Postponing the Punchline

Shovon Chowdhury’s debut novel The Competent Authority has some big funny ideas, but is too long in the telling

At 454 pages, The Competent Authority is about 150 pages longer than it should have been. The book reads like a first draft where every thing is put on the page without any filters applied. Shovon Chowdhury, the author, does have an interesting set of big funny ideas, but they inevitably fall flat once he gets beyond the headlines.

Chowdhury’s India is one recuperating after being levelled by China in a nuclear attack. Systems have crumbled, and from that chaos, one bureaucrat, The Competent Authority (CA), has emerged to usurp power. Everyone else, including the Prime Minister and chief of the armed forces, is a token puppet. He holds on to his dictatorship using the Bureau of Reconstruction, which, as the name signifies, must make the country whole again.

There is a grim equilibrium of sorts until Pintoo, a 12-year-old whose hand is stolen by a corporation selling body parts to rich customers, suddenly develops superhuman abilities. The boy wants to make India a better place and sends three people back in time to change history by averting key events like Gandhi’s assassination and the second nuclear test. The CA, meanwhile, does not want to be faceless any longer and plans to start another nuclear war to bolster his power.

This world—ruined, wacky and imaginative—is the kind that would instantly be labelled ‘dystopian’, a really cool word that is used because it is a really cool word to use. It is the kind of word Chowdhury would have some fun with, because he does get the whole thing about pretence right.

Allegories pop out of every page. From the Angry Old Man, a take on Arnab Goswami, to the Monty Constant, a play on Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s definition of poverty, which brings people above the poverty line by bringing the line down. From thousands of call centre employees in Bangalore paid to spout anger on behalf of the Chinese, to the Al Qaeda of the future—a social service organisation with only one jihadi with a guilty conscience left.

A godman called Guru Dharti Pakar, creator of the Art Of Breathing, sells a Personalised Guruji Support System, a cut-out that people can keep in their home and lean on in times of trouble. No prizes for guessing who that is inspired by.

And yet, while all this sounds exciting in overview, it is arid in the telling. The humour is badgering, unsubtle. Take this description of the CA punishing the director of the CBI:

‘The Director of the CBI twisted his own ear for a while. He spared himself no pain. The CA had an uncanny talent for spotting insincere self-punishment. The consequences of non-compliance were inconceivably hideous. He considered himself fortunate that it was his ears and not his nipples.

The CA observed his teaching methods in action. This would teach the man not to use rude language in future. He would be a model servant of the state from now on, language-wise. The CA finally gestured to him to stop. Sinha let his hand drop, but remained sitting upright, rigid with fear.’

It might be amusing to imagine a CBI director doing all that, but the words have sucked the life out of the scene. This is more or less the tenor of the book from start to end. You could cut out one-fourth of the allegories, metaphors, ironies and asides and the book would be the same or even better. This paragraph, for instance:

‘The Chairman hid a yawn behind his handkerchief. He hated research meetings. Like Steve Jobs, a sage from long ago, he always knew exactly what to do, and saw no reason why the flow of his omnipotence should be interrupted by asking customers for their opinion. Some of his minions were rather fond of such things, however, and he tended to humour them in this regard. Sometimes, he even stayed awake.’

Since it has little bearing on what came before or afterwards, the reason for its existence seems to be to slip in something clever. And it might even have been relevant, if it were clever.

dystopianfunnyShovon Chowdhury