Oct 13, 2011 07:37 AM
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My tryst with Uread.com continues. After being overloaded with so many “discretion advised” reviews of The Suicide Bankerby Puneet Gupta on mouthshut, I was once again driven by the insatiable urge to get to the bottom of this and find out for myself what all the fuss was about. I spend my usual $20 and got the book delivered. It is 2 out of 2 now for Uread.com. It is a better strike rate than I first expected.
Plot:
The Suicide Bankertakes us into the world of Sumit. The backdrop is the global financial crisis. Sumit is a newly-wed who leaves his stable job and joins the Ind-Credit bank because frankly, with a marriage, there is an undue extra burden on the purse. He wants to get rich and provide sufficiently for his new family. I guess with great power, really does come great responsibility. Soon, Sumit becomes disillusioned with the workings of the bank – with its odd job assortment of characters and the pressure of an output based working system takes its toll. He wants to be rich and fast. Will the decisions he takes come back to bite him? Throw in a ridiculously forced extra marital affair with an outsourced employee and you know that this is definitely not going to end well. The decisions that Sumit makes all but seal his fate and you know that the dream castle will come crashing down. What happens when things begin to fall apart in his professional life? (Due to Sumit’s overzealous and ridiculous mistakes). What happens when things fall apart in his personal life? (Due to the ridiculous and overzealous mistakes of the author). Read to find out.
I guess the Indian market for Indian commercial English literature is working on the simple exponential theorem: you pay Rs 80 for CB, you get a third rate time pass, you pay slightly more, Rs 146, you get a slightly better product in The Suicide Banker.Let us focus on the positives first. The world of Sumit is actually very similar to the world of Yossarian. I know it is unfair to compare The Suicide Bankerto Catch-22,but the similarities are very apparent. The machinery of banking is extremely similar to the machinery of war. There is the same assortment of characters that are governed by Absurdity with a capital ‘A’ and are incapable of escaping it. For just creating something that is even vaguely similar in structure and attempt as a throwback to Catch-22,I give Puneet Gupta a pat on the back.
Secondly, the world of banking itself comes alive through the novel. Puneet Gupta creates an assortment of characters and puts them in a hierarchical structure, with each knowing their place. Sumit attempts to move beyond his place and has to pay the price. A wonderful logic that works in the context of the novel. The author explains banking jibber jabber in layman’s terms and uses banking mantras as analogies for real life situations. This was also a neat plot device that was a pleasure to read. In fact, in so far as Mr. Gupta had refrained himself to only talk about the professional life of Sumit and not tinker a lot with his personal life, this was actually a good novel. Alas! This was not to be.
The extra marital affair and its forced entry into the narrative is not only farcical and caricature like, it also does wonders to undermine the quality of a rather good novel. I guess this point has been made earlier about the necessity to have a ‘romance’ which is lust worthy to make the novel appear like a film screenplay, but in the context of the narrative it just doesn’t work.I would have loved to see where the author could have taken the Absurdity of the situation and what all could he have achieved with it. Do you know how frustrating it is, as a reader, to read something that you actually like,and then the author suddenly takes that away from you and starts off on a completely different tangent which has no correlation to the plot whatsoever? Mr. Gupta plotted his own downfall by this forced screenplay type situation. The girl just makes an entry, there is no build up, any suggestion otherwise, Sumit just falls for her and even though he was married, I couldn’t see an ounce of guilt or dilemma.
The reader is forced to sit back and survive through this forced ‘romantic’ onslaught, whereas the realplot of the absurd banking world is put on hold. I wanted to tear off those immaterial pages and get back to the crux of the banking world. The novel didn’t need this subplot; Sumit had enough on his plate otherwise. Without this forced affair, the novel was perfectly good read, but with it, it became slightly irritating because of its clichéd nature.
Even the standard of writing diminished. Whereas, in the banking world, Mr. Gupta had command over his pen and phrases, in romantic and extra marital territory, his pen became increasingly childish. It felt almost as if this whole subplot was added as an afterthought. Perhaps, the Absurdity once again returns when Sumit is romancing his mistress, while his wife is going bonkers looking for their missing child. It was an infinitely funny and cruel scene that brought back the absurd nature of the novel. I loved how the characterization was textured here – all the while the wife was characterized as the unsupportive one through Sumit’s eyes, while now, it became a complete role reversal – Sumit became the insensitive one, whereas the wife was given empathy by the audience. This character texture was done well. It was a relief to see grey characters, rather than plain black or white ones.
Overall, even though the forced screenplay type romantic subplot occupies much of the middle of the novel, there is enough to like in The Suicide Bankerto give it a shot. Frankly, a lot of it has to do with your patience and ability to sit through the shabby subplot, till you come back to the absurd world again. Still, The Suicide Bankeris worth a read just because it reminds one of Catch-22and the absurd logic that governs the life of the characters. A good novel which was spoiled by the zeal of the author to create a screenplay.
