MB Recommends: Mumbai Rollercoaster

Zeenat and Rahul are like any other 16-year-olds who are dating. She studies and works towards getting admission in an Ivy League college. He contemplates becoming a forensic pathologist after watching CSI: Miami but decides being an actor is a better option. Their usual rendezvous spot is a half-constructed building in Khar, which, if you climb high enough, even has a sea view.

One day, Rahul reaches the building a little early and finds a blood-still-dripping but definitely dead body. That’s not when all hell breaks loose. Pandemonium strikes Rahul’s and Zeenat’s life some time later, when Rahul realises there’s an elaborate attempt to cover up the murder. And since Rahul is incapable of ignoring this and returning to normal, some seriously abnormal things happen. Mumbai Rollercoaster is author Rajorshi Chakraborti’s first attempt at young adult fiction and the voices and tones of his teenaged characters are pitch perfect. They speak and think like real people, which is refreshing. The novel is fun as much for the wit of its characters as the unpredictable plot, which scampers from crisis to twist to revelation to suspense to…Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. The real star of the book is Ganesh, a slum kid who gets entangled in their adventure. He’s a little mysterious, extremely resourceful and more slumdawg than slumdog.

Chakraborti’s Mumbai is both familiar, somewhat improbable and yet, given tragic incidents like the killing of J. Dey, vaguely possible. Shots are fired, walls are scaled, phones are tapped, emails are hacked. There are spies, inattentive security guards, international conspiracies and interrogations. In innocuous items like bhel puri and cold coffee lie clues and red herrings. While there are plenty of dangling loose ends, and leaps of faith that Mumbai Rollercoaster demands of its reader, the pace of the novel is frantic enough to distract you. Ultimately, you don’t really care too much about the doesn’t-quite-add-up details because the ride was so much fun.

Mumbai Rollercoaster by Rajorshi Chakraborti, Hachette, Rs295. Buy it from Flipkart.com.