The protagonist of Bhaau is Karam Singh Kirti and the book tells the story of how he manages the inherent contradictions within the communist movement and his own party to create a secular alternative to a Hindu nationalist party in the 2004 elections. Darshan Singh refuses to admit that his work is a retelling of the life and times of Surjeet, who is 92. “It’s virtual reality,” is his cryptic remark. The blurb on the book talks of the protagonist as “an imaginary politician”. The novel also talks about Kirti’s differences with the then shadow general secretary, PR, a hardline communist leader, who is all set to replace him. It also speaks of how PR’s wife is all set to become a politburo member. On Sunday, Singh, once employed by the local information department of the erstwhile Soviet Union, responded to questions posed to him at a literary meet as to why he had taken the trouble by giving fictional names to characters that could be easily identified by saying that many “novels have been written about American presidents without naming them.” In the book, the European lady is simply called Madam and her Indianness is questioned by a man called Salve from Maharashtra who comes from a region where there are a lot of sugar mills (a reference to Sharad Pawar and Baramati). There’s another character called Bal Gopal who, when it becomes clear he will lose his chief ministership, gets his wife to replace him (a reference to Lalu Prasad). And there’s Pehlwan, another ch
