The Cord by Sredhanea Ramkrishnan #BookReview #Historical #War #IndiaIndependence #Fiction @ZeroDegreePublishing — Rain’n’books

My Rating

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The times whilst one reads a book with tears in the eyes is kind of a rare occurrence. Yes, we do endure sometimes all the emotional feelings conveyed in a story but to be moved in such a manner that tears are bound to form in one’s eyes, well I would say the author has magnificently achieved what she set out to do.

Sredhanea Ramkrishnan speaks about the war, the war of Indian Independence, which started out as a struggle for freedom but dug its roots as a rift between Hindus and Muslims, the reverberation echoing across centuries even now. The author introduces a young 17 year old Azad who decided to stay behind in his homeland when his father was given the marching orders to board the train to Pakistan, the decision that comes back to destroy him from the inside out in an unexpected fashion.

The story focuses its attention on the plight of the soldiers, not just Azad but the trauma that affects his father, Ashraf, thru the black shell of a man like Major Karanveer, thru the unwarranted destruction of lives and relationships when one friend has to kill the other for survival. I loved the subtle tale of Major Karanveer woven thru the pages of the story, in fact, the entire arc of his story is told thru letters and POVs from others’ eyes’, the author has excellently told the plight of a man hailed as a legend but left behind as a hole. The story touches on different lives, the mother’s pain, the father’s anguish, a wife’s loneliness and utter despair and terror of losing her husband to war, the friendship between the boys Viren and Azad, and that between Vijay and Ashraf, each of the thread had something touching to offer and leave the reader’s teary-eyed.

There is an effortless flaw in the story that pulls you in, so much so that I finished reading this in one go. Excellently delivered and poignantly told, The Cord is a cord that ties you in pieces and melts your heart.

Many thanks to the author for the chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

“The greatest war we fight is the one within ourselves”, true to these words by Eric Christopher Jackson, ‘The cord’ is a personification of wars waging inside each individual in the turbulent background of 1947, with the imminent partition and the strife-torn Indian nation. As European colonists raided the world and ‘civilised’ the indigenous inhabitants, the mark they left didn’t just stop with the unruly borders and westernized organizations. As India woke up to her independence on 15th August 1947, unfortunately, her sons and daughters watched the dawn, hazed by Indo-Pak partition, communal riots, mass killings and much more. But these gores are no match to the souvenirs left in personal lives and families of the common public of the twin nations. The ones that their subconscious holds on to, till date. ‘The Cord’ follows Jamedar Ashraf Ullah, of the British Indian Army, whose family moves to Rawalpindi, leaving behind more than just traces of his lineage and Major Azad, 11th Kumaon Infantry, who gets a chance to right a wrong he had committed almost two decades ago. What would Major Azad choose? Guilt over duty? Kinship over comradery? or Love over all else? Is everything really fair in love and war?

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Originally published at https://rainnbooks.com on August 20, 2022.