Author: Manreet Sodhi Someshwar
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788172238285
Description
Seventy-one-year-old Baksh wakes up one night in pain and ventures out in search of a doctor. In the time it takes him to reach a hospital, his heart irretrievably damaged, he travels down memory lane, reliving his life lived in the border town of Ferozepur, Punjab-from pre-Partition India, to the holocaust that accompanied independence, the Indo-Pak wars, the Green Revolution and the rise of religious extremism.
Increasingly isolated in the terror-infested eighties, an era of curfews, encounters and hit lists, his world all but falls apart as his wife falls under the spell of a rabid preacher; his best friend, a Hindu, flees the town; the Bar Council where he works cleaves along religious lines; and he himself makes an error of judgment that could have serious security ramifications. As he nears the end of his walk, and his life, he wonders: will there ever be a redemption, a homecoming'
Redolent of the soil and the spirit of Punjab, The Long Walk Home is as much one man's odyssey through tumultuous times as it is an elegiac meditation on the passing of a way of life, on faith and fundamentalism and misguided passions.
COMMENTS
Yeh faasle teri galiyon ke humse tay na huey, hazaar baar rukey hum hazaar baar chaley Na jaane kaun si mitti watan ki mitti thi, nazar mein dhool, jigar mein liye ghubaar chaley.
-Gulzar
‘A Narrative of pain that knows no borders’.
-Gulzar
Contents
The Bhalla Family Tree
Prologue
Day 1: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1946
Day 2: Noor
Baksha
The Last Walk
1947
Day 3: Noor
Baksh
The Last Walk
Day 4: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1954
Day 5: Noor
Baksh
The Last Walk
1958
Day 6: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1965
Day 7: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1971
Day 8: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1977
Day 9: Noor
Baksh
The Last Walk
1854
Day 10, Morning: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
1988
Day 10, Evening: Anant
Baksh
The Last Walk
Aaaaaaa2004
Then, Now
Epilogue: One Day Later
Acknowledgements