Book Review: Choked!-Fight Until You Win

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same;” One is constantly reminded of these lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” once he has completed reading Rejeti’s “Choked”. The narrative written in a plain and simple, lucid style is a perfect documentation of the modern day society. In today’s world avarice and greed are the hallmarks of everyday living. However, the essence lies in the fact how well an individual survive these oddities in order to come out as the victor. The plot of the novel revolves around Aditya Kulkarni, a small businessman, pushed into a conspiracy against a corporate giant, Mr. Singhania. As the narrative progresses we come to know Aditya loses his business to the avarice of the business giant. Unable to put up with the fact that he has to lose out on a business that he has inherited from his father and has also promised to scale it to new heights on his death bed Aditya refuses to give it up all without a fight. He makes the best use of his intelligence and rationale to put up a stiff resistance to Singhania’s business. Step by step he calculates his moves and plots the downfall of Singhania. What’s interesting to note is that the way in which the narrative unfolds. Each chapter is arranged in a sequential line of actions and are way episodic and dramatic in nature. While the first chapter explores the life of Aditya, the second one explores Singhania’s. The Third one again shifts to Aditya’s and the fourth one to Singhania and so on. The novel has only one female character, Meena, Aditya’s wife who unfortunately has not much been given much space to evolve. She appears in one or two lone episodes as the supportive wife to Aditya. Nevertheless the reason for the same can be that women in India is always associated with tenderness, motherliness and benevolence; so how valid it would be to portray a greater presence of a woman in a world that is murky, harsh, ruthless, opportunistic and of course selfish would be a matter of great conjecture.

Aditya as the father, a partner and a business man is a very evocative presence in the novel.He is wise, generous as well as tactful and a caring personality. One may ask how valid is Aditya’s treatment of Singhania. The answer to which lies in Krishna’s dictum in “The Mahabharata” i.e. “All is fair in love and war.” and why shouldn’t Aditya, after all he is also a father, a son, a husband and a boss to someone; its his basic responsibility to look after those who are dependent on him.

The subtitle of the novel is “Fight Until You win” this reminds us of the Darwinian concept of the “Survival of the Fittest”. In this century of hypocrisy and individualistic means the basic concept of survival is to fight and eliminate your opposition and this conjures up the subtitle of the recent Rani Mukherjee starrer Movie “Mardani-Every fight is personal”. No matter how grim the circumstances are, no matter how bad the situation is, our basic objective in life is to rise like the Phoenix from our ashes as rose Aditya against Singhania.

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About Subhojoy Ghosh

Kolkata-based Subhojoy Ghosh is currently pursuing Masters in English from the University of Calcutta. A passionate lover of literature, an avid reader and a writer of poems, Subhojoy loves to travel and explore the unknown.