Book Review: All Quiet In Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee

Quote: With some scepticism, Girish starts drilling. He has been given the most advanced drilling machine that man has ever held.
The portable and lightweight GABOR-HKV22x.
He takes great care in preparing for the journey.
Body and mind.
With patience and rigour of Arctic email Roald Amundsen.

A journey of the psychic plumber who has been given the task to find the mythical river Saraswati. Set in dystopic India, pitted against a background of development, corruption, political instability and opportunism, gang wars. A political satire that critically mocks self-induced amnesia of ignorance of middle-class India and Delhi is an example of that amnesia.

Uses a lot of tropes from Bollywood, has some exceptionally well put funny scenes. The characters I felt were underdeveloped, through everything is happening through Girish's eyes, he was lost somewhere in the great shoot out of themes. It's an ambitious book, talks about the water crisis of Delhi is facing and how soon water wars will erupt.

Girish is set on the task by the evil boss, is also the voice of the thousands of migrants workers who float to capital for jobs. The issues of class, caste, power, capitalistic greed are all well drawn. I loved story of Jagat Ram and his ever demoting floors.

The art is much more coherent than the previous book I read by Sarnath. The panels were strict so were the speech bubbles. There was some colour play and the lettering was bare of style and looked handwritten if so it is a daring task. I loved the use of rare dashes of red like on the bow tie and of murder panel. The one blue panel did a good work of drawing attention.

Overall it is a socially apt book for our times when development is fading from our political narrative, a good criticism on the culture of how we middle-class Indians think the rich people are on our side for good.

I would have loved if there was more involvement in the character development, characters failed to capture my attention, the moment I moved to next page they were gone from my had. A narrative like this needs more investment in its character than focusing on the obvious elephant in the room.

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