In Rasul Ramji’s Debut Novel, Dreams Bring Lovers Together

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: You’re hooked into the story from the first line that mentions the Riverwalk in San Antonio. After all, how many novels do you come across that are set in San Antonio and in the opening pages take you riding on the flat bottom boat that ply by all the restaurants and sites along the way?

In this familiar setting, we meet Maya and Allen who discover each other through furtive glances, then connect on the dance floor of a restaurant while her family eats lunch nearby. They meet again the next day, but leave without sharing their phone numbers, and Maya goes back to Barcelona the following day.

As the story unfolds, Russell Ramji, in his debut novel, “Once Upon a Dream …. A Tale of Fated Love” takes you on a journey from San Antonio to Barcelona and Madrid as the forlorn lovers try to find each other and connect in their dreams. Meanwhile the family business is in turmoil and the matriarch is comatose in Barcelona. There are several twists and turns and sinister figures who try to destroy the company and seek Maya’s hand in marriage.

If all of this sounds vaguely like the plot of a Bollywood movie, then you have to thank Ramji for being faithful to his Indian upbringing in a coffee estate in Nairobi, Kenya. Though he has a background in entomology and horticulture, and doctorates in chiropractic medicine and public health, his passion for creative arts shows up in his personality and gregarious style.

And it definitely reflects in the novel which, “is more like Bollywood meets Hollywood,” Ramji quipped on a recent interview on the Indo American News Radio show. He has already done pre-production work for making the novel into a movie – which will have five romantic songs – and expects the trailer to be out by June. He has already hired several actors, and he himself will be the director, while the producer will be Escape Films USA headed by Adam Ramji of the Ramji Law firm. “Adam gave me the inspiration for the movie”, explained Ramji, “and it became a novel afterwards”.

The 273-page novel is a quick and engrossing read, and wastes no space with superfluous descriptions, moving rapidly from one scene to the next. An interesting element is the way Ramji weaves the Greek Gods Morpheus and Eros into the explanation of dreams as might be described in a Shakespearean play. And true to form, there is a superb twist that comes out of nowhere!

“Once Upon a Dream …. A Tale of Fated Love” is available on Amazon and Google Books.