What a lark Shovon Chowdhury's The Competent Authority is. Check out the logic in this strategy:
``I want you to insult the Chinese,`` said the CA.
``We must show them that we are not afraid of them by insulting them. We must cause them to lose face..once they see we are fearless, they will be too scared to attack. ``
The rest of the book contains characters like the giggling guru Dharti Pakhar who takes care not to mesmerise himself when gazing into the mirror; Muthu and Venu Chopra, thevars from TN who decide a Punjabi surname will serve them better in New New Delhi, which is where the action is set; Hourly Status Reports which take over an hour to type, and the many places Bob Marley- on- a- T-shirt travels to.
My only beef was that the story picks up flab as it progresses, and the perceptive bits at the heart of this satire gets lost in the slack.