Artist, Undone

Title:         Artist, Undone

Author:     V. Sanjay Kumar

Price:        INR. 495/-

Publisher: Hachette India

‘I can see where you are going. Up shit creek…with a paddle.’

He was right. That is where I was going.

It was the kind of thing that my analyst had always warned me against: ‘you are at an inflexion point, in a mood to do the irrational and the irreverent.’

He forgot irreversible.

Harsh Sinha, forty, decides to take a year off from his work to spend some quality time with his family. He was based in Mumbai and his family in Chennai. After years having spent weekends with them he is fed up and wants a change. When he reaches his home & shares the news with his wife he expected a warm welcome. What he didn’t expect was being thrown out of his own home & the realisation that he had no family.

His wife Gayathri tells him in clear terms that their relationship is over. What she doesn’t tell him that she is more interested in Newton, the crazy artist who lived next door. Well, how could she, it was yet to happen, the relationship that is.

Newton is a crazy artist who has often been termed a thief because his art always imitated his inspiration. Add to the fact that he was a womanizer and thus the fodder that every journalist dreamt of.

After the rejection Harsh moves back to Mumbai & keeping him company is a 27 Lakh painting that he had bought on a whim because he saw himself in the muse. In a bid to unload the painting he starts exploring the art galleries and gets sucked into the industry which functions strangely and ends up meeting Manoj Tyaagi, who after inadvertently getting entangled in a financial scam is termed as “The Naami Chor”. Together they forge a friendship and make a foray in the art world. And it is here that his life connects with that of Newton.

What happens further is best read.

My Verdict

Quirky, strange, entertaining and immensely readable is how I will describe this book.

There are lengthy discussions on Art which according to me should have been boring but strangely that wasn’t case, I guess that says something about the writing. In fact I would go to the extent of saying that the book is like Newton in some ways. A little crazy & yet entertaining. It is full of sub plots and entertaining characters which connect at some point or the other. There were times when I felt where is this going but then the writing was such that it kept pulling me back.

A different book in terms of treatment but a nice read and at the cost of repeating myself, a little crazy just like the cover ;)

My Rating 3.5/5