Guilt Trip - Lost Loves and cathartic journeys - Tara Sahgal

A couple of pages into Navtej Sarna’s We weren’t Lovers Like That and you learn that around the time Delhi-living Aftab Chandra turned 40,his wife Mina took their son Ankur and left him for his friend Rajiv, his richer, better-looking friend. Chandra, our balding, ageing, midriff-thickening, bitter, heartsick hero and self-proclaimed member of the “inner coterie of the Association of Men in wrong jobs” with nothing to lose, jumps aboard the Shatabdi Express to find sanctuary in the safest, kindest place he knows: his childhood home in the Valley. From Delhi to Saharanpur, Roorkee, Haridwar and, finally, Dehradun through (a chapter for each station), anecdotes, memories and letters and e- mails, are revealed the life and times of our unfortunate protagonist. 

With Chandra we weep for past sorrows, rejoice in past joys and long for his future bliss in the form of old flame Rohini who we fervently pray will be the light at the end of the tunnel, releasing him from outbursts such as “the sun shining on the blue sea will still break my heart like I broke Ro’s heart then when the ships that stood out in the sea seemed to have been painted on a timeless canvas”. To be fair, often the novel offers bright flashes we all recognize, heartaches we all know. We Weren’t Lovers Like That is about guilt and regret, love and loss, squandered lives and second chances.

Although the novel sometimes reads like a monologue of a friend recounting the glib minutiae of an ugly divorce or an idealised childhood, you are tempted to keep listening. Though the novel looks at the world through the eyes of a thin-skinned cuckold of negligible self-esteem and a persecution complex the size of Qutab Minar, it is catharsis to the core. Despite its nihilism, both the protagonist and the reader emerge hopeful at the end. For Chandra, there is the promise of sunset over the ruins of the brewery, not to mention Rohini. For the reader there is the knowledge that no matter how bald or how old he is, how poor or how ugly, his life has most definitely been more tolerable than Chandra’s. If gratuitous sentimentality is your anti-depressant of choice, then this novel is pure Prozac.