A Maverick
Heart: Between Love and Life_ Book
Release
Feb 18,
2013
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am happy to be here to release the debut novel, ‘A
Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life’, by Ravindra Shukla but before doing
that I want to share a few impressions about the book and the author. At one level it is a free-flowing easy-to-read
story with no pretensions of literary pompousness but I want to draw your
attention to something at another level. This novel is a vehicle in which the
author has placed 3 central characters to mouth messages that he, the author,
wants to send to society.
These messages are important. I will come to that
later without narrating the story itself. The amount of passion in the key
character, Rahul, made me wonder whether he is indeed the author itself. It
does not take much to unmask the autobiographical under-current.
Ravindra Shukla is himself, an engineer from IIT
Bombay. Engineering is hardly a profession that is expected to throw up
novelists, although we are seeing a few like Chetan Bhagat, these days. Many
people believe that engineers don’t really understand human behaviour because they
see everything as absolutes whereas human behaviour is anything but absolute.
Ravindra Shukla has not fallen prey to making this
novel an all-out autobiography. He reserves some of his philosophy of life to
be reflected in the other two important characters, Richita and Neerav. All
three are IITians. You will appreciate their character if you realise how an
engineer thinks.
You have, no doubt, heard about the story of an
optimist remarking that the glass is half full and a pessimist calling it half
empty. Don’t be surprised if an engineer looks at it and concludes that the
glass is twice as big as it should have been. In this book, the characters
succeed or fail because they seek to find the right glass rather than try to
fit into what is there.
An engineer’s mind is trained to use masses of
quantitative data along with the laws of science to design and make goods that
are useful to mankind. His mind works to fix problems involved in making things
and to fix problems that will appear after something has been used for a while.
Engineers are supposed to be logical, precise and analytical. Ravindra who
works for IBM does precisely that in his day job. He carries that into this
novel. Hence Rahul, the main character just cannot understand why someone
should want to do something but would still avoid doing that due to social
mores and customs, he cannot see any logic in not doing something that one
believes in even if had to be at the cost of one’s career. He sees the world as
black and white with no grey in between. For him, corruption is an absolute
cancer as is the need to fight for RTI. He is a character like Howard Roark
from Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, not prepared to compromise. ‘Integrity is the
ability to stand by an idea’, a quote from Fountainhead, explains Rahul’s
philosophy too.
The second character is Rahul’s best friend through
whom the author tries to show the good in self-made capitalists. Neerav was clear
from the outset that he is world-wise and wants to be successful. He goes onto
becoming wildly successful the way it happens when Silicon Valley meets Wall
Street. The author twists the tale to paint Neerav as a self-made man who is
not attached to his wealth- much like Bill Gates, who gives back to society
through Rahul’s fight for social justice and eradication of ills in India.
The third character is a woman and when there is a man
and a woman, romance cannot be far behind. But here love is a victim to the
over-powering forces of social compliance and risk avoidance. Rahul is hurt,
numbed and upset but this adversity only increases his resolve to fight against
the various forces that obstruct individuals from doing what they believe in.
Finally, the three characters come together to empower
the movement set off by Rahul. The easy style of the narrative could lull the
lay reader into believing that it is the familiar happy end to a long
story. I was left with the feeling that
the author, was trying to show that each of us can go our own ways to pursue
our dreams but there is some part of us that wants to see some essential
changes in society, which can be fulfilled if some take up the cudgels and
others support them financially, emotionally or otherwise. Everyone has to play
a role to fight those who have a stake in status quo.
Do read this book.