|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reviewed by Kanwalpreet GAJRA KOTTARY says this work of hers is "a bittersweet novel about growing up". And it is. The protagonist Niyati grows from a confused child into a beautiful girl who realises, in the process, that she has to keep her head on her shoulders while growing up in a household which is "dysfunctional", as the writer puts it. Niyati gradually learns to pick up what is useful and relevant discarding the redundant. This includes relationships but unfortunately, like all of us, she cannot classify memories so easily. They continue to haunt her, making her yearn for the few good times. But Niyati weighs the situation and then decides. And her decisions are right. There are times, especially as a child, when Niyati feels that something wrong is being inflicted on one member of the family by another but she keeps quiet, though she can distinguish the right from the wrong. She gives vent to her feelings once she grows older, but again in a decent way unlike her elder sister Nisha.
"Set in Delhi of the 1970s and the ’80s, Broken Melodies is a deeply moving novel about the search for beauty in our lives." The novel has that old-world charm, when the current crop of readers was growing up. It talks of a quiet neighbourhood, noisy neighbours where the going-ons in your house extends to the colony where one resides. The old Bajaj scooter, Chitrahaar, visits to the library, travelling in the buses, meandering at Connaught Place all are reminiscent of the urban India in the 1980s when MNCs hadn’t entered our drawing rooms. It seems that the writer is biased towards Niyati and her mother, for they go through a lot in circumstances not of their own making. Through the novel, Kottary’s personal views can be gauged. There is no sympathy towards extra-marital affairs or philandering. She believes as her protagonist that a home is what is made by its inhabitants and growing children have to be extended that love, security that they need to grow into responsible citizens. Kottary is very clear on such issues. The novel vibrates with the protagonist’s silent plea for a house that needs to be put in order. The work highlights
middle-class values, how they are passed on to the next generation, how
they are flouted at rare times, and the repercussions that follow.
Kottary has to her credit the honour of being the co-writer of the
television serial Balika Vadhu, where again the values of a
conservative family are upheld even in the harshest of times. Broken
Melodies also talks about the middle class, though in a different
setting. On the whole, the novel is an engrossing one-time read.
|
Niyati’s
mother is her anchor but later as she grows old, it is Niyati who
comforts her mother. The mother who stands by her decision of staying
with the man whom she married against the wishes of her family, though
the relationship has soured over a passage of time. But Niyati’s
mother takes all the decisions with the interests of her children in
mind. It is also a story of bonding between two sisters. It warms the
reader’s heart. The love of the elder sister for her younger sibling
takes new dimensions because of the parental conflict. But later a stark
revelation of Nisha’s life haunts the relationship of the sisters to
an extent that they drift apart. Niyati, living under the shadow of the
protective elder sister, decides not to be a puppet in the hands of
anyone, at least her sister’s.