The Cave of Freedom: A Novel

Bodhi has always been there deep inside him, like a throbbing light. Vivek grow up talking to him, yet never getting to know him, really. The light never stopped throbbing, though it was feeble at times. When he went places, fell in love, let down those who he loved, got enmeshed in fabulous business deals or, lapsed into looking beyond the end of nowhere, Vivek felt Bodhi’s company, now intensely creative, now excruciating. Bodhi was always there, Vivek’s other ‘I’. Vivek’s travels-straddling countries and continents from Parur to Paris to Palm Springs-constitute a travel into himself. This is a chronicle of that spiritual odyssey, recapturing its contours, not much more, making a fateful attempt to grasp its essence. The essence is, essentially, elusive. Its charm, as much as its exasperation, runs through this blend of fact, fantasy and fiction. This first novel by V. Radhakrishnan, a Bangalore-based architect, is, more or less, a middle-age novel. Bodhi having been within vivek, and Vivek within him, for as long as he could remember, it could have been written many years ago or many years later; but it had to be written, in any case.