Book Review: The Sialkot Saga

Name: The Sialkot Saga

Author: Ashwin Sanghi

Rating: 4 out of 5

' Promises are like babies. Easy to make but hard to deliver.'

Abundant with catchy one liners like the one mentioned above, Ashwin Sanghi brings yet another beauty carved to ensure an orgy with wit, humor and brains. The book is certainly a masterpiece with regard to enormous wit quotient that the book boasts. This is precisely the element that makes the book rather impossible to put down once one has declared a war on it.

What makes Ashwin stands out is the beautiful way in which the sentences are crafted together. You do not simply read the sentences in his books. You read them, ponder over them and give a hearty laugh until you make the people in your house flutter the yellow pages in frenzied fury to find the nearest house for the mentally challenged. :p It would not be an exaggeration to depute him as the master and God of words. The words dance brilliantly to his dictates and fall together to perfection.

The book revolves over the life stories of two brilliant shrewd adversaries Arbaaz and Arvind who seek the supreme elixir of power and money. Arbaaz, though a Robin Hood for the people and Arvind, the son of a very honest businessman, would stoop at any means to quench their lust of power and money. A battle of deception, treachery and betrayal is what ensues. The business techniques and the deceptions have been crafted with Machiavellian precision dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. This ensures a very wonderful literary and intellectual treat for the readers.

This plot of Arvind and Arbaaz is interrupted by a few excerpts from the kingdoms and civilizations of some of the most succesful kings. These seemingly form a pattern and the curiosity of the reader is indulged only at the end of the book.

The book has a very little historical background than i had expected after reading other of Ashwin's books. Most of the book involves the tussle between the protagonists and the historical connection is made too late. Also, I felt that there was very little significance and connection between this latter part of the book than the earlier one. This might prove disappointing to the reader. It is almost as if two very different stories have been merely put together. Also, many of the things in the latter part are too hypothetical even for Ashwin’s books.

But overall, the book makes a very awesome read owing to wit and ingenuity with which the book has been written.