A deep perspective about India

The diagnosis is made albeit with cynicism and yet the tale lands with a hope. ‘The Autobiography of a Mad Nation’ is a saga engineered backward to the diagnosis of the lack of sanity in the polity

Sriram Karri’s ‘The Autobiography of a Mad Nation’ starts of in the very recent past and swaggers around a decade or more and is perhaps indicative that civilisation-ally this is the time when the collective lost its sanity and the polity its credibility. Although there are instances, which refers the distant past and snide comments on a PM speaking at midnight hour on freedom in stylised English.

Fortunately, the writer does not toe the line and quickly returns to a treatise on various facets of a nation that increasingly is losing its balance. It is not difficult to be critical of India in recent times. However, what makes the tale extremely absorbing and worth reading is the adaptation of a formula that Ayn Rand used so well in ‘Atlas Shrugged’.

Its reverse was well established in the Indian polity when the left leaning centralists joined the Indira Gandhi bandwagon. The basis of the John Galt plan is executed in the Indian context and with tremendous understanding of the skill of writing and storytelling. Very often he leaves the reader with the feeling that he could have been far more detailed and told us the laity in greater detail the nuances of a polity that is skewed up.

The book is unabashedly and justifiably vitriolic. The Mad Nation is a repeated usage and every time is a time bound alarm to those who have not read the writing on the wall, yet. Where does fiction depart from reality? In fact truth and fiction constitute the inseparable warp and woof of the script. He hides nothing. In fact not even his self assessment.

The work is extremely well-crafted not something that flows effortlessly. It has multiple high points as a result even some good passages seen mediocre in comparison. From the word go where Karri refers to collectives “We the People” as a fake collective, he minces no words, saves no punch.

To quote him “Strange how political stances impact vocabulary.” True and the work is full of contemporary usages that have specific flavour of the country and the city of Hyderabad. Also a veiled prep as a B Plan for failure Karri is at his best when he says, “The success of the stupid and failure of the profound; they both lie at the mantle of the soul of the nation, which does not run deep.”

The author leaves no room for debate. He admits: “I am often challenged by friends who think I am too harsh in judging nations and societies.” I think he has not been harsh. He has been legitimately conscious of the times we live in and the issues that plague contemporary India - give or take a few decades.

The book is not just thought provoking, it also plods you, nay even pricks you to react and stop being in slumber. Notice some brilliant flashes that come in the form of questions that catch you unguarded. Just two samples: What’s the point in life if you can become the President of a country but have not read Salinger? And is it compulsory to be secular in a secular country.

The amazing story of how the nation has lost its moorings and the expanse of its vistas is told with a kind of honesty that is unparalleled and makes for compulsive reading. The sting flows and often tells rather with raw honesty, an India that we all can surely put in Naipaul’s ‘Wounded Civilization’ though the author seems more caught up contextually and thematically with Rushdie - who he needlessly compliments.

He deals ruthlessly with a nation that has come to pass. You were the ones who were given a free India, a value you perhaps did not deserve from a generation that was noble fierce and picture worthy. Karri goes on to deal with why and how civilisations collapse and how it is after all justified for the anarchist with a plan to take over.

The idea, the ideology, the theme and the solution are all worth a serious debate and not just cursory reading. That is the greatest strength of a book: an idea that gets you thinking. The Ayn Rand influence in thought is visible. I wonder if there was a conscious effort to duck the style!

By:L Ravichander