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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : Dilip Kumar Roy Miracles Do Still Happen, as Dilip Roy has stated, is based on those incidents which he himself had witnessed. So, this realistic stuff makes it a novel. But at a deeper level he speaks of the truth of the Higher Reality of Krishna and the blissful effect of His grace on the human lives. Hence, it can be called the narration of Krishna's romance with his ardent and loyal devotees on the human stage.
The conflict, in this novel, is generally between a person versus his or her own self. Actually, there is a conflict between ordinary human existence versus the spiritual one. Shethji, Kamala, Manju Devi, Arun, and his relatives are persons of ordinary human existence, having hopes only for a prosperous social life. But at the end, they turn towards spirituality. They thus move higher. On the other hand, Amal, Shyam Thakur, Mandira, and Sati are persons of strong aspirations for the realization of God and their aspirations, as it is emphatically shown, are fulfilled by the miraculous incidents of their lives. They had been higher and they still keep moving higher. Asit stands as a witness to these miracles of their lives. Roy wants to reaffirm faith in the spiritual happenings which are beyond the ken of the reasoning of human mind and which are, as a result, known as miracles.
The symbolic couplets quoted at the beginning of each story from diverse Indian scriptures like Kathopanishad, Mahabharata, and the Gita are suggestive of the themes of the stories.
As in Upward Spiral and many other novels, here, too, persons like Amal, Sati, Shyam Thakur travel from one place to another. Again, their spiritual journey and its realization are depicted here. The pattern of ever mounting aspiration for Krishna is present in almost all of Dilip Roy's works, but in this novel, he has worked very hard to show the realization of the aspirations of even ordinary human beings like Amal. At the centre of them all is Anand Giri here who is changeless eternity inspiring all constructive changes. The arrow pattern discussed earlier at length is clearly exhibited here, too. The narrator, though he is a witness to the miracles within this novel did not find any one happening in his own life. But at the end of his severe struggle, he has succeeded in getting himself accepted by his divinely-appointed guru, Swayamananda.
Miracles Do Still Happen can only very loosely be described as a single narrative. It is supposed to be a historical account of the things that have really happened. Each miracle is, in a way, independent. Any chapter could be at random read and enjoyed independently. It is not a part of a well-made plot. The novel is many stories and not one single tale. The author, however, has tried to combine them all in a loose frame, somewhat similar to that of the Canterbury Tales or the Arabian Nights or the tales of Vaitalpanchak in Kathasaritsagar or Jatak Tales. In each one of these works, many tales are held together by a loose
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