Are some crimes unpardonable? That's the question that roared through my mind as I read Salil Desai's crime thriller, "The Sane Psychopath". The plot revolves around a bus driver called Shankar Lande in Pune, who went on an hour-long rampage. In one hour, ten people were killed on the roads of Pune, 70 maimed, and over 100 vehicles were injured. The people of Pune are angry and they want nothing less than the death penalty for the man. No lawyer is ready to defend a man who has committed such a heinous crime. At this point, a young advocate called Varun Gupte decides to defend the man and all hell breaks loose as political parties, the Bar Association and citizens groups are outraged by this lawyer's decision. That Varun Gupte chooses to represent the accused at a time when his marriage has been fixed points to a larger problem - increasingly, our professional choices clash with the happiness of our loved ones.
Varun Gupte's meeting with Shankar Lande's family provides few heart touching moments in counter balance to Lande's monstrous behavior that cost innocent lives and wreaked havoc across the city of Pune. Their meeting, the first awkwardly painful moments, are not elaborated upon, however, the flashes of sensitivity and understanding show two strata of the society that are trapped by their own choices, appalling as it may seem to the logical reader in equal measure.
"The human mind had a remarkable capacity for self-deception as well as to manipulate others. It knew exactly how to cast itself as a victim to justify whatever the Self did....At other times, when it was not manipulating, the deranged mind is like the debris of a crashed plane.You could see the physical signs of a catastrophe and build your theories on the indications provided by the thousands of smithereens scattered around,but a definitive account could be ascertained only after the recovery of the plane's black box. And retrieving that black box was no mean task because black boxes of humans, unlike those of planes, didn't always emit signals."
Perhaps the ending was predictable and sudden, but the subtler aspects of the narrative such as the sensitive portrayal of Dr. Kanitkar's decision to agree to examine, upon the request of Varun Gupte, as whether Shankar Lande is mentally sound tends to restore faith in humanity. These are the little flashes of sensitive characterization that urge readers to probe the meaning and purpose of life. Deeper questions of "who is good?" and "who is bad?" are also pertinent to the contemplation of a subject that relates to crime.
Published by FingerPrint Publishing!, Salil Desai's thriller "The Sane Psychopath" recaptures a series of events that led to a horrifying crime and attempts to decode what may have triggered a simple, family loving man like Shankar Lande to unleash such rage and violence on the roads of Pune.
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