Neon-lit, pulpy prose tracks the scapegrace Charlie in his myriad mishaps across Delhi
The title is a pun in a book filled with neon prose and pulp fiction. Charlie, who prefers to be called Seth, has his girlfriend distastefully OD on him just before a party. Charlie being Charlie, he abandons the body to his Chinese manservant as he flits off to his evening at the Jogis.
Charlie dodges kisses and dubious wheeling dealing only to stumble upon another corpse in the Portaloo. Unfortunately, he has no alibi since his hosts cannot tell when he arrived at the party and the girls he glimpsed on his way have vanished. The polÂiceman Nik has an axe to grind, becÂause Charlie has never invited him to a party and is determined to arrest him for something or the other, desÂpite Charlie바카라™s line to the commissioner of police. A mysterious femme fatale who smells of Shalimar appÂears and winds her tendrils around Charlie바카라™s heart.
Etteth cocks a snook at the high life in Delhi where Moet et Chandon is inferior champagne and only drunk by social climbers in a world where forgettable women chase after LamÂborghinis. He specialises in metaphors바카라”traffic as thick as the head of a Gurgaon bouncer for example바카라”and they pepper the pages striving for effect while upping the hilarity. Shiva is referred to as 바카라˜the smoky dude바카라™ by a swami who materialises with equal strangeness in Charlie바카라™s life. The glamour quotient is high, with short Chanel miniskirts and legs that stretch all the way to heaven. It goes side by side with the violence quotient바카라”a shikari grandfather who has his throat torn out by a leopard in a wild act of revenge in a dream estate called Silver Cloud. Sort of like James Hadley Chase meets Judith Krantz.
Perhaps there are too many femme fatales바카라”Asha the loved and lost wife with the dimpled chin, who was more attractive than Princess Di, the only one who really held Charlie바카라™s heart until바카라¦. Then, Sheena, the efficient and beautiful secretary who reigns over Charlie바카라™s office and organises his fashion show. And finally, supremely Mandira, strangely familiar, strangely haunting, who takes complete charge of Charlie바카라™s life. Would we miss Asha if she weren바카라™t there, apart from the poetry of her dimpled chin and Charlie바카라™s Barbie tattoo?
As the story proceeds, it gets more nuanced and tangled until Charlie is knotted so tightly that he doesn바카라™t know how to breathe. There are touches of dark comedy and surreal moments when the manservant Chow reimagines himself as an Antonio Banderas figure.
Etteth sketches characters in a few strokes바카라”possibly it goes with having been a graphic novelist. Rudra PraÂtap Deo, the princely fugitive from Bastar with a posh accent and 바카라˜hair as white as cocaine바카라™, who does not smell of eau de fear. Buffet Bhat, the grossly overweight freeloader whose fallen body rests on its blimp of a belly. Etteth바카라™s language conjures up a cloying world that is yellowing at the edges, like a spider lily as it rots. Is it overload, is it overdrive, or is it a way of killing time? Whatever it is, it has its own dark poetry.Â