The book The Bogus Read by Divyamaan is true to its title. It was really a bogus novel to read. A perfect sleeping pill. But there was something in the novel which kept making me read it till the end.

Something which was intriguing was the author’s observation. Baseless TV serials, without any head or tail movies, fake melodramatic reality shows, social media sites and things like these are really making human brains involved in highly unproductive and trivial things that we fail to see through and understand even simple things in life.

Well author’s novel is based on this observation. Pakistan in a conspiracy has manipulated Indian media, cinema, and TV serials which are now showing the people of the country only trash and thus reducing the IQ levels and are now not able to think straight which includes the Indian army as well. 

In such a scenario Pakistan is all set ready to occupy India. The only people who could now save India are the people who didn’t waste their time watching TV and cinema and spending hours on social media sites.

The concept of the plot was very good and also close to reality. People in reality spends hours in front of idiot box, the time which could be used in something more productive. Bollywood is churning out one crap after another and people throngs to see that repetitive crap in different avatars and goes gaga over it on Facebook and Twitter. Youths are spending hours in liking the newsfeeds of other people on social media site. Print media is no different.

Great idea needs to be executed properly to have a desired affect. Plot woven around this idea was weekly formatted. It was really difficult to get hold of entire situations, what was happening. The satire did not come out well. Though hint of some logic behind all this hubbub kept me glued to the novel but felt sleepy most of the time.

Divyamaan’s writing is also like a top class batsmen who is out of form. Like the out of the form batsman takes many overs to settle down surviving many scares till he starts middling the ball and in the slog overs start hitting the ball over the baller’s head for six. Divyamaan’s writing was also like that. It was a haywire writing initially but started settling down in the middle of the book and then bingo.

The way in the end the author portrait AAP party and Arvind Kejriwal, Modi and his wave, and of course Arnub Goswami and some celebrities in his novel was at par and superb. All gets involve in the battle to fight against Pakistan contributing in their own exclusive style. I enjoyed reading the last part most. 

There is no laugh out moment in the book nor any punches which will make you say WOW. Slangs and abusive words dominated the conversations. Sarcasm weared off when the strategy of Pakistan started unfolding. But somehow Divyamaan pulled off things at the end. The final battle between Pakistan and India was a decent read. It was full of ups and down with lots of drama. The satires on how corruption and scams depletes the nation and pushes the nation’s development many years back was written with so much precision made me wonder how can politicians commit such crimes knowing its adverse impact on the country.

The Verdict

Sarcasm was not at the best but the author’s observation came out real strong.