My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Many thanks to the author for bringing this book to my notice.
Romantic Guerrilla by D S Kumar is a tale of revenge and justice and there’s always something about the “underdog” winning over the superpower that makes anyone jump up to the heaven and back. And Subash Bodhi has every reason to take revenge on the billionaires who ousted him and his partner and friend Rohan from the start-up they had built from the scratch to a successful business enterprise.
Right off, one gets a sense of Subash as uncaring and unapologetic bold & brash person who doesn’t want to toe to any controlling individual. There’s absolutely nothing likable about him, in fact many a time his thoughts are terribly offensive and downright dirty for his fixation to a part of female anatomy, ‘booty’. There’s also his bitterness about every system in place in India, be it educational or financial. But even then, one sees the spark of goodness and honesty as he offers a job for Mohini, a prostitute, after hearing her inability to find a good job. Mohini is a character that I absolutely loved, she’s totally a kickass female who has no qualms in fighting for what she wants. Things get out of hand when Subash is beaten to an inch of his life by thugs and thrown out of the company he loves, and there is nothing for him to do but take matters into his own hands for teaching the mighty and controlling Bhasani family a lesson they wouldn’t forget in a lifetime.
5 yrs on, the Battle Of Bombay is formed by members against whom gross injustice have been done by the Bhasani family and the action shifts from Bangalore to Mumbai. The team comprising the vigilante army includes Vijay, a technological whiz and a hacker; Arjun, a wrestler whose brother died in one of the plants of Bhasani’s and Mohini, Rohan and Subhash. They also use the help of a down and out make-up artist to change identities and looks, a helper inside the Bhasani household who provides the family intel, porn stars and movie stars and even the daughter of the Bhasani family, in their quest for justice.
The story is captivating and interesting and the author does weave a tale of magic but for certain parts that left a bitter taste. The disregard to a woman’s basic right for choosing her pregnancy was outright ignored and that one part in the book made me see red. Of course, it is fiction and liberties are taken but as a reader, I just couldn’t see the justification of that scene. There are explicit sexual scenes in the book that may feel objectionable to certain readers so you are fairly warned dear friends.
In all, a highly entertaining and exciting guerrilla warfare with a highly irritable hero who has no romantic bone in his body and who compares his dick to an anaconda😏😏😏. I felt the language in the book could have been toned down but by the end realized that it was essential to establish Subhash’s uncouth character. The struggle of a start-up entrepreneur to maintain the basic qualities and the unethical ways of the big business conglomerates is well-etched and conveyed brilliantly and it is a hard look at the current scenario in the world of cut-throat competition.
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Subash Bodhi is an entrepreneur who runs his startup in style. He gets into a power struggle with Prakash Bhasani, a billionaire investor and heir of a family-run business group. As the conflict escalates, Subash gets kicked out of his startup. He comes back for justice with a guerrilla army, consisting of a hacker, mimicry artist, MMA fighter and a call girl. His aim is to humiliate Bhasani group and family, using social and system hacks. This battle also features a pop star, Bollywood actress and a porn star.