Nebula is a dark object

Author Name: M.T. Vasudevan Nair

“Silence is a kind of music,” says Wimala, a teacher who spends the school vacation weeks at a teachers’ residence, where all the other teachers leave for their villages and towns. She stays in her 20-room house in the mountainous Nainital district of Uttarakhand, India, a region steeped in captivating natural beauty and overlooking the snow-capped Himalayas. In the solitude Wimala has imposed on herself, her memory is activated, recalling small details, with no logic other than the whims of conscious and subconscious mind. In these silent whims, the sound of music is revealed. A middle-aged woman listens to her innermost thoughts, escaping a harsh family past and clinging to the memories of a love story of which only deep recollections remain, residing within her and never leaving, just as she does in this ancient building. Memories linger and intertwine with the twists of the groves and trees that Wimala contemplates on her walks, fighting time while haunted by the ghosts of the past. Some features shine through and others fade, just as a lake does when thick fog descends upon it, turning it into a mist that deceives the viewer, distorting his vision as he wonders: Is it a lake of fog or a white oasis of frosty groves floating on the waters?! Few novels have adopted the stream of consciousness narrative style, and the Indian writer Nair has succeeded in giving the narration in this style a special character, woven with a mixture of elements of local Indian culture and its picturesque nature with sensitivity and intensity; intelligently revealing the connection between man's awareness of himself and his relationship with nature. A captivating novel in its ability to capture the music of silence, because it is, in essence, the music of the universe!