The Realm Beyond The Mind by Meeta J Gupta – Book Review

Introduction:
This novel, The Realm Beyond The Mind, by Meeta J Gupta is a fine example of serious fiction writing by able, thoughtful and motivated young Indian novelists who want to offer something serious and something for the long run rather than simple entertainment that most of the authors choose to provide to the readers. The Realm Beyond The Mind is spiritual, serious, literary rich and also a complete contemporary fiction with the right elements in the right proportion. Readers who read it just for the sake of stories will also be entertained and those who read it to find out the hidden elements and the symbolic meanings will also find many things in the novel to enjoy and to think further. The novel has an ideal length – a full-length novel that doesn’t protract itself to loosen its grip on the readers.

Content, Themes & Analysis:
Meeta J Gupta, the novelist, has tried to do something new… something that very few novelists try to do. She has embedded symbolism and hidden meanings in the storyline of her novel so that a normal story, or the surface story, casually reaches its significant conclusion and beneath the surface layer, there is a hidden layer that can be interpreted according to the personal or subjective ideas of the readers. The major characters are Meru, who is the leading lady protagonist, Darsh, a doubter in the beginning who doubts the grand scheme of things and Vaid Moti Lal, his grandfather who is a staunch believer and practitioner of Ayurveda and thus known as Vaid (Vaidya). Other characters appear frequently or less frequently according to the needs of the plot. Dr Wick is a modern-day scientist, doctor and businessman who wants to create a medicine that can cure nuclear radiation exposition. However, his ideas are rather evil in design and he wants his medicine to be launched even without appropriate clinical trials. On the other hand, Vaid Moti Lal can cure any disease with his Ayurvedic knowledge and he does not boast about it. The general storyline will show you this story developing into an eye-opening experience for Darsh who, in the beginning, does not approve of his grandfather’s idea to do public service with Ayurveda.

The novel will also involve the readers on many levels. They will not only find out the contrasts between ancient and the new, modern and the forgotten, good and the bad, welfare and greed… and so on. Moreover, the characters will also be very quick to get along with the readers and they (the characters) rather become types for a set of people – those who think freely, those who think all as a universal whole, those who believe that the world is about connecting with one another and realising that we are all one… The novel has many chapters and all of them are designed in a very metaphorical way opening the eyes of the readers to something new, something beyond every day discourses and something that we discuss but not very much because we don’t have any straight line to follow. This novel, by Meeta J Gupta, will give the readers a place to start and a line to follow with subjective conclusions to be drawn…

In the end:
I would recommend this novel to readers who want to read serious stuff, symbolic stuff and fiction with a multi-layered storyline and post-text ideas to remember, discuss and discern. Meeta has succeeded in producing a novel that will not only provide the readers with a contemporary novel’s entertainment but also a typical, timeless, and traditional reading pleasure. The novel has been written in very simple but effective language and it perfectly matches the theme and the plot of the work. Any reader who understands basic English can read the work… however, a little more than average introduction with philosophical ideas and ancient India would help very much in enjoying the work to its full effect.

You can get the novel from Amazon India by clicking the link below:

Buy the novel by Meeta – click here to get from Amazon India 

Review by Rupesh for The Book Blog