The Winner Stands Alone

My reading material enroute Bangalore was the latest Coehlo, The Winner Stands Alone. Well, the name was intriguing enough, more so because more and more of my extended family keeps embarking into this industry now. Yes, indeed Bollywood is no longer a catch phrase in some newspaper insert for me and am confident even Hollywood too would become a reality sooner than I know! So definitely I was curious to know more. The setting was after all the world's most prestigious cinema awards Cannes, how could I not fall victim to such dreams after all?

The story evolves around four characters Igor, Ewa, Jasmine and HH or Hamid Hussein. Funnily, Coehlo picked four stereo types of the glamour world. Igor the rich man who has made his money and could be a potential producer in the future (quite like our illustrated Ambani progeny, huh?), second was Ewa, Igor's ex-wife who is a typical bored wife turned into a goddess; Jasmine, the waif like model and HH, a rising star of the kingdom of glamour and fashion(with so many Guddas and Sabyasachi doing the rounds we have to digest these information however expendable).

Juxtaposed are victims of Igor's temptation (yes indeed Coehlo too wanted to write a crime thriller, like yours truly!) the blessed dark Portugese girl, the American money launderer/drug mafia aka the distributor, the hard working focussed independent director who is desperate to get appreciated for her work and so on...indeed it is a very lonely world for our super class and superclass wannabes. But then Viktor Bout is a reality and War of Lord (or Lord of War) of Nicholas Cage was on his life. Glamour and crime indeed is a dangerous combination.

It has an eerie start gets to the point quickly but somewhere between Ewa getting the text messages and Igor being haunted by the hallucination of the blessed virgin gets caught in the eternal dilemma of the writer where should the story lead it to? To the land of Coehlo's very dear mystic realism or should he dwell on the nitty gritties of Scotland Yard and forensic science and make it pacy as CSI? This is where this wonderful portrayal of the great seven sins gets all mixed up and as result of which we have a very less than average Coehlo. In case you have another option at hand miss this or read it with a pinch of salt, because this ain't no Veronica Decides to Die.