A review by sisyphus07
Aarushi by Avirook Sen

2.0

Picked this one up with huge expectations. Sen is a gifted writer. My introduction to him as a writer was that Open piece where he recounts his days at NewsX. The book has the same easy flow of narrative and delves deep into the dramatis personae. However, there was quite a bit lacking as well. Sen starts over from the primary evidence collected by the police and the CBI, and traces how things got bungled up eventually. So far, so good. But as various reviews (particularly, the one in Fountain Ink) have pointed out, he does seem to be going easy on the Talwars. The thoroughness with which he examines Krishna and Rajkumar, or the way he goes into the history of Kaul and Shyam Lal, is absent when dealing with the Talwars. He offers no reason for the CBI to maliciously go after the couple the way he says the agency did. It is unclear throughout the book what the CBI (or indeed, the individual officers) had to gain from framing the Talwars. Their connections with key people in the forensic laboratory and even the police is not made much of. The book reveals as much as it hides.

PS: After I had finished reading the book, I read about the panel discussion at the book's launch where Sen was patently rude to Ellen Barry who had been less than charitable in her review of the book. That kind of cheesed me off, post-facto.