4:44am….
“Started reading The Guardian Angels yesterday …. and finished it today … a heart breaker that makes u want to believe in love till eternity… its purity … and d pain which brings an unsaid sense of solace with it … review to be posted soon …. but for now, there is just emptiness that wants to be caressed…”
These are the lines that I wrote to Rohit Gore, the author of- The Guardian Angels, after I finished reading that novel. And well, the timing of the email at the top left shall say you enough about how much I connected with the book overall and my liking towards it.
The Guardian Angels in a way has nothing new, but if you think deep, it is completely alien to all the other romantic pages that you might have read or end up reading anytime in your life from here on.
The plot of the novel revolves around Aditya, son of one of the biggest business tycoons of the country and Radha Deodhar a girl from the suburbs of Mumbai with everything supplied in limited quantity to her and the family by the lords above. Except for those ‘warm moments of laughter’ that she, her baba and aayi share almost every evening sitting together.
This novel is about a story of untold love between a guy and girl who find their meaning of life living under each other’s shadow which they can’t even think of being without. While it takes a brutal accident for Aditya to realize what he is actually meant to do in life (and of course Radha’s one line advice), for Radha it was always about doing something for people and that is what she chooses to be- Giving Her All- To All!
While Aditya reaches every new height in his career and sees almost all good things that a guy of his age would want to see, Radha grows to her late twenties with various forms of sufferings and struggle, – getting raped while fighting for a cause being one of them! And when you read that paragraph which speaks of this brutal incident- trust you me- the agony and the pain of Aditya holding on to her naked body comes alive, right in front of your eyes!
What stands out in this novel is that finally there are few faces coming up in the gen-next category of Indian authors, who have good command of not only English while penning down a novel, but also have an understanding of saying the unsaid for the reader to find out!
The reason why I wrote this above paragraph is:
I tried to read a bit about Rohit on Google before doing this review and I came across a review in which the reviewer has taunted the end of the story, She writes and I quote “And while I appreciate that the writer avoided giving them an impossible happily ever-after ending, giving one of them an incurable mental illness and taking her out of the picture seemed like a convenient and lazy plot tool.”
Now I do not intend to demean the review done by this reviewer as everyone is entitled for their own true opinion, but if you read the novel thoughtfully, it would not take much of an effort to understand that Radha knew her end since the very beginning. She knew what her life is going to be like 10 years down the life- well in advance! The hereditary Alzheimer disease that took many a lives in her family was always going to be a bane and no she never thought that it was a bane for her, but she knew- it could prove to be one for Aditya!
Therefore, it was never an escape tool that was being used by the writer, but the reality that was just waiting to spread its wings and darken Radha’s life.
Yes, to most the novel can give an impression of- oh it is one of those predictable stories. And well, it might just be one for many. But that is where the emotions unspoken have been brought out best by Rohit Gore, which can only be understood by the readers who really want to read every single page of this novel with a conviction of knowing more about love and the essence of it.
And no it is not about saying I love you and being with someone by a relation that society approves of, but it is about knowing that you do, to whoever you do and being their’s; forever!