The beginning of the story is interesting enough - coupling intrigue with an issue easy to relate to. The protagonist Sanchit is the quintessential boy-next-cubicle, facing the concerns and predicament of a typical workplace. An under-performer aiming to excel. It is this trait of his,that pushes him to dive headlong into a mysterious adventure. Following a strange message delivered to him on a postcard, he journeys all the way to Turkey to join an elite group of individuals. Though partially skeptical and dogged by fears, he persists, spurred on by a hope of glory. In Turkey, he’s inducted into a secret society which functions on the belief that the shareholders of any company can’t really affect the working of the company, and hence should not have more power than the employees who do all the actual work.
At some places, where the functioning of the group is talked about, I was briefly reminded of the secret brotherhoods from a Dan Brown book. The story flits between past and present, which makes the narrative interesting. The first half of the book is good, but the later part of it, comes with many bizarre twists and absurd revelations. The characters you were reading about for almost 3/4th part of the book, are in reality something entirely different. I found this rather confusing, and even a little irritating. This is where a ‘slightly-weird but interesting’ tale starts becoming absurd. The book ends with a couple of Ayn-Rand type speeches (thankfully neither as heavy, nor as long) in the movie-style climax.
Like Sanchit, the other characters are pretty believable, all except a woman called Pause. There’s a senior manager with Don-Quixote like traits, and is referred to by that name throughout the book. Then there’s talkative Lokesh (aka loquacious) who evokes our sympathy, being the rather feeble link in the Sanchit-Pause-Lokesh love triangle. A Gabbar Singh style villain also has a presence, adding drama with his larger-than-life presence. A super-ambitious, manipulative lady completes the gang. The only unrealistic character is Pause. It’s not only her name that’s unusual. It’s the bizarre and baffling ideas she comes up with. She creates an impossibly complex hoax to only to convince Sanchit to see the light. But yeah, their love-story has been cleverly written into the story and is subtle and sweet.
The relevance of the pictures of the huge bull on the front cover and the little bear on the rear end becomes clear half-way thought the book. ‘The Flawed God’ is the sharemarket that’s worshipped these days, and the flaw is the way it’s structured. The power to form the strategies and agendas in a company lies with the board- that its to say, the share-holders. The author feels that this decision-making power should lie with the employees, who do all the actual work in the day-to-day functioning of the company. This would give them the freedom to set their own strategy, and the same time inculcate the feeling of responsibility in them.
The ideas presented in the book are new, and there are some funny moments in the book, but at times it’s a tedious read, and the ending, to me, was a little disappointing.
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