BENGALURU: Nidhie Sharma’s Dancing with Demons is a book tailor-made for a Bollywood blockbuster and one has the feeling that the author wrote this dark romance keeping that in mind. The hero and heroine in this novel are characters desperately trying to hold their lives together and fight the ghosts of their past. The hidden past of both seems to intrude often and at the most disagreeable of times.
The storyline is similar to other romantic novels with lots of good and bad characters, like Coach Jerry, the hero’s friend Madan Bhalla, boxer Sawant, Vijay, Inspector Somnath and many other characters with shades of grey.
The handsome and brooding hero Karan Pratap Singh is poised to win the amateur boxing championship. However, he loses it all in the ring with memories from his past interfering even as he sees his father in the audience. But his failure seems to be rooted in his arrogance and short temper. This one loss changes his life and he becomes a recluse as he is banned from the sport for four years. But the truth hides deeper, in a childhood secret he hasn’t shared with anyone.
The heroine, Sonia Kapoor, has her share of secrets. She too is running from her past and is a fugitive, hiding from the police. She is charged with the murder of her brother-in-law, with her sister Ria testifying against her in the court, although Sonia committed the act to protect her sister.
Karan and Sonia are thrown together by the hands of fate even as their secrets and personal demons collide, to stir up trouble. They are drawn to each other, they fall in love but are unable to get over their misunderstandings. They have tiffs over her conviction and his obsession with boxing. Will they overcome all this and get on with their lives? Will Karan get over his health issues and enter the boxing ring again after four years? Can there be any redemption without forgiveness?
As the novel is about a champion boxer and the boxing ring, the author has done quite a bit of research, eliciting information from a former Olympic boxing coach and Head Coach of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Club at Santa Monica. Nidhie Sharma is a writer-director and studied filmmaking and screenwriting from New York University. She now plans to do a mainstream Indian movie.
Dancing with Demons is a well-written book and a rarity from a woman novelist on combat sports. It is fast-paced with many twists and turns and is suited for a Bollywood adaptation. One can visualise the potential screenplay which would be incorporated with lots of song-and-dance sequences to keep the audience happy.