The night was silent as death. Not a soul stirred, no sound of feet, no crickets chirped, no leaves rustled, no wind in the air- just an all-pervading sheet of darkness with a deep colour of silence. The silence outside seemed to echo the silence inside him. He sad huddled. In silence. Waiting.
Set against the backdrop of time, Dinesh Prasad's book is a collection of novellas and short stories about love that sears and consumes, elevates and devastates between Lahore and Delhi in the wake of the sub-continent's partition in 1947.
There are stories of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, men and women who come together and yet are symbols of possibilities unexplored because the world around them is exploding, stripping them of their dignity and humanity.
With names like 'Kasturi','Madhurangi', 'Beeran', 'Meiral' for the stories, Prasad also tries to put in metaphorical explanations.
According to Prasad, 'East of Love West of Desire', published by India Research Press, is a mirror work of cultural variety and a kaleidoscope of alluring colourful characters through a derived sensibility of Partition.
“In this adventure of love and hate, the conquistadors that emerge are ordinary people, who moved from east to west and from west to east, people who had the formidable resilience to live, people who were passionate about life despite its vagaries, and people who found hope in the chaos of abomination," he says.