. Where is the decency in that? Where is the decency in that?”

Everyone went silent. He asked them to leave the room so that the nurse could change his dressings. The nurse was not due for another hour, but he felt that the boy could do with this little comfort.

“You know doctor, I loved her and she loved me back. We were so happy to have been engaged. Even our parents approved of it. I still remember the kiss she gave me that night. Her lips were so soft and moist. I still remember it like an old memory that you keep thinking of, because she always kissed me like that. I don’t think I have the will to live much longer. But I must tell you this because I am told you tried to save her. You did more for her than the rest of the world could. That night we had planned to save up to buy a house for ourselves to movie in to when we would get married.

I still cannot understand why they did this to us. Why do they hate us so much? Ours was an act of love, why did they do this to her...to anyone...”

“Hush now, you need to be quiet and rest. The nurse will be on her way soon. I will give you a dose of sedative to put you to sleep. You need more rest to recover.” He gave him a shot before calling the nurse in.

He was standing near the hospital entrance waiting for the rains to stop. The sudden rains had brought things to a jam in the city. Since he hadn’t brought an umbrella he couldn’t walk and the traffic was too slow moving to take a cab. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and the lighter. Out of habit he ran his fingers along the length of the stick before inhaling it in before flicking the lighter open and lighting it up. He hadn’t been smoking for a while, but today he had remembered to pick up the pack and lighter from the drawer in the office up in the hospital. He was feeling tensed, scared for himself and for her. He half had a mind to call her up to check up on her, but he had already done that a couple of minutes back.

The boy had taken a blade and slit his wrists in the bathroom. He was dead minutes before his family had noticed that he was taking too long in the bathroom. Today was his funeral. It seemed odd that it should rain today in the winters. He finished smoking his cigarette before he threw the stub on the ground and crushed it with his heel. He pulled up the collars of his jacket before walking off. He was going to attend the funeral.