“The Boy With a Broken Heart” is a fictional love story, a novel written by young writer Durjoy Dutta, a guy who believes in writing about love, friendship. This book is the sequel of the book “The Boy Who Loved.”
Book revolves around two major characters and happens in Dehradun city, with the latter part of the story happens in Delhi.
The first character is Raghu, a boy with a broken heart. He comes to Dehradun, leaving his everything in Delhi after some bad incident happened in his life. In Dehradun, he lives a suspicious and low-profile but helps the poor people and poor kids for IIT entrance with teaching. In Dehradun, nobody knows much about him and his past, and most of the people think he came here to hide after involvement in a big crime or blunder in Delhi. Altaf is his good friend there, who tells him about Advaita and her family regularly. Everyone and especially Advaita, like tasty, refreshing tea made by him. The later part of the book reveals many folds and past events of his life, like his nature, his friends, a girl who loves him, a girl to whom he loved, the nature and behavior of his girlfriend, his brother’s inter-religious love story and marriage, brother’s death, his widowed sister-in-law’s life and struggle, his affection for the nephew, his parent’s behaviors and many other. Most importantly, about his heartbreaking love story.
The second most important or hero character of the story is Advaita, a young college-going energetic, wishful, positive girl and the younger daughter of Dr. Vaid’s second and only handicapped son. She wants to live freely and independently with her parents and sister, in their own house separate from Vaid’s house. Her dream is to leave one room cage of Vaid’s house. To live free without the troubles, molestation, and slavery of the Vaid family and to buy them own house, she and her family save money from earnings. The story revolves around Advaita and her family (Parents and Divya Di).
Dr. Vaid, Advaita’s grandfather, a reputed man of Dehradun, is a homeopathy doctor and a strong believer and follower of religion and caste system and carrying false pride in it and does anything to keep it intact. He has 3 sons and a daughter, who got seriously injured by burning while saving her mother and her face got ugly with burn marks after this accident, childhood. Advaita calls her “Bua,” and she thinks she is having an inferiority complex because many boys rejected her marriage proposal at a young age due to her skin and look. Advaita’s father is physically disabled by polio because of stubborn and rigid Vaid, who doesn’t believe in allopathy and refused to give her father a polio dose in childhood. Dr. Vaid is dominating by nature and dictates own rules on peoples and family.
Advaita’s papa marries a lower caste girlfriend who loves him very much, against his father’s will. He is a humorous man who keeps telling that her mother married him and not the other way round. Her elder uncle supports him in this decision and helps him mentally and financially in living separately. But after his death, her family is forced and pressured to return to Vaid’s house, where her Bua is already living with her husband and children, and she rules that house. Dr. Vaid and Bua treat her family as slaves, humiliate them at every step due to the low caste of her mother. There her sons Karan and Anshuman trouble her and Divya a lot. Her mother is a free maid and servant for them and professionally works as a ladies’ tailor and having two Muslim assistants Aslam and Iqbal, who care for Advaita and her sister. Aslam is Raghu’s friend and shares her and her family’s details with him. Mob attacks and kills Aslam under suspicion of terror activities, which later turns to be fake news.
Advaita sister Divya is an aspiring model, actress, good looking dancer. She was restricted by Vaid and Bua from wearing short clothes for modeling and video, making her lose assignments and work, so she hates them very much. Local goon Meghnad love and stalk her from school days, but she loves Vibhor. So, to stop Meghnad from stalking and troubling, she spreads a rumor about an affair and physical relation with boyfriend Vibhor, which hurts Meghnad’s male ego. And after that, he and his friends trouble and humiliates her by stalking and calling her slut publicly. She loves and cares for her sister very much.
Manish Advaita’s younger uncle is a financially and professionally unsuccessful and unstable man. To make him financially and professionally stable, Vaid and Bua fix his marriage with Sumitra, whose first husband left her, and she was Divya’s best friend. After many failed businesses finally, they open a furniture shop for him, and they expect a big amount of dowry from Sumitra’s parents for his business. Divya leaves home and runs away to Delhi by lying about her job when she learns about her best friend’s marriage with uncle Manish. She is angry with her because she loved and had a relationship with her boyfriend. Raghu asks Advaita to inform Sumitra about her uncle’s homosexuality. But she agrees to marry after knowing about his homosexuality also, and after marriage, they develop a strong bond as friends and love. Her parents fail to pay the committed dowry, so Vaid and Bua try to break the marriage, but she frightens them by telling them she will reveal his homosexuality publicly. To avoid the Vaid family’s image and pride damage, they keep quiet and allow her to stay with Manish in the house, but they treat her like a slave and tells her to work as a labor. Bua asks her to work till she gets faint, after which she gets ill, and Manish and Advaita take care of her in such a situation. So she helps Advaita and saves her job and humiliation when a chance comes. Bua locks Advaita and her family till her marriage with Meghnad, so Manish and Sumitra help them to escape and run away.
In Delhi, Divya was jobless for many days and searching for a job, and after some days gets a job in an airline. When she knows Advaita is marrying Meghnad, she plans to leave and settle in Dubai with her family. Her parents having a passport, but Advaita doesn’t have one, so she asks Advaita to visit Delhi for a passport application, and she will get it in 3-4 days with her contact persons.
Advaita is staying with her parents and sister in her grandfather’s house and is facing humiliation, trouble from Dadaji, Bua, Fufa, Karan, and Anshuman, due to her mother’s low caste. She and her sister had stolen some “Shagun” pockets from their cousin’s marriages, so they don’t have a good impression on relatives and suspicion about sister’s activities. Her sister Divya tells her she is a good-looking girl, but she ignores herself. She and her sister are experts in kite flying, and nobody is close to them in competition except Raghu. She meets him in a series of incidents, and they come close to each other and become friends first and then best friends. He helps her to free herself from Vaid’s house and live freely. She starts a coaching institute in partnership with him and expands their coaching business to get enough money to buy her freedom and house.
To take revenge and taught lessons to Divya, Meghnad plans to marry Advaita, with a huge financial loan as help to the Vaid family. Vaid and Bua agree to it after this financial support from Meghnad and commitment for future help after buying the debt Vaid house. Her helpless parents also agree. After this, he molests and troubles her. One day, he comes home drunk and creates a ruckus there. Nobody from her family objects to him, whereas they support him. She frustrates with him, but with sweet-talk, she saves herself from him on various occasions and gets permission for a job in the institute. He keeps a continuous watch on her by his men following her. She visits Delhi with Raghu for a passport application by telling a lie about the education conference. But still, the men following them inform Meghnad about her and Divya’s plan of flying to Dubai. To stop her and her parents from going to Dubai, Vaid and Bua burns their passports and all documents and lock them. Raghu helps her and her parents to escape from the house and reach Delhi and meet Divya. Meghnad and her cousins follow them in Delhi and Raghu, with her family run and hide in hotels and at a friend’s house. Raghu’s friends help her and her family getting a passport and fly away.
Book tells how and where Raghu first time met Advaita, was it coincidence or planned? What was he doing, where they first met? How and why does he help her? What plan do they make to get out of Vaid’s house? From where and how he gets information about her and her family? Really Meghnad leaves Divya alone? Why does Meghnad want to marry Advaita? How Vaid’s family humiliates Advaita and her family, especially her mother? Vaid’s family hates Advaita and her family, then why do they allow them to stay in the same house? What does Divya’s best friend Sumitra do with her boyfriend? Why did Sumitra marry Manish after knowing his secrets relationship? What is the story of Manish, Sumitra, and Aslam? Why and how did Vaid kill Aslam? How does Maghenad molests and harasses Advaita, and how she saves herself from this? Advaita’s family knows all about Meghnad still why Advaita’s family agrees to Meghnad and Advaita’s marriage? Goon Meghnad allows Advaita to get out from the Vaid’s house? What does Meghnad do when his ego hurts?
Most importantly, why is the book titled “The Boy with a broken heart”? How and who brokes Raghu’s heart? Does Raghu love Advaita? How does Raghu and Advaita’s story starts and goes ahead? Why does Raghu leave Delhi and come to Dehradun? What does he do in Dehradun? Who and how helps Raghu and Advaita in Delhi? What is the story of Raghu’s family? Who is Brahmi, and what is her story? All these questions are answered in this dramatic love storybook.
When Raghu was driving Advaita and her family to the airport, Meghnad follows and tries to stop with an acid attack on her. The book ends with Raghu and Meghnad’s dramatic fight on the road and one huge twist, which turns the book and Raghu’s life. It is good to read it in the book.
The book has religion, caste, LGBT, love stories, molestation, mob lynching, feminism, money problem, career struggle, etc. All are mixed well in this love or friendship story, which keeps the reader’s interest up while reading it. The reader, especially the young, will like reading it.
Chetan Nikam 