Book Review: DHANAK

Title: Dhanak
Author: Nagesh Kukunoor, Anusha Ravishankar
Publisher: Duckbill
Pages: 136

Dhanak (rainbow) is a story of hope in the midst of difficulties. It is a feel-good story about two little orphan kids, Pari and Chotu, and their determination to make happiness for themselves. 

The children live with their Chacha and Chachi. The uncle is loving yet helpless when it comes to show his love in the face of his wife’s disapproval.

Chotu relies on Pari for he is blind, but he isn’t going to be dependent on her forever. He will turn 9 in just 2 months, and Pari has promised him that he will begin to see. But just how will Pari go about fulfilling that promise?

When Pari sees SRK’s poster, urging people to donate their eyes, she is filled with hope. But her letters to SRK are never sent to him. What’s a loving big sister to do, particularly when Chotu’s 9^th birthday is just a week away? Learning that SRK is shooting in Jaisalmer, the children run away from home to go meet him and plead for Chotu’s vision.

Along the way they face many adversaries. Other than Chachi, who resents their presence in her home, there is Bhanu Prasad, the bully, and his goon, among others.

As they set out traversing the deserts of Rajasthan in search of SRK, there follow a medley of minor characters: a truck driver, Shamsher and his father, the godman, the policeman, Shira Mata, Mohini, the dancer, Dadisa, Pratap Sharma, Doug, and Badrinath, the funny fat man.

There were so many things I enjoyed about this book and so much I wished could have been better,

What I enjoyed was the bond between the siblings. One can sense the affection between them. He depends on her to smooth his life, and she lives to ease life for him. Together they are each other’s world.

The banter between the kids is refreshingly real and fun, not to mention colourful, particularly when Chotu, the little blind David that he is, dares to take on the Goliath that is Bhanu.

I can only imagine how much more colourful this is going to get in its original rustic Hindi.

I also found Chotu’s character refreshingly childlike and real. Like his screen idol, Salman Khan, he imagines himself sailing though difficult situations armed with his imaginary muscles. Chotu’s hunger is an entity that pushes the plot ahead too.

You can’t help but be touched by the innocence and naivete of these children.

And then there is the 1 Re coin, reminiscent of Sholay’s coin, although it plays no such stellar role here. For these kids, it’s just the means of deciding which of two Bollywood leading mean will make their imaginary screen scenarios come alive. His choice: Salman, hers: SRK.

The style is simple, almost as if somebody were narrating the storyline of a film to a friend.

But there were some things that were a trifle hard to believe. Two kids on the run and nary a villain in sight. There are so many minor characters, and any one of them could have been a menace, but even the few villains that prowl around are cardboard cutouts at best. Neither Pari nor Chotu are required to display any of the pluck and courage that I have no doubt they possess in ample measure.

Gardu Bana is one grownup who treats them well. I wish he’d had a meatier role to play.

With the children leaving, the equation between Chachi and Chacha undergoes an alteration. Chacha speaks up for the children for the first time and Chachi’s customary feeling of negligence seem affected. I would have liked to see a little more of that alteration. Perhaps if her back story had received more attention. A childless woman, Chachi has suffered her own brand of torment at the hands of the world, and she chooses to resolve her issues by lashing out at the children.

I would also have liked to see Chotu get his vision and fight Bhanu Prasad effectively.

These issues apart, Dhanak is a sweet story that sails entirely on the shoulders of the children. We love this story because of the children, and because of what it teaches us.

Along the way, the children learn lessons about magic and about trust, often the hard way.

We, in turn, see through their eyes and learn that the world is full of magic for those willing to see it, that bad things happen, but good things follow, and that it’s difficult to judge people correctly.

(I received a copy of this book from Duckbill.)

Dear X-men

To, 

X-men, 

C/o Professor X, 

Founder, 

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, 

also known as the X-Mansion,

Westchester County,

New York, 

C/o Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Dear X-men,

Who would have believed that a new idea could be born even in the midst of a creativity drought! 

There’s a lesson there for those of us who get caught in dead-ends in our lives.

Apparently, Stan Lee wanted to create a new bunch of superheroes but couldn’t seem to come up with great origin stories for them. After all, how often could you ship someone over from another planet, have them exposed to gamma ray explosion or bitten by an insect? The novelty would have begun to wear off after a while. The easiest thing to do was to decree that someone was born that way.

Your name was given to you by Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, who can control and read minds, and who assumes the trouble of banding you together. But X actually stands for the X-gene, the unknown gene that causes mutation, giving you something X-tra that us ordinary humans do not have.

And that’s how you came to be the X-men. Even the women. But actually you are mutants, a subspecies of humans born with superhuman abilities. I was in awe of you. Your ability to eat fire, walk through walls and doors, grow knives right out of your fingers, everything impressed me. And even though I knew that a number of you, or at least the world around, viewed your gift as a curse, I sometimes wished for a radical gift like that.

The makers sometimes got so caught up in the larger story of the X-men versus Magneto, the arch enemy of Professor X, that I felt that they lost the opportunity to make you human. To give you interesting back stories, and to show you struggling in a world that isn’t designed to comfort the likes of you.

What distinguishes you from other mutants is that you are trained by Professor X to fight for peace and equality and to envision a world in which normal humans like me and mutants like you could live in harmony without harming each other. It was a natural aspiration in the “Marvel”ous superhero universe.

What you didn’t count on was the level of difficulty you’d be up against. Don’t you know how much difficulty we have in harmonising with other humans? How could you even think of spiking up the mix with mutants and expect us to swallow it without protest?

But in doing so, you discovered the larger goal of fighting against prejudice and racism, the lust for power and the struggle of good against evil.

In recruiting mutants from around the world, the stage was set for introducing multi-cultural hues and philosophies, and for making the canvas of your world far more expansive than it was. And that too was a good thing.

Sometimes I wonder if there are mutants among us, people who keep their gifts under wraps for fear of inviting a backlash of hatred. Maybe there are, and maybe we are all mutants in some form or the other.

Dear Truman Burbank

To, 

Truman Burbank, 

Seahaven, 

C/o Christof 

C/o Andrew Niccol, 

The Truman Show



Dear Truman,

Being an intensely private person, I feel a lot of sympathy for you, forced as you were to live your life, LIVE!, under the relentless gaze of a billions-strong worldwide audience, 24x7x365xYour entire lifetime. Of course, for the greater part, you were unaware that you were the object of so much curiosity, and that is no mean consolation. 

For you, all the world was truly a stage with thousands of hidden cameras watching your every move, and hundreds of set decorators and actors sharing screen space with you, the clueless star, the only one who was spontaneous and real.

The producer tried every cheap trick to control you. He “killed” your “father” in a “storm” to create in you a phobia of the “ocean” and to dissuade you from leaving the giant set that you thought was your “hometown”. He created news stories and commercials to extol the virtues of staying home and warn you of the dangers of traveling. When you fell in love with an extra, Sylvia, who sought to enlighten you about the truth, she was made to disappear.

When you finally caught on to what was happening (a studio light falling from the artificial night sky just outside your house gave the game away), I cheered for you, as the pieces slowly began to fall into place. As you realized that your wife was mouthing advertising spiel, and that the same people were crossing your paths at the same time every day. Once your car radio picked up a conversation between the show’s crew as they tracked your movements.

Your realization that none of your experiences were genuine was heartbreaking. Even as your audience watched you, they rooted for you, hoping you’d beat the system.

After that, they couldn’t hold you back even though they tried. You struggled to get out of their constructed reality, to be a True-Man, not a mere pawn in their game. As you told them, “You never had a camera in my head!”

Your repeated efforts to leave town failed. The producer wasn’t about to let his golden goose get away so easily. He had no qualms about having you actually killed to prevent you from leaving. His justification was that you were born in front of a live audience, so if required he could make you die in front of billions of viewers (or is it voyeurs?). But you showed your strength of will in overcoming your fear of the water.



We live in a strange world. Today there are many who willingly opt to be a part of the artifice-ridden circus that is a reality show. I commend you for having the courage to turn your back on the safe reality that you were familiar with in order to explore life outside it. Even after the producer warned you that there was no more truth outside.



You deserve your freedom.



Welcome to the real world, and in case, "I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night."