BOOK REVIEW : Sunlight On A Broken Column by Attia Hosain

"Pre-independent unified India and the struggle for independence", are topics on which innumerable stories have been written and that too from all possible perspectives. This book " Sunlight On A Broken Column" by Attia Hosain is also set during the Raj days, prior to our independence. So, now the inevitable," What's so special about this one?? What sets it apart from other innumerable fiction stories in the backdrop of India's struggle for independence??" The answer is clichéd but true and simple: it's DIFFERENT!!!
I urge you to buy this book and feel the difference on your own by clicking on the link here: https://amzn.to/2RGyU0F
Attia Hosain weaves a beautiful, intricate story about an influential Muslim family with characters having an uneven blend of black, white, and grey shades in their temperament, their personalities making them very real and easy to identify with. While reading this book I found myself on a roller coaster ride experiencing a myriad of emotions ranging from a claustrophobic feeling of restriction, indecisiveness, rebellion, the feeling of excitement and goose bumps-on-your-skin on meeting "the right one", of anger, of resentment, of helplessness. However, the predominant feeling that lasted even after I was done with the book was a deep deep sense of longing for the years gone by, for the hometown left behind, for the friends who were once my lifeline but are no more there with me because of varied reasons: change of place, change of interests, change in mindset, change in priorities, a melancholy loss for those dear ones who left halfway in this journey called life for heavenly abode. This book, especially the last few pages in the story made me ache for my roots, for my childhood, for the moments left behind, for the time so so lost from my hands forever that I had almost started crying. And not the ladylike soft sobs but those huge loud cries with hiccups and running nose, all combined together...
I actually told Niraj after finishing this book," How I wish I could go back in time, if, only for a day!!", and the look he gave me was a thousand answers in itself!!
Laila, the main protagonist is the orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family of Talukdars. Keeping her father's last wishes in mind, Laila is given western education but she observes purdah like her aunts and cousins at home. She is being brought up in an ultra-conservative setup but all these changes when BabaJan, her grandfather passes away and she goes to live with her uncle Hamid who though claims to be liberal, is in fact very dominating and controlling. Laila gets exposed to the outer world through her new friends when she starts going to university.  Here she comes across young men and women who are anti-government (British government) and are actively involved in the Independence movement which is slowly gaining momentum. But Laila, herself is not able to commit herself either as pro-British or anti- British as she finds herself continually fighting ( within herself)  for her own independence against societal rules and dogmas. She is finally able to break the shackles of tradition and honor and duty when she goes against her family to marry Ameer, who though a Muslim is not a part of their social strata. Laila imagines a life of " happily ever after" with Ameer but life, as we know loves to shock us and put us in unusual situations when we least expect any change! And so it happens with Laila. Her life as she had always known takes a complete turn in the height of India's fight for freedom, the partition of India into Pakistan and India and the need to ascertain one's rightful place whether as a Muslim in India or uprooting oneself and going to Pakistan to build a new life and a new nation.
This is a story which is almost like a memoir based on Hosain's personal experiences, growing up in an influential albeit a conservative Muslim household prior to independence.
The story tends to be a bit depressing at times and it is also a tad bit slow in some portions but overall it's worth a read. Reading this book takes you back to a time which our grandparents talk fondly about, it talks about customs and traditions which are rarely seen today and talks of love which was, is and always will be the feeling which makes us strong emotionally and mentally and gives us wings to fly to our rightful abode!!!

BOOK REVIEW : LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

There are authors and there are AUTHORS, whom you have to read atleast once in your lifetime to feel those goosebumps up your arms, completely mesmerised by their story, their way of writing and are enthralled by the places such authors take you to, and that too by the sheer magic of their words. 

It must be very clear to you all by now that I am completely in awe of the great author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I got to know about Marquez only after the news of his death appeared in the Telegraph( our local newspaper ). There was a beautiful write-up about him and his various books. I was so impressed by the article that I decided to read atleast one of his books to find out if it is as good as the journalist claims it to be. It took me almost three months to get hold of this book and I have to say that I had to eat the humble pie as this book proved to be much much more than what the journalist had written about. 

Before I get carried away in my praises for the novel and it's author, let me tell you very quickly about its story. 

The story is set in a fictional 19th century South American port city. Fermina Daza is a young pretty girl, daughter of Lorenzo Daza, a mule driver, who is involved in many illegal tradings. Florentino Ariza, is the illegitimate son of Transito Ariza and Don Pius V Loayza. They fall in love with each other in their youth and exchange many love letters. The affair continues even after her father gets to know about it and she rebels. But suddenly one fine day,she realises that she does not love Florentino and that they are practically strangers,inspite of exchanging letters for more than two years. She moves ahead in life and marries a young, promising,highly qualified and respected doctor, Juvenal Urbino. They spend half a century together till a fateful day when Dr.Urbino dies while trying to save his pet parrot. Meanwhile, Ariza suffering from unrequited love, finds solace in the arms of a series of females, while claiming in his heart to be still waiting for his one true love, Fermina. The story takes an interesting turn when Florentino proposes to Fermina once again,after her husband passes away. Whether Fermina accepts his proposal at this juncture in their lives, is to be read and seriously people, I cannot play a spoilsport by disclosing the way this story ends. 

When I started this book I was under the impression that it is a sentimental story about the power of true love but gradually I realised that this story is much more and is just not one dimensional. Garcia Marquez himself had said in an interview on this book, "You have to be careful not to fall into my trap". 

This book is basically about the different types of love we experience in the course of a lifetime. Love need not always be the gooey-lovey feeling between a man and a woman and at the same time it need not be true and pure and an all encompassing feeling. In the case of married couples, most of the time, it is a feeling which is created or rather an illusion of this feeling is created, after spending decades with someone, as in the case of Juvenal Urbino and Fermina Daza. "It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not", said Fermina to Florentino, when talking about her five decade long marriage to Urbino. Another kind of love spoken here is the love of a doting mother, Transito Ariza for her son, Florentino. We also see here the love of Lorenzo Daza for her daughter, Fermina, which was pure though selfish in its own way. Dr. Urbino had married Fermina not because he loved her, but because he liked her arrogance, her strength but he firmly believed that there would be no obstacle to their inventing true love, after they had kissed for the first time. Then we have Florentino Ariza - he claims that Fermina is his true love and is determined to earn status and lots of money to win Fermina back, even though she is happily married to Dr. Urbino, but at the same time he has a series of affairs with many a delighted woman. Infact, in his obsession for Fermina and his never satiating lust, he misses out on the true love of Leona Cassiani, who loved and cared for him dearly, though they never made love. Marquez has even shown Florentino having an affair with a young America Vicuña, a mere 14 year old girl whose family had entrusted her to Florentino as her guardian while she was sent to his town to study secondary education. An old man having an affair with a girl, good enough to be his grandchild was a very big put off for me and almost made me hate this character. 

Barring this disgusting section, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book . 

Infact I really found certain dialogues written by Marquez to be very interesting and true in its sense. 

One such dialogue is, " The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast", said by Dr. Urbino. 

Another of my favourites is, " It was not possible to live together in any other way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love." 

Another sample, Fermina said this, " The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom."