The inciting incident of Age of Vice, a horrific collision between dissolute wealth and harsh poverty, marks out the central theme from the very start. It’s 2004 in New Delhi and a speeding Mercedes with a drunk driver at the wheel ploughs into a group of street sleepers, killing five. This symbolic yet seemingly senseless act also binds together the three main protagonists of an impressively ambitious literary thriller: Sunny Wadia, the playboy scion of a major criminal family; Neda Kapur, an investigative journalist; and Ajay, a hapless footsoldier in the Wadias’ nefarious business empire. Their lives interweave in an epic story of political and moral corruption in contemporary India. With intricate yet plausible plotting, the book has all the energy of a high-concept crime thriller. What makes it compelling is the emotional intelligence of Kapoor’s characterisations.
We start with Ajay, born into squalor and privation in Uttar Pradesh. A lower-caste boy, he is “less than poor”. Sold into slavery at the age of eight and serving in a backpacker cafe by his teens, he slowly works his way up to become a “Wadia man”, as Sunny’s valet and bodyguard. Ajay’s picaresque struggle provides some kind of moral compass to our tale, and a ground zero from which to view the vicious hierarchies we encounter on the way. He seems to rise up, yet every material gain brings a spiritual loss of self. When he tries to do the right thing, he is simply used as a fall guy, but pushed too far, he is eventually driven by a heartbreaking quest for revenge and redemption.
