Days Of Their Lives  -  Kishwar Ahluwalia 

Soft and lyrical, Navtej Sarna’s novel is a gentle push into a world of nostalgia and romance. A world where battles are fought, lost and won in the privacy of the heart, and encourages us to believe that there are men who, beyond cold calculations, allow sentiment to rule their lives. It manages to kindle the radiance of hope in the gloom of brittle relationships, which snap at the first whisper of a wind.

Despite being an MEA spokesperson, a job in which he undoubtedly uses all the cut and thrust of latter day diplomacy, Sarna’s style in his first novel captivates with its simplicity. There are no larger-than-life heroes here — only a paunchy, middle aged man with thinning hair, Aftab, trying to make sense of a world suddenly destroyed when his wife, his child and his faithful diary all go missing at around the same time.

Sarna uses Delhi as a backdrop for this somewhat maudlin tale- but it is the realism with which he writes which makes his characters so contemporary and yet so middle class, as they shuttle between parties, the clubs and their homes, creating an assortment of illicit relationships, but no ripples. Till the dreaded waters of infidelity begin seeping into Aftab’s home.

This is where we enter the narrative: Aftab’s wife, Mina, leaves with his son, to live with a mutual friend, Rajiv. Aftab, who has been aware of a storm brewing in his house for several years now (as the husband and wife lead their lives in separate bedrooms and separate worlds), is not quite prepared for Mina’s exit.

However, Aftab is like a polyester shirt and falls into place without creases, but the tears drip into his whiskey glass and his silent rebellion is nourished by office politics. Not at all the aggressive macho male, Aftab’s hidden angst grows as he begins to resent an overbearing boss, and a wife who still harangues him on the phone everyday. But he continues to cling to the security of constant, reinforced rejection-even as he mournfully watches his wife twirl in the arms of her new lover. His only escape is in fantasizing about an affair with his secretary. The image is of a bewildered modern man, blindly following life wherever it leads him, because all relationships seem to be built on shifting sands.

But the worm finally turns and a sense of renewal prevails as memories return of a woman he had loved, before he had got married. In true Devdas style, he left her because his father insisted she was “from the wrong caste”.

Aftab now wakes up, alone and dismal, rudely scratched from the shards of his shattered marriage, yearning perhaps for the stability of shared happiness, and contacts Rohini, who has also in the meanwhile survived her share of marital discord.

Another unusual touch from Sarna are the unconventional women in his book who plunge into the unknown, in search of fulfilment, and face no moral inquisitions.

It is within this unshakeable faith in relationship that Aftab rediscovers himself and he begins to finally break away from the pendulum of being depressingly normal, to normally depressed. He quits the job he has always hated and begins a tentative exploration of the poignant bond between him and his son.

Sarna’s strength is that he has successfully created a world where longing for love is an accepted state of mind, and where sensitive men (and not just women) can worship these dreams, pursuing them with a believable, but hard won, courage.