LUCY AND THE TRAIN
Debashis Chakraborty
LUCY AND THE TRAIN by By Anandajit Goswami , 2016, 81 pp., 190.00
November 2016, volume 40, No 11

As documented by Lewis Carroll, the journey of Alice down the rabbit hole became ‘curiouser and curiouser’, with Cheshire Cat, Jabberwock, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and the other characters gradually entering the narrative. Carroll’s fascinating account led to a rich genre of fictions, which document one’s magical journey in the realm of fantasy. The science fiction stories in the recent past have matured into a similar genre of documenting journey to the future. Futuristic science fiction can give the reader an unexpected and enjoyable jolt, if at the last moment it is revealed to be a frame story (i.e., a story within a story), as classically seen in the ‘Planet of the Apes’. To his credit, Anandajit Goswami in Lucy And The Train creates an interesting ‘frame’ covering fantasy and science fiction, while managing to add another crucial dimension to the narrative, namely, sustainability challenges. There exists a vast pool of sci-fi stories in dystopian framework, with the world slowly moving towards destruction. Goswami’s narrative stands out within the genre by viewing the future through the eyes of a child, on a journey to come to terms with the future world, trace the causes behind the disaster and more importantly, to discover herself. In Lucy And The Train, the protagonist Lucy, a ten-year old girl from New York, drinks a potion at the Central Park in 2015.

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