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In sync with her rage
Updated On: 28 November, 2021 08:11 AM IST | Mumbai | Jane Borges
Union minister and former actor, Smriti Zubin Irani, turns thriller writer with a novel that takes the reader into a violent Maoist hotbed, where law-enforcers live on the edge
Smriti Zubin Irani
Rage is both, a powerful and painful thing. Smriti Zubin Irani, the Minister of Women and Child Development in the Union Cabinet of India, will also tell you that it can be channelised into something more constructive. A book, perhaps. The politician and former actor’s just released fiction title, Lal Salaam (Westland), is the result of that, she says, when we connect with her on a weekday afternoon. We’ve caught her between lunch; Irani is almost apologetic, when she requests if she can return the call in 15 minutes. She calls back in less than 10—such niceties rarely ever go unnoticed.
The book, she says, has been at the back of her mind for years. In April 2010, in what was one of the deadliest attacks by the Maoists on Indian security forces, 76 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) policemen were ambushed near Chintalnar village in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh. The spate of attacks against state forces never really stopped. But, what shocked Irani was the indifference towards the deaths. “The basic desire to tell this story came from a public television debate that I was part of,” she recalls. “One of the participants was very nonchalant about the fact that if a paramilitary personnel has died, this is what they wear their uniform for. I wondered that if there was a family member, friend or colleague listening to this conversation, how did they feel about the stature of the sacrifice being reduced to this in such a discourse. My rage has been building since then.”
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