Road to Abana - Lata Gwalani

Author: Lata Gwalani

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: I think my expectations went awry with this one. I was primarily looking forth to a historical fiction about a woman longing for her homeland, but the road taken by this character to her ‘Abana’ was not the one I had expected. Nevertheless, if you go in with the right expectations, you will probably enjoy this one better than I did.

Story:

Paari stayed in Sukkur, a small town in the Sindh area of a united India with her family. Despite umpteen personal struggles, she relished her life with her kin and her work as a seamstress. However, the Indo-Pak Partition in 1947 caused chaos, resulting in Paari losing everything and living in deplorable conditions in a refugee camp in Ulhasnagar, on the outskirts of Mumbai. Paari now has just one dream in life – to return to her home. And she is ready to go to any extent to fulfil this dream, even if it means testing the limits of morality and humanity. Will Paari ever find herself back in her homeland as she wanted? What costs will she need to pay on her road to ‘Abana’?

The story comes to us in the third person limited perspective of many characters, mainly that of Paari.

‘Abana’ is Sindhi for ‘home’. As such, Paari’s deep feelings of ‘hiraeth’ are the foundation of the entire story and for all her actions. Rather than treating us as spectators watching a sentimental journey of Paari’s way back home, Lata makes us involved readers by causing us to question various decisions that Paari takes on her sojourn and wonder what we would do if we were in her place. Paari’s unexpected path is what makes the novel different from typical historical fiction. Furthermore, there is no religious blame game or political commentary despite the strong connection to the partition. The focus stays on the human cost of such incidents rather than finger-pointing.

Lata’s strength in writing lies in her ability to create a vivid picture in our minds. Her grasp over creating descriptive imagery is so strong that one only needs to glance through the words and the entire visual emerges in our minds. I had enjoyed her descriptive phrases in her earlier work “Prisoners of Secrets”, and this book also maintains the same standard. Also, books that overladen with description usually tend to slow the reader’s pace. But that doesn’t happen in both of Lata’s books, further demonstrating how smoothly her words flow.

There are titbits of wisdom scattered throughout the book. At times, they interfere with the narration but on most occasions, they add the right amount of emotions to the story.

The initial third or so led me to believe that this is Paari's story, but it isn't. Some important characters who come further down the line - Virmal, Shaqib, Zain… - also get their backstory revealed in detail. This plot technique reminded me a little of Sidney Sheldon's style in ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ (TOSOM), where you get an elaborate backstory of the key characters whenever they enter the narrative, and you wonder where the story is going with it. But soon the connections between the characters are unveiled and you realise that the background was incorporated to make you understand the motives and actions of the said character better. That worked in TOSOM because the characters, their personalities, and their backgrounds were very distinct. I cannot say the same here because most of the characters had a similar origin story (dysfunctional or poor family, great ambitions, desperation, and courage being the common points) and there wasn’t much to distinguish their rationale for their behaviour. I absolutely loved Paari’s part of the story, but I feel most of the other character backgrounds, except maybe for Virmal, could have been incorporated within the main narrative itself instead of sectionalising them with individual back stories. I must appreciate how Lata keeps all the main characters grey rather than clearly black or white.

The story moves across three timelines: the historical past before and until the partition, the recent past (6 months back) and the "present", but the present of the story isn't the present timeline of the reader and there’s no definite mention of the year any time except for a couple of indirect references to age or duration. I'd have preferred having a year mentioned along with the place to establish the timeline clearly at the start. The random back and forth across time means that you need to stay focussed while reading to get the plot timeline right.

There were a few convenient coincidences, especially in the second half of the book. The characters are modified or given a scene as per the requirements of the plot rather than growing naturally along with the narrative. But ultimately, all tracks come together in a neat and coordinated ending. Thus, all’s well that ends well.

Basically, I think my expectations caused me to veer on a different road, which made ‘Road to Abana’ a journey of mixed emotions. To help you get into this book in the right spirit, keep in mind that this is a character-oriented novel so there’s more focus on the people than on the circumstances of that era. It’s not a plain historical fiction but a mix of historical drama and terrorism thriller. The imagery and writing flourishes are amazing, so these will provide tremendous reading satisfaction.

If you want to read an unusual story set around the 1947 Indo-Pak Partition and its repercussions, this ought to be your pick because it sure doesn't walk the tried-and-tested path.