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NARRATIVES
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from Brindaban, Fullara invites him to visit their house. She realizes that he is her divinely-appointed guru. Nandaraj and other members of the family, too, accept him as their guru. Mahesh, through his occult powers, foresees a shadow over Nandaraj. He prays to Lord Ganesha to save him from his trouble. In the "Epilogue", the readers are informed of Nandaraj's miraculous rescue from the fatal plane crash when he came back from the plane, which was to carry him to Madras, to bring back the locket with his guru's photograph which he had forgotten in the bathroom of the aerodrome.
Wings and Bonds can be called a novel as it is an imaginative presentation of a real story of Fullara and Nandaraj's life. But when the author sets out to speak of spiritual reality, the work also takes the shape of a romance of the Divine with the aspiring human beings. When Roy refers to Goswami and Mahesh and also the influence of Mahesh in changing the attitudes of many people like Nandaraj, Swarna and Sukhendra, he, as a literary artist, presents, his own views of ideal human existence.
Here there is room enough for conflicting views. Fullara, Goswami and Mahesh stand for the importance of spirituality in human life. On the other hand, Nandaraj, Sushanta and Swarna initially do not believe in the Higher Spiritual Reality. They are prudentmen of the practical world. But the conflict is resolved at the end of the novel when, due to the miraculous incidents caused by the influence of Mahesh, Nandaraj turns into a man of complete faith in the Divine Reality. Nandaraj's attitude to Ekanta also becomes mature and positive at the end of the novel. Later on, Swarna, too, allows Pari to learn music and devotional songs from Fullara. The indication of the union of these two young aspirants, Ekanta and Pari, in marriage, is that Divine Grace will prevail everywhere in their future.
Dilip Roy's motive in this narrative, as he states in the "Preface", is:
"...to delineate the soul's evolution through the vicissitudes of its eternal quest for the ultimate end of life, to wit, the One who goes on with his everlasting Cosmic Play, lila, of joy and pain, hope and despair, ascents to the heights and descents into the abysms. I have taken my stand on faith founded on the testimonies of Godrealised saints, but leading ultimately to the experience of Divine Grace which our faith accepts on trust at the outset but
verifies through the soul's progressive realisations."26
As in the other novels of Roy's, so also here the element of journey is involved in the plot. Nandaraj, first of all, goes to Delhi and Kashmir from Calcutta. Later on, he begins his journey from Calcutta to Nagpur and when he is about to leave in the plane for Madras, he is miraculously saved from the tragedy
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