New Delhi, Apr 6 (PTI) Writer Rajat Chaudhuri’s new novel “Spellcasters” is a part psychological thriller and part climate adventure with a twist of the occult as it tells the story of a journalist who gets caught up in a case of a billionaire tycoon and chocolates laced with a secret drug.
On writing this dark and gripping story, Chaudhuri says, “Recently, industry captains have been talking about a ’70-hour work week’ and how we should work harder to beat other nations. Meanwhile, cautionary voices that flag the need to slow down because of ‘planetary limits’ get drowned out.” He then adds: “Limitless growth is an addictive dream, stronger than the most potent drugs, but the addict doesn’t care about the damage it inflicts. Think of the poisoned air, the Himalayan landslides or the summer temperatures that broke all records, aren’t these clear signs of a raging illness?” “Spellcasters”, he says, is a mirror to this diseased time, when persuasive hogwash rules over mind and matter, affecting and transforming people and the living planet in unimaginable ways.
A dragonfight with the shadows is inevitable for everyone, at some stage or another, in one lifetime or another. And it is time for such a fight for the protagonist Chanchal Mitra. Sometimes the dragon is internal, other times, external, and yet other times, internal and external simultaneously.
Mitra is a business reporter by day, dreamcatcher by night; he wakes up in some unknown desert town where he is supposedly sharing a shady hotel room with the flamboyant character, Kapoor, who is intent on abducting a billionaire.
Mitra inadvertently becomes the most integral part of the plot from thereon. Soon enough, they are joined by the mysterious, dark-eyed and raven-haired woman named Sujata and then an ex-sailor, who limps on a crutch and has a weapon on him; a gun, to be precise. In the smog-laden capital city of Aukatabad, an organic chemist funded by a sinister corporation to design a mind-altering drug is found dead from an overdose. In another scenario, the billionaire industrialist’s chocolate production line is contaminated by salmonella.
As abnormal weather patterns close in on cities and towns and Kapoor ventures out with his posse to abduct the billionaire, everything reality is composed of starts to dissolve slowly but surely.
The story has characteristics of postmodern pastiche as the author brings in characters or names from other texts like Caligari, Nine Unknown Men and LJ (Long John Silver).
Will Mitra and Sujata escape the sinister forces that are battling for the control of minds? Will they make it alive, with their sanity intact and purpose fulfilled? As dreams, desires and rough weather coalesce, the landscape of the entire novel leaves one with raised heartbeats and adrenaline.
Blending elements of thriller and fantasy, it delves into the shared concerns of Indian metropolitan cities struggling with the impact of consumerism that’s growing at breakneck speed and the conflicting cultural and spiritual values of its ancient past, civilization. PTI ZMN RB RB
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