If we cannot sacrifice anything for our family, then we cannot love anyone

AJAY K PANDEY

My Rating: 5/5

The End of any books from Ajay K Pandey touches the soul and this one is a masterpiece. ‘Her Last Wish’ is one such book which i could read it again and again and not get bored. It’s all about Love, Sacrifice, Family, struggles faced by HIV patients. The quotes ‘Love is blind’ is proven to be true in this wonderful book. One would easily get lost while reading it.

Although the start of the book is a little drag describing about the protagonist Vijay’s life how he has been a failure in life wasting 5 years of his adulthood trying to clear the IAS exam to fulfill his Father’s dream yet failing every year and finally gives up his hope. His mother somehow uses her influence and gets him admitted in a college as a assistant professor. At this moment, Astha enters in Vijay’s life being his reason to relive again. They both gets into Indian ritual of Arranged Marriage. Astha is totally opposite of Vijay, she is energetic, lives every moment to the fullest, yet one thing that haunts her is being a illegitimate child. As time passes by they both share a bond of love and whenever Astha gets upset being a illegitimate child, vijay could console her saying being illegitimate is not a fault of her but the fault of her parents. As life flows smoothly Vijay gets one phone call from a blood camp where Astha had donated blood a few days back changes their whole life, it took him a while to sink in what he heard, she has been diagnosed as HIV positive. Vijay was shocked and shattered by the phone call, yet he chose to hide it from Astha.

The whole plot of the books changes from there and it’s so gripping and realistic, one just can’t put down the book. The author had done a beautiful job to throw light on a very sensitive topic and gives a lot of information about how HIV is carried to a person, what could be the reason, how can one be treated, the difficulties faced by such patients all together brings tears to the reader.

Now Vijay hunts to discoverer all the possibilities to save love of his life (Astha). He eventually finds out it’s a terminal disease and love is the only cure (mentally). Also he comes across 7 wishes that Astha had, which are practically impossible for a middle class guy to fulfill it. Yet he goes to prove it wrong as he fulfills her wishes one after another even without the knowledge of Astha, how he does that is truly admirable to what extend one can go to keep his love (wife) happy for eternity.

I recommend this book to everyone to read it at least once in a lifetime, you won’t regret taking up this book. The narration is simple, each characters play a good role, plays with our emotions, many beautiful quotes are been used at the right situation and one such quote which i loved personally is below:

“Always try to represent yourself as ‘Happy‘ , because initially it becomes your ‘Look‘ , gradually it becomes your ‘Habit‘ , and one day, it becomes your ‘Personality‘ “
–Astha Sharma (Her last wish)