The novel Seducing Pain is woven around the story of an idealist and sensitive civil servant, suffering from the guilt of his participation in the system generating and perpetuating depravation, miseries, suffering and utter helplessness all around. His efforts to extricate himself from the quagmire – his breast beating, whining, self-flagellation, his ill-fated impotent rebellion against the system, seeking succour in his God, escapism, drunken orgies, reviling in small everyday ‘achievements’ (Chekhov’s concept of small deeds), altruism…- all come to a monumental nought. Crushed by the system he tries to seduce pain, a self-induced pain. His existential brooding as to why do we live, what constitutes happiness – power…wealth … suffering …martyrdom are all overcome by his basic feature – hypocrisy. The protagonist had to come a cropper because his ‘other’ – the minister and his omnipotent, omnipresent PA, the king of builder mafia, a horde of fawning cogs in the wheel working in clandestine proximity with the forces of Holocaust, the communal carnage…- is too formidable to challenge.
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