Dhamar book review, another Airlift in making

I do not know how I got connected to Biju Verghese (author of the book Dhamar, a fiction), on facebook and he gifted me his book.

Getting a book as a gift is the most precious one. I am fond of reading books. Reading a book enhance your creativity, imagination and thinking capacity. A good author, specially fiction author is one, who connect the plot and character of the story with the reader. When he writes something connecting to real incident, he does a good research, study Socio, political and geogrpahical context of the region which is in story. I must say, Biju has done this well. The name of the characters, places, real incidents, location etc. This reminds me Lajja by Taslima Nasreen. I am not comparing anyone, just connecting styles and pieces.

What is Dhamar?

Dhamar is a novel, a fiction based on Indian government's evacuation operation in Yemen in 2015 where Minister of State General V k Singh was self present in Yemen while rescuing Indian from the war torn country. We rescued not only our people, but also helped Asian, our neighbours such as Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, Pakistani, US and other countries. Pakistanis also rescued Indian, no doubt and Biju mentions it well in his book.

Dhamar is a University in Yemen

The story revolves around protagonist of the story Prakash who is working as an administrative staff in Dhamar University alongwith his two friends (Chatura, a Sri Lankan and Rahman, a Bangladeshi). I don't know why Biju chosen two very close friends from our two neighbors, two allies who are indeed our friends (not Nepal and Bhutan or Afghanistan who are our closer friends), possibly he wanted to bring diversity and philosophy of culture, I.e. Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam, the whole world is my home).

Novel is divided in several chapters and each chapter is short , goes with story in Yemen and in Flashback in India. Chapters are short so it engages readers well. The Flashback story is also well connected. Language is simple. He did not use any erotic lines just to sell the book. Like, the physical relationship is described as "sweet shop burgled" and this line is enough to give imagination to the adult author and nothing for the young audience. I found similar maturity in Resonance (searchy blog to know about this book).

The story is all about a middle class boy, a middle class family who aspire to live happy life but things change in the life. They struggle to live life with basic necessity and how so called friends try to take advantage of that. A father who loves his daughter a lot (Prabha/ Pappy), why middle class or lower middle class have to migrate middle East to make life better (same is the story of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, AP, Telangana, West Bengal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and other Asian countries). How they suffer the life over there, the circumstances which leads to opting such job far away from their families. What happens to family when such unforeseen civil war breaks whether it is Yemen or Kuwait. Plight of the labours and nurses who takes loan to study and to get job abroad when they do not want to leave when even their life is in danger. The book is good from parenting aspect also and how it illustrate how parents need to change their attitude towards children and their relationship including giving freedom to them.

The book is good, but still need few improvements like instead of using you and I, it is written as I and you. That brings an obstacle if the readers are habitual of reading it correctly I.e. you and I. The language and sentences are loosely composed and it looks like a chat transcript sometime. That should be improved with further proof reading and editing. If it is done, I am sure it will be hugely popular.

When I said another Airlift in making, I didn't mean to say this book is inspired from the movie, not at all. The book is completely original and does not resemble at all with the movie Airlift. It can definitely inspire a movie producer to make a movie based on evacuation operation and has a good material to show the world what happens to family of such people when such emergency arises.

Conclusion: you must read this boom whether you love fiction, whetheer you want to know what happened in Yemen ans what would have happened to expats and local people, whether you are a parent and even if you value good books. Its definitely not an easy task to write such a good book.

Thanks Biju. Visit Biju's and book's official page at

You can buy book online at Amazon, Snapdeal and eBay. 

Here is Biju's official fb profile

https://m.facebook.com/biju.vargheese.94

And here is Dhamar official page

https://m.facebook.com/dhamarstory/

Happy reading

Govind

Mumbai 

June 20, 2016