A
rjun Chatterjee, the hero of this little novel, races at a dizzy pace through scenes set both in 1857 and the present. Tormented by recurring but incomplete dreams, he whips from scene to vivid scene as the complex story unfolds in 64 short chapters. Arjun is a senior corporate executive living in Mumbai who in his dreams regresses into a series of past-life memories set in Calcutta. He is led to present-day Calcutta, where he is attracted to Shiela, an attractive historian who has unearthed an old document that draws him as well as a few villainous characters determined to prevent the manuscript being revealed. His reincarnated enemies are sophisticated, politically powerful and possess a mysterious but fairly plausible nuclear weapon similar to a crude device that failed to detonate during the sepoy mutiny. This time too, despite the creation of a superior delivery system, Arjun succeeds in foiling his adversary’s diabolical plot.