Love in the time of e-mails

March 12, 2006

Mid-life crisis comes to different people in different ways. To Aftab it came when, Mina, his wife of 14 years, deserted him for his friend, Rajiv, who had” a bigger car, probably a better air-conditioner and a CD player.” Like most married people life between them had gone on, at times unsatisfactorily with a feeling of unhappiness over the way things were; but never quite to the point where the relationship could snap. That’s until one night, when Mina invites Rajiv for a dinner while he is away and succumbs to” the strong physical attraction she had always felt for him.” Having “tasted earthly satisfaction, in a way that for one reason or the other, not found in my arms,” things began to irreversibly change between them.

After the initial loneliness, the depression and the indulgent self-pity that follows his separation from his wife, Aftab gathers himself to rediscover his long lost love, Rohini, on the internet.” Suddenly when I needed you the most, when things began to finally fall around me, I sought you out and you were there.” Her messages begin to save his life and become his secret allies against all of that is lined up against him- Basu’s scheming at office, Mina’s badgering calls and the whisky laden evenings.

Aftab had met Rohini in Bombay at a party. And, as “I threw myself into a chair next to you and drained half a bottle of beer, I was already in love.” He invites her to a lunch the next day and after it is over he wants to meet her again. As meetings become frequent, he begins to look forward with a strange anxiety for the moment to fix up a next meeting. Fondness grows and reaches a point where “We were to care and not show, wrap up our love in banter and funny stories and if we hurt each other, it wasn’t meant to matter. Enough people loved seriously soberly. We weren’t going to be lovers like that.” With her he discovers Bombay, riding in Victoria and eating pau bhaji at roadside stalls.

However, good times don’t always last. Romance comes to an end when, like most Indian men of marriageable age, Aftab too gives in to an arranged marriage after his father refuses permission to marry Rohini. The reason? Because “she was not of right caste.” After spending half a life Mina, his wife first move out to a guest room and then to another man. Aftab finally overcomes remorse as Rohini’s e-mails,” random signposts in barren, brown stretches,” gradually begin to fill up years he had put behind after he had married Mina.

He flings his job and leaves Delhi as he sets out on journey to a reunion with Rohini, who has come back after leaving her over ambitious husband, racing to catch up with the rest of his classmates who had made it into the small group of millionaires from India.” He too wanted to be interviewed in community newspapers, to be invited to embassy functions, be presented to the visiting prime minister.” A longing to meet Rohini grips Aftab.” I dare not think what my days and nights will mean after that. I dare not deceive my promise again.”

Navtej Sarna has produced a moving account of missed opportunities and inexact relationships in his first novel. The best sections of the book are Rohini’s short but sensitive e-mails. Leaving aside the initial passage, which are a bitter ranting of a wronged man, rest of the book is immensely readable.