Is India truly a mad nation? asks author Karri in his book

'I was born in a mentally retarded country', he begins his book. Encompassing a broad history of the country from the Emergency era in India, Babri Masjid demolition, economic liberalisation to the Godhra riots, journalist-turned-corporate-brander, Sriram Karri, in his book constantly reads this question to his readers: 'Is India truly a mad nation?' and adds, "India is unpredictable".

In the book 'Autobiography of a Mad Nation', twenty-four-year-old Vikrant Vaidya awaits capital punishment, as Karri opens up the political history of the country before the readers, to connect it with Vaidya's hanging.

Sagar, a retired chief of CBI gets a request from the president of the country to investigate if Vaidya's capital punishment is justified. With godmen, cricketers, politicians, journalists, war heroes linked with the case, Sagar steps into an India where innocent people take the blame and face the death sentence rather than tell the truth.

The book features former president A.P.J.Abdul Kalam as the president. After Vaidya's mercy plea to the president, the political mystery behind the case is unlocked.

Karri, who personally feels that "the use of capital punishment must be minimal", said the rarest of the rare is a great test.

In a surprising coincidence, his book comes at a time when the nation is caught up in a debate about a hanging -- of Yakub Memon for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts in which 257 persons died.

On being asked why he had taken a fictional account and not the case of a real hanging, he said "I wanted to focus more on the plot, of a person being hanged with no justification. If I had taken up a real case, I would have to focus on the details of it, rather than the plot itself. This is a story of an angry young man who was born in a mad nation," Karri told IANS.

"I think a lot of us have evolved through the generation of Emergency, the Babri Masjid demolition. It felt more important to me as it was the context I grew up in. So, I felt a betrayal of a promise, anger, a sense of protest and at the same time I found meaning in economic liberalisation, which I give out through the book," Karri said, explaining the idea behind his book.

His anger in the book comes from the love for the country, at times when the country acts against its own citizens, he added.

The first line and the title almost came many years before the writing of the book and they stayed with him, he said.

"I knew that someday a novel should start with 'I was born in a mentally retarded nation'. And I wanted to write a fast-paced murder mystery where I do not have to justify the murder," Karri told IANS.

For today's generation that is not aware of what these red letter events of India mean, he said, the book is more like a revelation of India's past. "Are we, as a generation, ready to fight against a possible dictatorship? Are we resilient enough. This is what our country needs to know," he said.

When asked whether he foresees another Emergency ahead, he sternly remarked, "I do not think the present government is capable of doing that. I don't think any government in the country can do that. It is mainly due to the democratic media that we have today."

(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)