India, June 27 -- Having retired from the Kerala State Police, Shreedharan Nair seeks a quiet life in a village. But the peace he has just begun to savour is shattered one night when stones clatter against his tiled roof. As the stone-pelting becomes routine, Nair - once feared as the ruthless Kaalan Shreedharan, Kaalan being Yama or the god of death - suspects that retribution may finally be at his door. While some well-wishers see in it the handiwork of supernatural forces, others point to ghosts from his mercenary past. Nair begins to retrace his career, compiling a grim list of those he once brutalised. Devadas VM's Backlash unfolds through Kaalan's encounters with figures entangled in India's darkest chapters - Emergency, the rise of religious fanaticism, fake encounters, and mob violence; events that altered the nation's social fabric. A haunting meditation on the toxicity of power and the terror of powerlessness in a hypermasculine society, this gritty novel is taut with suspense until the final page....