True Love Is Blind! - A Book Review

Book Review: Hold My Hand – Durjoy Dutta
Published by Penguin Metro Reads in 2013.

Image credit: goodreads.com
Being an Indian, a book-lover and a fan of the rom-com genre (in movies as well as books), it is strange indeed that up until last year, I didn’t read any book of the popular romance writers of India like Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Dutta, Nikita Singh, and so on; writers of the books that are termed instant “bestsellers”.

Why I didn’t, is a conversation for another day.

So, what drew me to this lesser-known book by Dutta?

The answer is in the question, if you look closely. The name of this book never came up in any conversation around the author (not that I had many to begin with) and that’s why, when I saw it up for grabs at a cheap stall in the Book Fair at Lucknow, and read the back cover, I was instantly attracted to the story. It’s not everyday that writers rise above those cliched romances to write something truly unique, plus I finally had a chance to explore the writing of an author I had only heard of, so I bought the yellow paperback.

And sure enough, the book got me hooked since the beginning!

Nineteen-year-old Deep, a student of New Delhi Technological Institute, is usually described by just one word when assessed by girls from other colleges that his friends force him to meet — ‘tall’. True, his lanky frame, with a waist worth the envy of runway models as he puts it, does dominate others’ opinions of him, but intelligent, nerdy Deep has so much more to him. Like his combined love for libraries and coding software that lands him with an internship to Hong Kong.

His first encounter with Ahana, is in their hotel lift, where he is mesmerised by her bluish-green eyes just by looking at her reflection in the mirror. Our shy protagonist of course, makes no attempt to talk to her even as they exit at the same floor and she follows slowly behind him to her own room, hardly ten feet away from his. A few more encounters in the lift or at the café of the hotel follow, with not much exchange of words, but Ahana is now the inspiration for Deep’s first novel.

However, it is at their chance meeting at a nightclub where they both have been separately forced to come—he by his senior at work and she by her enthusiastic father—that Deep realizes that Ahana is blind.

But isn’t true love blind too? Ahana’s muscular, athletic, middle-aged father takes an instant liking to Deep, much to his relief (unlike the fathers of most heroines in our Hindi movies), and keeps trying to set them up. So as Ahana and Deep roam the multi-cultural streets of Hong Kong, he describes to her the sights that are plain to his eyes but which, through his words, become magically alive in Ahana’s mind, as she holds onto his hand. She, in turn, provides her unique perspective on everything he sees by her perceptions of sounds and smells. Ahana, though blind, sees in Deep a boy no other normal girl could see before—someone to hold onto forever.

But when her pessimist, visually-impaired-since-birth yet gorgeous ex Aveek arrives in Hong Kong once again, Deep is left wondering if his hopes were too high.

In the end, the choice is really Ahana’s to make—to live in the shadow of an arrogant yet successful ‘motivational’ speaker cum blind genius, or to be the ‘exquisite’ muse to a young writer who promises to stay by her side while demanding nothing in return but the smile that lights up her eyes.

This book will leave you feeling you had your own Deep, no matter what your abilities or disabilities are!

Oh, and there’s also the budding love story of Ahana’s father toward the second half of the book, but it proves more like a filler for the ultimate climax and almost abrupt end. The pace that was maintained by the author since the start suddenly accelerates as the culmination happens too fast, though it in’t an unsatisfactory closure.

The frank, humorous description of characters shows how deeply the author observes his surroundings. And it isn’t all descriptions either—the dialogues and the camaraderie between characters flows naturally and made me laugh more than once.

And even though for the most part it was set in Hong Kong, the book is dominated by Indian characters, so a full ten on the Indian-ness factor. The narration is engaging, so much so that once you pick the book up, you can’t keep it down without reading it completely—no matter how many times you’ve read it before! (That's the reason why I read it last year, re-read it yesterday, and wrote this review today!)

If you want to visit Hong Kong by Paperback Express, this is surely a good book for you, that packs along a bit of romance (but isn't overly cheesy), emotion and humour along the way.

Thumbnail Image Credit: elements.envato.com