A woman who goes missing in the forest with a non-existent man, a long barber who lights a lamp in the dark night, a tribal activist who even after death saves a police team from a Naxalite attack, a double murder that finally just disappeared in a village and a terrifying meeting after midnight in North Block. These are some of the stories that are part of a book written by former IPS officer and former National Security Guard (NSG) chief MA Ganapathy.
Unlike most police officers who recount their careers in their first post-retirement books and express their achievements or general administrative shortcomings, Ganapathi fictionalizes his professional experiences with an extraordinary twist. have chosen to make
A 1986-batch IPS officer of the Uttarakhand cadre, Ganapathy has had an illustrious career, serving for years in the Central Bureau of Investigation, as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, as Chief of Aviation Security in the Central Industrial Security Force, and as Ganapathy. The DGP of Uttarakhand before retiring as head of the NSG, the country’s elite counter-terror force, earlier this year.
Ganapathi sets the tone of the book in the very first story, which draws from his childhood and all the stories he has heard. The book captures the author’s love for nature and mountains with vivid descriptions of forests, mountains, mountain air and sounds of nature.
Many of the stories in the book begin with a regular murder mystery but end with a supernatural event. Entitled ‘Whispers in the Shadows: Extraordinary Encounters of a Policeman’, the book takes a potshot at the culture of power-obsessed Delhi and satirically expresses the boredom of government meetings.
For example, Lodhi Gardens is described as a large park in central Delhi with tall trees, ancient mausoleums, sprawling lawns and a “small ego”. The North Block is a sandstone building where “very important meetings” are held. In an extraordinary event, a “very important meeting” is also taking place in the building.
In many stories, it appears that the officer himself is talking about the cases he investigates. Some of these murders are quite famous. But here too, the author has inserted a supernatural event to close the real event.
The tone and flow of the prose show hints of inspiration from the Ruskin Bond stories. The author also pays tribute to him, saying that he grew up reading his horror stories. Bond reviewed the book as “essential, interesting and realistic”.
A quick read and mostly fun, the book’s only flaw is that it rises from the dead too often to maintain the story’s unpredictability.
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