• Title – Toke
• Author – Jugal Mody
• Publisher – HarperCollins Publishers India
• Genre – Fiction
• Pages – 216
• ISBN – 978-93-5029-340-9
• Price – 160 INR

Synopsis – This is a story of a boy named Nikhil Parmar who leads a monotonous life working as a software engineer. He secretly admires his colleague Suparna and has never mustered courage to speak to her let alone express his feelings for her. His life goes for a tailspin when he decides to take a break from his dull life with his college friends whom he hadn’t seen for a long time. That’s when Lord Vishnu in his modern-day avatar steps in along with weed. (The cover of the book quite well portrays that aspect of the story)

A combination of sci-fi antics mixed with zombie scare paints the scene in myriad of colors the most prominent of those being Green. Lord Vishnu entrusts the task of saving our planet and humanity to Nikhil and his friends, which brings to life many unexpected twists and turns in this thriller book.

Review – The Urban dictionary defines Toke as: To take a drag of a marijuana joint/spliff.

The story starts on a good humorous note that makes the start quite entertaining. The events at Nikhil’s office are very relatable. Things take a dingy turn when the weed steps in the story. Given the title of the book you can well imagine that marijuana occupies a key position in the story.

I found the drugged scenarios getting too dramatic on many occasions even though they are to be imagined in the backdrop of a hallucinated mind. The part played by the Japanese twins does help to lighten the smoke clouding the plot, but fails at finding logic to many of their choices and preferences. The principle task of saving the Earth from zombies seemed to take a backseat being dealt with in a rather haste towards the last quarter.

I personally found the language bit offensive. The over generous use of the F word acts as a deterrent to the flow of the book. Though I can understand the use of colorful language to do justice with the kind of environment portrayed, but it was too bitter a pill for me to swallow or appreciate at ease.

The book loses steam soon and becomes a difficult to finish expedition owing to the story not getting anywhere close to the mission mentioned in the start, with a hasty ending.

I am probably a bit old-school as far my reading preferences go that hampered me from enjoying this book.

It would make for a breezy read if colorful language & raw humor interests you.

Rating: 3.25/ 5

* Thank you HarperCollins for sending me a review copy of this book.