Sultan of Delhi, a book review

I finally got around to reading Arnab Ray's Sultan of Delhi, and found it more entertaining than the other books of his that I have read. The reason for the same is simply the accessibility of the material. While The Mine is a horror novel which aimed at suffocating its readers and Mahabharat Murders is a thriller that is heavily inspired from an epic, Sultan of Delhi is more relatable on account of it having a lot of Bollywood references. The book is a testament of the author's maturing as a storyteller.

The book is ambitious in its scope, starting off with the Partition and stopping at the economic liberalization of 1990, with a detour through the Emergency. These events, in addition to being historically important, serve as important placeholders in the story as it is during these times that the titular Sultan of Delhi Arjun Bhatia faces his own nadirs. The Partition is when a 10 tear old Arjun is forced to grow up in a night. During the Emergency he is down on his luck and borrowing money, but after Emergency his rises up from ashes. The 90s Liberalization is when he is looking forward to growing further, but is also aware that a storm is coming his way.

While these three events are the poles on which the storyline hangs comfortably, the role of Bollywood to take the narrative forward is a good choice. Arjun himself is not too much into movies, but people around him are, and the changing tastes in music serve as an aid in moving the story forward. From the debate between Rafi and Kishore in the beginning to the talk about remixes at the end, Bollywood songs serve as a creative way to note the passage of time.

The character of Arjun is sketchy, leaving the reader to imagine him accordingly. Bangali is even sketchier. As far as character sketches go, all of them are defined loosely. This serves the story well, as the reader can visualize each character as they wish.

Arnab has set his ambitions high with Sultan of Delhi, but the book shows some inconsistency. Descriptions of the Partition, Lahore, Delhi and UP are bare bones. But he excels when writing about Kolkatta. In fact, the Kolkata parts seem to be written the most earnestly, moving as they do at a leisurely pace. The hurried pace of the non-Kolkata parts make for the novel to be a frenetic read, but they could do with some more descriptions of the place.

I must give kudos to Arnab to talk about caste in one of the novel's pivotal moments, and not in a perfunctory manner. The mention of caste underlines the lawlessness of UP, ostensibly in the 60s or 70s, but seems timeless. It also serves to show the cleverness of Arjun, how he navigates the north Indian mafia. Not just in one point, it is the caste, though not said explicitly, that earns Arjun a place in the smuggling gang. I have not read many Indian pulp authors, but from what little I have, this mention of caste is used cleverly by Arnab. Caste is mentioned openly in the 60s and 70s, but after the Liberalization, it is only spoken in a coded manner, showing how things still haven't changed, even though the language has.

To sum up, Sultan of Delhi has a lot of ambition in its scope but is let down by the hurried pace it takes to achieve it. The story telling is fast paced but does become inconsistent at time while some passage pull the reader in with their words. Arnab has said that he will probably not do the sequel to the novel as he had intended, which seems fine as the story ends at a place where things still hang in a thread but the story still seems to have reached a nice conclusion. Arjun is till the Sultan of Delhi, having fought adversities that destroyed his family in childhood, saw him at his nadir and then rise again to a position where he has the pulse of all that happens in Delhi. The reader closes the book that Arjun is still the Sultan, which may be construed as a happy ending.

The book is not a page turner, but keep at it and the reader will be pleased when it ends.