Ayush Majumder

a book which tries to be more than what it wants to be, or more than what the plot demands. starts of with quite a decent plot of two families who live in the same apartment and are so close that their lives are intertwined, but goes on to be a predictable tale of one family assembling wealth and the other family remaining the typical middle class household, thus leading to a ridge between them. durjoy attempts to take some political potshots or parallels after the families seperate, with the current right wing and their education policies and propaganda- driven policies being the target, but the arrow misses the centre circle by large and the targets become too obvious, weak and predictable. the entire crux of the central plot- anvesha and druvan's love story- is, however, very amateurish. it relies on bizarre coincidences and hilarious superficial stuff, and the emotional part of it is quite cringey. the fact that they are born exactly at the same moment to two intertwined families is- a bit undigestable. in order to portray the so-called intensity, durjoy relies heavily on sex and sexuality which is perhaps more than what the plot demands. the fact that parents get to know of their sexual exploits, which leads to their seperation, which is followed by anvesha's life threatening disease, is very predictable in nature and monotonously the same as the plot of several daily made stories. now, the most interesting part. apparently, a firm and it's scientists build a lab and work out a formula to "transfer the soul of two people into one body and keep both living". in order to get selected for this program, there is a popular vote and anvesha and druvan come up to the top ranks. this is done by winning over public sympathy by "arranging a fake marriage" filled with emotional melodrama. druvan's body, at the end, houses both their souls as a result of a soul transplant. I mean, this entire plot could be laughed off, but let's just consider the hyperimaginative effort put in, and realize that a plot needn't be this critical at the basics- it just kills off the credibility of the entire plot, which is in any case supplimented by heavy, agonizing dramatization. overall, the book may seem attractive for a few selective parts and quotes, but the plot, and the execution of the plot rests on a mere vacuum of quotational attractiveness.