Percolation of Time

Quantifying and then compartmentalizing emotions be it hate, anger or love, is humanly unattainable but the ones like Nancy, who live a kaleidoscopic life shall inadvertently find themselves consumed by all of them and then attempting to tag them all. There is always a juggle which each one of us lives, the juggle to make the informed choice between the achievable and the unachievable and from here on, this book attempts to grasp the distance one travels with time, to face the outcome of our well weighed decisions. The deft hands in which life has placed all its cards to distribute them wishfully are partial and Nancy came to know about this fact a fortnight after her thirteenth birthday when those hands quietly played some contradicting cards, abruptly ending the should-have-been happily ever after love story of her parents. From here on she never understood if she walked through her days looking at her feet or they just sped past her, with the person holding the cards looking at her through the window of the racing vehicle. Her grandparents tried to be with her but an year later she again finds herself standing in-front of two burning pyres. Her father's business partner, Mr. Rai took her to his house and then it was their manager Mr. Mehra who pretended to help her. But nowhere could she stay for long. All alone in the world and too naive to live alone she sought refuge in a boarding school and then in the hostel of Hindustan College of Medical Sciences, where she meets her future friends. Due to the delinquent hands of destiny or as the outcome of informed choices, reason can be any and many, but Nancy finds herself in the middle of communal mayhem of December 1992 and meets Jamaal, one of the rioters, just to lose him in the blasts that ravage Bombay later. Sumedha's days comprised loneliness and her evenings reflected the scattered snapshots of happy moments once lived by her mother. When she saw Nancy for the first time she was stuck by the uncanny nervous similarity between Nancy and her own mother. She knew Nancy was standing on a macabre trampoline then too she had to help her. Sumedha believed that the word destiny is used by escapers but when Jamaal entered Nancy's life simultaneous to her father stepping back in her home, she felt like the Mickey Mouse sticker she had glued on the ceiling fan above her. But when once again Jamaal did what he felt had to be done concurrent with her mother accepting her father back, she too had to look out for the person deftly holding all the cards. Anya is a lot like Nancy. There are biological parents and then there are embraced parents. Anya didn't know this discrimination but since she was made to realize this fact, she has not been able to forgive her seminal parent who divulged the details and also because her mirror reflects him. She and Nancy understand each other the best and due to the same reason she can justify Jamaal but finds it impossible to pardon him, but what about Nancy? Prerna, a well fed Punjabi girl had lived a sunny and a sun-flowery life but as she grew up her stammered speech hampered her. Her whole childhood her grandmother gave her the undivided attention she craved for and later Nureet, the love of her life did the same. When finally it came to choose between Nancy and Nureet, she didn't know she should have thought twice. Jamaal the young, restless boy, who has from his childhood treaded the path forsaken by the adults too, the path which had to circumvent compassion of his mother and had to walk through his inflammatory father. The confusion of a staggered household, the exasperation of lack of familial consent and the inputs of a fanatically angry friend, all work up together and leave Jamaal where he had always been standing, in the middle of the 'Y'. The path he picks up finally, the informed choice he makes finally, completes his circumcision and affects the lives, he sincerely wished to protect."