As credits rolled, the small audience at a private screening in Bengaluru drew its collective breath after moments of stunned silence. We rose from our seats, and applauding, turned around to look for Vivek Agnihotri- the producer and director of the film, Buddha In  a Traffic Jam. There he stood after the last row, a thin smile curling around his lips. We roared in thanks, as much as in awe. For, this man had seen the contours of India’s emerging vulnerability as a nation and had the daring to reveal it.

The doughty Harkiran Vadlamani, founder of Indic Academy, who had brought that audience together for a workshop, went on to persuade a hesitant Vivek to write a book on the making of the movie.

Two years later Vivek, a first-time author, has written a political and sociological bestseller that will awaken you to the threats that face India’s polity. If the film had dramatised the cold reality, Urban Naxals, the book, gives you the factual details of the conspiracy. It’s a daring book, that will soon come out in other languages. Daring because, it is almost as if Vivek, in revealing the huge threat, has transferred it to his own person, for that’s how the cabal of enemies will see him from now on.

Happily, Vivek, among many things, is also a fearless man. His book’s release a fortnight ago -and its runaway success- had gained him a huge social media following. And, just when you thought he’s a good film maker, a good writer and a good political analyst, it turns out he’s also a charismatic speaker, as I found out at his book’s launch last week in Chennai.

One liners tumble out in a row:

“I am not Left wing or Right wing, I am India wing”

“An Indic person is one with a decolonised mind”

“India’s mothers built this civilisation”

“One day, the whole world will say, Bharat Mata ki Jai”

Don’t miss out on seeing him live at an event near you. He begins his US tour this week.

It’s a measure of the book’s success and the phenomenon that it has become, that people are aware of its outline even before reading it. It confirms something many have long suspected but were puzzled to understand. We have wondered about Naxal uprising and thought it as something that happens faraway between poor people and our forces. The book tells us, it is only a part of a huge conspiracy. It is a co-ordinated uprising against the state, nurtured by people in media, the arts, politics, business, academe and the government. NGOs, jihadis, evangelists and political and commercial interests abroad are in it too.

I needn’t urge you read the book, for you will. If not now, but one day surely. News will break from time to time that will astound you. Like the following, just three days before the Chennai book launch:

“Bhima Koregaon violence: After arrest, Nagpur University suspends Assistant Professor Shoma Sen…The four accused - Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Jacob Wilson, Sen and Mahesh Raut were arrested by the Pune police on June 6 from Mumbai, Nagpur, and Delhi.”

You may have read past this news previously, but now the Vivek Agnihotri phenomenon won’t let you ignore it. Someone who has read the book will explain the beast lurking beyond. And you will never be the same. One day this book will have played a part in defeating the conspiracy and the people in power and outside it, who have nurtured it for 70 years, either by abetment or with silence.

When its work is done, the book will live on as a classic that mattered. The book has so many strands that it requires an index, as good book of reference would. I hope the next edition will have one.

I am struck by the synchronicity of events that surrounds the film and the writing of the book.

Vivek did not set out like some Costa Gavras to make a political thriller. In 2010, he was an out of work director looking for a break. The idea for the movie dawned on him while stranded in a Rajasthan desert during a thunderstorm. Thereafter the script nearly wrote itself. But it’d be another 6 years before the film would release, because of the many lulls and setbacks it faced.

On a parallel timeline, a Chief Minister in Gujarat could not have been confident he’d win a fourth term in 2012, that’d propel him to the centre of Indian politics. By the time the film is released, Modi is a prime minister buffeted by daily jibes of intolerance and fascism. But by now Vivek’s film had reared up to shine the light on the cabal that was fronting the conspiracy. The social media, now wiser, raises its collective voice against forces that had earlier run unchecked. Forces that’d break India today stand impeded, though not yet defeated.

Likewise, what made Harkiran Vadlamani persuade a reluctant Vivek to go write a book on the making of the film? Vivek says, “Hari told me, ‘Just go away for a fortnight to Goa as my guest. Try and see whether or not you can write’”. And after a pause, Vivek adds: “I wonder what made him do that.”

 Vivek did go away and fidgeted around not knowing where or how to start. But removed from his daily grind, his own past played back to him: He had been a Naxal himself while a student in Bhopal. He too had a professor like the one that you meet in the film, who mentors rebellion. Things come together to reveal a pattern.

Synchronicity again.

And thus it was the book got to be written. You see in it a Vivek Agnihotri beyond the filmmaker and writer. He’s an engaging writer, very readable. For me the takeaway reward was this delicious bit on a woman I detest:

“There is a thirty-three page essay by Arundhati Roy on the (Naxal) issue, yet it doesn’t smell of the jungle. It smells of her. It stinks of her agenda”

There are description of the filmmaker’s craft, of travels to campuses, travails of a driven man and lyrical passages on our amazing people and their lives.

The book is selling well. Vivek’s meetings are overflowing with people. He’s a delightful wit, a fearless, passionate communicator and a very approachable man.

As a man who has lived through the last 75 years of India’s life, I can’t resist this reflection. There’s a rising tide of disappointment against Modi among the many who so enthusiastically backed him in 2014. They each have a list that remains unattended. I too am puzzled as to how Modi could have not righted our  flawed education system. Seems so doable.

But I become conscious of the great odds that face India. It needs strategic timing and unobvious solutions. I try to advocate patience and hope, but I realise their impatience is also a required energy.

This much beloved land has not endured this long to now crumble and disappear. The three men I have named share a timeline that has a synergy. Who knows what other initiatives might be arising unseen, to later come together?

Maybe it’s my age that inclines me to believe such things do happen in this land of ours. The Vivek Agnihotri phenomenon suffices me as a proof.

One day the world will indeed say, “Bharat Mata ki Jai”