Iyer avoids writing in a pretentious manner, but with vivid emotions intact.
KARACHI:
How often is it that emotions allow us to bend and shield a loved one? How often do we love someone in their entirety, worrying little about their sociological background? How often is it that we truly fall in love and are loved back in the same way?
In reality, you may or you may not disclose, but the reasoning to allow that one special person a place higher in the form of acceptability, lies at a greater disposition.
Neeru Iyer’s short stories, based presumably in India, tell us about our shortcomings as human beings with the overarching theme that love really does rule supreme.
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In Of Bridges Among Us, one marvels at how she revels in man-woman, woman-woman, mother-daughter, stepfather and foster-mother relationships, lucidly explaining everything. She talks about how we need to accept love as a gift and need not pine for hope of falling short of recourse.
The book’s simple tone and basic language are formatted with a complexity of the plots. However, the reader can surely understand the mysteries of this one spectacular emotion beyond the physical realm right in the beginning of the book itself.
Each of Iyer’s characters has a life of their own and a reason to stand up for a cause. If they’re not bold enough to profess their sense of belonging, they hold the mere act of seeing the beloved as their ultimate indulgence. Isn’t that what love really is all for?
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One can argue that Iyer talks of love alone but then we as humans are obsessed with gaining some possession of it, in our lives. We want to be loved and to be accepted.
In the process of building these bridges, we at times erect walls instead. However, Iyer’s characters prove that hatred might be a very strong emotion, love neutralises everything.
One hopes she writes spins more of these simple tales, set in the backdrop of bewitching emotions of anger and hatred, exploring relationships beyond all-else and manipulating her simple character sketches. In Of Bridges Among Us, they’re too sensitive for reality; if only wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Nonetheless, man will continue to hope that love shines and relationships shine with it.
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Title: Of Bridges Among Us
Author: Neeru Iyer
Publisher: Palimpsest Publishers, India
ISBN: 9382622071
Pages: 216
Price: $3.69
Saadia Qamar is a reporter at The Express Tribune’s Life & Style desk
Published in The Express Tribune, January 17th, 2016.
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