Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande This is a work of fiction. For Anupama Life is not what one lived, but one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez You cannot write more truly about yourself than you are. - Ludwig Wittgenstein ***** A word of Thanks I thank my elder sister Anjali Deshpande who read an earlier draft of this once ‘secret’ novelas an accomplished novelist and story teller. This novel owes a lot to her remarks. If I have been unable to incorporate some of her comments on the draft, the fault ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande II The Lovers It was past midnight when Ravi went to bed after smoking a on the terrace.He tip toed into the bedroom, took off his pants and shirt and slipped into the bed. Both mother and daughter were fast asleep next to him their silhouettes visible in the semi dark room. A pointless conversation with his wife was the last thing he desired after a trying day. He knew she was inquisitive by nature. He failed anyway because a few minuteslater she turned towards him murmuring something in sleep. He felt her smooth warm ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande III The Gentleman The last few days had sapped Ravi’s energy and increased his anxiety. wondered what he would do with his father’s illness.The prolonged illness had exhausted him but he could not fall sleep. He had taken his father four times to the hospital in the last one month. The doctors with bored expressions had revived him with copious doses of oxygen and saline.They sent him back home after this.In the meantime the Patriarch cursed the hospital staff in words which would have embarrassed a Punjabi sergeant-major. “I will fuck you” he shouted at ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande IV The Doctor and the Patriarch Ravi tried his best to look at his father’s from a distance. He knew very well that a son can rarely do that with his father. In life, unlike a neatly narrated story, the present is always kneaded into the past. Once his friend Dheeraj had asked him “Do you think we would have led the same life Uncle did in his times?When I think of my father I often ask myself this question” The friends were talking about Sunita Vohra, a well endowed female table tennis playerwho was ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande V Family Memories A bitter life had made the Doctor’s memories rancid. Ravi’s childhood had her but his growth into an unsuccessful romanticmade her anxious. She never expressed this anxiety in words but her eyes said everything. The Doctordisapproved of Ravi’s love for his attractive young wife. The fact that hedid not dominate his wife did not go down well with the bitter old woman. Sometimes Ravi thought his mother wanted to see herself in his wife to vindicate her opinion of matrimony. His choice of a girl from a Punjabi family was also disliked ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande VI Nanda In the late 1970s Nanda returned from a medical college in Sonipat with dislocated knee andgave up the medical course despite the open disapproval of her parents. Nanda was erudite, imaginative, disorganized and, as it happens with such people, bad at prescribed studies. From Assam she had been sent to Hyderabad to finish school. When she refused to distinguish herself in that city and Ravi’s grandfather died she was called to Delhi. She failed the entrance tests in two schools before a third admitted her. She passed out from this school situated in ...Read More

Dreamt Lives Anirudh Deshpande VII Two cremations. After Bahadur and Ravi removed the Patriarch’s corpse from the bed the what to do with it arose in Ravi’s mind. He had never prepared a cadaver for cremation and the vivid memories of preparations for a cremation went back to the summer of 1971 when his sister, the one younger than Nanda but older than him, died. Everything happened without much warning. The Doctor’sdreamy family had arrived in Delhi on a freezing January morning in 1968. Getting transferred to the capital from NEFA was never easy in India but the Doctor ...Read More