The Department of Denials

The best-selling author of The Inscrutable Americans and Making the Minister Smile returns with another entertaining story in The Department of Denials. In this latest venture, Babar Thakur—-Babs to his friends—-a youth fresh out of college in search of an identity and direction in life, sets off on a trip to fulfil his dream of becoming the prime minister of India one day. In the best traditions of all heroic odysseys, he starts out on his quest alone. Soon, he is on a roller-coaster ride through the corridors of power, witness to the shenanigans of netas and babus. Chief among them is the minister Balak Kumar, who, repeatedly at the receiving end of various allegations from the Opposition, finally decides to centralize all denials under one authority, namely, the Department of Denials. And he asks Babs's father, Bahadur Prasad Thakur, to head the newly created department. The stage is thus set for an unending run of situations, alternately bizarre and funny.