This is an interesting book written by Mainak Dhar. His favorite name makes a comeback – Aaditya. Only this time Aaditya is not in the army.
He is a corporate executive in Mumbai who is offered a CEO position at his company. The night he gets back home after a celebratory party the city experiences a blackout. Initially everyone assumes that it’s just a power outage.
Soon everyone including Aaditya realise something serious has happened because nothing works ! No phone, no automobiles and no electricity – anything that has some electronic component is dead. Aaditya’s neighbours are as baffled as he is.
Aaditya meets several neighbours and suddenly people realise that living without modern facilities is almost impossible. No one is prepared for it. No one knows how to rewire a generator except one electrical engineer. No one knows how to get water into an overhead tank when the pump doesn’t work. Well, many youngsters don’t know growing vegetables and definitely don’t know how to cook.
As the people in Aaditya’s condominium are coming to grips with the situation, they hear screams from the nearby shops and the hospital. Looting gangs start robbing stores, raping women and just run amok because there are no policemen around.
Aaditya finds himself taking a leadership role. He organises his condo complex’s efforts, gets a generator going which helps with the lifts, organises the security detail with the help of the guards and a few youngsters and also manages to get a supply chain going for water from the Powai lake.
When the looting gang reaches their condominium, Aaditya and some of the guards manage to push them back and that gives Aaditya some confidence. His NCC and Karate training also comes in handy. Soon, the security team goes out to help foreigners in the nearby hotel and manage to rescue a doctor in the nearby hospital. In the process of rescuing the lady doctor Aaditya kills her attacker. The gang comes back that night to take revenge but the security team manages to injure their leader and kill another member.
People who were sitting behind desks suddenly find themselves playing the role of farmers, water suppliers, care givers and mechanics. The whole condominium complex tries to come together after some initial hiccups. They also go out to nearby complexes and try to form a loose federation especially with respect to security.
They organise packaged food from a nearby Supermarket and one of the ladies who works there comes to stay at the condo complex. She knows how to grow vegetables and they soon create a small veggie patch.
A couple of weeks into the blackout, planes start landing at the airport. That’s when Aaditya and others realise that this blackout is due to a terrorist attack and using an old TV they hear the broadcast by the Indian PM asking everyone to fight back. They also realise, that it’s the dreaded ISIS that has denoted a nuclear weapon and is trying to establish the Caliphate across the world. All electronics across the world are dead and every country is in a blackout situation.
Aaditya manages to mount an offensive with the help of some Naval commandos who find the condo complex. They manage a small victory despite heavy losses. The plot unravels a bit in the second half because it’s almost impossible to imagine that a desk jockey can suddenly think strategy like an army general. But it’s fiction, so anything is possible. Aaditya not only wins the battle but he also falls in love with the doctor he rescued and marries her.
I liked a few things in this book. It forces us to think about a world without our gadgets ! It also makes you wonder what life skills truly mean. If there were to be a nuclear attack the fallout is almost impossible to imagine. Life as we know it will vaporise. Survivors will have to go back a century and relearn some skills. The book makes one understand that the true life skills are probably the following – self defense, cooking, basic plumbing, learning to make water or making water potable, cycling, swimming and working with old fashioned electrical systems. Electronics are all good when no nuclear or EMP attacks happen. 🙂
My rating – 4/5. It’s a good book to read and maybe get prepped for a time when some “moron” triggers a nuke.