The Department of Denials

The Department of Denials - SMBR: 5

Author: Anurag Mathur

Category: Fiction

If I could sum up this book in one line, it would be that after a long time I found a book so damn interesting that I read the entire book in one sitting. The book revolves around the lives of two primary characters - Bahadur Prasad Thakur, Joint Secretary with the department of Income Tax of the Indian government, and his son Babar Thakur. Everything seems to be fine with the Thakur family until Mr Thakur gets into the bad books of one honorable minister Balak Kumar. Balak Kumar has a propensity to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and to get himself involved in a mess for all the wrong reasons. He manages this amazing feat so often and with such a consistency that his ministry then has to issue denials of his involvement in all those funny yet tragic incidents. So, Balak Kumar decides to create an altogether different department, whose only job would be to issue denials that will save Balak Kumar's ass everytime he gets into a mess. He promotes Mr Gupta to the post of Secretary and transfers him to the Department of Denials. The book describes many instances when Balak Kumar gets himself into a funny trouble and then Mr Gupta would come to his rescue. All the while, the book also describes Babar Thakur's journey through his job search and finally, to his marriage with his girlfriend B.G.

Anurag Mathur has made the book all the more interesting not only by giving such names to his characters as Tempest (the female secretary of Mr Sethji), B.G. (Behemoolya Gunvati - a female with higest virtues), Palangthod Pahalwan (someone whose adventures in bed could break the bed - referring to honorable minister Balak Kumar) and Kathor Dand (bitter punishment), but also making all those characters living upto their names. Not only this, the book is also splatterd with witty comments by two kids: Baby Loon, a neighbour's three-year old kid, whose father, mother, grandfather and grandmother, are all government servants and Baby Hack, another neighbour's three-year old kid, whose parents and grandparents are all journalists.

Overall, I would say that Anurag Mathur has succeeded in his efforts to amuse me more than he did with his book The Inscrutable Americans.

Au revoir

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