Salim Must Die;
By Mukul Deva; HarperCollins
Pages: 417; Price: Rs 225
Buy Borrow Avoid
The storyline of Mukul Deva’s Salim Must Die — sequel to the bestseller Lashkar — is pretty simple, Bollywoodesque and strikingly similar to today’s geopolitical scenarios vis-à-vis terrorism — a beleaguered American president wanting to create a legacy, a Pakistani dictator trying to save his government and his life and an ISI brigadier plotting against the ‘kafir’. Iraq and Afghanistan are burning and a ‘clash of civilisations’ as one of the blurbs states, is looming large. And caught in the eye of this impending storm is an Indian Prime Minister — already battling allegations of being ‘soft’ on terrorism and neglecting internal security – who has to save his country from this storm.
Deva’s army days and the skills he learnt there are visible in the operation which sees the capture and subsequent death of a character loosely inspired by a certain Mr Osama bin Laden. Another brilliantly etched out and true-to-life is scene is the resignation of India’s Home Minister in the aftermath of a Mumbai-like attack. Apart from its principal characters, Col. Anbu and Brig. Salim Murad, the role of G.K. Rao, a portly, horn-rimmed intelligence expert is bound to leave an impact on you with his sheer volume of information. However, it’s the planning, plotting and execution of operations which form the meat – and pace- of the story. Travelling through Murree, Male, Vienna, New Delhi, Berlin, Chicago, Deva gives the reader an insight into the mind of a terrorist and the meticulous, deceptive mode of communication he uses in his operations. The creation of profiles on shaadi.com and the near-anonymity of operational heads and subordinates is a brilliant example of this. However, the smart characters fail to hide its shortfalls; Rao drones on about his volume of information and statistics at the National Intelligence Command (NIC) sitting while Murad’s lecture to Cheema about “targeting the minds of the kafir” is fails to impress. Crisper, smarter dialogue and a fewer pages would’ve sufficed but sadly, that wasn’t the case here.
Salim Must Die is uniquely Indian; written with a lot of flair, informative and most importantly, it makes you think about the dangerous world we live in.
A version of this review was published in the Businessworld Issue Dated 9-15 June 2009
Book Reviews 
.jpg)
Salim Must Die;
