Democrazy is a satirical spoof of political environment of media – it caricaturises several key figures of media, politics and business (religious or non-religious). In truth, that pretty much sums up the book review. 😉
Characters in the book
Politics is led by Badi sarkar and her inept and puerile son chote sarkar – a clear reference to bosses of a yesteryear (feels good to say so :P) political party. Chote sarkar is mentored by Mohammed Panja whose rival is a politician from Orchid party with a naughty name Girpade. There is BB, Buddhiman Buddhiraja, no less, who has a nightly show called ‘B for Budhhi’ on a channel called, wait for it, Bow Wow. He quite closely resembles an Arnab clone. There is Giani Seth, the richest man in the country, who disburses cheques of ten crores to beggars, hires people to defeat his rival Chaddha on candy crush and makes accident caused by his kid goes away. Sounds familiar, the last part? Oh yeah! Then comes another businessman, err, religious leader, er no, neem expert, Baba Neemacharya, who is close to Badi sarkar. Between Giani and Baba Neemacharya, they hire Miss Indias to be their personal secretary or hospitality girls. Again, any of these characters could be clone of any number people from same brethren (politics/media/business) that we have heard of. Needless to say, all these characters work hard to take the country to dogs. In this nasty mix, throw in an honest school Principal Ambika and her Twitter activist son Adarsh and we have our victims.
Thing about this satire was it was very close to reality. I laughed at the hyperbole and dark humor for 100 pages and later I quietened. I wish the writer, Atulya Mahajan better known as Amreekandesi, had put a Coen-esque disclaimer in the beginning of the book: This is based on a true story. I am pretty sure I can prove that just as well as Coen brothers can for Fargo.
The book has an end befitting for Priyadarshan movies, where all characters come together in a chaos. I won’t write how it ends but chances are you already know since you have witnessed it many times in real world and fiction.
I think I must applaud Atulya for his courage to write about it and mock these caricatures of our society. However, none of it was new to me; I could always tell what was about to come. The satire in the book was something reminiscent of what Twitter humorists (including Atulya himself) have already acquainted us with.
I loved the tweets in the beginning of each lesson; I thought that they captured the ‘Twitter essence’ of each character very well. A shout out to book cover designers, I loved it. The funny quotes in thought bubbles and the illustration are both a credit to the book.
This is Atulya’s second book with a subject different than his first one; his first book was a coming-of-age story. I will wait for Atulya to write a third book about, well, something new again. 🙂
(I received a review copy courtesy the author and his publisher.)
Visceral Observations 
nice