Soutam Banerjee

The Blue French Horn Soutam Banerjee

A mushy and slushy journey of a mango person, the author narrates his troubled love story in this book and the haunting melancholia wrapped around it. In his final year of college days, when he realizes his lungs have been stuffed with cigarette smoke, his stomach layered with caffeine and his heart engraved with despair, he comes across a girl from the first year one fine day. He experiences a moment of epiphany that she is the one he wants to grow old with, for whom "lifetime in a heartbeat" does not seem a phrase anymore. The anecdote starts with their first call, their first date and their first movie together when she abruptly takes a step back and hibernates herself. His excruciating voyage spans through a phase of dejection and desperation, a painful severance from Kolkata, fantasies and hallucinations, abstract and fancy realities when, all of a sudden, she walks back into his life like magic woven from a wand. Just when things seem to be rosier and favorable, his ailing heart decides to make the final move, but a revelation from her leaves him totally devastated. A story each and every millennial would relate to, it is an amalgamation of the author's vivid life experiences, forlorn love and his warped emotions mingled together exquisitely. Will he be able to win her back finally or does he have to let her go? Does love really speak for itself?