New Delhi, Apr 28 (IANS): The Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir wrote: "There was a city famed throughout the world, Where dwelt the chosen spirits of the age; Delhi its name, fairest amongst the fair; Fate looted it and laid it desolate, And to that ravaged city I belong."
Cut to the present:
"Sometimes, Joey feels her whole life is a montage of randomly selected, alogrithm selected surveillance-can clips, mostly of her sitting at screens or sitting glazed-eyed at meetings. A professional image-builder and story-teller, she finds the lack of structure even more offensive than the banality of the material. She always takes pride in her instinct for cuts and angles and rhythms of the wildly successful stories that she produces – one day, one perfect day, her life will be just as award-worthy."
Thus does Samit Basu begin "Chosen Spirits" (Simon & Schuster) , a tale about Joey, a Reality Controller, in charge of the livestream of a charismatic and problematic celebrity in smog-choked, water-short, ever-transforming Delhi - a city on the brink of revolution, under the shadow of multiple realities and catastrophes - at the end of the 2020s.
When Joey impulsively rescues a childhood friend, Rudra, from his new-elite family and the comfortable, horrific life they have chosen for him, she sets into motion a chain of events - a company takeover, a sex scandal, a series of betrayals - that disintegrates not just their public and private selves, but the invisible walls that divide the city around them.
To find the lives they need, Joey and Rudra must reckon with people and forces beyond their understanding, in a world where trust is impossible, popularity is conformity, and every wall has eyes.
The book offers a glimpse ten years into the future, what normal life will look like in the next phase of the multiple-choice disasters that have already overtaken us. Joey and Rudra inhabit a world that is ever-changing but much like us are trying to find happiness, success and sanity in a difficult time and place.
What Taqi Mir wrote about was the ravage caused by plunder. What about the ravage caused to the mind today? Can it be mended? Will the change we see happening be irrevocable?
Samit Basu is the author of the ‘Gameworld' trilogy of fantasy novels, the 'Turbulence' series of superhero novels and the ‘Adventures of Stoob' series of children's books. He's written bestsellers, won awards, and been published
in multiple countries and languages. Basu is also the co-writer/director of a Netflix film, a comic writer and columnist.
-