Men and Dreams in the Dhauladhar

Name: Men and Dreams in the Dhauladhar

Author: Kochery C. Shibu

Publisher: Niyogi Books; First edition (3 August 2015)

Paperback: 284 pages

Language: English

Blurb: A Hydel project in the remote Himalayas- three people brought together by fate.
Nanda an engineer from Kerala at the dam construction site, hiding from his past, from the law, torn between the love for his dear ones, and the Kalari code of revenge.
Khusru, a youth displaced from his native village in Kashmir, a gambit in the terror plot that threatens to blow up the dam, working as a labourer at the site. Rekha, a Kathak dancer at heart, a doctor by profession, arrives at the campsite as the consort of Khusru. A village that accepts the dictates of modernity with a heavy heart, its population steeped in superstitions and religious beliefs.

All throng the campsite like moths to a flame, some escape untouched, successful; some miss a step and perish. each has a story to tell and a dream to realize. Men and Dreams in the Dhauladhar are about the aspirations of these people, with their cares and worries woven to the site life. The fury of nature and hardships of project life have no mercy for the weak and no time for the dead.
Like an eternal spectator, the Dhauladhar watches as men risk their lives and limb in the quest to fulfill their dreams.

My review

For every book I read, the first thing I notice will be its cover and the title font.  This title cover shows the beautiful Himalayan mountain range and being a travel wanderlust, it strikes me very hard. Because of this appealing cover, I always picked it to read and re-read so many times.

The story revolves around three main characters Nanda, Khusru, and Rekha. Nanda is an engineer from Kerala who comes to Dhauladhar for supervising a dam construction on the Dhalaudhar mountain range. Khusru is a Kashmiri who is a part of a terrorist group which is planning to blow up the dam. For that purpose, he joins at the construction site disguised as a laborer. Rekha  is a doctor and a classical dancer who is in search of an ideal match for herself. All these 3 protagonists meet at a certain point in the novel. The rest of the story revolves around the problems they’re facing as their lives intervene with each other

Men and dreams in Dhauladhar is a character-driven book, because the author Kochery C Shibu, has invested a lot of effort to develop each and every character to the fullest. The aspirations, the dreams, the thoughts, the background of all main characters are given in vast detail. It is one of the best quality of a book I personally like. The book opens with the travel of the protagonist Nanda to the construction site. From the first chapter, the book is written in a way to create suspicion and mysteriousness in the character. Thus the book kicks off promisingly to every reader and does keep the entertainment graph high throughout the book.

One-third of this book covers the technicalities of building a dam and I liked those parts very much because of my engineering background. Technical fiction is one of the genres most of the authors feared to engage because it only appeals certain group of people from a particular technical background. But here the author mixed this technical fiction with an accurate formula that makes it readable to all the kinds of readers.  Also, being a Keralite, I loved the description of Kerala and the family backgrounds of the protagonist Nanda.

Another notable quality of the book is it has large number of supporting characters.  But the author cleverly has woven all their lives with the beautiful regional description of their home and dreams, goals which makes the story a full circle.

Overall, the book is well planned and well written which is worth your time.

My rating: 3.5/5