This is one of those books which play with the extent
of your imagination and hold the capacity to tarnish the ability of your mind to
differentiate fiction and reality.
John A. Raju writes his “Purgatory of the Half
Forgotten Riddles” to commemorate the strange fallacies of the human mind. He explores
the vibrancy of the fictitious realm humans create up in their mind. In that realm,
there is no right or wrong, neither are there any boundaries. Upon careless
groping, that realm may very well dissolve with the tangible real world we exist
in.
Peter is a writer who often reminisces about his childhood
and his past. He takes us on a journey of rediscovering his life through the
help of the figments of his memories—memories of him getting brought up without
a mother, memories with his childhood buddies Alex and Alice, memories of the
same Alice he falls in love with, of his school, games, books and beyond. He
takes us along to question his passions, his ambitions, his betrayals and his
faiths. Buoyed by this kaleidoscopic picture of remembrances and nostalgia, Peter
gets unfurled as a real person. The storyline keeps getting mysterious and we constantly
feel that Peter is sometimes very delusional, sometimes too impulsive and
sometimes he tries hard to evoke sympathy and good wishes. Is the Peter we are
seeing really the one who is talking about himself? Is his past really getting
conveyed as colourfully as he vouches to be? What losses of identity and hidden
aspects of his past will slowly dawn upon us?
The story, at first, seems like the unravelling of someone’s
past—with a detailed account of the most minute of happenings, and the emotions
and hysteria associated with it. But as we go deeper and deeper, his past starts
to come off as mysterious and murky. The terrain of remembrance and recollection
that the author constructs through the eyes of his protagonist Peter, makes us build
up a character wholesomely like never before. We feel for Peter amidst his
agonies, laugh at his subtle witty humours and we empathize with the vibes of desolation
and loneliness he emanates. We see him as a tangible, real person living next
door—and get involved in his life quite involuntarily. Before we properly know it,
we start sensing several mysterious aspects of his personality which were
hidden in his first impression. We get the flavour of vehement envy, the
mistiness of prejudices and the odour of fear of loss of acceptance. By this point,
we start to look at Peter with an eye of sympathy and compassion---and we twitch
our tongues at how severe fate might have loomed large before him. The struggle
of never seeing his mother, the struggle of getting brought up without a proper
intervention of his father, along with the effect that his father’s demise and
his aunt’s departure might have had on him—it all makes us ponder over the
blatancy of human destiny and the belittlement of personal desires in front of
it.
A huge plot twist comes towards the end of the book—which
completely shakes the foundation of understanding that the readers might have been
building until that moment. It emboldens the writer’s ability to convince and
convey, and makes his intellect praiseworthy. This twist in the tale somehow
reconsolidates our previous analysis of Peter’s past. It makes us rethink and again
go back and search for details we might have overlooked then, and come back burdened
with more ambiguity and more questions. A massive void of imagination and perception
suddenly grips us all—engulfing us in a bubble of denial and cynicism.
A visible downside to the book was the over indulgence
in terms of the analysis of the protagonist’s past. There was an endless discussion
of some really mundane events, and although Peter’s take on them was
fascinating—it kept getting cyclical and repetitive after a point. I understood
that the author was perhaps trying to justify the unclarity of Peter’s memory
fetching, but as a reader, there remains a possibility to get overburdened with
the plethora of analyses of his mental condition. Moreover, the very last
chapter of the book attempts to elucidate the plot twist which is established just
prior to it, and this strips the story of the element of mysticism that was intact
till then. The open-endedness to the book simply vapourizes and we get a very
clear-cut explanation of everything that has been told—much like the convincing
our mind that whatever we’ve read, is indeed very true.
Loss of identity and the scarcity of mutual
consideration looms large as the primary theme of the book. It upholds the basic
fundamentals of a deeply fascinating psychological saga of multiple interpretations
and hazy storytelling. It explores the various hues of memory and bears the hint
of some extremely disastrous psychological syndromes like anxiety, schizophrenia
and bipolar disorders. It skyrockets the flag of the seriousness of mental conditions
and imagination influencing our lives. Partly thriller and partly imaginative fiction,
this book rightfully makes its space in the list of my essential recommendations.
Disclaimer: This review is in lieu of a review copy.
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