Alok Jha

A Covid Story that is certain to leave the readers in splits. Its the early days of the lockdown. The Deputy Commissioner of Excise has framed an exhaustive list of dos and donts including strict quarantine rules for groceries. When he learns that his brother-in-law had attended a party he reviews his own brief encounter with his wifes brother and isolates himself at the outhouse. While the wife sceptical of the very presence of the virus greets the news with indifference the family matriarch who has a rational mind urges her son to get himself tested. But when the son gives no sign of heeding to her advice she chalks out a plan in which her bumbling nephew joins her. What follows next is a rib-tickling account of chaos descending on the sprawling government bungalow the memory of which the senior officer of the Excise Department is unlikely to forget in a hurry. The delicious humour will remind readers of P G Wodehouse. The book is also a satirical take on the growing inclination of the educated class towards pseudoscience and the seriousness they attach to messages that circulate on various social media platforms.