I heard an intriguing doomsday theory the other day. Now, I love doomsday theories. They make good fodder for my stories. The theory I heard then is that 2012 will definitely happen.
For those who don’t know the significance of the year 2012 (where have you been the past few months and why haven’t you watched the movie?), there exists an ancient Mayan Calendar System which predicts the end of the world in the aforementioned year. Of course, like all doomsday theories, this one too has naysayers who claim nothing of the sort will happen and that doomsday mongers have drawn this erroneous conclusion based on the fact that the calendar ends on winter solstice (or is it equinox?) 2012.
According to this intriguing new theory, the world will definitely end, only not in the volcanoes-erupting-Earth-caving-in-Sun-getting-outta-control kinda way but in a more sophisticated financial Armageddon kinda way. So you’ll have a situation where the banks and bourses have collapsed, asset prices have collapsed and there is hyperinflation. Unable to afford food, people will die of starvation and there will massive looting and vandalism. What we will have eventually is massive geo-socio-politico (and any other o you can think of) unrest.
The reason: The US economy is on a headlong collision course. The levels of debt and unemployment are extraordinary and you have a set of politicians who are out to destroy the currency. Not bad enough?
Picture Spain, one of the bigger European economies. Its economy is in worse shape; the housing sector which was the driver of growth there has completely collapsed and thirty per cent of the population between the ages of 18-25 is without jobs. To make matters worse they have the common currency, the Euro. Otherwise the natural thing would have been to devalue the currency and somehow get growth back on track. As things stand today, they are staring at massive deflation and that is never good for growth.
Then there is China where the Central bank has been conducting the most extraordinarily inflationary experiment and flooded the system with liquidity. As the result there are huge asset bubbles everywhere and danger of hyperinflation.
You see where I’m going with this? No? Rest assured, neither do I? All I know is I’m going to liquidate all my stock market holdings and stuff the cash inside my mattress. After all, during the conditions reigning at the time, I just might be able to afford a packet of sugar.
When tall, suave, handsome Kaustav Kapoor walks into her office, ditzy private investigator Kasthuri (aka Katie) Kumar has anything but detection on her mind. He is, after all, a scion of Bollywood’s first family—perhaps he has a role for her? Perhaps she will, at last, get to sashay down the red carpet in a designer gown, with flash bulbs following her every move?
But Kapoor’s intentions are much more prosaic: he wishes Katie to trace the heroine of his new blockbuster (and, if Katie’s read the glossies correctly, his life) who is mysteriously AWOL. Despite her misgivings, Katie finds herself unable to refuse the task entrusted to her, and thereon follows a bewildering hunt for the film star across a trail of corpses.
And if that isn’t excitement enough, she has to contend with the maddening and mysterious, but, oh-so-hot, Tejas Deshpande.
The first in a brand new detective series.
IN BOOKSTORES NOW.
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