I am not quite sure as to what prompted me
into reading Kiran Azam's Dreams Can Come
True. The lean, 82-page novel is quite
ordinary looking on the outside, the
storyline on the back cover was most
depressive. After all, who looks forward to
reading a story of a sweet thirteen-year-old
suffering from brain cancer?
The author is a child herself. A ninth
grader, she wrote this book when she was
just twelve. Suddenly my mind raced back to
another young lady who had penned a
fascinating novel also at the age of eleven
or twelve. Her book A Dream Come True
was also published by the same publishers
and it is commendable that they are giving
young budding novelists a chance. Although
Nayantara Noorani has not written another
book after her second one, the emotionally
involving Reflections, we hope that
Kiran Azam would continue writing more
stories and grow into a wonderful novelist.
Kiran certainly knows the first rule of
storytelling: Lie, and lie beautifully. She
has done just that in Dreams Can Come
True. The book is written in the first
person. So we meet thirteen-year-old Neha, a
perfectly happy child with beauty (her eyes
"are like limpid pools of molten jade!") and
brains. She has a little sister, busy and
successful parents, lots and lots of friends
and nice teachers. But wait, isn't this kind
of boring? Neha thinks so too when she longs
for some change. She wants some adventure
and some challenge, "This was way too easy.
My adventurous streak made me feel like a
prisoner inside. I wanted to open up, fully
realize my potential... I wanted to grow..."
Sure enough, Neha's wish is granted. Her
life changes in the most dramatic way when
she starts suffering from headaches, blurry
vision and fainting spells. She is diagnosed
with brain cancer and given little time to
live.
While reading the book, I wished, countless
times, Kiran Azam wouldn't kill off her
heroine so easily. In the next pages, she
makes her suffer the agony of being in and
out of hospitals, losing her "straight,
shoulder length auburn hair" due to
chemotherapy. When she starts wearing a wig,
there is the trauma of a naughty boy pulling
it off her head.
Enough was enough! Just when I was about to
toss the book aside, my eyes fell on its
title again: Dreams Can Come True.
Could this story have a happy ending after
all? Yes it did, and in the most bizarre
ways. The final pages have a very sick and
desperate child working in a sophisticated
genetics lab trying to come up with a cure
for cancer. She does too and I wouldn't have
believed a thing had I not really wanted to
believe it. The climax too is all very
exciting. You have a grownup, healthy
scientist chasing a weak little cancer
patient all around the lab to finish her off
and steal the credit for her discovery.
Thank you Kiran Azam for not letting him
succeed. Thank you for writing such a weird
tale. I forgive you for being so
unbelievable but then you are a child with a
fantastic imagination. I look forward to
reading a sensible story with the same
byline in the next ten years or so. |
|
|
