If I had a Chance...

In the 21st century, with the advent of various communication channels, love may also find newer ways of survival.
Niyogi Books Pvt Ltd director and COO Trisha De Niyogi
Niyogi Books Pvt Ltd director and COO Trisha De Niyogi

As a publisher, I often wish that taking cue from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, some celebrated novelist of India could write a novel called ‘Love in the Time of Corona’ and I would pitch for publishing it. My wishlist, of course, contains this book not just in similarity with the title but also projecting the crisis of faith and the recovery of faith that the entire mankind goes through during the corona holocaust. 

In the 21st century, with the advent of various communication channels, love may also find newer ways of survival. However, my book will not use ‘love’ in a conventional romantic sense. Rather than having maudlin expressions and cheap sentimentality, I prefer love here, as a transcendental force. Hence, my fiction must have a metaphorical undertone. 

 The book could serve as a record of the experience of these days of coronavirus for the following generations. The future generations could get to learn from it how we coped with the lockdown of the entire globe.

At the same time, the book will document the triumph of humanity over the ruthlessness of nature. In this history, there will also be the lesson of humility, the lesson to live in a compatible and companionable manner with Mother Nature.  In addition to that, the characters have to be portrayed with utmost sensibility, the actions must be informed by knowledge and research and the narrative must have a touch of magical realism. Is anyone writing such a book?

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The New Indian Express
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