Cryptically coherent
Randeep Wadehra

Lost Torn Forlorn
by Arun Dhadwal & Belma Bojic. Author House. Pages 88.

When the protagonists struggle to reconcile memories of their past with present realities, a skein of verbiage grips the mind. Its sad, exasperating strands tighten around thought-processes, forcing a desperate bid for a way out of an asphyxiating experience. To decipher the meaning of this short novel, you want to read on even when a part of the self exhorts you to ignore this look at the vagaries of time, that travels through a relatively happy summer, a heart-breaking autumn, a bleak winter and a hope-filled spring.

Gloom strikes when the siblings find their dead dog that had gone missing. It is dead, not because it had fallen into the abyss, not because it had been starving in desolation, but because it was shot. Time forces a coloured person to abhor colour; and consider black and white a misnomer for right and wrong. Yet, he prefers shades of grey, silver, black and white – the wintry hues, harsh, but honest, that absorb all colour and emit only grim complexion, tinting the landscape with unadulterated drabness. And yearns for love, knowing fully well that love begets pain.

To be empty within and seek fulfilment without. To be human, but kill remorselessly and senselessly. Contradictions, but time makes all living self-contradictory. Time uproots families, forcing them to flee their violence-ravaged homelands, psyches scalded.

But people find respite in a world that is fast. So fast that time has become a luxury. The result: fast food, fast people, fast trains, fast cars; speed work and speed dating. All this causes stress. But, is stressful living in a "peaceful" land preferable to a distressed existence in a war-torn land? Stress, unlike war, is a silent killer. The choice is between tromperie and stark reality. So, it is natural to plumb for the former even as we hark back to tranquil times, when time stood still.

We have to come to terms with our today even as we get ready for a more demanding future, as does the physically challenged child in the story. And, we have to overcome mental handicaps too – something with which the protagonists grapple relentlessly because psychological scars are enduring and deeper, albeit invisible.

This is a book which tells a tale that does not look like one; it is peppered with poetic outpourings, yet is not a poem; the narrative is coherent, but leaves one baffled. Cryptic coherence is an oxymoron, so is this volume.

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