Skip to main content

Shoes of the Dead- Kota Neelima- Book Review

Shoes of the Dead is many things, but what it is not, is a light read. With words carefully string together, Kota weaves a story of our country. A story I suspect, may be more familiar to some, and for city brats like myself, be eye opening.
The story focuses on a small group of individuals: a journalist, a farmer, a politician, a money lender, a village leader, an industrialist's wife.

Together the story investigates, the relationship between these various individuals, and their roles in shaping the world of compensations for farmers who have killed themselves, due to rising debt. Keyur Kashinath is a politician in whose constituency, there has been a rise in farmer suicides. When exploring the reason behind this rise, he meets Nazar a journalist who's had his good days and his bad days, but someone who lives by old-school journo rules.

The reason for the increase in farmer suicides, is just one man. Gangri, who wants to do the right thing, and not play cover up in the name of politics, one man who fights to provide the families of these suicides relief funds, that which was denied to him. Using clever manipulation he swings the committee members into, putting aside their personal agendas to do the right thing.

The dynamics of these leading men, along with the anti-heros, Lambodar & Durga Das and the small but important wife of a business magnate- Videhi forms the premise of the story.

The story is refreshing, and it's poised objectivel, and is definitely recommended for anyone who wonders why years pass in India, with little changing in terms of issues. It may also work well for those who have an opinion on the way this country has almost remained stagnant in the rural areas and gain a little bit more insight into the reasons this may be.  Yet another aspect to commend is the way the author manages to envelope various themes, from hope to cronyism into this tight little book.


Some of the negatives about the book is that at times it reads a bit on the boring side, and it's a hard genre to classify. George Orwell adopted the satirical writing style to provide political commentary in an amusing, candid manner in Animal Farm and used science fiction in Big Brother. I wish that what was used was some other form of fiction, as the pacing of the story moves unlike a thriller and reads like a cover spread article in a magazine, with no clear end or beginning and more importantly lacking clear clinchers at the end of every chapter to carry you through to the next chapter. Another area where the book could have been better, would have been in thie ending.

***Spoiler Alert***  Gangiri dies, Nazar resigns, Videhi is sympathetic, Keyur resigns and decides to go NGO on his father and actually do something for the sake of doing it, as opposed to doing it because he'll gain more supporters/votes. Lambodar & Durga Das turn over a new leaf, so to speak, by deciding to be fair, to honor Gangiri's memory. I find this hard to believe, the book shed some light on the brutal politics in villages, I think that this type of conclusion, leads the reader away from the reality, that the whole book has driven at from the start.

Conclusion: This book will leave you with much to think about and begging to jump into this world.
Price: Rs. 495
Rating: 3.5 / 5
This review is a part of the biggest <a href="http://blog.blogadda.com/2011/05/04/indian-bloggers-book-reviews" target="_blank"> Book Review Program </a> for <a href="http://www.blogadda.com" target="_blank">Indian Bloggers.</a> Participate now to get free books!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Celebrations

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 16 ; the sixteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton . It was a hard ground that felt like sand paper. When he started his journey, it was the soles of his feet that were in contact with the ground, but now as he pulled himself closer to the station, it was his whole body. His elbows were scraped, bloody and fresh scab peeled bled out to leave a trail of red on the wicked hot dusty ground of pain and suffering. All around him slow moving bodies crawled towards the direction of hope, all along leaving patterns of blood, sweat, skin and pus. These bodies had seen civil wars, droughts, genocide and lived to tell a tale of a people who now belonged to a nation listed as one of the poorest countries in the world. This is now, but before the list, was a struggle of massive proportions, under reported and quietly hidden

Escape

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 10 ; the tenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton . The Temple Widow A narrow dirt path, generously peppered with tiny pebbles, tiny miniatures of their gargantuan ancestors, leads to a bridge. It hangs, rickety and old. Old but not well used, old like abandoned and not frequently used. The bridge hangs low over a small stream that slowly gurgles past, happy unlike those that visit the place. The bridge leads to a temple. It is not very big, only perhaps the size of a small hut and at the most the size of an average temple hall. The temple has no deity; the temple has no one corner that doesn’t look like the other. It is clean, well swept, and empty. It has no furniture, and excepting a series of well spaced out windows, the walls remains uninterrupted. She stumbles in, the lady. She is not very tal

Time Travel

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 8 ; the eighth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton . I haven't got the memory of a vedic tantric. Neither do I ever claim to remember all. All I know is what I know, question my memory if you want to. I don't ask you to remember, I don't ask you to believe. In fact, I'm not asking you for anything at all. It is your choice to be here, to read this. So no, I don't owe you a favor. I happened to chance upon a watch, on one of my travels. Turning the dials of such a watch, could transport you to the past, to the future, to any time. But time, my friend, is not how you think it is. It is not a straight line, and you cannot just by chance hop into the world of dinosaurs and wooden weapons. It is a series of transparencies, like films of clean sheets of paper laid on top of each other. You look from above