The Governor & The Mogul

I grew up reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Sevens & Malory Towers. And Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan series. And Biggles and World War II comics. 

And Chandmama, Champak and Chacha Choudhury and Vikram aur Betaal series.

And Suppandi and Tenali Raman and tons of Indrajal Comics & ACKs ( Amar Chitra Katha).

And at home we subscribed to Illustrated Weekly of India, Junior Statesman, Reader’s Digest and we borrowed Sports Star & Sports Week from neighbors. And we also peeked into Mom’s Femina  and Eve’s Weekly.  

And I also read a couple of Denise Robins and Danielle Steel mushy love stories from my sisters’ collection.

When we went for a haircut we read the Screen and the Stardust while we waited our turns.

And on Sunday Indian Express (Sunday Standard) we read comic strips -  Bringing up Father, Phantom, Calamity Jane and Sad Sack and Dennis the Menace and Lone Ranger– while dad and mom focused on the cryptic crossword.

Our cupboards were stacked with piles of dogeared second hand Nation Geographics, Spectrum, Scientific American and Archies Digest.

And slowly we graduated into reading Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, James Hadley Chase. And the all time favorite James Bond series by Ian Fleming!!

And then Sidney Sheldon  and Alistair MacLean and Leon Uris (remember Mila 18?) and James Clavell (Shogun??).  PG Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe came later.

And we swung to western novels – Sudden by Oliver Strange, Louis L’amour and Zane Grey and JT Edson and Max Brand.

And along the way came Somerset Maugham, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and the classics – HG Wells, Jules Verne, Thomas Hardy, Bronte sisters and many many more.

And some Sci-fi from Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

And we eagerly lapped up every new issue of Gladrags that hit the stands. Remember the glossy full pages and centre spreads of Lisa Ray in her (skimpy) bikini?? And later graduated to Cosmopolitan. And I will leave some other magazines in this genre to your experience & imagination.

And we learnt about the complexities in Chiristianity from Dan Browne series. And court trials from John Grisham, medical thrillers by Robin cook, on horses by Dick Francis.

And Mario Puzo, Michael Chricton and Tom Clancy and Jeffery Arthur, Lee Child, Ayn Rand and more and more. And I seriously avoided the likes of Fritjof Capra and Milan Kundera and Edgar Allan Poe.

But sadly, I did not read many Indian authors.

In my younger days I remember reading only Khushwant Singh and RK Laxman and a few English translaton of Indian stories. And later, Ruskin Bond who I thought was English.

I liked Khushwant Singh – his stories, his writing style, his bawdy  jokes, his attitude and the unadulterated vulgarity in some of his writings!!!

Somehow other Indian authors missed my radar for  a long time.

And much later I read the Inscrutable Americans, Once upon a Raj, and other Indian Authors including Chetan Bhagat, Shobhaa De, Arundhati Roy, Devdutt Pattanaik and Ashok Banker.

And I got seriously sold on Indian authors after I read Meluha and the trilogy by Amish Tripathi.  A few more wonderful books followed – Asura,The Rosabal Line, The Mahabharata Secret and Govinda. And The White Tiger and The Family Matters.

Recently I got a surprise gift from my investment adviser -  Dont Tell The Governor by Ravi Subramanian.

A wonderful story (fiction of course) beautifully weaved around real life incidents and recent happenings in India

Yes, you may have guessed it right – the RBI Governor plays the main role, the Finance Minister must surely have a part as well. The Prime Minister walks in at the critical time. And there is someone not exactly a villain and a starlet included to give the story some glamour and oomph!!

And the plot thickens as we read. Special effects are manufactured with the Khandahar hijacking of IA plane and the grand finale leads to the Demonetization of the Rs 1000/- notes and other currencies.

A sad ending though, unlike our typical Hindi movies where they all live happily ever after.

How do you like that??

And as you read you cannot ignore drawing parallels and  imagining real life folks we have seen so often in the  media and YouTube.

If you wish to start/restart reading English fiction, this is a good book that will keep you engrossed until the last page!

I had bought the Kindle version since I am unable to read the print version.

So very soon, the intelligent Amazon app recommended me ‘The Mogul’ by Vish Dhamija.

This one is more like John Grisham with plenty of court room scenes, a double murder and a ‘who-done-it’ mystery.

And if you have read many crime & mystery thrillers, it will not be difficult for you to accurately guess who the guilty one could be.

Vish does a great job in drawing out the character of The Mogul – a wealthy Business magnate in Amchi Mumbai. Other characters are equally intense and their feelings and attitudes are wonderfully brought out as they react to the various situations.

Vish’s writing is unique – in first person and the sections are short and gripping.

So here is another book to read when you are lazing out in the sun or when you are siting in the departure lounge waiting for your flight to get announced! I assure you that this book will be more interesting than going thru your Whats App and Mail messages!

And I am going to buy the next book Amazon recommends. Let me see if there is one written by a female author this time??

Krish..