Author, graphic novelist and journalist Shweta Taneja's latest offering Cult of Chaos (Harper Collins India) is a curious book. It is a new kind of cross-breed, much like the oddball and imaginative creatures in the fantasy universe that she creates, right from the freewheeling and powerful female tantrik — Anantya Tantrist — to the host of rakshasas, minor demons, supernatural bladesmiths, serpentine potion makers and mysterious half-breed cops and forensic experts. Melding humour with horror, fantasy with chick-lit, the occult with technology and ancient myths and legends with a modern and urban vibe rooted in Delhi's posh farmhouses and crowded back alleys, the author has created a genre bender which is a fast paced and racy page-turner. Taneja's first full-fledged novel was The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong — a comic-ghostly caper for tweens and a training ground of sorts for this book, which is the first of her occult mystery series featuring Anantya Tantrist.
The chapters boomerang between the horrific and violent sacrifices and murders to some outright humorous oddball apparitions of the night, from apparently normal dates in a posh central Delhi restaurants to glamorous Page 3 parties showcasing filmstars and supernatural freaks.There are elements of a baroque excess about some of the set pieces in the book as a supernatural canvas unfolds across a very real Delhi life populated with all manner of supernatural creatures or 'sups', tantrics of various clans, rakshasas, daevas and many other half-breeds and undefined creatures from the various planes that are visible through Anantya's magical 'septifocals' and allow her to view what is unseen by regular human eyes.
There are some truly inspired creatures like the gnarled ancient tantrik Guru B with his great labyrinthine library of marvels and a taste for peacock meat. Then there is Kaani the blademaker who belongs to a tribe that has mastery of death and is a creation of pure genius. There are the absurd denizens of the Bedardi Bar who look like they would be perfectly at home in a Guillermo Del Toro visual spectacle. Shweta Taneja's brand of horror features generous doses of humour, plenty of high-octane action sequences, spell-casting duels (imagine Harry Potter & company going native), gizmos drama, romance and even a teensy bit of fashion thrown in. Above all, Cult of Chaos launches the newest crime fighter on the block who has shades of Nancy Drew, Lizbeth Salander, Miss Marple, Modesty Blaise and Trixie Beldon. At the same time she is her own peculiar person. Anantya is a curious character who piques one's imagination as much as the book itself. Armed with mantras for every occasion, this beedi-smoking, outcast rebel child of a detective has an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth and a knack to summon up the oddest supernatural sidekicks and minor demons to do her bidding. She straddles the worlds of darkness, light and all the supernatural things that lie in between with the preoccupations of a young 20-something free-spirited and independent young woman complete with raging hormones, an eye for vintage clothing and accessories and a taste for the heady soma. She can kick ass like no other and find a way out of the toughest spots with her ability to cast spells to match the occasion, summon spirits from the darkest circles of hell and give two hoots for order, propriety or hierarchies that other members of her order seem bound to.
The mystery itself follows the usual tropes, twists and red herrings and it is not the final resolution that leaves you feeling satisfied, rather it is in the telling of it. That and a spunky and irrepressible heroine and Taneja's mini mythopoeia with its assortment of 'sups', its parallel universes that lie beneath the cracks and around the bends of very real city like Delhi that makes Cult of Chaos a darned good yarn.
(This piece appeared in The New Indian Express Bangalore on 21 April, 2015)
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