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Book Description
This book is romantic fiction based on existentialism. It deals with many aspects of life such as break up, attempted suicide, entrepreneurship, infertility, lesbianism, multicultural ethos, IVF/IUF, uneven marital relationship etc.
Rosa Maria USA has written forward, excerpts of which is as follows:
The primary narrator is Anupam. Appropriate to his personality, his name means "unparal...
MoreThis book is romantic fiction based on existentialism. It deals with many aspects of life such as break up, attempted suicide, entrepreneurship, infertility, lesbianism, multicultural ethos, IVF/IUF, uneven marital relationship etc.
Rosa Maria USA has written forward, excerpts of which is as follows:
The primary narrator is Anupam. Appropriate to his personality, his name means "unparalled." He believes, among other things, "It is good to pray even if you do not believe in God." Anupam�s sanctuary, his place of meditation, is a park bench under his favorite tree, a jacaranda. His primary function in the novel is to coin existentialist philosophies for the day-to-day events that take place in his life, which centers on his wife, Sulekha, and their only child, Aalya.
Goyal also gives voice, at appropriate points in the novel, to some of the other characters. The philosophical issues explored in this novel are complex and challenging to the traditionally accepted social and religious beliefs of many cultures. However, the storyline has the simplicity of a fable, and it is this, if you will, "magically innocent" element of the story that enables the author to succeed in "suspending our disbelief" long enough to experience this enjoyable controversial novel.
Having survived a suicide attempt after losing the love of his life due to their star-crossed situation, Salil begins to pick up his life in his new home and finds he is falling in love with the small shadow of the lovely girl next door, Aalya, the daughter of Anupam and Sulekha. A
Ph.D. candidate researching "uneven" relationships in English literature, Aalya develops a bond with her thesis guide, Seema, an older childless woman married to Paul, a drama director.
Aalya and Seema become secret lovers, while Aalya falls in love with Salil and Seema continues to be faithfully married to Paul. A visit to a fertility clinic eventually results in Seema�s giving birth to twins, whose biological parents are Salil and Aalya. Paul consistently demonstrates complete faith in his wife and never questions the parentage of his twins, though he is well aware they cannot be his biologically.
Salil and Aalya eventually get married, and an untimely accident renders Salil incapable of fathering a child. However, the kindness they showed to Seema and Paul is about to come back on them. Salil and Aalya will soon find themselves rich in all that is most important in life, and Salil�s philosophy, "Gratitude is a way of reducing the importance of what somebody has done for you," will give new meaning to the concept of "divine intervention."
After we have come to know Aalya�s mother, Sulekha, for the majority of the novel from her husband�s point of view, she suddenly speaks directly to us as the narrator, and we get to know a very different woman from the bedridden asthmatic wife who is always drinking tea that Anupam has shown us. Sulekha emerges as the prime mover of the series of "coincidences" that occur leading up to the marriage of her beloved daughter. Sulekha is the one who bridges the gap between what is socially unacceptable and what is divinely possible in order to preserve her daughter�s long and happy life.
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