By Pradeep Atrey
Book Review: 1971 A War StoryByDr. Neelam Batra-Verma. (2018 Victoria, Canada: Tellwell Talent. www.tellwell.ca. CAD 14.99.
It is true that fictional stories are grounded in real-life events, albeit reimagined and remolded by the genius of the writer so much so that the fiction overshadows reality. However, the present-day readers’ interest in real-life stories is growing steadily and the phenomenon has given rise to new literary genres, such as creative non-fiction and fiction based on real-life stories.
A number of novels based on true stories, for example,The Woman King (Dana Stevens and Maria Bello), The Acrobat (Edward Delaney), The Christie Affair (Nina de Gramont), Sister Mother Warrior (Vanessa Riley), Winter Work (Dan Fesperman), Lady Joker (Kaoru Takamura), Take My Hand (Dolen Perkins-Valdez), Code Name Hélène (Ariel Lawhon), White Houses (Amy Bloom), See What I Have Done (Sarah Schmidt), and Inferno (Eileen Myles), to name a few, have attained great success, and some of them are made into films as well.To some readers this trend is reassuring,for several reasons.
Novels based on real-life provide a grounding perspective, and true events may be stranger than fiction. In some cases, the characters are well-known to the larger reading public and draw more empathy from the readers, while in other cases, the story may provide more information than is commonly known to people.
Dr. Neelam Batra-Verma’s novel 1971 A War Story is one such novel. Reading the book I had the feeling that the events in the story are well known, so, at times it became a little heavy to read all the details concerning the well-known issues, such as India’s constant struggle to save herself and her people from the aggression of her [hostile] neighbor and archrival, Pakistan, the wars India has fought imposedupon her people by Pakistan, the dirty border politics that goes on in both the countries, the difficulties of life of the people along the border on both sides, the daily struggles of the widows or separated wives of soldiers, and so on.
But then, asthe author has declaredin the back-cover blurb that the novel is based on true events, the novel became an interesting read with lots of new information on little-known facts.
Partition of the land into two countries, India and Pakistan in 1947, gave rise to hordes of issues in both the countries, the most burning of which has been the status of Kashmir, leading to loss of countless lives on both sides and the general public paying the price of politicians’ aspirations.
The novel highlights some of those issues. The novel relates the story of an Indian soldier (rather two soldiers) lost in Pakistan in 1971 war, who returns home after 28 years. The narrator raises questions to the plight of soldiers who,under patriotic fervor,sacrifice their allbut are ultimately disillusioned by the apathy of the government since the responsible authorities care the least to rescue them from being mercilessly butcheredin enemy territoriesand bring them home.
In most cases, the government disowns them and lets them rot in prisons and ultimately die in hostileconditions where everyone but a few are their enemies and are ready to kill them any moment.
Soldiers commonly come from humble backgrounds and strongly believe in the narrative of the Motherland, while political leaders and the people with larger stakes in the wealth of the country are clever enough not to send their wards to army to fight for the same Motherland.
The narrator’s voice, quite often angry at the exploitative system, is very often clearly perceptible. The novel may also be read as anemerging narrative voice for women’s empowerment. It isthe daughter of the lost soldier, born in his absence and not known to him, who also joins army and believes her father was alive in Pakistan. She resolves to bring him back, even if she had to disregard her official duty during Kargil war.
The narrator brings her point home through this female protagonist: If the government,as a collective system, is apathetic to the plight of lost soldiers, especially the prisoners of war, it’s the duty of individuals to take action and save their loved ones’ lives, not only for feelings and emotions, but also for the sake of justice.
Pradeep Atrey is an Independent Researcher in Vancouver.
