Imagine Goa, fifty years hence.

As a state run by a ‘democratic’ corporation, instead of an elected government. As a state where the population is divided into two classes, the Overlords, a rich numerical minority, who can afford a licenced privilege to live on the surface and the Subterraneans, the underprivileged mass, shepherded into underground cavernous colonies. As a state with extensive manicured landscaping, it is the beacon of global tourism and has India’s most expensive acreage, but at the cost of its forest cover, with climate change already whittling away at its beaches. As a state where a Board of Directors has replaced the Council of Ministers and where even Goa’s nomenclature has been changed to Go-aah as part of a commercial branding exercise. And as a state whose last living tigress is about to be hunted to clear off a patch of forests to make way for another luxurious villa enclave.

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My debut novel, ‘Goa 2075’, India’s first live, bilingual novel, is set in this futuristic milieu. The plot, set circa 2075, revolves around five friends who pursue a vigilante brand of justice to avenge the murder of another slain friend and his wife, over their refusal to sell their home, the last standing traditional house in Anjuna.

Emboldened by their success in avenging their friend’s murder, the five friends expand the ambit of their vigilante justice to include the Board of Directors, responsible for the state’s destruction and brutal subjugation of the subterraneans.