Review: Tomorrow Is One More Day

Tomorrow Is One More Day by G. Nagarajan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You read this work not for the story and not for the plot, but to have an experience of the vignettes of someone outside the usual margins of the society. And in this the Author has done a remarkable job. It can help us, the privileged, understand what we consider scandalous need not be so. Here the love takes unusual forms, not out of the need to experiment, but because of lack of options. In a way the true love, because here is a form of love that is constrained to not have any constraints. Despite many constraints in life, financial and otherwise, the protagonist here cannot consider them all, because if it gets too concerned with them, he will be undone. Because for the protagonist working it out any which way possible despite all the constraints is the only thing that can feed him for the day. And that too just for the day, and come tomorrow he needs to look at a new set of equations to keep him fed and clothed. But then again the new set of equations that come on the next day are tied with the same thematic clips. And all this thematic clips are hanging by just one hook, surviving any which way. And this requires that the protagonist doesn't get too much encumbered by emotions, he can only have them in small doses like taking a medicine.

I think, this overarching theme is what the author is trying to show us. And the author does it with text that doesn't even have a hint of melodrama. All the episodes that happened to the protagonist are factual and transactional in nature. What I mean is for this text there is no composed background music to speak of, other than the constant murmur of the life happening its frenetic pace that doesn't care or stop for anyone. And life doesn't care for tying up different threads of existence nicely. The everyday existence, just like some episodes of the protagonist are cut half-way, have frayed ends, and can remain perpetually unfinished.

Such a work that can depict to us an existence that we don't get to experience and or more precisely can never want to experience, in a very undramatic yet gripping way should definitely be celebrated. Even if you don't care for anything the author wanted to give you a glimpse of, the text is still very much readable because of its definite page turning capability. There was never a dull moment. The life of someone outside conventional margins, despite the overarching sameness, that is the struggle for survival, can never have a dull moment. The translation itself was very decent, I guess, I can never say for sure, the type of writing that the author originally employed in Tamil to tell us such a tale as this. A must-read.

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