ADITYA

The Success Guru

Aditya Srivastava, born and brought up in a traditional family at a north-Indian small town, lives his childhood amidst a rich and culturally fulfilling family atmosphere, full with siblings and caring individuals. Fed on the romantic notions of the civil services since his childhood, IAS happens to be his natural, and family-inspired, choice.

 

As he grows up, he is sent to Delhi University to prepare for the civil services examination where he soon becomes a popular name in the students circle. However, what he didn't know was that by choosing the path of Civil Services, he had chosen a path of self-destruction till he meets with Devanjali, a girl from St Stephens, whose perspicacity at her age was a matter of folklores. Through her powerful analysis, she tries to convince him that IAS is not the solution; rather, it is a part of the problem. Very naturally, it clashed with Aditya's small-town romanticism about the civil service. Aditya is in a fix. Yet, he goes ahead with his Mission-IAS. But, he's overawed by the charm and intellectual prowess of Devanjali and falls secretly in love with her.

 

Eventually, Aditya is selected in IAS as the all-India topper, but before he could think of joining it, he gets a crude personal experience which jolts him out of his romanticism

 

Now, that he has perceived the reality, he conceives a plan - a secret plan, to destroy this reality. He just needed few good men to execute his secret mission. He works out his strategies of a systemic change and prepares a detailed roadmap in his secret ARA CLUB that he sets up with his another maveric mate, Siddhanta. On the surface, he establishes himself in the society as a super-successful entrepreneur who is hailed as the 'Education Baron of India' and, more interestingly, the 'Success Guru'.

 

The politics of the day is mired by scams, scandals and controversies of unprecedented level. The govt of the day is bogged down by trust-deficit. Political scandals and sting operations are the order of the day. This backdrop gives Aditya and his team a right setting to bring forth their political agenda and they come up with their unique political and electoral reform proposals. People, fed up with scandals and let down by the existing political formations, give Aditya and his team a huge thumbs up.

 

The elections are round the corner. Aditya's team is riding the wave of huge mass support. But, what will happen? Will the govt of the day keep quite? Well, they let the man corner the people's goodwill or will they press the govt machinery to defame the man and to send him in political wilderness?

DEVANJALI

The Intellectual Powerhouse

There are few men and women on this planet who lead their lives with a mission. They carry a dream and display singular commitment to implement that dream in its totality. That commitment gives them a character that makes them special. Devanjali is one such special character.

But, what makes Devanjali special is her integrity. She’s uncompromising on a cause which she believes in and even the biggest of temptations can’t sway her - not even the might of the powerful Vikram Thapar, the biggest Moughal of the Indian media industry, who happens to be her employer.

Coming from an aristocratic lineage, she had a luxurious but melancholic childhood. With circumstances, she acquires her own ideas of life which makes her independent but headstrong. Even her IAS father, who happens to be one of the most powerful bureaucrats of his time, fails to convince her of his own importance in the system. Through her gifted power of discernment, she had understood the real character of the modern bureaucracy and the ills it had imported into the system. She was determined to stay away from it and hence, to the utter dismay of her father, she chooses journalism as her career and through it, she vows to create powerful leaders in society. She nurtures her own secret missions in life and needs few persons of character to execute her mission.

After studying journalism from USA, she comes back to India nurturing her two-fold mission: first, to create and promote real leaders in society and second, to cleanse the Indian media industry of its dirt and muck. She joins the biggest and the most controversial media house of India, the Newswire Ltd. To many in the industry the news happens to be scandalous. Then, nobody knew that it was a part of her long-term secret plan.

But, to her jubilation, Devanjali soon finds that the mission for reconstruction of the Indian democracy and society had already begun by few men with exceptional characters and that she she had already been made a part of it. The heroes of her dreams had taken lives.

With the mission of reconstruction of Indian politics and society well under way, Devanjali directs her focus on Vikram Thapar and on the affairs of the ‘Newswire Ltd’. Soon, she discovers an intricate network of dirty interests ensnaring the system where politicians, business houses, opinion leaders and lobbyists had held the political-bureaucratic system of India to a ransom. She finds that Vikram Thapar and his media house had its own intelligent role to play in the game. Now, her task was cut out; she would destroy the man and the ills he’d infused in the system. With her persistence and strong-headed approach, she exposes the nexus and, before she could fight Vikram Thapar legally, the man found a safer and a far more respectable escape route out of his desperate situation - suicide; he kills himself which symbolizes the cleansing act of all dirty influences in media. Her giant act sends a powerful message to the media fraternity that when it comes to fighting corruption in its own backyard, the media houses can’t keep their heads buried in sand.

Now, that her personal mission is fulfilled, will Devanjali get the opportunity to express her love for the man, who she had once created and who comes out to be the real hero of the great movement for the reconstruction of democratic India? What role Devanjali gets to play in the drama? Can she do anything to save the man from incarceration and conspiracies? Can she let ‘Her Man’ sink to the quagmire of dirty politics? On top of it, can she get to say her passionate love for the man who she had once created as ‘The Leader’?

SIDDHANTA

The unparalleled Soul

Siddhanta Sharan had a very wanting childhood which had come to him as the tragic legacy of a faded aristocracy. Through the thick of his penurious childhood days in his village, he studied at his village school where everyone knew he was special. Meandering through the difficulties of his life he gets few helps which enables him to reach higher academic echelons and get many academic laurels on the way. Soon, recognition came and so did job offers worth millions of dollars in compensation. But, he was not to freak out on those money nor he wished to sit on his laurels for long; he was dreaming of a different and more meaningful future.

Wandering around with his inner turmoil, he lands into the Harvard Business School drawn by the rigours of a management programme. Just then, he hears of a bloody massacre happened in the neighboured of his village as fall-out of a long-standing struggle between private armies of the landed castes and the Maoists. He thinks of a solution and, quitting Harvard mid-way, he comes back to his village. Now, he had defined himself and his goals; it was the call of his destinity. He flew down from Harvard to his village - one of the most underdeveloped region in the hinterlands of Ganges - and rolls out his unique solution that he calls 'Nano-socionomics'.

Within a span of three years, he turns the whole area into a hot-bed of development, growth and prosperity, thanks to his great postulates of ‘Nano-socionomics’ that visualized the socio-economic reconstruction of the villages through truly democratic means. To top it, by his unique skills, he manages to bridge the status differentiation of rural society and ensures total caste-equality in areas under his influence.

His unbelievable achievements make Maoism and caste wars fade into irrelevance. He is hailed in national-international media as the ‘Miracle Man’ and is honoured with many prestigious awards. The Maoists retaliate and abduct him but, with his profound intellectual capacity and with his great argumentative skills, Siddhanta managed an ideological coup in the Maoist camp leading not only to the annihilation of the Maoists’ top rank but also to the ideological defeat of the very philosophy of Maoism in India.

Now he focussed himself to a far bigger challenge - the reconstruction of Indian democracy and society. He was blessed to have the company of Aditya, the maverick educationist, who joined hands with him to open ‘The Ara Club’, the secret club. Aditya also brought Devanjali into the mission and soon they were working out a road map. But, Siddhanta was planning a movement full with wonderful ideas of change; he calls it a Post-Gandhian’ movement. Soon, the movement snowballed into a pan-Indian revolution. The waves of the revolution not only swept away the corrupt government of the day but went a long way into rejuvenating the tattered moral fabric of the nation.

The revolution has a beautiful culmination - the volunteers of the Ara Club are voted into power for implementing their great reforms. As the nation is through huge celebrations all across, Siddhanta Sharan was no where to be seen.

Where was Siddhanta at the time? What he was doing in a remote village alone? What does he tell Devanjali about that particular moment and about his conspicuous absence from the celebration? What was it that made Devanjali go speechless?

Sitting in her news room, she acknowledged that in his moral and intellectual endowments, Siddhanta Sharan was still several notches above the rest of them.

How?
A profound, subtle, enigmatic and discerning character whose ideological complexities and behavioral simplicity would blow the reader off his feet...

VICKEY THAPAR

The Wily Media Moughal

Vikram Thapar or Vickey, as he was known in the socialites circle, was one of the most colourful personalities of the contemporary India.

He was a successful business tycoon who owned one of the biggest media conglomerates of India - ‘The Newswire Media Ltd.’ which had its presence in television, print media, internet portals and entertainment business in the country. Besides, he ran one of the biggest event management concerns of India which organized many national-international events like film festivals, beauty pageants, music concerts and cultural events. He was also into field of education and he owned a network of Management and Mass Communication education institutions across many cities. Recently, he had taken interests in production business of Bollywood movies as well.

‘The Newswire Ltd’ was known mainly for its Television and Newspaper business. It ran a news channel “Suchh” in Hindi which meant ‘truth’. It had the motto: ‘Nothing but Truth’. The ‘Suchh’ was the highest watched private news channel of India. The Group also had an entertainment channel ‘Family’, which produced and showed sop-operas in Hindi. Besides that, Vikram Thapar had purchased one of the oldest newspapers of India ‘The Indian Mirror’, which was in a dying state and in a span of 10 years, made it to be one of the highest selling dailies.

Vikram Thapar was sharp, witty, articulate and perspicacious who was known for his business acumen and audacious decisions.

‘The Newswire’ group was known for hiring the best professional in their respective fields and for paying them the best.

Vickey Thapar, who was a handsome man in his early 50’s, had a knack of being in news for all the favourable reasons. He carried an ubersexual image and spent fortunes on his looks and fitness. He was known for his flamboyant and hedonistic life styles. He was an idol for the socialites and was loved in the women’s circles.

What happened to this colossus figure of Indian media when his path crossed with Devanjali? Why it ended up in a desperate situation where the only honorable solution was nothing but suicide.

INDER RATRA

The Mover & Shaker of the Power corridor

Inder Ratra was a renowned PR consultant, political analyst, celebrated columnist, successful businessman and author. After his post graduation from Faculty of Management Studies in Delhi, he joined a corporate consultancy group and worked his way up in the political-corporate power circles. He went on to open his own PR consultancy agency which had a wide range of clients from the corporate and business world. Because of his consciousness on socio-political issues, he wrote and commented extensively in media.

 

He was a man endowed with the gift of the gab. Because of his eloquence and articulation on the issues concerning the civil society, he became a regular on television debates. Because of remaining on the right side of issues, people loved his comments, cheered his repartees, hailed his jibes and remembered his epigrams.

He was witty and humorous but was equally acerbic and ruthless in debunking an argument which he regarded to by hypocritical, although to him, all arguments which didn't suit his 5-star brand of morality were hypocritical.

 

When it came to debunking a politician's morality, he chose his words with care and chewed it in mouth to make it venomous before spitting it out with derision. At that time, his familiar grin was substituted with an expression of grit usually visible on the face of marine commandoes out on a demolition act.

 

Within few years he had become a darling of the media and was waited eagerly for his take on issues, though mostly his take used to be tongue-in-cheek bunkums as he loved playing to the galleries.

 

Gradually, his stature rose in social circles. In all the social gatherings of the town, his presence became a must - more out of his media power than that of his intrinsic substance or character. Many corporate houses inducted him into their board of directors in non-executive capacity. In politics, media and business world he balanced many opposites by representing divergent interests. Yet, everywhere he was a success.

 

In upper circles, he was considered to be a man whose roots expanded under the ground to entangle with the roots of many other giants from different fields and thus he came to be a part of an extensive tap root system underneath, where each gave nutritional sustenance to the other. The people outside the network never got to know of it. Above the ground, all stood separately showing divergent interests in society.

 

What role the wily player got to play in the power politics of Delhi?

LAAVANYA

The Embodiment of Passion

A JNU scholar in her early 20’s who drew to the ideas of Siddhanta and immersed herself into the works of rural societies. Vivaciousness was the core of her existence that reflected from her voice, gait and mannerism. Her body frame that contoured through her skin-fit kurta and chudidar pyjama was something that has been eulogized over ages in classical Indian art - curvaceous and well-endowed. Although her dusky face had the natural radiance of youth, the energy and the enthusiasm that radiated from her inner self, made her demeanour more charming.

 

She got call letters for jobs from many universities and organizations; she was called for a job in the United Nations in America. But, when she came to know of Siddhanta’s ‘Learning Centre’ and of his development initiatives for the rural areas, she left everything behind. She turned down all the offers and came to her village to work among her people.

 

Did she meet the huge challenge stacked up her way? Did she take the right decision?