‘Age of Vice’ review: A compulsive thriller spun around chasms of class
Deepti Kapoor’s explosive thriller begins with a car crash. At Delhi’s Inner Ring Road lie the bodies of five pavement dwellers. Among the dead are three migrant workers from the district of Uttar Pradesh who had only arrived in Delhi a day before. They were run over by a driver in a Mercedes who didn’t look rich but rather ‘a man dressed in the imitation of wealth’. His name is Ajay, a loyal servant to Sunny Wadia, son of Delhi’s most powerful and wealthiest industrialist. Infamously called ‘The Mercedes Killer,’ Ajay is sent to prison for a crime he had no part in. Caught in the family’s bizarre and unyielding quest for richness, Ajay becomes a scapegoat, trying desperately to leave his life of poverty behind.
Kapoor’s Age of Vice (Juggernaut) is the first book in the trilogy garnering attention and praise that’s unprecedented. Even before its release, Age of Vice became the talk of the town with translation rights sold to over 20 publishers and FX studios eyeing it for a series. Living up to its pre-publication hype, the book delivers and how!
What is Deepti Kapoor’s deus ex machina, you might ask? The answer is quite simple: Age of Vice bridges genres as it is a compulsive thriller alongside epic family saga that’s interspersed with political turmoil and corruption. Exploring the dark underbelly of Delhi’s organised crime syndicates often backed by the state, the novel lays bare the decayed social system that only caters to and recognizes those it benefits from. In a country like India with fractured social and economic status, lower income groups stand no chance for growth.
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Sunny Wadia, heir to the ever-reclusive Bunty Wadia, cannot match his father’s ruthlessness and hunger for power. Indulging in a vision only he can justify, Sunny plans to turn Delhi into the New Global City. Stuck between a moral compass and undying desire to become a global phenomenon, Sunny views himself as a loner, someone deeply misunderstood. He finds solace in Neda Kapur, a journalist working for the Delhi Times. Theirs is a fiery chemistry and fast-moving romance where each is aware of the other’s social standing. Belonging to a family of intellectuals, Neda — conflicted yet headstrong — cannot help but admire Sunny’s charisma, his false sense of security, and his confident persona. On the outside, Sunny is the golden boy, the man with the world at his feet. He’s got it all; power, money, resources and the looks. But Neda knows that deep down, he is a man unsure of everything he is surrounded by.
Capitalism and the mafia culture
Despite the length of the novel, Deepti wastes no time getting comfortable. The novel’s expansiveness lies in its ability to borrow several elements that make it extremely compelling. Hers is a novel coloured by action-filled storytelling, visceral descriptions of dead bodies dropping left and right; gangsters threatening and looting — spanning the bloodthirsty and dangerous districts of Uttar Pradesh to Delhi’s changing economic and political scenario. Deepti grew up in Northern India and went to college in Delhi, after which, she worked as a journalist for several years. This is precisely why her writing is crisp and taut, offering a laser-sharp commentary on caste discrimination, the effect of uncontrolled capitalism and the mafia culture Delhi soon became infamous for.
There has and always been a classic distinction, a clear-cut boundary between the haves and have-nots. The system is rigged. There has never been an equal starting point. Those born into generational wealth already have a head start. They walk around with an air of entitlement while those learning to understand the world are already lagging behind. Oppressed by the hierarchical order and corrupt system, survival becomes essential. The drive to fend for oneself becomes paramount. It is this need to live, to carve a life bereft of poverty and impoverishment that compels Ajay to rise in the Wadia’s family ranks, to haul himself a little above the pecking order. After being sold to a couple to pay off his family’s debts, Ajay begins working in a backpacking café in Himachal. As fate would have it, he is spotted by Sunny who immediately takes a liking for him. Ajay, eager to please, ensures Sunny’s needs are always met. Soon enough, his unending loyalty and unwavering discipline earns him a place as Sunny’s bodyguard. With world-class training from a young Israeli, ex-IDF officer, who prepares him for every blow, every emergency, Ajay becomes Sunny’s most trusted man.
The race to climb the social ladder
Highlighting the new social order with fast-growing capitalism in the early 2000s, Age of Vice examines the changing sociocultural lifestyle of the urban youth, and how those belonging to the upper-class influenced by the West change their behaviours to fit in with the rest of the world. Sunny Wadia belonged to an exclusive class of affluence for whom the world owed everything. For them, ‘money is nothing to be concerned with, there’s no virtue in penny-pinching. They spend. They want their comforts; they make no romance out of misery’. It is the confidence they exude, the clothes they wear, and the way they command themselves, that make them invincible.
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Everyone wants a piece of them, following in their footsteps like fanatic devotees, waiting to be noticed, to be liked. Sunny liked to be their messiah. With extravagant farmhouse parties decorated with finest pleasures of life, thronged by the elite with their overwhelming need to be recognised, to be a part of the gang, and insane amounts of drugs and psychedelic, Sunny created a world of his own. And in this hypnotic world of desire and supremacy, everyone stands to lose. This is the age of vice, Kalyug, where loss is paramount. Where the race to climb the social ladder swallows everyone into depths of despair.
Age of Vice is an unforgettable novel that catapults the reader into Delhi’s glitz and glamour, its opulence and violence; it delves deep into the cruelty and ruthlessness existing openly and in the margins, and how power and money always win.
