Death of a Moneylender

Falak, a young journalist from Delhi, is assigned to a remote village in southcentral India where a moneylender is found dead, hung from a lamppost in front of his house by an entire village united against injustice. Falak coldly hunts the story for a page-one byline. He does not allow a corrective conscience, an attitude that had in the past cost him his relationship with Vani, a journalist from rival newspaper. Within hours of reaching the village, his story is ready – a villainous moneylender killed by long-suffering villagers. But Falak has also unearthed a disconcerting fact: the moneylender was a kind-hearted, generous man whose death was being used to intimidate other moneylenders. Outstanding loans are written off to buy peace with villagers, but the politically well-connected and dangerous moneylenders plan a brutal retribution. Shambu, a farmer, seems to have masterminded the death with Bhanu, the moneylender’s son. Falak hates the villagers for committing the crime but also sympathizes with them. He hates the half-truth he reports, but covets the byline it gets him. Truth rescues him from this twilight of dilemma. It devastates him, transforms him. And ironically, also makes him lie.