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Description
Till the Last Breath
When death is that close, will your heart skip a beat?
Two patients are admitted to room no. 509. One is a brilliant nineteen-year-old medical student, suffering from an incurable, fatal disease. She counts every extra breath as a blessing. The other is a twenty-five-year-old drug addict whose organs are slowly giving up. He can’t wait to get rid of his body. To him, the sooner the better.
Two reputed doctors, fighting their own demons from the past, are trying everything to keep these two patients alive, even putting their medical licences at risk.
These last days in the hospital change the two patients, their doctors and all the other people around them in ways they had never imagined.
Till the Last Breath is a deeply sensitive story that reminds us what it means to be alive.
A Simple Book With A Much Needed Message
Durjoy Dutta has written around nine books so far and is ranked among the bestselling authors of India. I, however, had never read any of his books until now, and I grabbed Till The Last Breath only to understand what is it that people love about Durjoy Dutta’s writing.
Technically, he is no different from the other writers who think that the best way to attract young readers is narrating their college stories in 200 (or more) pages. But this specific book is indeed different. Set in Room No. 509 of GKL Super Specialty Hospital of Delhi, Till The Last Breath is the story of Pihu, Dushyant, Armaan, Zarah and Kajal, and the line of events that connect their lives together.
Pihu is an always-smiling angel and a brilliant student who wants to become a surgeon, but reality strikes her when she realizes that she is suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)—a motor neuron disease that often leads to death. Sharing the hospital ward with her is Dushyant, the bad boy with a history of drug addiction, who physically abused his ex-girlfriend. He has done everything to kill himself and is now dying a slow death because his organs are failing one by one.
Armaan and Zarah are Pihu’s and Dushyant’s doctors respectively. While Armaan is a doctor who tries to get over his regretful past by playing the bad doctor, Zarah is his intern who pretends to be bold enough to bury her past.
And Kajal, Dushyant’s ex-girlfriend, is a simple girl, the daughter of a rich father, who always ends up being the damsel in distress and finds herself amidst two twisted relationships.
How these characters meet each other and how one’s life story helps the other with his or her crisis is what forms the major plot of the story. I know it comes across as one of those philosophical books on life, but Dutta’s narrating style is such that he manages to convey the message of life without getting preachy.
Frankly speaking, the first few chapters didn’t appeal to me much. They are so loosely knitted that the reader is forced to keep the book aside after reading the first four or five chapters. But, if you manage to survive the initial chapters—like me—you will realize that the book does get better.
The story has these moments when you find your eyes widening with surprise, because you never expected it to take that direction. And on other occasions you are grinning at the witty dialogues and wisely chosen situations; the credit for which goes to Dutta’s knack for writing.
Although he might have stretched some parts of the story like Kajal’s family history and her career choices—which I think didn’t add any value to the plot—the book doesn’t get boring at any point. In fact, you keep turning the pages to find out what happens next.
The only drawback of the book is that it mainly focuses on Pihu while the cover makes you believe that it revolves around Pihu and Dushyant. The last chapter does put an end to the story about Pihu and Armaan but we never get to know what happens with Dushyant and Zarah, making you question whether the bookseller gave you a torn book.
We all live under the perception that life is cruel and unfair which is true, but while reading Till The Last Breath we also realize that we make this unfair life worse because of our decisions and choices. So it’s in our hand how and why we make our lives more valuable.
Similarly it’s up to you to decide to read this book or not. But I would definitely suggest that you read it at least once.
Shraddha Jandial
Which of Durjoy Dutta’s books do you like the most? Write your opinions in the comment box below.
Till the Last Breath
