Title: Memories of Fire
Author: Ashok Chopra
Publisher: Penguin Random House India
ISBN:
9780670090341
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 420
Source: Flipkart Review Program
Rating: 4/5
But, nothing it seemed had changed at
their old haunt. Even after a gap of over five decades. The wilderness was a
hidden gem- quaint and unique. It had not lost any of its charm and was still,
in more ways than one, a place of pilgrimage, which evoked a spiritual longing,
was it just the well preserved….the treasured emotions of the days gone by that
had resurfaced? Was it just nostalgia?
Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra, is
a life journey of five childhood friends, who first met at boarding school in
Shimla, in 1950s. All were the same age, with a difference of just about a
month or two between each. There had
never been a time when they had not been together like a bunch of quintuplets. But
life would take them along separate paths.
Although the story runs in flashback,
the first chapter begins with a meeting of these four friends, after a gap of five decades, and they indulge immediately
into memories of past, school day-offs, their beautiful as well as ugly truths
and bits of love flings. It is not some contemporary fiction but story embedded
with such real incidents, related to Indira Gandhi’s era.
Here, I want to mention the thing I
loved the most about Ashok Chopra’s writing, He has surprising skills of
observing small details, Memories of Fire is full of such nostalgic words and
scenes, I could almost see those images, as Author mentioned Wooden Phaatak,
Atlas Bicycle, Binaca Geetmala on Vividh Bharti, jane eyre’s thornfield hall and
many more, It is really fascinating to read about Bishnois Samaj and their
rituals, Plus that small part of Begum Akhtar. While reading the book I could
tell that Ashok Chopra has lived richly experienced life.
There is not a single protagonist in
the story, every character comes with its own past and journey. If I am going
to discuss about those five friends then Vijay Thakur was only a Day Scholar
among them, Rest were boarders, and
Vijay is so unclear about his life goal, and living in some haveli. At one
place, author has woven a scene around Vijay’s thoughts, I could visualize that
part, where Vijay stood in his favourite
room of the haveli, that scene filled his heart with resurgent hope, “if the
haveli could resurrects itself from its dead past into a life in the present,
there was hope that it could step into the future too.”
Apart from the story, if anyone wants
to learn, how to draw an character sketch, this book would be a perfect read,
As author summoned of Vijay character in few lines — Vijay thakur , help
everyone and was ever willing to share their problems. Yet, another unsolved
mystery about him was that he never seemed to have any problems of his own,
friend would describe them an impenetrable carapace, somewhat of an enigma.
Coming on other friends, second is
Deepak, god gifted with phenomenal memory anything he ever read he could easily
recall and quote. Deepak would get most upset if an author quoted incorrectly
or translated poorly. He was in regular correspondence with eminent writer
historian, Khushwant Singh, that part was really fun to read.
Third one, Reza Ahmed who would really
interested to know more about Bishnois- the member of small religious group who
are mostly concentrated in the western Thar Desert, which overlaps the area of
Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan and runs along the borders of India’s Rajasthan
with Gujrat and Punjab. It is really interesting to know how Bishnoi word
derived. As Reza’s friend told him that preservation of the environment was
their religion. Their rituals, this is a common practice there Bishnoi women
are known to suckle young orphaned animals to save their lives.
Forth one, Balbir Singh, Author tried
to put some humor with this, he writes, Punjabis have strong sense of their
genealogy. If you bring two Punjabis – total strangers- together you can be
sure that within five minutes they will have traced each other’s family trees
back to at least four or five generations and what’s more in the process would
have discovered the kinship between them and if they for some reason failed to
find a relationship, they would surely make one up, which would seem very
convincing.
And Fifth one, Radhey Shyam, who ends
up in Jail, He seemed somewhat daring though, In that conventional environment,
he took courage to fall in love with his young female teacher, while he was
just a much younger male student. I was curious at one point to know how deeply
ingrained faith and arising issues impacts their whole life.
Basically Author, depicts the life of
that era when communities were close knit and people come together in each
other’s joys and sorrow. Each treat the children of the other as their own, and
they spend more time in each other’s homes than in their own. When old
tradition and values exist, people share almost every moment of success and failure,
happiness and pain.
As blurb says Memories of Fire is inspired
by true events and interspersed with the dark contemporary history of India and
Pakistan along remarkably realistic characters who tackle prejudice, prestige,
privilege and even prison head-on. It also asks the epic questions: What makes
for happiness? Why do people make certain choices and not others? And why do
men and women willingly make tremendous sacrifices for those they love?
Ashok Chopra has created an
authentic, densely peopled universe with a distinctive period charm. Memories
of Fire is a vast, colourful, emotional, political and social journey,
with a cast of characters that is interesting, sympathetic and lifelike.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Author of the bestselling Of
Love and Other Sorrows and A Scrapbook of Memories: My Life with the
Rich, the Famous and the Scandalous, Ashok Chopra has occupied some of the
hottest seats in the Indian book trade-executive editor of Vikas Publishing
House, vice president of Macmillan India, publishing director of UBS
Publishers, executive director and publisher of the India Today Book Club
and Books Today as well as chief executive and publisher of
HarperCollins India. Currently, he is the chief executive of Hay House
Publishers India and is working on his next book, The Lovers from Rampore.
He lives in Gurgaon, near Delhi.
