After writing and launching a historically relevant and thoroughly researched book on David Hare, Sarojesh Mukerjee is giving his readers moments to laugh and get aboard a joyride with The Ascent: An Occasional Diary. “It is ostensibly the journal of an up-and-coming developer who eventually becomes a minister via the various nooks and crannies through which one needs to travel to get there. It is written in a frivolous style but all of it is not comedy for there may be some pointers about corruption embedded in the story,” said Mukerjee, summing up the narrative of the book.

Talking about his protagonist who is easily relatable, Mukerjee, who teaches economics and international history, said: “He’s all over the place, whether in Calcutta’s Sealdah or Mumbai’s Shivaji Park or Sholavaram of Chennai. He’s mostly uneducated and, as you say, ambitious, which can only lead to a career in one of the most remunerative professions today, politics. And once in it, he serves himself just as much or a little more than his constituents.”

The Ascent has wit, humour, and the narrative is fast-paced. Talking about taking inspiration from a 19th-century comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith about a London clerk noted for his pomposity and self-importance, Mukerjee said: “I had read that book many years ago and nearly forgotten it but it somehow emerged from the lybrinth of memory to suggest itself as a template for this novel. There were other influences as well, like Jerome K. Jerome and P.G. Wodehouse.”

Mukerjee has a couple of books in the pipeline, including In Justice or Injustice: Early Trials at The Calcutta Supreme Court & High Court, a crime novel, which will be published soon.