Chances and choices

and before She Realised it by Piroja Shroff. Published in 2022 by Notion Press, 7, Red Cross Road, Egmore, Madras, 600008. Pp: 274. Price: Rs 349.

How many of us get the opportunity to press the reset button and have a second chance at life — the same life as the earlier one — but with the ability to correct our errors. Well, Nadia gets one in Piroja Shroff’s (pictured) novel, and before She Realised it. As the author confesses in the Foreword, her protagonist is very much like her, as she herself tried "to push away love, friendship and any real intimacy because (she was) so afraid of loss.”
Shroff starts with Nadia in her mother’s womb, "hearing the familiar sound once more,” very excited to be given a second chance to get everything as perfect as could be, with the same parents and the same surroundings. As a child, Shroff portrays Nadia’s loneliness and lack of affection as her parents are always distant: her mother is forever busy and Nadia looks forward to Sundays when they go out to run some errands together. Nadia desperately seeks affection which was totally lacking in the household. She yearns to belong to the "cool” club at school but even there she is isolated and discriminated against as she comes from a less affluent background, is timid and awkward. It is little wonder that she finds a friend in God and starts talking to Him every night.
Though Shroff makes sure that Nadia cannot hear God’s replies, He and his helper come to Nadia’s assistance by sending her a potential savior in the form of Arjun, a champion swimmer who comes to her school to address the students. We get a hint that this will not be a mere one-time chance encounter.
Shroff creates convincing characters. When Nadia’s parents decide to divorce, and her father keeps the apartment, he never asks her to share the place with him. She feels "irrelevant” and this feeling follows her to the USA when, at 18, she has to travel to Boston for higher studies alone, without her parents accompanying her.
It is in the USA that she gradually starts to become herself. She conquers the insecurities of her childhood and develops confidence. She realizes she is attractive and even though her features are far from perfect, she likes the way she looks. Her love life blossoms and she begins to date; she even regrets the time she lost at her school when a co-student, Jay, wanted to date her. She makes friends and realizes "she had people in her life she could genuinely reach out to.” So powerful and vital are her relationships with her friends that Shroff portrays the "high-functioning grief” she undergoes when her friend Chris dies in an accident.
A friend sets her up on an internet dating site, Hello Cupid, and she actually meets a Parsi, Zaal Irani, who has been in New York for two years and continually speaks about his stressful job which becomes one of the major irritants in their relationship. The intimacy grows from strength to strength and they get to the point where they decide to get married. But Shroff gives several indications that there are severe flaws in Zaal’s character. Nadia wonders if he is capable of feeling pain; she realizes he has low emotional quotient as he would seldom speak of hurtful matters like the passing away of his father, or the breakup in his earlier romantic relationships. Did he have "all brain, no heart?” Nadia hopefully believes he will change but when he does not show any signs of doing so, will she make the mistake of being pressured into a loveless marriage in spite of all the telltale signals and the warnings from God? Through Nadia’s behavior, Shroff advises her young readers to confront their problems and not go around them; keeping silent was akin to poison. Would Nadia go ahead and marry Zaal making mistake after mistake and live to regret it? Would this be the cause for her asking for a "reset,” for a second chance?
In the second chance, Nadia reads her mother’s diaries and is informed about her father’s life by her grandmother. Understanding and reconciliation finally take place and Shroff demonstrates how Nadia matures and grows in moral stature as she forges a healthy relationship with her parents. She returns to India and Shroff makes it amply clear that the cleaning of her grandmother’s hoarded rubbish is symbolic of the purging of the debris she has been carrying all her life. But she has one more battle to face and one more decision to make. She is on the verge of making a career by writing a recipe book in Bombay. She has also been involved in what seems a satisfying and loving relationship with Arjun who is a warm and caring person and seems to be the perfect match. She wants to stay in Bombay but Arjun has a highly paid and satisfying job in the USA. Will she make the right decision this time round and choose to be with Arjun or make her life in Bombay?
Shroff has made a wonderful debut. The poems which she includes in her novel do not seem to have the maturity and the skill of her written prose. The message is clear: at the end of our lives when we are faced with the question "Is there anything I would have done differently?” we should be able to reply with a resounding and truthful "No.” F. G.