Feb 18 2022 to Feb 18 2022 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Achala Moulik’s Rogues among the Ruins portrays the conflict of civil servants caught between ideals and thirst for success. The narrative adopts the style of great masters like Gogol and Cervantes who, in their search for truth, evoke laughter through tears.

The first part of the book is a gripping fictionalized account of the workings of the Archaeological Survey of India and the painful predicaments of a dedicated but naïve scholar faced with temptations. The scholar’s son, a morally indifferent bureaucrat, chronicles a later era in the second part. Through tawdry dramas, administrative acrobatics of sycophants and hypocrites, he encounters the sordid reality of powerful men and women who think they rule the country. With sardonic humour, sympathy and reluctant respect the narrator takes the reader on a journey through Glory Road where principles are discarded by the ambitious, where the proud encounter humiliations, where idealists are scorned, and sometimes those with stubborn strength overcome ordeals.

Two veterans of the world that the book describes, Achala Moulik and K N Shrivastava are in conversation about how much of a reflection the fictionalised account is of the truth.