The Last Song of Dusk

Some said he is in the league of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, while some compared him to Vikram Seth. But for me, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's splendid writing made him a writer out of the world. His adept choice of words and ingenious imagination made Anuradha, Vardhamaan, Nandini and the rest of the characters in his debut novel – The Last Song of Dusk, come alive.

The story starts with Ms. Anuradha leaving Udaipur to marry a man she had never seen in her lifetime. While she anxiously boards the train, peacocks themselves fly to sing a farewell song for her, and from there, her journey of a new and completely spellbinding life begins.

Anuradha, after marrying with a man of her dreams - Vardhmaan, starts loving life like never before. She believes, Vardhmaan was the best thing that had happened to her life, and gifts him a true bundle of joy, their loving son, Mohan, only to know that destiny had completely different plans for his future.

After the death of their innocent son, both Anuradha and Vardhmaan get devastated. The sorrow of their lives creates a huge invisible rift between the two of them. The rift that will never be balanced, the gap that will never be bridged, not even after the birth if their second child. She goes back to her mother’s place after Mohan’s death to seek the song of her life.

Whilst in the quest of solace, Anuradha meets Nandini, a girl who walks on water, paints people’s true selves and seeks sexual pleasure with the beasts of jungle. She loves art and loves even more to become the muse of Khalil Muratta, India’s finest painter who’d taken her in his wings. This bold and wide girl doesn’t give it a second thought when she teaches Khalil how to fall out of love and affiances the son of the Governor of India on the same night. And, while all this happens, Anuradha just observes everything vulnerably, cursing Dariya Mahal, the haunted house which is the cause of all the melancholy she and her family had suffered, except Shloka. Shloka was a mercy done by Dariya Mahal on Anuradha. Dariya Mahal keeps its promise of not hurting Shloka, and then comes the time when Anuradha needs to pay it back. Shloka has to go. He has to leave Dariya Mahal. On the day of his departure, when they both sit on the wooden chaise, admiring the painting that the dusk has drawn on the sky, she sings a lullaby for him.

While she bids adieu to Shloka, she remembers how Nandini drew exactly this same scene some years ago. And that’s when she realizes that the departure of Shloka proves to be the last mourning for her. That’s when she finds the song of her life… the last song of dusk.