Making The Gods Dance

'Making The Gods Dance' by debutant Indian author, Ajaybir Garkal, maintains the perfect grip on the reader’s imagination right up to the end. It’s an excellent read while traveling and actually Unputdownable as one may say.

Finely etched, vivid characters lend strong imagery to the story. The novel has subplots of love, friendship and loyalty but the frantic pace is derived by betrayal, violence and the ugliest form of ‘religiosity’. Making The Gods Dance is set in the years 2008 and 2009 and the author has portrayed futuristic politics in India and the looming possibility of Hindutva terrorism make you shudder at the novelist’s projection because you know what he projects could so easily become tomorrow’s scary reality.

The fiction touches upon how opportunists from both ends are hell-bent on using the Hindu-Muslim divide for all it is worth. The love story between the protagonist, a senior print journalist and an undercover Hindu terrorist from Jammu is extremely gripping and frighteningly electric! The characters in this fiction, though larger than life, could well be identified in our day-to-day life. The author has managed to keep the pace going till the last page as it careens towards its unforeseen and unpredictable climax.

Making the Gods Dance takes a look into an esoteric, enigmatic, racy and topical world. The plot is a high-octane drama that moves between terrorism, communal idealogy and megalomania, with occasional breathers coming in the form of sub-plots dealing with romance and love.

The book should be read because of the incredible manner in which various nuggets of love, violence, friendship and betrayal have been stitched together to create a story of epic proportions.