Editor’s Note: New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi makes her debut as a fiction writer with her latest book, The New Delhi Conspiracy. Co-authored by Lekhi and Krishna Kumar, the book, a political thriller, was launched Friday by BJP MP JP Nadda at the NCUI Auditorium & Convention Center, New Delhi.
The book is a work of fiction claiming to be adventurous and intriguing and begins with the death of a scientist, who warns a female politician in New Delhi of the imminent danger to the life of Raghav Mohan, the country’s beloved prime minister. Lekhi has tapped into the undercurrents of Delhi’s political landscape and placed her novel in its current socio-political context. This novel purports to hold the readers as it also attempts to expose the deep divisions and ideologies that influence the course of the nation’s political trajectory.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
Professor Narayan Deo Bakshi saw the leaves of the pariyat tree rustling in the morning breeze. The gentle swaying of the foothills, flushed with the rich blossom of white flowers, added to the serenity of the morning. Flowers that fell intermittently on the lawn below had turned the ground into a white carpet.
With a cup of tea in his hand, he sat down comfortably in a garden chair. The smell of green tea, recently brewed and served, permeated the air around him. Just yesterday, a visiting professor from Germany gave rich compliments to the beautiful lawn. “A house without a garden is like a dinner without wine,” Professor Bakshi joked. ‘The gardens in Delhi are enchanting; they’re good for your eyes, but bad for your lungs,” he’d added, referring to the rising PM levels in Delhi’s air; PM, as in particulate matter. But Bakshi’s real concern was about another prime minister – Prime Minister Raghav Mohan.
“This man is dangerous and appears to be quite invincible,” he had explained to the visiting professor as he strolled across the terrace. “Not just Delhi, he’s made the whole country unlivable!” Now Bakshi was reading his emails as he sipped his tea. Whose article should I retweet today?
He scrolled through the list.
‘Increasing violence against Dalits in the past 4 years’ by Sumana Ghosh of Harvard Kennedy School. ‘Uh… No, no, no Sumana! You missed it,’ he muttered. He punched in a number on his phone. Sumana was on the line from Harvard.
“Hi Sumana, I’ve read your article,” Bakshi said as she answered. ‘You are completely wrong. It’s not in line with what we discussed. It fails to tie the issue specifically to Raghav Mohan’s policies. Okay, hit it home in your next article. Look, there’s no point in highlighting an atrocity if we can’t get Raghav Mohan involved. ‘
He moved on to the next.
“Intolerance on the rise: Right to life ends up on your plate in the new India,” wrote Stuti Desai, an associate professor at Humboldt University, Germany. The article was a scathing attack on Raghav Mohan and linked the violence against meat eaters directly to the Prime Minister’s policies. Bakshi grinned, glad Stuti had followed his instructions correctly. This piece would make for the perfect retweet that morning.
He retweeted the article with the comment: ‘Is fringe the new mainstream @pmraghavmohan? The nation finds your silence deafening.’
Satisfied, he set his phone aside and turned his attention to the newspaper on the side table. It made a front-page story about the Raghav Mohan government’s welfare efforts for Dalits and minorities, and received applause from international bodies. The headlines jumped into his eyes. Annoyed, he folded the newspaper and hid it out of sight. Such stories did not deserve his attention. He would never tweet such ‘propaganda’.
He enjoyed the fact that he had a growing number of followers on Twitter, but grieved when he realized the majority of them were bigoted; they would not process his messages and instead post counterfacts and research, question his assumptions and expose his messages to critical analysis. He was sick of these people.
Trolls!
Those who used to be against your views were welcomed; now they are called trolls. With progress, dissent has lost its glory and respect. Once a proud companion of democracy, dissent is now orphaned; no one on either side of the fence likes it. The holy ‘critic’ of yesteryear has become ‘intolerant’ in modern times. That’s the law of progression, maybe!
Professor Bakshi never paid attention to trolls. Ignoring such bigoted idiots was a wiser choice than reacting, he thought. That’s why he never responded to the comments on his social media posts. As he had learned long ago, hit and run was the best habit on social media.
He logged out of Twitter.
Professor Narayan Deo Bakshi was an academic, philosopher, writer, intellectual, columnist, motivational speaker and thought leader of contemporary India. After a successful teaching period at many prestigious universities around the world, he had retired halfway through his career to devote himself to writing.
He had both the ability and fortune to take the well-defined path to success in life – a prestigious boarding school in Dehradun, followed by a degree from an even more prestigious university in New Delhi and subsequent higher studies and research opportunities in various Ivy League- institutions in the US that led him to teach at leading universities in the United States and Europe.
With a fairly good academic record and dozens of publications in leading journals to his credit, Bakshi had made a name for himself in the worldwide academic community. However, in triumph of his grumbling inner voice, he chose to withdraw from active academic life and, to appease his inner self, threw himself into writing full-time.
The prolific writer in him spawned more than a dozen books in a decade, further cementing his reputation as an intellectual. Revered both in India and internationally, and now based in Delhi, Bakshi toured regularly to lecture and wrote columns for several renowned newspapers and magazines. The Delhi media pursued him fiercely for his view on numerous issues.
Bakshi’s involvement with the wider society continued on many levels as he later became a trustee on the boards of countless trusts and foundations. He was also a managing trustee in the organizations he founded himself. Such trusts attracted huge donations from donors around the world.
Of the national donors, until recently, the government’s greatest support was; but since the arrival of the new government under Raghav Mohan, much to Bakshi’s chagrin, government support for his trusts has begun to wane. Fortunately for him, foreign aid continued to pour in.
Several of these trusts supported his academic pursuits and helped him hire an army of young people to conduct research and data mining activities on his behalf. This, in turn, kept him afloat in the flow of intellectual one-man art and secured him a position of power in society.
Firm in build, moderate in height and prosaic in appearance, Bakshi would have passed to a lay observer as an ordinary man on the street, but without his intense eyes that looked penetrating, his nose stiffened by his perceived sense of superiority and his astute face that shone with the radiance of a scientific consciousness; he came across as a character to be honored.
Because of his habit of having the last word in every conversation, he had developed a gruff, authoritative voice that suited his brusque demeanor. Bakshi had drawn his ideas and worldview from what he felt was the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment – libertarianism, socialism, secularism, individualism, progressivism and modernity. Theoretically, he held to certain concepts, such as the spirit of inquiry, the right to free speech, and the right to ask questions, and believed that they were inalienable human rights. However, his right to ask questions meant his own right to ask questions of anyone—not the right of others to ask him similar questions.
In his heart he was an eternal adversary and regarded it as the test of his intellectual existence. He had taken on the task of leading the political activism of his time and became its main ideological pole.
Through his complex network of finances and controls, he had portrayed political narratives in India, which were fed to the Western media for their domestic audiences. Such stories formed the worldly impression of India. This activism was not without its rewards, as Bakshi’s trusts became the center for the flow of overseas funds from foreign agencies that claimed to promote democracy and liberalism around the world. Bakshi knew the science of trust and the art of using it to sustain his five star lifestyle, regularly traveling in business class and eating and drinking in luxury hotels around the world with people of his kind and choice.
Bakshi had smiled in his lawn chair; a new trust, possibly the largest to date, was set to launch today.
LIFE Foundation. A real game changer, Bakshi thought, grinning to himself.
The following excerpt from Meenakshi Lekhi and Krishna Kumar’s book, The New Delhi Conspiracy, is published with permission from HarperCollins Publishers, India. The book costs Rs 250 (paperback)
