This fiction-spiritual moves from here to there and from where to nowhere, following in all directions in the footsteps of its free-spirited and soul-searching protagonist called Gopika.
Gopika is a spiritual-seeker working for a television channel, In Mumbai, in the city of lights called Mumbai. She falls in love with an American Wayne who has to go abroad. Now whoever she meets, she sees Wayne in him for some time. She goes home to her parents where her grandmother, who is her friend also, enquires from her about her life. Gopika takes her into confidence and blurts out to her grandmother, “I will tell you a secret if you can keep it.” The grandmother promises and Gopika reveals, “I am looking for a husband.”
Meanwhile, Gopika continues to practice Vipassana and placing her faith in godmen. Her grandmother warns her, “Guard yourself from gurus. They are also human.” Next she meets Jonathan and falls in love with him. She goes with him to Tiruvannamalai and does pradakshina by paying her respect to Ramana’s samadhi. She makes two paintings of the Mountain at Tiruvannamalai. When Jonathan goes away, leaving her behind, she feels lost and confused. She witnesses the “fear of loneliness. It has come, it will go,” she tells herself.
She falls in love with Fareed who has come from America and is studying medicine. Meanwhile, she receives the news that her grandmother has had a stroke. She rushes to meet her who does say a few words to her before dying. Gopika tells her mother about Fareed whom she wants to marry on going abroad. Her mother gives her the two gold bangles that her grandmother has left behind to be given to Gopika.
Towards the end of the story, when she obtains the visa to join Fareed in USA, she changes her mind and gives up her plan to go abroad. She rings up her mother about her changed plans and leaves instead for the Tiruvannamalai Mountain to live her life at the feet of her beloved Mountain.
This is a very contrived narrative.
(Rupa & Co., 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002.)
