Aditi Pant

A Turning of Seasons Aditi Pant

Tara dreams of an idyllic, idealistic world till reality gets under her skin. Raghav's best laid plans are at the mercy of his own gullible heart. Scarlett is resigned to a life in a wheelchair and then suddenly she is not. The mystical, poetic and audacious Storyteller seems to know it all, but does he? Set in the USA in the late 1980's, the novel underscores the dilemma of conflicted hearts and their vulnerability against the ravages of fate, love and time. Raghav decides to stay rent free in a quadraplegic's house and convinces his wife that this practical, short term arrangement will help in securing their future financially. A seemingly simple arrangement entwines the lives of complex characters and while the turning of seasons act as an essential backdrop, the story begins to take shape almost entirely in the minds of the four characters. Every season, both natural and personal shifts. All of us have been Raghav, Tara or Scarlett at some point in our lives wondering how the little pebble we threw in the pond of time metamorphosed into a big ripple that seems beyond our control. Caught between a wayward heart and an agile mind the characters fight the winds of destiny and change till they come to realise that just like the seasons, we humans must also yield to the natural order, to the higher ruling.