9. Review of “Destiny of Shattered Dreams” – Nilesh Rathod

Review of “Destiny of Shattered Dreams” – Nilesh Rathod

With his debut in the field of fiction writing, Nilesh Rathod takes you inside the inner workings of the boardroom. With a forced backing of political black money, Atul Malhotra, the budding entrepreneur, along with his team of equally able friends, works to make a mark of with the exponential expansion of his telecom business. Caught between personal responsibilities, a marriage going down the drain, expanding business, funding issues, political pressure, incognito mediators, CBI raids, unintended but unavoidable murders, and the likes, Atul strives to make ends meet. Aarti, a management fresher brings a breath of fresh air to his otherwise unstable relationship with his wife. He falls for her while she, who idolizes her boss, too succumbs to his charms and intellect. What follows is a risky affair both in corporate and personal life leading Atul to heartbreak and jail term, which is where the story starts. He recalls his life to his cell mates and in retrospect revisits his actions and devils from his past to find out that he too has become one.

The best thing about the book is that emotions like love and hate are touched upon very finely but with a profound impact. In between the boardroom mumbo-jumbo, it is essentially the story of a man’s rise to glory and his fall due to choices he made to attain that glory. Personally, I’ve read many authors writing tomes on love as an emotion, but in this book, I especially like a few paragraphs written on hate, its meaning and its impact on Atul’s life as told to him by his father figure and lawyer Qazi. The icing on the cake is that the state of mind of the protagonist is beautifully described using Hindi poems along with their equally exquisite translations.

The writing is smooth and makes you drift away easily between the pages. I am thankful to the author for not using Hinglish in dialogs (as it is very popular among writers these days) because that just makes it seem forceful upon the reader. Using one language, I think, makes it easier to maintain the flow and avoid unnecessary repetitions. After having read my share of a few corporate sagas, this brings out a point that when faced with a dilemma, if you take an alternative route, it doesn’t mean the end of the journey, because in your quest to reach the sky you will again reach an impasse and will again need to make a choice. It is rightly said by the author, “Itne unche ude ke wapas na aa sakey, aasmaan chhune ke aibh mein wapas na ja sakey…”