Tandoor Cinders

By Vilas Sarang
Penguin India
Year 2008, pp 107
Rs 199

Vilas Sarang has a strange and unusual way of telling weird things in most of his books. Tandoor Cinders is no different. Once again he gives us a provoking psycho-thriller invoking the sub-conscious state of mind in this tale of passionate love, hate and the human instinct that craves for revenge.

Chandrashekhar Nayak’s life as a college psychology teacher turns upside-down when he is completely ‘possessed’ by a newspaper report on the Tandoor murder case. With absolute resolve to meet the perpetrator of the crime, Jaidev Jakhad, Nayak ropes in his chubby daughter Leena to help trace Jakhad after the latter had escaped from police custody.

Despite his wife’s misgivings about their mission, the father-daughter duo set out on their mission only to find themselves in a strange journey to the underworld where they are compelled to re-think about their sense of justice and the worldly affairs of love and marriage.

Tandoor Cinders strikes not only the conscious but also the subconscious thoughts of the reader with its psycho-analytical narrative script which is quite monotonous at some stages. This book also takes your time to figure out how and why there could be a hole underneath the tandoor that could take you to the ‘patala’. Despite these, Sarang prepares his readers well for the sudden shift when he decided to take his characters to the strange underworld beneath the tandoor.

The concept of justice and relationship according to Hindu mythology and the western world also come into the picture when Nayak and Leena seek the help of a sage as they try to locate the tandoor murderer. This is quite intriguing because it involves some knowledge about the Hindu faith.

This book questions the very basic of your beliefs and stretches the ever-curious mind to its maximum limits. It also shows if you wish see your 25th years of marriage and to keep the marital bond intact you have to, at some point of time, lead a ‘false life’; like pretending to be happy when actually not and vice-versa.

The distinction between fantasy and reality is quite perplexing in Tandoor Cinders unless you stretch your imagination beyond the barriers of time and space. Once you let the story take you along, this strange tale of an extraordinary life is such a book that could give you nightmares in which you yourself will take part in the Nayak’s sojourn. A brilliant and imaginative psycho-thriller that could take you completely off your notion about life.