The Indian intelligence, RAW holds a conclave under the auspices of the Prime Minister of India and all the three service chiefs. This pre-emptive measure aims to scuttle ?Operation Red Rose? of Pakistan to devour Kashmir. The Prime Minister does a ?raring to strike? act vacillating with morbid credos. Even such a close-door palavers are not able to hold secrets from moles implanted by Pak ISI. The author, Brig YPS Mohan, VSM vouches this reality-hooped fiction-thriller to be first of its kind in India.
The plot is enmeshed with peels of machinations taking place concurrently in a surreptitious manner. The author lets large comic relief to cast a medley of emotions upon his readers. The macabre ISI pogrom is serenaded by a torrid affair of Sunita and the roseate romanticist Yogesh and setting up of Sonyog at the World Trade Centre. The ISI incursion is bound to spell doom for India ? ?God save the Indians now that we got our foothold in their government.? With ISI moles squirming hither and thither throughout the entire state machinery of India. Their death-knell sounded ? ?Rose is red. Black is beautiful?, an abracadabra to wreak havoc on Indian soil. Yogesh could never imagine that an ISI contact in New Delhi had put him under the scanner. Incredulously, the mole candidly passes their covert message to Yogesh. The author hops this sequence in a veritable cadence of fortuitious faux pas.
The readers would be thrilled to grab intelligence codes that bamboozle the armed forces. The police remain a lame duck as usual turning a volte-face to conduct an investigation. Finally, the coded message gets cracked ? a natty solution lurks out. It creates flutters across the army, intelligence and the government. The DGMI in India is jolted out of its reverie. Yogesh does derring-do acts. The desperado runs the gauntlet, in and out of death. Slambang action and the plot thickens.
Raman Kumar, the Indian Defence Minister lauds Yogesh for mustering to be a good Samaritan. Intriguing by all means, the ISI mole doped in the Indian Government turns out ? a cog in the wheel brandishing indubitable reputation. This tinderbox goes ticking to a seditious plot to smoother internecine rivalry that would prove detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of the Indian state. A snake in the grass goes undetected. Has the malaise afflicted the men in olives? The rot runs deeper. Some screeching hairpin bends await a reader.
The author swerves from the story line with twists and twirls at galore and also whips up salacious masala to garnish reader'smind. For instance, a graphic portrayal of two siblings entwined in incest and kinky things is a nifty abettor upon the reader.
?The day has finally come when, with the help from our Chinese comrades and their friends in the ISI?will indeed become the Prime Minister of India in the next twenty-four hours or so.? This jubilation comes from an honorable Indian Minister with impeccable reputation.
However, the author harps on certain fortuitous happenings that appear to be symptomatic of overt conjecture. Yogesh hiding in toilet and eavesdropping minister'sconversation, thereafter nephew shooting his minister uncle to lay snare upon Yogesh might fall a bit groggy upon readers. How could a minister take the umbrage to tow along an indicted accomplice inside Sena Bhavan? All strategic establishments are under CCTV surveillance and so certain encounters appear preposterous. Similarly, Yogesh'shitchhiking away instead of turning himself in the police raises some incredulous nature to rev up the storyline. The only way is to surrender to the police and the veracity could be verified later. How could the entourage of remain incommunicado with the centre? How could the Prime Minister go to a public place without security sanitisation, a turret in the vicinity posed a potent threat but yet remained unnoticed. These facetious conjectures could be dealt upon with a more seeming manner.
Har Ki Pauri would have been a veritable Tower of Babel had the danse macabre got enacted. But, the adage goes ? Man proposes and God disposes. And it happens for the good and the book proves it so. Above all, the role of conscientious good samaritans doing some desperado acts deserves encomiums to be heaped upon.
(Manas publications, 4402/5-A, Opp. HDFC Bank, Main Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002).
