‘Can Love Happen Twice?’- Ravinder Singh; Penguin Metro Reads; Rs.125; pp.216
The sensational and much awaited novel by the best selling author of ‘I too had a Love Story’ is unfortunately least sensational.
Ravin, the hero of the earliler novel who almost closed the chapter of ‘love’ in his life after his fiancée Khushi’s untimely demise in the earlier book encounters another romance on his official stay at Brussels, Belgium. Simar is an Indian girl, with all the qualities to be a heroine; young, fair, cute, lovely, affluent, enjoyably stubborn, romantically susceptible. She falls almost head over heels for Ravin after reading his real life novel ‘I too had a Love Story’. She reads, completes and cries all through the night and the next morning she calls up Ravin to tell ‘You are my sweetest heart’. What follows in the next 80 pages are nothing but maudlin romance. The real Simar is more westernized than Indian. She wants ‘her personal space’ with ‘her husband to be’ without the baggage of his parents. Ravin, being a true and lovely Indian boy wants his parents to be with him to be taken care of.
Ahem, another 30 pages carry broken heart, separation, pleadings, arguments, counter arguments, depression and copious tears, not by the heroine, but by our hero. He lands himself in a mental asylam for treatment. This lengthy, terrible story goes on air on a Valentines Day for hours through 93.5 RED FM throughout the world narrated live by Ravin’s two close buddies. Simar, after listening to the tearful tale of her beloved, decides to join her lover.
The meticulous concentration that has gone into the detailing of silly romance is missing in developing and establishing the characters. The change of emotions and moods seems to be too swift and artificial. If this can be considered as a new age romance, all sentiments sound just superficial.
Well, in a way, it is true.
