04 February 2013, 07:39 PM IST
Young India is bound to make Vikas Swarup's new book - The Accidental Apprentice - a bestseller. Contemporary India comes alive in this page-turner from the author of Slumdog Millionaire and published by Simon and Schuster on January 31.
As Sapna Sinha, a sales girl in an electronics boutique in Delhi, bites into an unusual seven step challenge to become the CEO of ABC group of companies, owned by Vinay Mohan Acharya, one of India's richest businessmen, Swarup skillfully presents an India that is in transition, running fast to keep its tryst with destiny.
This is an unputdownable novel. Swarup succeeds in arousing the reader's curiosity from the very beginning and manages to hold the suspense intact till the end. The twist in the tale, to admit it, is quite unexpected although every little clue has been placed at the right turn and at the right corner so that when it hits you, you don't feel that it is out of context. That's Swarup's success.
You join Sapna Sinha in her jail cell and then you don't step back. All the right ingredients are there to make it a racy read. Khap panchayts, kidney rackets, family dramas and dilemmas, corrupt politicians, Gandhian crusaders, child labour, reality television shows, haughty Bollywood stars, investigative journalists and corporate rivalry become textbooks as Sapna gets her CEO training.
Sapna, indeed, comes out a winner in six of the seven life tests set by Acharya. His tests of leadership, integrity, courage, foresight, resourcefulness and decisiveness were tough but deftly handled by Sapna. The seventh test, the hardest of them all, then spirals out of Sapna's control. It was one test she was never prepared for. It pushes her to her limits, but she fights back.
Acharya's basic philosophy is simple -- in life you never get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate. But things reach a stage where there is little room for negotiation. More than Acharya and corporate warfare, Sapna is battling ghosts from her past.
To me, Swarup scores best in his portrayal of Big Ben, the Gandhian Nirmala Ben. It is a delicate expose on the media, middleclass mores and teleactivism. Nirmala Ben gets elevated to saintly status by the electronic media as she goes on a fast unto death at (where else) at Jantar Mantar. From someone who has been nitpicking at life in an LIG colony in Rohini, Nirmala Ben emerges as the nation's conscience. Swarup has given Anna Hazare some competition.
And you wonder why Nirmala Ben has to be a kleptomaniac and realize only later how that trait opens the door to freedom for Sapna and the eventual denouement of the Accidental Apprentice. Here is a master at work, no doubt. Not an accidental apprentice.
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