BOOKMARK5

Farce and irony in a twisted tale of mystic love

By Jayant Patel

Lonely Gods, Shivani Singh, Hachette India, Pp 312, Rs 299.00

This is a love story with a mystic twist. Depicting love as the main weapon to protect the world from destruction, the author walks the thin line between farce and irony by using hackneyed phrases, like “throbbing of heart” and “look in the eye” with a touch of out-worldly magic.

This is the story of passionate love between Raj and Aparajita who are neighbours but strangers made for each other.  A chance meeting and they feel a pull towards each other which is beyond understanding. They can communicate without speaking and know that they are meant for each other. Aparajita is already married and Raj marries someone else because he is too proud to accept that he cannot live without Aparajita. Without meeting they carry on, so to speak, rather torridly in the subtler fifth-dimensional plane and she is described by Raj as, “Whichever way we may approach it, we all reach the heart chakra because it is the light of the heart that really shows us the way home.”

After 40-odd years of love for each other, Raj lies comatose on his deathbed and Aaparajita’s mind is clouded from Alzheimer’s disease. Uma, Raj’s niece receives a frantic call from her sister in Kolkata, informing her that their Raj Mama, is sinking. She immediately rushes to be at his side. What she sees mystifies her no end. She feels that her now comatose Raj Mama is trying to convey a message to her through his eyes, a message which is beyond her. Uma also knows that Indira, the daughter of Raj Mama, is up to something but is unable to pinpoint it. Kamini is being pulled into the mysterious group called VNP.   

The VNP is a secret society in Delhi comprising cranks, mystics, psychics, property brokers, teenagers and desperate housewives who collude and strategise in valiant ways to unite the soul of the two lovers because without it, the world is doomed. The Apocalypse can only be prevented by uniting these twin flames for they believe that most of life’s twin flame’s reunions are karmic till they reach the threshold of pure consciousness – when the laws of the universe take over.

Kamini finds an easy entry to it and becomes a part of the top-level project.

Will Raj and Aparajita unite? Is there love beyond all relationships?

The climax takes place at a cosmically sacred site, where the twin flames regain their power. The suspense is kept up and in the end the relationship between Kamini and Hari is revealed.

Mysticism and occultism form the mainstay of the novel making it somewhat different to the other run-of-the-mill stories.

(Hachette India, 612/614 (6th Floor), Time Tower, MG Road, Sector 28, Gurgaon-122 001; www.hachette.co.uk)