Dr. Bharat Desai's Blog

While writing a book review on novel one has to be cautious in not telling the details, so that reader still needs to read the actual novel, on the same time they should find the basic details of the story in the review. Yes, I will do that.

We Are Alive To Live Only is a story revolving around three young people in their twenties, namely Suhana from Kolkatta, Raahi from Surat and Joy from New Delhi. They meet and a novel is created in Mumbai. You have to read the novel to know how they become friends and how around ten years pass.

A story of a little known frontier village Mano - Majra (Punjab) - a railway station situated near the bank of river Sutlej dividing India & Pakistan. Here the author narrates the history of 1947 Summer after Partition was declared and frontier elsewhere has become the scene of rioting and bloodshed, but this is the village where Sikhs and Muslims have always lived peacefully and partition did not mean much. Life is regulated by the trains which rattle across the nearby river bridge. One day a local money lender is Kala Ramlal is murdered. Suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh - a gangster having an affair with the Muslim weaver's young daughter Nooran. A western educated communist agent Iqbal Singh comes and does his activity here and stays at gurudwara after meeting Meet Singh - a priest. And one day a train comes from Pakistan full of dead Sikhs and some days later the same thing - a train full Sikhs from Pakistan is repeated. Imam Baksh, Mullah a Muslim spiritual leader at a m…