- Sudhir Thapliyal’s latest book hits stores in Mussoorie

By AJAY RAMOLA
MUSSOORIE, 2 Aug: “Crossing the Road”, an intriguing tale of greed, lust, romp of relationships and a murder, written by renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Sudhir Thapliyal, and published by Roli Books hit the bookstands here on Saturday.
The residents of Mussoorie expressed pleasure at this latest development and congratulated him over the phone.
Speaking about the book exclusively to GP at his house in Kincraig, Sudhir Thapliyal said that the idea for the novel germinated from the famous Mafatlal case, in which a daughter changed her sex to become a man so that she could also inherit the property left only for her brother.
Thapliyal said that the book deals with the gender issue where the inheritance rights are in place, but implementation is poor due to the male dominant society in the country.
“Crossing the Road” is a fictional story about Leela, who is scorned and thrown away like a fly from a glass of milk by a villainous, greedy and selfish Menon. She vents her fury on him by seeking the ultimate revenge a woman can come up with.
The story is told by a friend who is first just a witness to the bizzare goings-on between Leela and her divorced husband, but later becomes a part of the dirty quagmire. Both of them take recourse to tantriks, plot murders that don’t happen and, in the end, an exasperated and frustrated Leela takes an
unheard of course. The friend initially looks on in an indifferent and un-interested way at a marriage gone wrong. But he, too, is drawn into the drama as both sides dangle the ultimate bribe - money. His scruples are thrown to the winds as the lure of filthy lucre traps him in the web woven by a scheming Leela. The book puts forward the issue of gender bias in very eloquent and effective way.
This is the third novel by Sudhir Thapliyal to hit the stands. “Crossing the Road” is an outright appealing story.
An IIM graduate from Calcutta, Sudhir Thapliyal joined the Statesman, Calcutta, in 1967 and is today a freelance journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker. He has worked as a radio and TV commentator in India and abroad. He was nominated for the Rhodes Scholarship in 1967, and is also a 1972 Fellow of the World Press Institute, St Paul, Minn (USA).
Author of ‘Hello! Mister Tee’ and ‘War at Lambidhar’, many of his short stories and features have been published in leading Indian magazines and Sunday supplements, including the Statesman Literary Supplement and the Financial Times, London. He has written the screenplay of a telefilm based on Ruskin Bond’s novel Room on the Roof. Currently, he is working on a screenplay for a Bollywood producer.
An avid trekker, mountaineer and naturalist, he has been nearly everywhere in the Indian Himalayas. He has traveled widely in the United States, Europe and India. He was a member of Edmund Hillary’s Ocean to Sky Expedition in 1977 and the Saser Kangri III expedition in the Karakorams in 1986. He presently resides in Mussoorie with his pets including several dogs and cats.