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Crime and comedy

‘The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole’ by Salil Desai is an unusual book which blends crime and comedy with apparent ease
The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole by Salil Desai. Hachette. Pages 294. ~599
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Book Title: The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole

Author: Salil Desai

Crime fiction is serious and, often, bone-chilling stuff. Can one expect to find humour in it? The answer would be a resounding no. But here comes an unusual book which blends crime and comedy with apparent ease.
Set in Pune during the Covid pandemic, the story kicks off with the 68-year-old protagonist, Gajanan Godbole, surviving a severe bout of Covid but realising that his personality has altered all of a sudden. From a meek, people-pleasing fellow, he finds himself transformed into an aggressive man without any trace of morality left in him. He even discovers that he wants to kill all those who had made his life miserable, but not before making them apologise for their sins!
Written in the first person, the novel instantly captures your attention with its storyline, interesting characters and rib-tickling humour as Gajanan starts recounting the horrors he endured at the hands of his tormentors. There’s Nandu Khandagale, Gajanan’s classmate who became the reason for his expulsion from school; Sundar Nambiar, who forced him to feed the stray dogs of his neighbourhood for a month; Geeta Hirway, who turned down his marriage proposal and even rumoured that he was impotent.
One hopes that Gajanan would get a sense of justice after extracting apologies from his tormentors and won’t go as far as to bump them off. But when he commits his first murder, he makes you jump with fright. From sympathy, your feelings towards him change to disgust. At this point, Desai introduces another character who serves to dilute some of your resentment towards Gajanan. He is Kamal Kishore Puri, Gajanan’s ex-boss, who got him transferred to a far-flung area and had an affair with his wife while he was away. You feel sorry for Gajanan but you realise that by turning into a cold-blooded murderer, he has crossed the line.
Desai has his finger on the pulse of society as several incidents in the story can be related to everyday news stories and social issues. The language is quite lucid and dialogues crisp! Here and there, you will find the characters using bawdy words for dramatic effect. The story would have been compelling irrespective of that.
A few over-the-top incidents, like Gajanan’s naïve belief that his victims won’t report his attempts to blackmail them to the police, look a bit implausible. But, Desai pieces them like a fast-paced sequence of events in an action film and you find them thrilling. This is actually a fun story built on the what-if hypothesis.
Witty one-liners and repartee add to the strength of the novel. Its free-flowing prose encourages the reader to finish it in a few quick sittings. Reserve it for those days when there’s a scarcity of laughter and adventure in life. The only issue one may have with the book is that for a paperback edition, it’s slightly overpriced.
— The writer is a novelist
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