Assassin by K.R. Meera (A Book Review)

 📍 This book, Assassin, contains a mystery of an assassin who's trying to kill Satyapriya. Assassin is an attempt to document the times and lives of women of the author's generation as personally witnessed by her. Assassin is very much autobiographical, although the characters and situations are fictional, the emotional core of the story remains true. That also made it an interesting story. This book is a thick one, it is 654 pages long. So, go for it if you are likely to read thick books.

📍 Satyapriya is a professional woman living alone in a city, she is attacked by a biker. The biker tries shooting at her. But she was lucky to defend herself.

📍 At first it looks like, the assassin had took her for someone else. Why would someone want to kill her? But, later when she reaches home for some days off and gets to talk to her father, her father reveals that this wasn't any random incident, but the attempt to kill her specifically. He told her that there were some incidents when someone had tried to kill her. And his father dies unexpectedly soon after telling her this. This makes her suspect more. 

📍 She starts thinking about who could try killing her and makes a list of a few people.

📍 She had had a pretty rough life since her childhood for a long time. That story comes between the mystery of this assassin, as she tries remembering her childhood memories. 

📍 Her father was the director of the first film. They had a hotel as well, but it was all ruined and they went through a bad time. The family had to beg for money from many people. Some were good to lend money, some just weren't.

📍 There were a few things which I liked and there were a few things which I didn't like. I liked the character of her mother, she is quite courageous and intelligent. While I disliked the character of the protagonist-Satyapriya. In her past, once she had been in love with a Hindu boy -Sriram. He did something wrong, she started disliking everything about him, which is quite okay. But when she talks about the other boy she had been in love with (Samir Sayyid), this is how she talks. There is this conversation between her and a policeman. 

Police: What is your connection with Samir Sayyid?

Satya: I was once in love with him.

Police: He is a criminal the police are looking for. Did you not know that?

Satya: I know that there are cases against him. Isn't it for the court to decide if he is a criminal or not?

Police: Yes, but he has killed many.

Satya: Even if that's true, his killings won't be equal to even a thousandth of the murders that our rulers have committed. 

And this is how Samir Sayyid introduces himself the very first time she sees him. 

Hello! I am Satyapriya, a Hindu who is a Bharatiya. She said and held out her hand. 

Hello! He smiled and took it. Samir Sayyid. A Muslim who is a Kashmiri. 

Then what does she do with a stranger who she had met for the very first time and who preferred introducing himself as a Kashmiri rather a Bharatiya. 

I kept his hand in mine. We walked into the street, hand in hand. We walked till Sachivalaya Marg through Nandankanan Road. His hand was smooth, cool and strong. Like a python curled on a branch. I picked it off the branch and wrapped it around my neck. It strangled me. The truth was that I, too, was a python. I, too, wrapped myself tightly around him, suffocating him. Hindu or Muslim, a python is a python.

📍 This book contains a good load of talks on politics. The protagonist has an issue with the ban of thousand and five hundred rupee notes by the BJP Government. And the character of protagonist is based on the story of the author, so she has shared what she had felt and what she had observed at that time.

📍 The author has really good writing skills, the book contains a well written story. If these fictional issues wouldn't have been there, I'd have loved it more. Read the book to find out about the life of the author and to find out about the assassin. Happy reading!