Pyramid Of Virgin Dreams
This is a novel depicting the story of an IAS officer’s life. Author Vipul Mitra is himself an IAS officer serving in Gujarat and living with his family in Ahmedabad. This book could take birth after ten years of thinking, writing and rewriting!
The title pyramid was derived from an Egyptian pyramid with a gigantic structure, a symbol of power stretching higher and higher into the sky. The author compares the pyramid with bureaucrats. He says the only difference was that one housed deceased Egyptian pharaohs while other housed living, conniving, tattling officers. There is a long (300 pages!) story of dreams those are virgin like unconsummated physical relation!
You will read this novel to know what happens to Kartikeya Kukereja who meets his first failed love Revati Kapoor after both married and long gap of time passes. Revati desires to re-unite but does Kartikeya have the courage to hold on Revati? Honest? Mediocre? Coward? Does he ultimately succeed in fitting her in his life?
The story background begins Kartikeya Kukreja having father Pratap as S.D.M. at Dhansa- later G.M. (General Manager) at Varsha Milk Plant and finally an IAS grade officer at Chandigarh. So his childhood is passed in the rural background finally going to big city Chandigarh for college study.
While studying at NDA, Missouri find letter getting a post of an IAS officer, here Kartikeya gets frequent transfers because of his honesty and un-corruptive principals. Yes, the transfer is a routine thing in “Sarkari’ job. Storyline dwells around him, his Beautiful wife Aakanksha and his two children Roshni and Chirag.
Why should you read this novel at all? I say for three reasons: your hobby of reading novels, getting wiser and finding out never seen comparisons all around everywhere!
I will post a few quotes first :
Kartikeya would hear heavy police breathing behind his earlobes: it was like the breathing of a tigress before the hunt, of a politician before a poll, of a child looking at chocolates or of a calf before the feed!
He thought bidis made gardeners, just the way cigarettes made babus, cigars made entrepreneurs, pipes made professors or hookahs made rustic wise man!
It was the same routine of packing, loading and unpacking, the customary farewell dinners, the thrusting of cheap inferior mementoes, and emotional parting with household menials.
His diary was his guilt sharing, tension draining, safety valve that absorbed all his day long shames like blotting paper snacking up adulterated milk to become fake mali.
The dining hall symbolized the state. Punjabis doted on Butter Chicken and Paneer Makhani, Rajasthanis eulogized Dal Bati & Churma, Malayalees relished Appam & Stew and Tamilians savoured Dosa and Vada Sambhar
The rural public had no work except working for their very survival eating, gathering fuelwood, collecting water, cooking, sleeping, defecating, procreating and feuding over street and field boundaries.
A bureaucrat is never completely a bureaucrat without his flattering henchmen.
- File-walle were the men carrying files and bags.
- Door-wallahs were to open the doors making officer limbless amputee.
- Dictation-wallahs were to take notes and help him remember things to do.
- Gaadi-wallahs were men to chauffeur him around as if he is directionless.
- Yes, wallahs were men who nodded yes to every absurdity implying he was some higher divinity.
- The red light of car draped with a white cloth-like the mouth of a surgeon.
- Green curtains of rest house worked as though looted from the ophthalmic ward of Civil Hospital.
- Water in the jug was like urine?
- The cops began to clap clumsily like circus jokers eulogising their ring leader.
- Teaching occurred like the drizzle in the desert.
- Its impact on him had been mind-boggling like the effect of a village elder’s freezing stare on a Purdah-less daughter.
- Kartikeya felt as insecure as a freshly abandoned orphan.
Yes, I have enlisted only a few, because each page contains many comparisons unique feature of this novel. Rarely seen anywhere else. I am happy and impressed by reading endless comparisons!
Raison d’etre: My treasure of words increased reading this French word telling about the reason to be (the reason for being). Yes, raison d’etre means reason, purpose or justification for some one’s existence or something like Japanese words “I kingai” reason d’etre teaches the purpose of life.
Well, this novel “pyramid on virgin dreams” by ‘Vipul Mitra’ is a must-read book. it will stimulate your thought cycle very effectively and fast. Let us see.
Pyramid Of Virgin Dreams
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