jayasree,review, vipin behari goyal

A journey called life…..

They are five individuals- like five sand grains.
They are like Sand grains amidst a desert-anytime a storm can blow them thousand of miles away.
Or can it?
What is the purpose of their existence?
What is the purpose of their living?
In this meaningless world, is it not true that their lives are nothing but mere instruments of getting exhausted for a prolonged period?
Are they merely a puppet at the hands of the destiny, unable to shape up their future?
Or can they create their own abode, out of their own consciousness create their own values and discovers an identity of their life.
From the dawn of civilization that quest had haunted the human soul.
And everyone has their own set of explanations to that eternal question.
Like the five individuals who are from the pages of the fiction ‘Tall man .small shadow’ by Vipin Behari Goyal. Characters may be fictional, but they are straight from the pages of a book called life.
Let us take glimpses of these colorful characters. Anupam is a man who seeks the purpose of his existence and always in quest of his identity. A quote from the fiction will give the reader some idea of his thought process
“I went up and up. I could see the earth like a small ball, then a dot. I could see the whole constellation going around the sun and went up to see many constellations. I could count up to twelve. I went out of the Milky Way and could se many milky ways. Suddenly everything went black. I was sucked into a hole with tremendous gravity. My mind stopped working and I was senseless. I heard the voice of Aayla and wondered how she could come so far with me”.
His daughter Aalya has just stepped up to the spring of her life-started to realize the splendor of her charming self!
Her mother seems to be a person who is an asthma patient and is apparently reluctant to her surroundings. Rather it seemed she relishes tea than the happenings all around her! Salil is another person who is always obsessed with the shadow-make interpretation of the personality of the characters he faced in his day to day life. On the other hand the handsome young lad has a past of broken relation that still haunts him o the present. Seema is the research guide of Aalya-who is fed up with his unhappy martial life and seeks to refuge under a complex lesbian relation with her students. A complex geometry of relations are constantly drawing some figures –making new relations and redefining the existing ones.
Now let us come to the story. It all begun with a book that Anupam came to deliver to Salil. No he is not a courier boy or a postman. He was merely trying to reduce the labor of the courier boy. In his own words Anupam-‘went to a stock exchange for about an hour, brought and sold some scripts at random, intuitively and earned bucks not just enough to survive but also enough for some rainy days.”
The life does take its own course of action-so one insignificant book acted as the catalyst for taking the two families closer-Anupam’s gorgeous daughter visiting Salil’s house one day in the pretext (have some patience! the real reason is going to be found later on.) of giving him some home made delicacy. Two beautiful young minds soon stated to feel attracted towards each other.
Let their attraction get increased day by day like phrases of moon-we don’t have any objection to that. Let us take a glance to the relation of Aalya and seema. seema found a soft prey in Aalya and lost no opportunity to explore. Again a complex pattern of mind-it is like a revenge for her to the entire male world. She knew the students with whom she had relation will in future no longer be capable to have a normal martial relation. To Aayla-it was however a tug of war deep within her mind. seema’s father was a close friend of Aalya’s –so it was between passion and relation, the ugly and the good and ultimately it was ugly that came out the winner! Throughout the entire book this types of mental conflicts has been drawn by the writer with artistic precision!
To add twist to the events- Salil proposed a solution to fill up the void of childless Seema’s unhappy married life. He can donate sperm to deliver to her God’s beautiful creation of a child.
Where does this proposal lead the trio’s life? Can Aalya free herself from this lesbian relationship?
May they be like isolated pearls, but an invisible thread has sewn them together in a beautiful garland. We do not have any particular name for that thread-may it be destiny, may it be coincidences, and may it be circumstances. But some apparently unconnected fates of life are getting connected by some unknown forces -like shaping up of the course of river throughout the whole story. Complex human relations are given an altogether new dimension in this work of fiction.
The story is narrated from the perspective of all the five players of the play who have their entries and their exists in this stage called life. This gives a unique voice to the whole story.
Towards the end of the novel came the startling revelation-was there any mastermind who have cunningly calculated all the probabilities and drifted the course of events to draw the beautiful mosaic pattern of life? Or is it merely coincidence? The strong narrative and style of the writer makes the reader encounter the ultimate truth of life.
A truth that makes us realizes how insignificant our play moves are to the silent child who plays with this whole universe.
Who has the power to make ‘meaningless’ to ‘meaningful’!
Read more of this book at
http://www.amazon.in/Small-Shadow-Vipin-Behari-Goyal/dp/8182534127
https://jayasreesown.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/a-journey-called-life/