Age of Vice

Seen through Ajay’s eyes, Sunny first appears as “charismatically handsome […] his chest is broad, his forearms strong” (44). Sunny is a protagonist. He symbolizes the conflict between idealism and convenience, as well as the perils of trying to change the world without questioning one’s own complicity in perpetuating injustice. A morally ambiguous character, Sunny is defined by his beauty and charisma. He is often depicted as the center of a party, spending money like water. Sunny seems different from other wealthy heirs, as he wants to use money not just to further the family business, but to bring about transformation. However, as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Sunny’s idealism is misguided. Sunny wants to build luxury hotels and real-estate projects to beautify his city and provide jobs to the marginalized, yet he ignores the fact that these projects will be built on the very lands of the people he claims to be helping.

Sunny is redeemed to some extent by his love for Neda, and by the reader’s knowledge of the harmful effect Bunty and Vicky have on him. Like Ajay, Sunny has witnessed a parent’s corpse, discovering his mother’s body when he was five. The hypermasculine world of gangster capitalists forces Sunny to shed his softness and sensitivity and prove himself as a man. When Sunny courts Neda, an intelligent journalist who appeals to his idealistic side, Bunty immediately senses a threat to the status quo. He wrecks Sunny and Neda’s relationship and kicks Sunny in the chest, symbolizing the dominant world order snuffing out rebellion. After Sunny discovers that Bunty played a role in Neda aborting her pregnancy, he slips into degeneracy and vengeance. His framing of Ajay and the discovery of his father’s betrayal are the two inciting incidents that push him into cruelty and chaos.

In the novel’s moral universe, drugs and excess symbolize spiritual corruption. As Sunny becomes crueler and more decadent, he begins to abuse substances to a greater extent. By the end of the book, Sunny spends his days overdosing on Xanax and MDMA. Sunny’s physicality mirrors his spiritual decay; he loses his handsomeness from the effects of the drugs and bears several scars from when he was kidnapped and beaten.

Sunny’s decay may seem to parallel Ajay’s hardening. However, there is a crucial difference between the two, as Neda reminds Sunny over the phone. Unlike Ajay, Sunny still has had a choice to walk away. Sunny does not exercise that choice out of compulsive need for his father’s wealth. In this way, Sunny is implicated in all of Bunty’s crimes, including the death of Sunny’s own unborn baby with Neda.

At the end of the book, Sunny gets his revenge on his father, though not in the form he had hoped. Bunty is killed, devastating Sunny. Sunny gets the throne he wanted, leaving open the question of how he will rule. Like Ajay, Sunny has a dynamic character arc in the novel, as he changes throughout.

Neda is a protagonist and the novel’s only significant woman character. At the beginning of the story, Neda is a journalist with the Delhi Post. When she meets Sunny and Ajay, all three are in their early twenties, their youth symbolizing innocence.

Neda is first portrayed as a protected young woman, having grown up in the “world of cultural elites” (195). Though she is an intellectual who recognizes injustice, she does not have a clear understanding of how systemic injustice operates. As the narrative progresses, Neda is exposed to harsh power dynamics, which force in her a change of perspective.

Neda is empathetic and egalitarian, as Ajay notices when she shows an interest in him. Other friends of Sunny usually treat Ajay as if he were invisible. However, Neda also has a couple of significant character flaws, namely her passivity and weakness for power. Neda’s attraction toward Sunny stems partly from her understanding that he, a rich, good-looking, upper-caste man, possesses the power that she, a woman, lacks. Her love for Sunny makes her ignore the warning signs about him and his family, embroiling her in a nexus of power, corruption, and violence beyond her control. Proximity to Sunny puts Neda in jeopardy, a fact which becomes clear when Bunty has her car attacked. Neda often asks Sunny pointed questions, and raises pertinent concerns at press conferences, which indicate she may destabilize Bunty’s world. The double threat Neda represents to the status quo as an empowered woman and a journalist with a conscience must be neutralized.

Neda is an introspective character, with an astute understanding of her own flaws in hindsight. She admits to having a weakness for glamour and the desire to be socially accepted, noting that “she always liked men to think she was cool” (188). In her draft to Dean, Neda censures herself for giving in to Bunty’s pressure and hiding the fact that Ajay was framed.

The narrative suggests Neda’s choices were never simple to begin with. She partly leaves Delhi because Chandra suggests Neda’s quest for the truth may land her family in trouble. Having witnessed the nexus of power and corruption up close, Neda knows the harm wealthy men like Bunty Wadia can cause someone like her. Dean, Neda’s boss, has already paid for his ethics by being fired from his job. Additionally, Neda is emotionally traumatized by Sunny’s betrayal of her and Ajay. Sunny’s framing of Ajay suggests his ultimate loyalty is to Bunty, and the revelation breaks Neda’s spirit.

By the end of the novel, Neda has reclaimed some of her agency, and “has not touched the Wadia money in a long time” (483). She has moved on from Sunny and has a new partner in Alex. When Sunny calls her on his wedding day, Neda tells him in no uncertain terms that people like her and Sunny are not victims. Sunny can no longer blame his father for his predicament; he is defined by his own actions.

Neda’s statements indicate that she has evolved from the naïve character she was at the beginning of the novel. She rejects the Wadia money, which, along with other excessive wealth, symbolizes moral corruption. In this way, she has also achieved a purging.

Bunty is the father of protagonist Sunny Wadia. Ostensibly, he owns liquor businesses and real estate firms in New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Through Sunny’s third-person perspective, Bunty is described as a self-made man who rose from being a small-time grain merchant in Meerut in Western UP to a tycoon in Delhi. Bunty’s exact business operations are deliberately murky, but it is clear that he is extremely wealthy. He lives in an enormous five-storied mansion in New Delhi, owns a farmhouse villa at the edge of the town and several luxury cars, and has a household staff running into the dozens. He spoils Sunny, his only child, giving him free access to unlimited wealth. Through Neda’s eyes, Bunty is described as benign and avuncular-looking; he could be any rich businessman in the city.

The novel soon reveals that Bunty is an antagonist, far from his benign persona. Bunty is emotionally cruel toward his son. In exchange for access to the family wealth, Bunty wants Sunny to be obedient and to conform to his idea of a masculine man. He often nudges Sunny toward ruthlessness and violence, forcing Sunny to prove himself to Bunty.

Bunty’s younger brother Vicky calls him out. In an important reveal, Vicky reminds Bunty that he is as violent as he is, and that Bunty started the brothers on their path of moral corruption, killing a young boy when he was himself a child. Bunty’s corruption is not just limited to family dynamics; Neda and Dean’s investigations show that Bunty is synonymous with the corrupt nexus between business and politics in Bunty’s home state of UP. In fact, Bunty is effectively the state’s chief minister because he has a complete monopoly over the state’s transport routes. Bunty enforces his control through a network of goons, his businesses in Delhi a cover for his criminal empire. Thus, Bunty symbolizes absolute spiritual decay.

Bunty and Vicky are initially presented as contrasting images of each other, divided along the lines of city and country, gentility and violence. However, by the novel’s end it is clear they are more interchangeable. Bunty gets a comeuppance, and is shot to death on Vicky’s command. Bunty’s character is static, as he does not change.

Frequently described through his imposing physicality, Vicky Wadia is the novel’s chief antagonist or villain, and possibly Sunny’s biological father. If Bunty is portrayed as corrupt, Vicky is shown as downright evil from the very beginning. In the text, men capable of sexual violence and threat are cast as the most extreme villains. Vicky traffics young women and epitomizes danger.

Vicky’s menace is made literal in his physical form. Ajay notes that Vicky is a “giant of a man bathed in wilderness” (78). Extremely tall and muscular, Vicky emphasizes the threat of his physicality by dressing in all-black kurta pajamas, lining his eyes with kohl, and wearing multiple rings. The colors and accoutrements deepen the mystery around him, which is what he intends. Vicky also poses as a godman to exploit people’s religious sentiments and their tendency toward superstition. A character notes that Vicky may practice black magic. Vicky is often shown studying astrological charts and making enigmatic utterances, such as when he tells Sunil Rastogi: “I have decided […] that you tell the truth. You are a vessel” (473). Vicky also goes by the name Himmatgiri, which roughly means mountain of strength or courage.

Vicky has a soft spot for his nephew Sunny, though he has an odd way of showing it. Like Bunty, Vicky imposes a code of toxic masculinity on Sunny, such as when inviting him to assault young girls whom he has abducted. Vicky’s interest in Sunny gains deeper meaning when the novel suggests that Vicky, and not Bunty, may be Sunny’s biological father. By the end of the novel, Vicky has Bunty killed, thus opening the path for Sunny to ascend the Wadia throne.

Vicky’s treatment of Ajay shows the depth of his moral decrepitude. He uses Ajay’s love for Hema to turn him into a ruthless killer. Vicky’s victory at the end of the novel symbolizes the apex of Kali Yuga, the dark age in which sin rules. Vicky is an archetypal character, representing absolute evil.

Modelled after a real-life sexual predator, Sunil Rastogi is a key villain in the text. He is described as scarred and burned from his life of crime. Rastogi, who hails from Western UP, is shown to be the king of survival and amorality. Although he is initially forced into crime because of circumstance—his uncles seize his home and lands after his brother and mother die—Rastogi pursues the criminal life because he enjoys inflicting pain on others.

Rastogi’s life shifts into a different gear when he meets Vicky Wadia. Vicky’s self-fulfilling prophecies lead Rastogi to kidnap and then release Sunny and become Vicky’s henchman. At the end of the novel, Rastogi guns down Bunty Wadia on Vicky’s command, and disappears in the shadows.

Rastogi represents the slippery, banal nature of everyday evil in the text. Like Rastogi, the man who does not die, evil too is hydra-headed. Significantly, Rastogi is the only character in the novel who is given a first-person narration. This mirrors the urgency and power associated with his character.