Title: Mother India 

Author: Prayaag Akbar 

Genre: Contemporary fiction 

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Pages: 168

Before I dive into the review, let's take a moment to appreciate the book cover. It has been designed by Bonita Vaz Shimray and is nothing less than sheer brilliance. The Instagram grid is of the exact dimensions of a standard mobile smart phone and  it immediately hints about the role of social media in this story. Saying that it's a beautiful hard bound book would be an understatement, you are bound to pick it up from the shelves by the mere look of the cover.

About the author: Prayaag Akbar is an award winning scriber whose "Leila" won critical acclaim and awards in 2017. While I didn't get the chance to read Leila, I was well aware that his award winning novel was a base for a Netflix show. 

Alert: There are spoilers .

Mother India is a brilliant book set in the backdrop of modern India: AI, Social media, work romances, corruption etc. The protagonists of the story are Mayank, a guy who works for a You Tuber, who didn't go to college to make ends meet and Nisha, a pretty Pahadi girl who works in a high end Japanese chocolate retail store. Both are totally unrelated although they manage to change each other's lives forever.

This story is about how technology and social media has started playing with human lives. It's a very realistic story with how someone's image is stolen from their Instagram grid without consent and processed by AI to create a viral gif. I mean the repercussions can be life altering.

This story has so many political sides to it also. The collapsing of a flyover because of faulty construction, corrupt ministers, people destroying nature for personal gains, harming an honest journalist, and so on.

While Mother India mainly points to the gif, there are numerous aspects of motherhood in the story. Nisha getting pregnant, how Nisha's  elder sister is considerate towards her, Mayank taking care of street dogs like his own, dotting Mayank's mom and she guiding Mayank into doing the right thing and of course, the intricacies of our very own motherland.

The novel is a brilliant piece of work. It's fast paced and very relatable with today's scenario. It has elements of everything; from romance to thrill, tragedy to sarcasm. Set up in Delhi, I could precisely relate to all the locations where the story takes place.

The writing is superb and there are two sentences in the entire story that are of the length of a whole page!

Mr Akbar has done a fantastic job and this book is a must read for contemporary fiction lovers 

PS this story would make an entertaining Netflix limited series too. OTT people, are you listening?

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