Must read the debut fiction novel - Silver Hair Sins - by Saumick Pal

By Saumick Pal

Can I be-‘a Hindu devotee + a Muslim believer+ a Christian devout’ at the same time?

taubatauba,kaisibaatkehdiya- hey Bhagwan, God buramaanjayega.

I say Insha’Allah…

The headline is what we call- social commentary, provocative and powerful- it’s a challenging take on the reality ofreligio-politico divisive vote banks strategy of the recent past and the upcoming elections.

It challenges our understanding of Bharat and our social reality of being surrounded by everyday keyboard-extremists; trigger-happy and harboring intolerant thoughts and fanatic actions, often driven by deep-rooted personal religious misbeliefs and misplaced convictions- fueled by a few fawning religious, political and media influencers, mostly for biased gains.

It seems many amongst us have become self-deemed social media jury-judge-executioner, infecting our digital world with our version of black and white, aka, right and wrong, judging every day, basis our biased misbelief set, to shame or glorify humanity in real life.

These are dangerous times- when many of us seem to be forgetting the context of grey, especially when we saffron, green or white paint our brains to stop ourselves from thinking intelligently and questioningly- ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘biased’, ‘point of view’. Our grey-reasoning seems to be turning all white. Winter in really coming to Bharat- it seems.

I wrote ‘Silver Hair Sins’ to bring back the grey- the silver= ‘the intelligent logical reasoning’; back into our everyday lives and WhatsApp groups.

‘Silver Hair Sins’ is my fictional window to social commentary. In this story, I have tackled the narrative commentary through an equalizer- what if- today’s religio-politico divide reaches its tipping point, and technology steps in to save humanity- an Artificial Intelligence (AI) merges all religions to create the One God AI.

Then does our everyday lives change? Will then the definition of right/wrong, sins/virtues, paap/punya, taqua/gunnah change? Is religion- which today we all seem to be obsessing about- even the correct parameter to measure our humanity?

The story revolves around a middle-class family- Mary, Azad and Aasma, living in the utopian/dystopian (depends on your perspective) world of Murder, Manipulation, Sacrifice, and Love. And of course, with an all-pervasiveshining silver biometric chip on every human’s wrist, which constantly validates actions, running it through the Sins-and-Virtues One God AI subroutine.

‘Silver Hair Sins’ is a stark social commentary about today where aspects of religion are being selectively chosen by political and religious leaders, only to create and then exploit our differences.

Today, we need an excuse to flare an unsensational debate on Fanaticism, Intolerance, Apathy, Patriarchy, and Hypocrisy, in our very own drawing rooms and office cafeterias. ‘Silver Hair Sins’ begs to be that very excuse.

by Saumick Pal

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