Skip to main content

Book Review: Raising Hell for Peace by Shashi Bakshi

Raising Hell for Peace by Shashi Bakshi is more than a political thriller novel. Stretched across a long timeline and set in different countries with a good cast of characters, this novel sums up exactly what’s going in the world today. The book deals with the events that stage the performance and life of political parties in India, and elsewhere.


The story, when starts, looks like it is going to be a mythological fiction in a contemporary time, because initial chapters focused more on Kalki – the tenth avatar of Lord Krishna in the new era. The story starts with Guru Satyanand from ‘The Indo Aryan Pride Organisation’ (IAPO). He sets one detective to find out the birth of a baby that is potentially a Kalki. The detective manages to find one boy. The IAPO takes care of him, names him Deshbhakth. After Guru, Balraj takes care of the boy. Desh is bestowed with a privileged life. He gets into in IIT Kanpur.

The ideology of IAPO for India is to make it a majoritarian country. As the story chugs ahead, Desh proves to be a normal guy. Though active in politics, he looks lost in the milling crowd. During college days, Desh and Arya were good friends. Later on Arya moves to the USA for higher studies.

The blurb of the book may suggest that Desh is the leading character, however, a close look reveals otherwise. It is Arya – he wants to change the world’s political order for peace and harmony. He loathes things that cause hatred and riots and turbulence and kills millions of innocent people. But why? There is a reason for that.

While Arya is away in the foreign country, Desh becomes the CM of UP twice. When Arya comes back to India to meet Desh, things change and the novel picks up speed. Hereafter the novel becomes quite political in its stance. Readers will be surprised to know what churns beneath to win an election. The author also, simultaneously, considers the political landscape of Russian and the USA and how does it affect India and other countries. It was shocking to know that Pope of Vatican involves in big election and how things go berserk if not materialized properly. The novel is not one-country focused. It rather collectively tries to study three to four countries. The novel is a perfect political thriller. Some of the events and circumstances in the story mirror the political agenda of the current Indian government, it ossifies when the author brings CAA, NRC kind of stuff in it. The novel might have tried exploring the underlying theme but it certainly landed up disturbing people who support right or left wing politics.

The novel is thoroughly enjoyable with full of political insights. Characterization of Donald Smith was superbly done. The ending of the novel was way great, on the terms of karma. Overall, it is a fascinating read for its genre. All the characters, from Arya to Kat or that manipulative Julius – they never bored. They were perfect as per their roles and virtues.

The author is a keen political observer. His knowledge about the politics is evident in the book. On the whole, the novel is a wonderful read. Yes, at times, it looked that the story was going off the track but the author converged everything brilliantly in the end. People who hold neutral views on politics can thoroughly enjoy this novel. Fingers crossed for supports of any wing!

Get your copy from Amazon.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r