Hadal: This novel rekindles memories of the scandal behind the ISRO spy case of 20 years ago

You would have to be of a certain age to remember the ‘ISRO spy scandal’, as it came to be known, which broke in October 1994 in Thiruvananthapuram. Two senior ISRO scientists were accused of selling secret data, two Maldivian women of being spies. They were arrested and tortured; careers were wrecked, lives destroyed. Four years after the ‘scandal’, the Supreme Court found that the allegations of espionage were false and ordered the release of all the accused. To this day, it is unclear who conjured up this fantastic tale and why.

It is this intriguing story that has inspired Hadal, a novel by C.P Surendran. At the launch in Bangalore, during which he was in conversation with theatre personality and writer Prakash Belawadi, the author was at pains to point out that the book is not an investigation into this particular case. It is a heavily fictionalised account which chooses instead to explore how the corrupt system can so easily spin a web of lies, ensnaring whoever it chooses to – a crowd-sourced construct, as Surendran describes it, and a point at which myth and reality begin to merge.

The title refers to Hades, the netherworld of Greek mythology. In these dark, unfathomable depths dwells Honey Kumar, a prurient police officer who can’t seem to help himself as he exerts his diabolical power on the vulnerable. He is on a punishment transfer in Thiruvananthapuram when the beautiful Maldivian woman Miriam –still grieving for the family she lost to the tsunami — who has come to India in the hope of writing a novel and getting her life back together, approaches him to have her visa extended.  When Honey Kumar makes sexual advances towards her, Miriam spurns him. It is a mistake he will make her pay for and her affair with the rocket scientist Paul Roy provides him the perfect opening. Then the lies begin and the system comes into play.

Hadal holds up a mirror to the corruption of the system that we seem unable to escape; it also delves into the corruption of the spirit, questioned, occasionally, by the likes of Honey Kumar’s boss and partner-in-crime Ram Mohan, who finds it in himself to say, ‘The good in me tells me that we are doing a wrong here.’

Hades is peopled also by tree-huggers, dog-lovers, anti-nuclear power activists, generals with body doubles and ghosts of rulers past. They all come together to tell a captivating, thought-provoking tale set in the Maldive Islands which would one day ‘tug away from its moorings and just float away’, and in Thiruvananthapuram where ‘the sea lent the city an air of infinity’.

C.P Surendran’s prose is both sharp and lyrical and the words are chosen with exquisite care. So, a place is ‘lit by the moon and laved in music’ and shadows are ‘beasts without blood’. Hadal, the author says, is not intended to be pretty or nice. But there’s no denying its compelling beauty.