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A Bridge to Nowhere "There are only two roads to be taken, the shortcut and the shorter shortcut." (Narrator in Vishal Bhardwaj’s film ‘Kaminey’) WHEN it comes to hurting each other, humans are a very self-absorbed lot. We focus on our hurts, real or imagined, nurse our grouses, lick our wounds and struggle to walk on the shorter shortcut that we have chosen for ourselves. Rarely, if ever, do we spend time gauging the impact our words and deeds have on others. In our not-so-small world, we often get by without ever knowing the other end of the story. Memories sometimes flit by like butterflies and we wonder what became of the other. But we hang on to our decisions adamantly, ignore the little wounds still bleeding inside and try to trudge on. Ever wondered what would happen if the truth were to be laid bare before us?
Set in England, the heroes of two of the stories, George and Alexander, feel that fate had dealt them an awful hand. One of them is recovering from an accident that left him in a coma for nearly two and a half years. The dysfunctional family of the other leads him to believe that distance from his squabbling parents is perhaps the best prescription for a normal life. It is when the truth strikes them hard that they are the only ‘survivors’ in the debris surrounding them that they realise that the road to life is pretty meandering—a long cut if you please. The female protagonists of the other two stories set in India are the classic cases of betrayal, of women who chose to follow their hearts instead of heeding the ‘writing on the wall’. Their dreams pillaged, they seemed to have been crushed by the blow fate seemed to have dealt them. It is only when they learn what went on at the other end, and the turn events had taken, that the cryptic ways of life are revealed to them. Readers will find the stories cathartic—as I am sure did the writer in writing them. The Future Group’s self-publishing arm deserves applause for encouraging authors to jump into the publishing arena and helping them to market their books. The themes of the stories are well thought through. The characterisation is good. The end is Maughamesque but too hurried—one starts anticipating a ‘routine’ anti-climax after the first two stories, which is not really a lacuna if the style is touched up. Sincere effort by a debutante.
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This debut collection
is, in fact, ‘the other end’ of four such stories. Each principal
character in the story is trying to carefully glue together a fragile
present from a fractured past. The flotsam and jetsam of their
battered bodies and hearts suddenly wash ashore. Reminiscences that
had hung heavily in the air till now like a curtain of mist come to
the fore. The ‘other’ now appears more sinned against than
sinning. Four stories strung together with this one simple theme. Four
people unified by one pain, an antithesis and then again by the pain
of the ‘other’.