We Shall Dance Again

Book excerpt: We Shall Dance Again is a kaleidoscope of human relations: caring, loving, lustful, humiliating and revengeful. The central character of the story, Siddhartha, engulfed in these relations has tasted their extremes. Sonia, a stunning beauty, who does not think even the most eligible man worth her casual glance, pampers him with her mad love. She ushers him into the charming world brimming with desires of a home, of children and of a life-long companionship of love and devotion. But in response to her abject surrender, he only has a liking for her no love. He vacillates between liking and love and eventually loses her. Sonia is fragrant and balmy and she oozes honey. And then comes Kranti , his wife, who with her cruelty and sickening absurdities, deflates all his pride to the edge and he has lost himself. She demolishes that Siddhartha whom his Dadi Maa tenderly raised with her selfless love. Kranti stinks of choked gutters and spits venom. Bereft of all hopes and rid of all desires when he is searching himself, Bharti happens. She is a dazzling beauty, earthly and spiritually both. Bharti is odourless like the spirits and exudes nectar. Both make love but in void. With her divine love, Siddhartha attains nirvana and is transformed to Siddha the atman for whom Sonia and Kranti, love and hatred, pleasure and pain, all become synonymous.