Sacred Games – Vikram Chandra
This truly is an epic. At first sight, I thought Vikram Chandra was just trying to match his namesake (the more famous Vikram Seth, author of other ‘epics’ like A Suitable Boy) by writing a long novel (it is long at 900 pages!). But as I started reading it, I realised that this was not just long, but wide and deep.
The author’s breadth is dizzying – the story goes from the murky world of the Mumbai mafia-style underworld, to international terrorism, to the workings of the Indian bureaucracy, to the intelligence services investigating Islamic fundamentalism, to the traumas of the Partition of the Indian sub-continent 60 years ago, to the sidelines of the inside workings of Bollywood….
But, it is not just the breadth of the canvas that is breath-taking. This is not a superficial skimming of several sub-plots. It is the depth with which Vikram has researched each of these sub-plots and gone into not just describing the superficial external happenings there, but the intricate workings inside the minds of the people involved. He has gone right into the depths of the mind of a Mumbai don, a Mumbai policeman, an intelligence officer, a family uprooted at Partition….
It is hard to imagine that a 900-page book could be unputdownable – but this one was for me. I lost touch with the outside world for a week while I read this for several hours everyday.
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