The Road to Xanadu

 

Book Review

Title: Xanadu

Author: Harshita Nanda

Format: PDF E-book

 

Harshita Nanda’s novella, Xanadu, is more about a road to Xanadu than Xanadu itself. The idyl is not natural or easily available. It has to be created. It demands much agony and endurance from us. This novella is about those agonies and endurances. That is precisely what makes it enjoyable too. Utopias can’t entertain us; they can only satiate us and then leave us exhausted with ennui. The reason why there aren’t any utopias in the human world may be precisely that. We have all the potential to create utopias. But we won’t create them. In fact, if someone does create one, the others will sow the seeds of all possible vices there and kill it. That is how human nature is. All our good literature is about those vices and follies of ours. Any good novel has to end where the idyllic Xanadu begins. And that is just what happens in Harshita Nanda’s novella too.

The plot revolves primarily round Anita, Bhoomi and Harish. Anita is a young woman when the storyline starts. A British young man, Derek Rogers, captures her heart. But Derek has to leave India when his parents decide to withdraw to their own country after India wins independence. Anita is reluctant to join them leaving the hill town she loves much. We meet the aging, solitary Anita in the first chapter who eventually gets a little girl named Bhoomi for a friend.

Bhoomi has to leave Anita soon as a catastrophe leaves her fatherless. Her mother, Shalini, belonged to an aristocratic family in the city and had been disowned for marrying a poor hillman for love. Following the tragic death of her husband in an accident that also destroys their house, Shalini returns to her parents in the hope that they would understand and accept her. If family honour is what got her disinherited, the same family honour gets her back in and the business sense that usually accompanies such ‘honour’ gets Shalini married to Arjun who is settled in the US. Arjun had remained a bachelor all these years just because his love for Shalini had been unrequited. Unrequited love is a dominant theme in the novella.

The marriage takes Bhoomi to America where life turns miserable for her as well as her mother who is unable to forget her dead husband.

Harish is a young boy whom Bhoomi had become friends with as a little girl while she lived in Shalini’s parents’ house. Fortune favours Harish who gets good education in an elite school.

The plot now takes some very interesting twists and turns and leads the reader to an unputdownable climax.

It is a short book that can be read in about an hour. The story is narrated skilfully though it is the author’s debut work in this category. The plot has a Dickensian neatness and finesse, not to mention the suspense that the end of each chapter carries. The book is a sure indication that this author will go a long way and give us excellent works in the future.

PS. This book is part of the Blogchatter E-book Carnival and is free to download now here.

My contribution to the same Carnival is LIFE: 24 Essays which is also free here.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon.