A new book- usual Indian fantasy….

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 12-08-02 AT 08:30 AM (GMT) by WebMaster (admin)]

http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=Book3&d=Books

Apart from holding the reader’s attention right till the end, the timing of this book will help in its scoring at the stands, says ANIL BHAT

Flashpoint By Mainak Dhar; Fiction House.

For a country which got bloodied by a war immediately after attaining Independence and since, had three more conventional wars, a decade and a half of low intensity conflict with high intensity terrorism by past – masters in this gory art and, not to mention, insurgencies as well as a five-decade-long live Line of Control, novels or films on the subject have been very few and far between. Ravi Rikhye’s The Fourth Round and General K Sundarji’s The Blind Men of Hindoostan are the only two that come to mind. Mainak Dhar’s Flashpoint, released recently, comes at a time when India is facing fresh challenges in its war against terrorism – much older than September 11, 2001.

Although the story is set in 2009 the war, in this case, begins with an action which has been under hot discussion at many levels of the political and military leaderships, but never implemented – that of attacking bases in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). This news shocks Illahi Khan, the military dictator, Prime Minister of Pakistan who exclaims, “The b——s have more b—s than I thought. How bad is it?” Vivek Dwivedi is the 58-year-old Prime Minister of India, the world’s largest democracy, who likes reading Kahlil Gibran and suffers from a conscience as well as a consciousness of national security – something his service chiefs have not been used to.

From this attack onwards the story picks up an exciting pace taking the reader into the high-tension, high-tech war fought on land, sea and air through characters and names on both sides of the border bearing some kind of resemblance to real-life ones. Taking off from the trend of live battlefield coverage by electronic media set since the early 1990s, there is also a television team duo of an anchorwoman and a cameraman who are assigned to an armoured regiment in Rajasthan’s desert sector.

The narrative is full of abbreviations of modern weaponry which readers of Tom Clancy will be familiar with. For those who are not, there is a glossary at the end. The scenes of terrorist actions at the behest of the Imam and handling of the ‘key’ to set-off nuclear weapons by a mad military head of a rogue state provide brief glimpses of the horrors and havoc involved.

Mainak Dhar, the 28-year-old author, an alumnus of Modern School, Hindu College and the Indian Institute of Management, works for a well-known multinational based in Singapore. His fascination with matters military seems to have honed his imagination which has produced a racy thriller as his magnum opus. The title he selected, Flashpoint, prefixed with Nuclear has already been popularised by the Western shuttle-diplomacy managers’ description of the current Indo-Pak crisis. The book’s cover depicts the horrendous orange flame and mushroom cloud made famous by the only country which actually targeted innocent humans over half a century ago and pontificates today.

Despite some liberties taken by the author the story succeeds in holding the reader’s attention right till the end, which is actually good. Along with the ingredients already mentioned, the very timing of this tome may help in its scoring at the stands.