Sahitya AajTak review of the loom of time (along with my short introduction)
“The Loom of Time” Is available at flipcart and amazon,
It can also be purchased at the Book Fair India Netbooks Hall No. 2/3 Stall No. K07
About the Novel
In late 1980’s, I wrote the story that became the first chapter of this book. I sent it to a handful of magazines. One editor returned it with a single line: “I don’t agree with the idea this story is promoting.” Another dismissed it: “We don’t publish science fiction.” It was not science fiction.
A close friend was more direct. He asked, “What were you thinking? Why did you write such a story?” I had no answer that would have satisfied him—or myself. I only knew the story insisted on being written. It refused to align with the political certainties of the time or submit to the philosophical positions then in vogue. It occupied an uncomfortable space, and for that reason, it was rejected.
By then, I had already begun the second chapter, The Boatman. That story carried me further, reaching the birth of Vaman—and then stopped. The narrative stalled, not for a lack of material, but because I lacked the clarity to continue. Fragments gathered around it: the story of Mani, the figure of the Pandit, thoughts on death and memory. These eventually hardened into The Ghost, but at the time they remained incomplete.
Years passed. The loom was set aside, though never entirely forgotten—resurfacing in conversations or moments of loss. Three years ago, I returned to The Loom of Time. I did with the acceptance that it had to be finished honestly or not at all.
I finally finished the book not because I had resolved its questions, but because of the desire to know what it could still become… The loom of Time arrives late and is precisely why It belongs neither to the time it was first written nor fully to the present. It belongs to the time in between the future and the several evolving ‘nows’—the interval between writing, leaving, and finally returning.
—Why did I write this book —
I wrote because explanations had simply failed me—politically, spiritually, and personally. For a long time, I believed practical, participatory and performative ideas could save us: that revolutions could redeem suffering and spiritual teachings could free the mind. I believed clarity was the endpoint of inquiry.
The Loom of Time arrived from a slow disillusionment, from conversations that went nowhere, in ideologies that promised justice but demanded submission, and in spiritual teachings that dismantled belief only to quietly replace it with authority.
I stopped trusting masters, even those I once admired. I could no longer separate politics from ethics, or spirituality from power. Every system I encountered—Marxist, Mystical, Scientific—claimed to explain the whole, yet collapsed when confronted with the mess of actual experience. The gap between what was said and what was lived became too wide to ignore.
My failure to belong—academically or spiritually—was not accidental. It was the condition that allowed me to see.
The "loom" was not a metaphor I chose; it was one I discovered. History does not move in clean lines. It frays, knots, and tears. Every attempt to pull it forcefully in one direction—through faith or reason—tears the fabric. The loom is delicate. Force it, and it unravels.
Time no longer felt linear. The past refused to stay buried; the future refused to arrive. Love returned as memory, and memory returned as haunting. I needed a form that could hold all of this without trying to resolve it.
Krishnamurti mattered to me—until he didn't. His words, once urgent, later felt like a silence that refused to acknowledge history, technology, and material suffering. I realized that the rejection of belief can itself become a belief, and that timelessness is often just a refuge from responsibility.
By 1990’s I no longer believe in conclusions. I believe only in attentiveness, in restraint, in not pulling too hard on the threads that bind us. There are no final solutions and no final answers. The Loom of Time is a record of how I stopped looking for one.
—A short summary of my book —
The Loom of Time begins in displacement. An ordinary journalist, unimportant, marginal, and feeling entirely out of place—finds himself on a delegation of celebrated thinkers traveling to the Soviet Union. He feels like a glitch in the system, a quiet error amidst men of academic credentials and ideological certainty. But it is here, in this unease, that he encounters a young woman whose questions unsettle him. She suggests that true authority doesn't come from knowing the answers, but from the courage to remain open to uncertainty. This idea becomes the first thread of the loom.
“Human society, with all its institutions—political, governmental, religious and sovereign law—was increasingly seen as a product of economic activity. Every society’s mode of production dictated its structure. As these modes evolved, so did the institutions, adapting or perishing in the process.
And as everything is a by-product of economic production, then to know and unearth the dynamic relations that govern the development of all material forces of production. To know and realise in practical terms, how this economic activity by individuals, people and nations generate historical, social, political and religious realities. And having understood the historical engines one has to register the insights arising from such an inquiry to replace all previous forms of knowledge production as well as its related institutional modes of education. Thus everyone should work to transform the world and the human consciousness of it in relation to the above insights.”
In Moscow, this romanticized view of The Worker and his planetary dominion, industry and collectivism- shatters against the hard surface of reality. The theory promised justice; the streets reveal scarcity, fear, and silence. Interviews and Conversations with locals puncture the official myths, showing how ideology can rewrite human suffering as historical necessity.
Here, the book defines itself as a hybrid—part fiction, part memoir, part philosophical inquiry. It embraces the fact that the narrator’s identity as the philosophical anchor is never fully resolved. Instead, it circles back on itself, meditating on the unreliable nature of memory and the limits of what we can truly know.
The chapter - The Loom of Time
The narrative expands into a philosophical allegory. The narrator’s position as an outsider allows him to see through the ideological certainty of the elites around him. The loom in the library is revealed to be a living system that responds to human intention. The narrator realizes that trying to alter history with ideological zeal only tears the fabric; true repair requires compassion and restraint. It serves as a critique of both Soviet control and liberal arrogance, proposing that history is not a march of progress, but a slow, exhausting process of repair grounded in humility.
The Boatman
The story takes a surreal turn, entering the posthumous journey of Lu Xun. Trapped in a mausoleum and ferried across a misty river, Lu Xun is forced to face the consequences of revolutionary thought. The Boatman, representing silenced voices, forces him to see how totalitarian systems devour the very culture and sentiments they claim to liberate. Lu Xun’s rebirth as Vaman isn't a fresh start, but a continuation of the struggle—a rejection of heroic narratives in favor of a cyclical, humble responsibility.
The Ghost
Moving from the political to the intimate, this section explores time as potential rather than a fixed destination through the narrator’s relationship with Aruni. Their debates on evolution and technology mirror their emotional vulnerability. When Aruni dies, the narrative fractures into hauntings, suggesting that memory operates like a ghostly loom outside of chronological time. The story refuses to offer closure, insisting that love and loss persist as overlapping layers of existence.
In the River Bed She Dreams
Back in Mumbai, the narrator reunites with Kanak, and their dialogue spans art, science, and spirituality. Jiddu Krishnamurti appears here not as a teacher, but as a gravitational force that draws them together before highlighting their differences. The mango tree becomes the central metaphor: nourishment without ideology, growth without guarantees. The chapter moves away from abstract spirituality toward a lived attention to the present, ending with a farewell scene of children planting seeds—a symbol of continuity without ownership.
Appendix – The Krishnamurti Critique
The book culminates in an intellectual confrontation with Jiddu Krishnamurti. The narrator moves from early fascination to deep disillusionment. He argues that while Krishnamurti brilliantly dismantled other belief systems, he quietly established his own authority—one that ignored the historical and material conditions of human life. The narrator challenges both Theosophical mysticism and scientific reductionism for trying to map the unknowable with false coordinates.
Ultimately, the book rejects all masters. It concludes not with enlightenment, but with radical humility. The narrator remains an unshielded searcher, accepting that disillusionment is perhaps the only honest state of being.
Concluding the summary
The narrative in stranger than fiction manner travels from political myths to metaphysical intimacy, shifting from revolutionary certainty to ethical fragility. It ends without a resolution, refusing to offer final answers in favor of a life lived with responsibility but without authority.
