A Tale of Two Countries - Ashok Sharma - Bog

A Tale of Two Countries- is a contemporary, mainstream novel about the first and second generation of immigrants of Asian Indian origin in pursuit of the American Dream- the rewards and woes it brings. At one level, the story explores alien psyche, emotional angst, dreams and conflicts of several interesting and multicultural characters, revolving around three friends settled in USA for over thirty years, who knew each from back home living in the same neighborhood in Delhi. On a deeper level, it is a moving and intricate love story (and stories) of these three characters, their unrequited loves, temporary affairs and arranged marriages, and redeeming value of their friendships- and ends when the trajectories of their lives make a sudden intersection at the WTC on 9/11. The major character of this story is Robin Arya, an engineer, failed entrepreneur (also called-a man with bullet in the head) shot during a robbery attempt at his Maryland store and taken to India by his parents who were visiting him in USA to attend the funeral of his wife. He miraculously survived with surgery and the only effects appear to be emotional- lucid dreaming and nostalgia for good old days both in India and USA. His childhood love is Vanita Mehra, the two of them were born on the same day in a hospital in Lahore but she ends up marrying Robin's friend (who tries to set her on fire and she kills him in self-defense), when he has to flee India during the Emergency Rule and ends up in USA while she moves to Canada and later starts working at the UN in New York. The book starts with a scene, in which Vanita Mehra has promised their precocious son Baby Michael that she will let him fly a kite from the top of WTC, which happens to be the fateful day of 9/11- they are both trapped on the roof of North Tower from where she makes a long farewell phone call to her newly wedded husband for recording in her lower Manhattan apartment since he is in India, reflecting on the twists and turns in their lives like in a Bollywood movie but eventually love had triumphed, and all the while she is talking, Baby Michael is unfurling his large pink kite so both of them can hang on to it- believing they can escape from the burning tower. And from here, the story moves backward in time in a non-linear narrative style that alternates back and forth in settings from India to Washington DC/Maryland suburbs. Two other major characters are Robin's friends: one of them is Naren "Nick" Grover, the crooked immigration lawyer who was married twice in USA and then went to India for arranged marriage to a woman lot younger than him and later has two daughters with her; and the third of triad of friends is Dr. Adi Shankar, a cardiologist who went to India for a visit and was forced into an arranged marriage to a woman from a business family by his parents and he did not have the courage to refuse- even though he was in love with this white American girl Autumn Rose of the beat generation to whom he was engaged and she was pregnant. Other minor characters in this book are: Robin's wife Ruby Joyce of mixed Indo-American Jewish origin who becomes a Buddhist nun, spending a year seeking nirvana in a solitary cave in the Himalayas, later dies of accidental drug overdose and was put in a cryogenic preservation ("American Ice Mummy") by her father Dr. Jason Joyce, a biotech scientist; Robin and Ruby Joyce's son Baby Michael, a "test-tube" born child prodigy; Robin's father, Rampal Arya- a retired journalist translating Urdu work of great poet Mirza Ghalib into English, and Robin's possessive mother Nandini; a Bollywood star Faroze Khan with whom Naren Grover's wife elopes to Bombay to get married; Dr Adi Shankar's illegitimate daughter Dawn Rose from his previous affair working in a topless bar in Washington DC, who shows up twenty years later at his son's wedding; and many others.