Ch 25 of The Pickpocket’s Letter: The Dying Sanyo, and a Very Alive Cliché

Continuing with Anil Nijhawan's The Pickpocket's Letter, as promised to the ARC agency, up from page 32 to page 142 (2/3 done). And it does not improve. There seems to be now a dual timeline (as well as the narrator's digressions and comments, which jump the timeline even more). Unlike Flossed In Love this does not work here. This is supposed to be a letter narrated by a semi-literate pickpocket. This is not supposed to be an ‘अस्ति कश्चित् वाग्विशेष:’ moment (not that I may be accusing Kalidas to be matching Mr Nijhawan's prose in any sense). 

I am at Chapter 25, that's 7 pages per chapter on average. But the chapter length varies considerably. At least the flow is natural.  I find that the Sanyo voice recording machine is also a full-fledged character in the story. The model isn't mentioned, but it might look like this(image courtesy of Saudi Amazon), considering the timelines:

It's 20 years old, but 'works like a dream in the opening chapter. But as the pages progress catches up to its age. On page 100, it shows the first signs of sleep apnea. In the 25th chapter, it dies. This might be the genuine most genuinely saddest I have felt up to this point. I may have a list of 19 tragedies in the first 32 pages itself, but the Sanoyo thing was the only one built up slowly and the only thing that felt real. 

Deenu and his friend Sanju tried very hard to save it, but they couldn't. Sanju is somewhat relieved from this, as he was the one who had to type out the voice recording. Deenu felt genuinely sad at this point

I had grown so accustoomed to its purring sounds, the clicks and clanks, its silence was distrubing me. 

The chapter then changes tracks to a discussion of religion (following overspeeding), which, mind you, started with Islam, but the killing blow, of course, had to be taken by the Hindoo, and we get the most cliché statement:

religion is a bad thing. The idea of going to heaven is nonsense; its's a concept created by rich Brahmins to keep the poor lower castes from rebelling. 

This is exactly what Mundaka says, right?

परीक्ष्य लोकान्कर्मचितान्ब्राह्मणो निर्वेदमायान्नास्त्यकृतः कृतेन ।

तद्विज्ञानार्थं स गुरुमेवाभिगच्छेत्समित्पाणिः श्रोत्रियं ब्रह्मनिष्ठम् ॥

I think perhaps the author can handwave the dialogue as thoughts of the street urchin rather than his own. And the chapter ends as it must with:

So now, we are back in Business, Modiji.