How can they live by detaching themselves from their art? Is it possible for the artist to give priority to anything else other than art? Which is more important-art or happiness? Do they both have to be separate or can they be interlinked? What is more important-practicing your art or living your life? Or are they both separate entities?

While others may ponder about the importance of art to the artist. What is the purpose of life? Can one decide to die? How much of life is decided by others? How much of one’s life is coincidence? The story starts and ends with the same incident that make the ending a poignant, heart wrenching one that suggests how life can twist and turn and what it means to have a cruel fate!Ĭhicken with Plums brings to mind so many questions: While Nasser Ali Khan waits to die, he reminisces about his past: his childhood- his conflicts with his brother and mother, all the missed opportunities in his love life, his past love affairs, how he married his current wife, his immense love for his daughter, his almost cruel unconscious rejection of his son who ironically is the one who prays for Nasser’s life and many more anecdotes come to his mind while he waits for his ultimate death.Įach day, until his death, is sketched in great detail where we see his past and his future in a way, where we see the myriad vignettes from his well lived life! The angel of death, Azrael, himself visits Nasser, and narrates his own anecdote about how he meets people who are destined to die, even those who have decided to commit suicide. The protagonist being a renowned musician having deep questions about his art and his life makes this novel part of The Book Cafe’s series called, Musically Yours! But after failing to find such a one despite his repeated attempts, he consigns himself to a state where he simply only wishes to die.

Now that it is broken, he goes on a search for an equally matched tar. He probably had the best one in the world. The musician Nasser Ali Khan’s favourite tar (an Iranian percussion instrument) is broken.

How about picking up another of her equally insightful and somberly black and white illustrated graphic novel, called, Chicken with Plums?

Chicken with plums novel