Yesterday Once More

Love’s taken a back seat and it’s nostalgia that Ravinder Singh has banked upon for his new novel,Like it Happened Yesterday.”This one’s not a love story unlike my previous two,” said Singh,who was in Chandigarh for the release of the book (Penguin; Rs 140). Singh said the book will bring back memories of childhood — the time you broke your first tooth,the first crush,the days when life’s most complex choices had a simple solution of flipping a coin in the air,when the rains were welcomed by making paper boats,and when waiting at the railway crossing meant counting the bogies of the trains passing by.

A coming-of-age story,the book is about growing up in a small town — the pains,joys,anxieties and apprehensions of those wonder years. A journey replete with adventures,Singh hopes the book will make the reader relive their own childhood,in a refreshing way. Like It Happened Yesterday is Singh’s third book,with his earlier books I Too Had a Love Story and Can Love Happen Twice being bestsellers. After having spent most of his life in Burla,a small town in western Orissa,Singh — an engineer and MBA by qualification — has now quit his corporate career to turn full-time writer. Writing,he says,happened by chance as his first novel was a result of “watching people using social networking sites to connect and share experiences”.