‘My beloved people,’ the President said in a midnight broadcast,’ give me your freedoms, henceforth let them be hidden inside me, because it is to rob you of these that the insidious enemy has penetrated us.’ The people were grateful to be stripped thus, yet the sceptics’ whisper caught the unwary citizen now and again, settling with wasp’s feet on his ear for a brief while, before winging away to the next defenceless host. But the people easily overcame these feeble disturbances. No,they told themselves, not the President, the Supreme Commander of the Congregation of Persuaders; never would he imprison and torture his own subjects! The Palace brought out colourful stamps of the President squatting among heaps of carrot and lettuce, munching the vegetables, and defecating – a picture of deep and enduring peace which reinforced the people’s faith in their pacific Presidency…

--O.V.Vijayan, The Saga of Dharmapuri.

The Saga of Dharmapuri is a distinctly odd creation in O.V.Vijayan’s oeuvre. If all of Vijayan’s works brim with compassion, it’s anger that defines Saga. It was Vijayan’s answer to Indira Gandhi’s emergency.  But the timeless and sweeping quality of the work would compel us to discover in it a stinging critique of all despotic governments. No need to remind the pertinency of this novel in these times. One feels more respect to this writer seeing several contemporary writers pander to the government in power.