MALAYALAM
Drug mafia and power nexus
K. K. GOPALAKRISHNAN
LOTTOS THEETNIKAL: R. Sreelekha; DC Books, DC Kizhakemuri Edam, Good Shepherd Street, Kottayam-686001. Rs. 125.
A STRIKING feature of this novel is that it is authored by a woman IPS officer and it exposes the nexus between the drug mafia and the power centres, while portraying the life of an IPS couple. It underlines that fictional works are not always mere stories.
While Manoj Pillai is attitudinally unfit for the career in uniform, his wife Nisha Menon is a ‘butterfly’ smart enough for such jobs. At the police academy, when an introvert Manoj falls sick, Nisha takes care of him, and this kindles his fondness for her. But she gets involved with another trainee and the affair leads up to a physical relationship. Soon her handsome Gujarati boyfriend walks out on her and she feels cheated and becomes shattered. As expected, she turns to Manoj and reciprocates his feeling towards her. And this ends up in marriage. During Nisha’s childhood, her father, an IPS officer, got killed in Bhopal by terrorists. Her husband’s dearest sibling fell a victim to drugs. In Nisha is seen a gentle woman who is tough, even cruel, with men of crime against the backdrop of her experiences.
With this setting, as the story unfolds, Chandrasekhar, a young minister and a venerable link of drug mafia, gets brutally beaten up in custody by Nisha. He is none other than her soul-mate ‘Chandu’ of her Bhopal days. Nisha herself is not aware of it, until ‘Chandu’ enacts a drama that culminates in their love shenanigans.
The lives of VIPs,their aspirations and frustrations are depicted in this novel which progresses like a detective story through interwoven memoirs of characters.
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