Benaami by Anish Sarkar - Dan Brown meets Frederick Forsyth in an Indian milieu

Anish Sarkar, a vice president with information major with Cap Gemini and an IIT-IIM alumnus is the latest to join the bandwagon of high ranking professionals with enviable academic pedigree to storm the literary world. I also happen to know Anish personally as an ex-colleague. In his debut novel, Anish has attempted to create a Da-Vinci code kind of feel against the background of the Great Indian mutiny of 1857 which was probably the closest that India came towards upheaving the colonial rule of the British until Mahatma Gandhi came up the more subtle mantra of non-violence.

The book follows the adventures of an Indian software engineer, Arjun Chaterjee who has been struggling with certain dreams since his childhood and has been trying to make some sense of them. He meets the attractive history professor Dr. Guha who is an expert on the Great Indian mutiny and before they realize, they are sucked into a major terrorist conspiracy by a crazy business tycoon whose inspiration also lies in the mutiny.

The book shifts between the past and the present (with the past being printed in italics) keeping the reader glued to the inevitable point where the two have to converge. And when it does, it is indeed quite a revelation. There are numerous threads intertwined within the plot, some of which include

• A view of the thoughts, challenges and deeds of the Indians of the mid 19th century.
• A secret unknown society which was the brains behind the mutiny and whose presence has been lost in the annals of history.
• Romance between an indian man and a British woman who eventually becomes a key member of the secret society.
• Widow remarriage
• The inevitable romance between arjun and guha
• Nuclear technology and a view of what happens when this falls into the wrong hands (even if the ulterior motive could be one of extreme patriotism)

Anish keeps sprinkling the plot with a number of sub-plots and then subsequently ties all of them up towards the climax. The best part is that pretty much all the threads get neatly tied up leading to an action packed climax. In my opinion, the plot offers significant potential to be made into a movie. Overall, the book has a Dan Brown feel with the climax drawing similarities to Frederick Forsyth's book 'The Fourth Protocol'

A couple of things that could have been better include the following

• The plot of the tycoon seems a little rushed towards the climax
• One thread which remains open is how did the tycoon figure out what finally happened to the benaami bcos all of them are shown to have perished while unleashing the 'brahmastra'?
• The book could have had a different title. It is an apt title once u have read the book but it probably distracts the audience because 'benaami' in modern india stands for illegal hoarding of wealth using an alias. This is one place where Chetan Bhagat and Ravi Subramaniam seem to have got it just right.

Overall, the book made for fascinating reading and I hope that Anish continues to churn out such interesting plots in the days to come.