Woes of an immortal

Karishma Attari is back with her too good to be true protagonist, Alia Khanna, in her latest ‘Don’t Look Down’, a sequel to ‘I See You’.

Karishma Attari continues with her penchant of threading the fine line between thriller, horror and romance genres. Alia’s attempts to balance the teenage lifestyle while running away from the threats of the supernatural make for some captivating moments. Karishma displays an ease at dissecting and displaying the complex nature of human emotions in her characters while they try to cope with the turmoil of competing and opposing priorities.

Alia is a typical teenager at the St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai with the standard problems of classes, friends, tumulus social life, convoluted relationships and a dark secret. The events of Last summer added a new colour to her life’s canvas. Now, she is immortal. Sleep, Thirst, Hunger and Death all the pains and pleasures of life are out of her reach. But she is on a slippery slope.

The cost of immortality is eternal. In her pursuit to save her father and mother from their sins, she placed her soul on the line. “The Baba of Saat Rastha” is on her tail to claim her soul for himself and drag her into the darkness.

As Alia comes to terms with her abilities, she finds herself losing everything that made her human. Her attempts to correct the wrongs of her past bring more woes than relief.

All she has to do is “Want” and it shall be hers to take. The harder she holds onto her life the faster she seems to lose control and slip into oblivion. The love of her life Sid is her grounding element. Add back from the dead Chris to the equation and it is a triangle love story of the ages. Alia is constantly trying to stay a step ahead of the darkness and despair that seems to always be around the corner waiting to overwhelm her.

The book ends with the open thread that marks the possibility of a third instalment in the series. The narrative flow of the pages consumes the reader and is bound to hold your interest. The descriptions of the settings, the Khanna Villa, the centurion college, the food, the streets and sights of Mumbai and the page 3 fashion were apt and in line with the rich and elite.

A lifestyle usually reserved for narratives in a foreign more western setting. The inclusion of the changed modern Indian life and western influence may not have been a conscious construction but was definitely a novel perspective done with the right flourish.

I rate the book a 4 out 5 stars for a poignant and subtle handling of the horror genre. The absence of over the top gore, mayhem and jump scares while still cultivating a sense of dread and malice was refreshing. As a follow up the book builds exceptionally on the prequel in the way it reuses and builds on the characters and the story arcs that were established in the prior book. However, as a standalone, the narrative falls short of establishing the characters as something the readers would want to emotionally invest in.

By: Shirish Amirineni