Samantar Prem by Ravi Ranjan Goswami is a short easy-to-read Hindi novel that discusses love stories of some people from the same college but they couldn’t have a proper confluence of their love as they anticipated. The novel explores the streak of love while people are young and immature during their college days.
The novel’s story is placed against the North Indian cities like Jhansi, Agra, and Kanpur, etc. Primarily it’s a college days’ love story. The limelight falls on Rajesh, a student in Agra. He is a college student with focus on education, hailing from a middle class. Salim is his best friend who fills him with nitty-gritty news of life and college.
One day Salim informs Rajesh about Madhu, an exceptionally beautiful girl in the college. Rajesh feels for her. It’s like love at first sight from his side. However, Madhu remains unchanged and casual to all. Rajesh and Madhu play badminton for the same team at the college level. After that their interaction levels up but to no avail. Soon Rajesh founds that Madhu is engaged. His hopes of love crashes.
On the other side of the story, Geet falls in love with Rajesh at just one meeting. Geet lives in some other city…while Rajesh in different. Through Geet the author depicts the tougher side of the world that is not so good and lenient towards women. Also you should consider that the novel was placed in 1980s and 90s, so it was obvious.
Quite soon all get married to different partners via arranged marriage. Life moves on and they feel good about one another. Madhu was happy with her life. But Rajesh couldn’t stop thinking about Madhu. And Geet too longs for Rajesh but as with time love fades and family responsibilities and children fill up that love void invariably.
Samantar Prem means parallel love. The people were in love but it was parallel, there were no intersections and crossings of fate and lives. It was distanced and simple. Overall, the novel was simple and good but with realistic approach about the love that we see in our society.
It’s a good one-time read in Hindi. The language is way simple, posing no difficulties for readers. You can try this as your first Hindi romance novel.
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