Literary RDX - The Explosive Debut of Subcontinental Spy Fiction

The Cold War and the threat of nuclear armageddon inspired most of post-World War II spy fiction. English language readers generally heard the Western side of the story with British and American heroes, and I'm sure there were equally gripping novels available on the other side of the Iron Curtain featuring heroes with names ending in -sky or -vitch, as PG Wodehouse would have said.

Considering that the threat of nuclear war today arises mainly from the Indian subcontinent, it's surprising that we haven't so far seen much spy fiction set in this region.

That long drought may soon be coming to an end. Two recent debut novels by Indian authors, featuring heroes from the Indian spy agency RAW and their escapades in neighbouring Pakistan, provide some welcome analysis, however fictional, of the issues that bedevil the South Asian region.

Shatrujeet Nath's "The Karachi Deception" of 2013 was soon followed by Bilal Siddiqi's "The Bard of Blood" in early 2015

[I reviewed Shatrujeet Nath's second novel on this blog in January. This book is a work of mythological fiction - "The Guardians of the Halahala".]

Without giving away the details of either story, let me just say they deal with topics that should be very familiar to Indian and Pakistani readers.

The name Dawood Ibrahim is notorious throughout India. Ibrahim was a Mumbai-based don who fled the country when the heat on him began to increase. He is believed to have been responsible for the Mumbai blasts of 1993. He has been sighted in the UAE on occasion but is now believed to be hiding out in Pakistan.

In The Karachi Deception, Irshad Dilawar is the thinly-disguised equivalent of Dawood Ibrahim, and the story is of a group of RAW agents who are sent into Pakistan to eliminate him. Of course, nothing is ever straightforward in a good spy novel, and there are twists and turns galore.

The separatist movement in Pakistan's province of Balochistan is likewise well-known in the subcontinent. Pakistan has long accused India of providing support to Baloch separatists, a charge that India denies. However, given Pakistan's own barely secret support for separatism in the Indian state of Kashmir (and its equally stout denial), Indian citizens would not be surprised at (and may in fact welcome) their government's tit-for-tat involvement in Balochistan.

The Bard of Blood is largely woven around the Baloch separatist movement, although it involves characters from the larger AfPak region, such as Mullah Omar of the Afghan Taliban. Again, the story focuses on a group of RAW agents on a mission to Balochistan, and there is betrayal and intrigue here too. There is a scene featuring a meeting between the fictional Indian prime minister Shailendra Patel and Chinese president Zhou Bocheng in Ahmedabad, a sly reference to the actual meeting of Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping in the same city.

Both books weave historical and contemporary facts with fiction to create an engaging story. Needless to say, the villains in both novels are members of Pakistan's spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).

It is important to note that Bilal Siddiqi, the author of The Bard of Blood, is just twenty years old! This novel is a terrific accomplishment for one so young.

Having said that, Shatrujeet Nath's is by far the more polished work. The sophistication of the plot, the quality of the language and the richness of the atmosphere evoked by The Karachi Deception are first rate. This is not to say that The Bard of Blood is amateurish. It is also a very readable novel, but there are definitely better books in the author's future. Siddiqi is a good twelve years younger than Nath was when he wrote his first book, so he can certainly look forward to producing more sophisticated writing as he matures.

One thing I must say, though. I am a strong believer in quality as evidenced by the little details. Sloppiness in English grammar and composition detracts greatly from the overall impression of a book's quality, and Bilal Siddiqi should definitely get himself a more conscientious editor. There were at least three glaring errors of language in his book (apart from the constant and erroneous reference to the Baloch people as "Balochis").

1. The description of Mullah Baradar on page 76 alternates between the past tense and the present tense. It should have been in the past tense throughout.

2. On page 130 appears the line "Sadiq and him never got along well." That should have read "Sadiq and he never got along well."

3. On page 151, there is a reference to the "draft itinerary" of an important meeting. That should of course have been "draft agenda".

I'm pedantic about English, so these kinds of mistakes can ruin a book for me. I hope Siddiqi fixes these errors in the next edition of the book, and ensures that such mistakes don't mar his future writing. Shatrujeet Nath's novel has a couple of typos in it, but fortunately nothing more egregious.

I did enjoy both books, and would recommend them to other fans of the spy genre as well as to those interested in South Asian politics. Here's looking forward to more subcontinental spy fiction from these and other authors. It would be good to see Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal and China included in the ambit of future stories, since they no doubt play a role in real-life covert operations in the region.

Book Review - The Guardians Of The Halahala

I have just finished reading the first book in what is billed as the "Vikramaditya Trilogy" - The Guardians of the Halahala.

[Pronunciation hint: It's Vikramaaditya, i.e., with a long vowel in the middle.]

Mythological fiction at its best

The author is Shatrujeet Nath, whose earlier spy novel The Karachi Deception I had enjoyed very much. So I fully expected this one to be good, and I was not disappointed.

Different genre, same quality

Nath joins a distinguished line of modern Indian authors who are delving into the rich store of Indian mythology to inspire their works of fiction. Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy is perhaps the best-known in this genre so far, but my bookshelf is being rapidly populated by a host of similar others, and Nath's Vikramaditya Trilogy promises to be one of the classiest.

The premise of the Vikramaditya Trilogy is intriguing. It combines two well-known myths, one being the churning of the Ocean of Milk by the eternal rivals, the devas ("lesser" gods) and the asuras (demons), and other being the exploits of the wise and valorous king Vikramaditya of Vetala (or Betaal) fame.

The churning of the Ocean of Milk is a cultural meme that resonates throughout the Indic world, as this statue at Bangkok airport testifies - but more on the Indic stuff later!

Generations of Indian children have grown up shivering at the creepy tales of the storytelling Betaal or Vetala (a ghoul that possesses corpses) and the brave and wise king Vikramaditya

Most Indians know the story of how the devas and asuras once reluctantly cooperated, using the giant snake Vasuki as a rope and mount Meru as a pestle (with Lord Vishnu in the form of a tortoise supporting the pestle) to churn the Ocean of Milk in their quest for Amrit, the nectar of immortality. But before the Amrit appears, a host of other objects and beings emerges from the Ocean, the first of which is the deadly poison Halahala that threatens to kill them all. Enter Lord Shiva, who eliminates the danger by simply swallowing the Halahala, after which the churning resumes.

Nath introduces a bit of mischief into the proceedings by revealing that not all of the Halahala was consumed by Shiva. A little bit of the poison, enough to fuel a weapon of mass destruction, had been stolen by one of the asuras and hidden inside a dagger before Shiva could arrive on the scene. True, Shiva seizes the dagger from the asura and keeps it away from the squabbling rivals, but there comes a time when he wants to return to his meditations and looks for a trustworthy and neutral party who can keep the dagger safe. The unfortunate one Shiva chooses is of course our hero King Vikramaditya, a mere mortal but endowed with all the heroic qualities one would require to stand up to both the devas and the asuras.

Nath neatly melds the historical king Chandragupta "Vikramaditya", who kept the Huns and Sakas at bay, with the mythical hero of the "Vikram and Betal" stories.

The historical Chandragupta titled "Vikramaditya", presented to us by Amar Chitra Katha comics

So in The Guardians of the Halahala ("guardians" being a reference to King Vikramaditya and his loyal warriors), the king has to ward off not only his conventional nomadic enemies the Hunas and the Sakas, but also his two new celestial foes. An uneven contest? Well, that's what makes the story interesting! Vikramaditya and his merry men (and women, for Nath is no chauvinistic male author) have plenty of tricks up their sleeves to meet the challenge, not to mention pluck.

Nath maintains a lively pace, switching from one scene to another and back again to provide a simultaneously progressing narrative covering many characters in many settings. This is a story in which many things happen, and at the same time, so it's important for the reader to be treated to a slice of each scene before the narration moves on.

The story could be confusing to readers without a good background into Indian history, mythology and a familiarity with Sanskritic names.

There is a nice Tolkienesque map at the beginning of the book showing all the kingdoms referred to in the story. The difference is that Tolkien's Middle-Earth was pure fiction; Nath's Sindhuvarta is based on historical reality.

It helped me to mentally translate each kingdom's name to the name of the modern Indian state to which it corresponded, so I could make sense of the geographical directions mentioned in the story. These are a sample:

Avanti (Vikramaditya's kingdom) - a region between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
Heheya - Madhya Pradesh
Anarta - Gujarat
Matsya - Rajasthan
Vatsa - also in Uttar Pradesh
Magadha - Bihar
Vanga - Bengal
Kosala - Northern Uttar Pradesh
Kalinga - Odisha (Orissa)

As a South Indian, I was slightly disappointed that much of South India was not shown on this map at all, and the bits that did appear were largely dismissed as the "Dandaka forest", when some of the most virile kingdoms of ancient India happened to have been in the South. It was the seafaring South Indian kings, omitted from mention in the Sindhuvarta story, who spread the Indic culture to South-east Asia, through Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia all the way up to Cambodia and South Vietnam! [Ah well, some of the best historical fiction of the South Indian kingdoms has already been written. See this and this.] During the course of the story, one of the characters mentions "two kingdoms to the East", Sribhoja and Srivijaya, which hints at the extent of the ancient Indic civilisation. This is a bit of an error, though, since these are both names for the same kingdom which corresponds to part of modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia. Perhaps he meant to say Kamboja instead of Sribhoja, which would have referred to modern Cambodia.

The nine gems of Chandragupta Vikramaditya's court, who were mostly nerdy scholars, are here turned into doughty warriors, with two of them even becoming female. I daresay even Indians would have a tough time pronouncing some of their names (try Varahamihira and Kshapanaka).

I enjoyed the occasional flashes of Nath's subtle humour, as when Kalidasa is introduced as a giant warrior who also writes poetry on the side. It was redolent of the tough Steven Seagal character in the action movie "Under Siege" who "also cooks".

What I liked most about the book is how it turns conventional notions of morality and right and wrong on their head. Hindu mythology has always glorified the devas as the virtuous ones, and the asuras as evil beings, with Amar Chitra Katha comics contributing to the stereotyping with appropriate illustrations.

The Devas - the "good guys" are always fair-skinned, clean-shaven and handsome

The Asuras - the "bad guys" are always dark-skinned and demonic in their features

The stark difference in appearance between the devas and the asuras is implausible. Both had a common father, the sage Kashyapa. The mother of the asuras was Diti and the mother of the devas was Aditi. Diti and Aditi were sisters. How can the offspring of two sisters and a common father be so different? It's just stereotyping and quite literally the demonisation of one set of beings.

Shatrujeet Nath's portrayal is more realistic. In The Guardians of the Halahala, the devas are villainous characters, no better than the asuras. It's the humans who are the heroes. Indra, the king of the devas, comes across as a particularly odious character.

Indra - a villainous god in Shatrujeet Nath's retelling

There is no question about where the reader's sympathies lie. We root for King Vikramaditya all the way.

To be frank, the depiction of Vikramaditya isn't rousing. The dashingly heroic character of Hansa Mehta's Adventures of King Vikrama is strangely absent. Yet there is one trait of Nath's Vikramaditya that endears him to us - his loyalty and love for the wife who lies in a near-coma throughout the first book.

Nath's description of the shadowy Borderworld as "Creation caught in the transition between life and death" is brilliant and haunting, as is his portrayal of it as "the eternal realm of the undead ghouls, the gloaming separating the world of the living from the world of the dead". This is where Nath houses the Betaal (Vetala) of the old Vikram-Betaal stories, and the Betaal has a crucial role to play, after all.

Nath neatly brings together chiasmic contrasts, as in this passage.

Shukracharya held his breath, not heeding another word being spoken by the men. Asuras with four horns on their heads, shell-like bodies that were impenetrable, eyes that glowed like white moonlight...and jagged swords shaped out of bone.

Diti's seven demonic sons. The dreaded Maruts. Asura by birth, deva by allegiance.

The irony of it brought a small sneer to Shukracharya's lips. After all, he was a deva by birth, but asura by allegiance. Loyalty was everything and nothing.

The Guardians of the Halahala is a great first volume of a promising trilogy. If Shatrujeet Nath can keep up the suspenseful pace and carry the series through to a satisfying conclusion, he would have earned a leading place in the pantheon of modern Indian authors who are forging new tales from old.