The Diary of an Unreasonable Man
By Madhav Mathur
Excerpt: This could have been a good ride. This could have even be perfect. But the knife-like elbows of my neighbor, digging into my sides, coupled with his inordinate love for flatulent indiscretions made it otherwise. Almost half the compartment turned to glare at him. He smiled sheepishly and twiddled his thumbs. They were opposable, I checked.
I watched the people who shared the moving tin box with me. My fellow sardines, mildly salted for the vicious piranhas they worked for. Expressways were jammed with more worker ants crawling over each other to begin their day’s labour. Familiar sights that have now become associated with getting to work adorned the ever changing canvas that was our compartment window. The same trio of children taking a dump on the side of the tracks, the same girl fighting in various degrees of agitation to board our iron ark, the same billboard in disrepair, I knew them all. I had made them an important part of my day today, even though there weren’t any piranhas waiting for me. Not anymore.
Beethoven’s 9th became louder and I couldn’t contain my excitement as the train slowed down by the platform . Hawkers fried tikkis outside. Kids ran along the platform with the train. People pushed and shoved to positioon themselves for the optimum angle of approach to dive in to the carriage. Fruit-juice sellers were peddling their jaundice, as amgazine men palmed off the intricate details of film stars’ chinaware. The station was untamed and alive.
“Dadar Central,” the electronic woman said over the intercom.
I got up and started for the exit, crowds of people were entangled in an uncontrollable mass now, pressed into each other near the doors. I squeezed out and started walking. It was right on time. Of course, I had accounted for the four-minute delay that crept into the system every morning.
The bomb went off with a thunderous clap.
The compartment shook violently and the thick liquid made it’s way in every direction, plastering everything and everyone. Fountains of paint flew angrily and the screams that surrounded me grew louder as I walked away calmly. Some of the glass panes gave way and fell out behind me.
“Bomb!”
Madhav Mathur is 25 and has just released his debut novel The Diary Of An Unreasonable Man. It’s about an ad man – Pranav Kumar – who is the quintessential jaded Indian youngster of today having lost complete faith in the consumerism-centric modern way of life. So he sets up ‘The Anarchists of Mumbai’ and through some very carefully orchestrated stunts, brings corrupt politicians, two-timing husbands and too-rich-for-their-own-good businessmen to justice. But soon Pranav realises that he’s got into a whole lot more than he bargained for; with both the cops and underworld goons baying for his blood. Watch out for the big-screen version coming from Anurag Kashyap!
MOB: You’ve painted a very sharp picture of a jaded New India and for once, rather than feeling helpless, the protagonist does something about it. So let’s get the cliche question out of the way – how much of this is autobiographical? Your protagonist Pranav Kumar hijacks manages to ruin an exorbitantly lavish luxury car launch by drowning the stage and the car in manure and hijacks SUVs owned by the owners of a chemical plant and destroys it in the same toxic waste the company was responsible for creating among other social experiments.
Madhav: I share a lot in common with Pranav, definitely in terms of his values and ideals and so on, but I don’t think I’d have the guts to do what he did. I mean he’s a lot more unreasonable than I am. You know, in terms of taking things a bit too extreme.
MOB: Yeah, Pranav seems very convinced about his principles and will do anything to get people to believe in him.
Madhav: Very self-absorbed, very stubborn if you want to say.
MOB: There’s Pranav who is spearheading the operation and there’s the apathetic Abhay, Pranav’s flatmate, who’s been dragged into it…
Madhav: He’s actually an amalgam of some friends of mine. So when they read it, they were like, “Hey dude, that’s me, right?” And I’ll be like, “Yeah, yeah… in bits.” Ultimately, I guess everyone has to draw on composites of friends. People you really know in life, right?
MOB: But we’re sure we can’t say the same about Shehnaz – the only female member of the Anarchists and evidently Pranav’s childhood crush?
Madhav: I love Shehnaz.
MOB: Aha!
Madhav: But then again, she’s also a composite of a lot of friends. Is Pranav crushing on her? Well, yes, he does admire her a lot. I mean, she’s very well read and shares his beliefs and you can definitely see a subtly undercurrent there. But I haven’t looked at it too deeply because that would take away from the overall focus of the story. But it’s evident the feeling is kind of mutual also, like the way she reacts to his blueprints for wrecking a fashion show in response to the consumerist ideals high fashion preaches like staying skinny and so on.
MOB: Were you ever in advertising like Pranav?
Madhav: No, not really. But I was in marketing, analytics, strategy, stuff like that. So I do have an idea as to what goes into marketing and what should be done. Which forms one of the main reasons why Pranav does what he does. You tend to really question yourself.
MOB: You talk about how Pranav has changed since his childhood days where he would stand up for injustice, rather than being apathetic. There’s an episode in the book where Pranav stands up for his friends in front of the authorities, risking the wrath of a cane-loving vice-principal. What was your childhood like?
Madhav: I did most of my schooling in Delhi, with the exception of five years in Kanpur. In fact, the vice-principal incident actually happened, sans a slight dramatization on my part. I didn’t grab the cane from him and run through the school like Pranav did but I did tell him what’s what and we weren’t at fault. And he did listen.
MOB: So would you say you were a small revolutionary-in-the-making back in school?
Madhav: I don’t know. I would internalise a lot of it, which would lead to a lot of arguments at home. I would question everything, why people did what they did and then my parents would take it personally. I would be like, “Yes, drinking champagne and clinking your glasses seems like fun but is this really how you want to celebrate your evening? What’s the point of all of this? Is this what a memorable evening is?” And they would be like, “Yes, Madhav, it does.” Such small arguments were very commonplace in the Mathur household. Music also influenced me in a big way as a kid, which has made its way into the book as well. Pearl Jam, James Brown and Queens Of The Stone Age are a few.
MOB: Any other stunts? In the same vein as Pranav?
Madhav: There was this security guard who used to really abuse these dogs who roamed around the building. Hit them and beat them with a stick and stuff like that. They didn’t deserve it. He would basically vent his frustration in life on the poor things. So one day, a couple of us got together and managed to sneak in some raw meat in to his pockets. And then we let the dogs loose.
MOB: That’s intense.
Madhav: (Laughs) Yeah, it was. It was quite dangerous though we didn’t realize it then. Those dogs could have totally taken the f**ker’s balls off! Definitely one of the wildest things I’ve ever done.
MOB: There’s also a very strong anti-materialistic stand that you take in the book. The Anarachists lay waste to two very beautiful cars and wreck the launch of yet another one. How anti-materialistic would you say you are in real life?
Madhav: Like I said, I’m not as unreasonable as Pranav is. I’m a lot more balanced guy. I don’t have the guts to exist the way I want to.
MOB: Which is…?
Madhav: Very austere, very simple. Live on very basic needs in life.
MOB: There’s this one tiny thing that’s niggling us about the story, though. Pranav hates cars because more than anything else, they are a status symbol, a marker for the level of consumerism in society. But at the same time, the paint bomb attack on the train the Anarchists pull… Why the train? Public transport is something Pranav should be trying to encourage, right?
Madhav: Well, Pranav always makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He just wants to make sure they sit up and take notice. Like the pamphlets that lands in the trains reads, “Imagine if this was an actual near-death experience…” That’s all Pranav wants, for society to ask themselves why they’re going where they are going. They need to ask themselves if they really need all the stuff they work so hard to buy. The train was just an ideal place for his message.
MOB: There’s a host of characters who appear in the book, very quintessentially Indian, all of them. There are the hitmen Basu and Sarkar and the crazy conversation they have in the middle of the road about their last hit. And the seedy pimp-cum-brothel owner who unknowingly facilitates the anti-prostitution experiment. How much research went into all of this? Did you actually meet characters like this?
Madhav: Basu and Sarkar are purely works of fiction. So is the brothel owner himself. But I did walk around a couple of red light districts. The awkward door that I mention in the book is very much real. And I did talk to a couple of guys around the areas, which was quite the enlightening experience!
MOB: If we described your tale as Fight Club-meets-Rang De Basanti, how far off the mark would we be?
Madhav: I really don’t know. I’m a big fan of Fight Club, Rang De Basanti not so much. But I guess there’s the same anti-materialistic, anti-consumeristic stand from Fight Club and that feeling to do something about the situation from RDB. I don’t think I have any conscience influences as such, mainly because I tend to read very fast. I like to take away as much as I can as fast as I can from whatever I’m reading. Personally, I’m a lot more into histories and non-fiction more than anything else.
MOB: Anurag Kashyap seems to have grabbed the story. How did you manage that?
Madhav: I approached him. I had seen Black Friday which is one of my all-time favourite movies. And then, there was “No Smoking” which also I really liked. More than anything, it gave me hope in him as a filmmaker because the way he handles the film, his treatment is so non-conventional. I saw synergy in the way he was thinking and I was thinking. So I got in touch with him through his blog on Passion For Cinema and they were hosting a one-minute film making competition. So I made a short called Puddle Jumper, which he noticed and really liked. So after he heard the idea, he called me down to Mumbai. He started reading it en route to Pune in a car on the expressway and by the time we got there, he was done. And lucky for me, he liked what he read. This is before Dev D came out, so I got to sample the Dev D script while he was reading mine. So hopefully, by next year mid-2010, we should go on floors. I will be involved in the scriptwriting and screenplay process, so it should be fun.
MOB: Any dream cast you have in mind? Who will play the actor Johnny C from the book?
Madhav: That’s a tough one, mate. I’ll really, really have to think about that one and get back to you. We need someone who can match Pranav’s temperament spot on, you know.
MOB: Sequel? Any more adventures of the Anarchists?
Madhav: Well, as of right now, I’m working on another book. I haven’t really thought about another edition of this one. But you can catch up with the Anarchists on their Facebook page.
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