What would you do if you had the opportunity to go back in
time? To unravel the mystery and know answers to hidden puzzles. And if you are
provided with such a chance to retrace your steps and set your footprints on
the exact path you have travelled on, would you grab such an offer? Isn't this
deal too alluring to pass up?
Set in Tokyo, in an unassuming café dated more than a
century of history with nondescript but eccentric décor that saw hardly any
upgradation in all these years, is a story of bunch of characters. The
windowless underground café is awash with sepia glow from the overhead lights
that hang above the tables. These characters have nothing in common but what
ties them is one ardent yearning to engage with the past. The secret tremors in
each of their hearts become so unbearable that they shake them and throw them
in a whirlpool. Every suck and pull makes them more distant from their own
selves. When they are at the end of their tethers, this café pulls them from
the swirling current and breathes life into them. The yearning to revisit the
past is fulfilled by the café but the conditions are too many. Even readers
will feel overwhelmed hearing about the rules that has reigned in the café
since time immemorial. Which makes us believe that there is nothing called free
lunch. You should be open to stick to these rules and unless you do that, you
won’t succeed in your journey of past discovery and resolution. But these
characters relent in their promises and thus, a new portal gets opened in front
of them. That’s not it. The café’s most abominable rule is you cannot change
the present. Yeah the baffling twist.
The book gives us a glimpse of each of their lives, their
past and the point in which they all stand now. The characters are flawed but
they make a steady progress to set their flaws right. Bridging the gap between
past and present is what you can draw out from this book. Meaning we all live
or have lived in a space between ‘what could have been’ and ‘ what actually
is’. A simmering tension exists in this space where we are attacked with
unknown demons. Similarly, the characters, straddling between both the worlds,
are confronted with unknown demons and try to seek resolution. The café offers
them (in each story) an opportunity to cement that gap and helps them to accept
the ‘what actually is’. You cannot change the outcome but at least make peace
with the knowledge by knowing the reason why it happened. For some, letting go is an only option, for
some knowing the truth behind the indifference, and for some, a chance to
reunite with their families. Towards the end, the tightness in the chests of
the characters are reduced to bare minimum.
Though the story has umpteen number of rules, I mean, very
difficult to catch up; all the sub-stories have different plots, which is a
clean win for this book. I personally loved the story of sisters and the one
with husband and wife.
While I was reading this novel, I chanced into one article that
came in The Newyorker online Magazine. The piece was very much inching towards
these lines. The uncanny allure of our unled lives is so attractive and flashy
at times that we stop find meaning in the present. We find peace in dwelling in
the regrets that present pleasantness pales in comparison. We have unlived lives for all sorts of
reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events
force our hand; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more
so with time. Even as we regret who we haven’t become, we value who we are. We
seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of
negative space.
Even though this ‘what could have
been’ has its own allure and charm to it and as the article puts it ‘we clamber
up into our future thinking back on the ladders unclimbed, it is just a fantasy
or a fiction that we plot in our heads. It might be beautiful in our heads but
we should be thankful enough that we are spared by the ignorance. What if that
‘could have been’ area was a trap and our present life has saved us from that
trap.
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