The Competent Authority by Shovon Chowdhury

The Competent Authority by Shovon Chowdhury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A hilarious and whimsically satirical book on present day India. Set in a moribund future dystopian India, nuked by the Chinese, it pokes fun at all the holy cows – bureaucrats, religious gurus, the police, politicians, doctors, historical figures, the army, caste arrogance and parochialism etc. The convoluted plot takes recourse to the handy tool of time-travel and is too long, hence the four stars. There are some genuinely comical bits

The bananas were bright purple, and perfectly straight. Robbed of their curvature, glistening purply, they looked like tanned and fit brinjals. Each had a little sticker on it. Banani picked one up and examined the fine print. ‘Hanuman Brand Super Banana,’ it read.
If he actually met one too many people who were affected by his decisions, it would affect his decisions.

Fish has to be mentioned if the author is a Bengali

Rich, pungent and briny – with a hint of decay. This was not the mild, innocent fish that was tandooried every evening by his neighbourhood kebab vendor. This was formidable fish, fish that boldly declared its presence, fish that once consumed, would stamp itself on you at a cellular level and define your character in strange, unpredictable ways. This was fish whose odour could transform, cleanse and purify you.

Slums and another Bengali meme - poets

…odd gentleman of leisure with no particular goal in life. Most of them were poets. They were painfully thin, with concave chests, thin, scrawny necks, and disproportionally large heads. It was like living in the middle of a lollipop convention. Ennui was rampant. Eyesight was poor. Tuberculosis was widespread.

The Shakahari Sena (SS) – a playful but morbid reference to the Nazi SS or the indigenous Shiv Sena)

The organization was able to do all this because it was a religio-poliitcal organization, and hence the normal principles of law and order did not apply.

At the risk of nit-picking, there are two inaccuracies that I would like to point out: It is potassium iodide (for the iodine moiety) that is administered as a prophylactic for thyroid cancer in case of a nuclear fallout and not potassium; it is imperforate anus and not unperforated anus.
Entertaining and hysterical, just wish it was shorter.

View all my reviews