Khaki Files - The Stories Behind The Man

“Khaki” derives its name from khak - soil, in Persian. It is the colour of police uniform in India and is widely respected, feared and despised, all in equal measure. But few can claim to know how the police actually prevents and solves crime, while having to deal with a huge and diverse population and various social and political pressures. 

With his “Khaki Files”, author Neeraj Kumar, who is a much acclaimed former police officer himself, bridges this gap and opens a window into the background  narratives  of how some of the most high profile cases of last three decades were solved. It is an extremely readable account of police investigations for cases such as the long forgotten Delhi lottery scam or the more recent horrific Nirbhaya bus rape case. Neeraj Kumar has been in the thick  of all the investigations he writes about.

Kumar has a deceptively simple, yet a compelling writing style which turns mundane police investigations in to racy, page-turner stories. It is fascinating to see how, with much assiduous working and with a little bit of luck too, pieces of puzzles in these cases fell in to place and tough cases were brought to their logical conclusion. The stories are peppered with interesting and little known nuggets of information, making the reader privy to something more than just a straight story  - for instance, Amitabh Bachchan’s generosity  for a slain cop or how persistence of a young man - not even a policeman - to crack a code led to a terror attack on India Gate being averted.  Kumar is generous about sharing achievements of his juniors and colleagues and at the same time, graciously avoids name-taking when talking of inevitable office politics.        

Above all, Kumar with a very straight-from-the-heart writing evocatively introduces the reader to the human being behind the uniform who fights his share of daily battles like in any other job, sometimes  bogged down by pressures, and elated at others. There is a chapter about how Kumar’s initiative leads to a criminal being reformed, and truth be told, this poignantly written piece brought a lump to my throat. I never thought a book written by a police officer could have this effect on me. That says it enough, doesn’t it?   

Pakistan & America - A Case of Exploding Mangoes?

Conspiracy theorists can be assured of never being out of work if they stick to Pakistan as their subject.
Osama Bin Laden, arguably the world's most potent symbol of organized terror, has been finally taken out  by America in a covert operation deep inside Pakistan's army cantonment area of Abbotabad.
That America did not find Pakistan trustworthy enough to share with them the details of this mother-of-all-operations is a humiliation Pakistani establishment is finding hard to shrug off.
Did Pak Army know about Osama holed up in such a close proximity? Did they simply ignore it? Or did they actively abet his hiding? Is it a double-game Pakistan is playing, keeping both the fundamentalists and the Americans happy? Or is the Pak civilian establishment unaware of the agenda their Army is pursuing, which means that after all, it is again the forces (now in cahoots with the mullahs) who are running Pakistan? Does that mean America should not take Pakistan's servility for granted now?      
While theories and their rebuttals keep surfacing and this curious master-protege relationship which America and Pakistan share touches another low, I am suddenly reminded of a very brilliant book - A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which is an incisive satire on the Pakistan establishment (read Army), set in the time when General Zia-ul-Haq was the President of Pakistan. General Zia was only the third  Pakistani army chief who had overthrown a democratic government via a coup but he went a step ahead and appointed himself the President. It was in his regime that an enforced Islamization of Pakistani society started and the Army gained in their nuisance value like never before.  
"A Case..." is the debut novel by Mohammed Hanif, a one-time Pak Airforce pilot who left to pursue a journalistic career and is presently the BBC Urdu Service Chief in London.
The book has at its core the real incident of the plane crash which killed General Zia and the American ambassador among a few others and spawned quite a few conspiracies then.
Written in first person from the perspective of the protagonist Ali Shigri, a junior army officer, "A Case..." is a thriller, which weaves loose strands of all these conspiracies, and then some, whipping up a delightful read with a biting black humour and pithy dialogue.
Each of the conspiratorial strand is a real and distinct possibility, leaving the reader guessing and gasping. And as I said above, beneath the comic style lies a very realistic backdrop of power-hungry & paranoid army generals with a terrific power over the civil society of Pakistan in the name of democracy and sharia.  
With summers around, and mangoes in full supply, this is one book you should surely read, specially if you are an average Indian with even a little interest in our friendly neighborhood Pakistan.