Tantra is a magical fantasy novel written by Adi,
about whom not many details are given in the "About Author" section
of the book. The only personal detail in it is about his passion for reading
novels late night and that this habit has to be given the credit for this debut
novel. Also the title of the book, Tantra was a of turn off as I myself come
from an ancient Malayalee Brahmin (Nambudiri) family of Thantris and has heard
lot of ancient magical stories about magicians, imps and evil rituals performed
for gaining unlimited power from grandmothers and grandfathers while growing up.
Tantric stories are also a main part of Malayalee popular culture spawning
several novels like Kalika, Surya Kalady and movies like Anandabhadram and
Adharvam. So Tantra had a lot of expectations to fill and the back cover
synopsis that told the background of the lady protagonist as a vampire slayer
did not help either.
But Tantra exceeded my expectations thanks to the
very good characterization of the protagonist, Anu Aggarwal and the breakneck
speed it adopted after the first 100 pages. Tantra tells the story of Anu, who
is a trained vampire killer in New York working for an organisation known as Centre.
Her boyfriend Brian is killed and the only clue points to someone from Delhi.
She gets herself transferred to Delhi without informing her superiors that
vengeance is her agenda. But once in Delhi, soon she gets herself dragged into
a whirlpool of much bigger events for which her training and experience in New
York is not sufficient. Kids get kidnapped and murdered, her own colleagues
have made pacts with the vampires, someone is accumulating a massive amount of
power in the city threatening the lives of innocents, she has to master an ancient
weapon in days to prevent it from happening and above all her nosy aunt is desperately
trying to get her married.
Actually the first hundred pages were a bit
baffling. I had a tough time deciding what exactly was happening. Here was
something that started like a teenager fantasy about vampires, progressing as a
subtle allegory about cultural differences between east and west and
culminating as a thriller mystery involving exotic Tantric rituals with some
standard elements of chick-lit thrown in here and there. (And I had an issue
initially with the name of Indian vampires- it’s tough to think a blood sucking
creature with the name Mishra..) But as the story progress, the focus becomes
clearer. Still what I felt as the initial hiccup has served the purpose of the
etching the character of Anu deep into the story thus helping the reader to
identify with her actions and motives at a later stage.
Like many of the thrillers that I read recently Tantra
suffers a bit from lousy characterization of sub characters. There are many
characters inhabiting the pages, but barring Amit, Anu’s colleague and Nina,
her aunt, I feel are mostly cut-outs. This was unsatisfying because there were
many important people who could have been made more interesting like Dr Sharma
or Chandra. Also one of the major mysteries that I was waiting to find out was
never revealed in the end. Hopefully Adi is working on a sequel which will
unravel that.