>Resident Dormitus by Vikas Rathi

Resident Dormitus by Vikas Rathi portrays a tale concerning existentialism as well as the changing psychological landscape of young professionals. Covering the life and confusions of a compelling small town guy whose job takes him to Singapore and Malaysia, this book explores the feelings of its young protagonist Achet.

The novel follows his life through a sequence of ostensibly incoherent events where he flirts with morality and death culminating into a startling insight where he commits a murder, but not because of wrath or retribution. Although in the company of women, friends and family, Achet basically allows himself to remain the same, unwilling and unable to commit himself fully to anything.

Achet finds an assorted group of associates who share their principles, thoughts and visions while escaping work either by having multiple cups of coffee or playing around emails and postponing dealing with them as much as possible or going for smoking breaks.

Undeniably, what’s remarkable and astonishing about Achet is his aimlessness, his repudiation to be pinned down to any finicky view or ostentatious thought, but it also signals a welcome lack of pomposity. He is unruffled and in control all through with almost no opinion about anything and is the epitome of indifference.

It’s really one person’s story as his life goes by, but Vikas Rathi dots his story with mottled and vibrant episodes with so many nuanced characters and creates such an ideal sense of the place that you are naturally drawn into a tale, which stays effervescent, in spite of the almost aimless life of Achet.

It takes a while before the story actually takes shape but once it does, the characters form themselves who will talk to you and will conspire to tell a story. The characters are so well-developed that as a reader you’re not astounded when a certain character says or does something. They’re attractive and pleasurable to comprehend about, especially the focal character.

The author also gives a reasonably nimble touch where we find a character leaving his glamorous dreams, planning to support the military cause of his country and a so called ‘Bitch’, who is known to be using her body to climb the corporate ladder, wanting to settle down in life.

Overall, the volume has an exceptionally attractive way of writing where every place, episode or circumstances described unerringly how Achet would perceive it, which is stimulated by a bunch of real life incidents and written in a very authentic and ingenuous way.

To sum up, the general disposition is light-hearted and one which you’ll not put down till you finish it.