I happened to read the novel, The Sanctuary, by Hemant Vasant Jadhav, our very own TOPS guru, hvj1. It's just been released and is available over flipkart and amazon. I ordered my personal copy through flipkart. It's heartening to note that IFGians shoot words as efficiently as they shoot their lead.
The plot is fascinating and starts off at the place we all love and hold close to our hearts - Shooting Sports. It tracks the journey of an aspiring national level shooter, Vikram Shekhawat, who inherits by chance, a vast estate that holds a past that's sinister and gilded at the same time. The early part, including a jilted love affair, sets up the stage for the actual trial of the young lad who shoulders the social responsibility cast by his late father. In this he is helped by an enigmatic figure, his Guru. While the omniscient "Gurubhau", acts as a catalyst to stem and guide the flow of events, he restrains himself from giving any "capsule" advice and lets the lad figure things out for himself. Then of course steps in the doppelganger of the first love interest, albeit a "positive" image and helps Vikram discover his destiny and with it ... a huge treasure. This destiny has its seeds sown in the post 1857 National Uprising events which are hardly spoken of today and seldom narrated. The dividends that the young shooter reaps are tremendous and worth their weight in gold ... and silver too !!! The ghost of the British officer haunts the plot till the last line of the last page. The ghost of Major Hurst just would not let me put the book down.
The stage is set in the sylvan idyllic settings of the hill station of Mahabaleshwar, the erstwhile capital of the Bombay Province of the Raj. Reading this novel makes me wish another series of trips to this place, albeit with a different mind-set. Next time on, my visits to Mahabaleshwar shall have the enthusiasm and the zeal of an explorer and the hope that I literally might lay my fingers on a piece of gold. May be Vikram Shekhawat missed out something... for me.
I wish happy reading to y'all and good luck to hvji.
regs
A.
P.S. : My humble respects on the day of Guru Purnima to all those on IFG from whom I have learnt something and keep learning as days roll on.
