Dream Interrupted

About the Book

Dream Interrupted records the sublime joy of falling in love in a society where love was frowned upon and considered to be a threat to the very fabric of the joint family system. It describes vividly the life of fulfilment following marriage, migrating to England, and coming to terms with the demands of the harsh new society in the adopted home. The story then charts the vicissitudes of career and community work in frequently hostile surroundings. The focus of the second part of the book is on the darkest phase of author’s life when after a brief debilitating illness, his wife succumbed to cancer. The turmoil caused by her gruelling treatment, the frequent false and unrealistic hopes and the crippling impact of grief are described in words suffused with poignancy and pain.

Dream Interrupted charts the extraordinary journey of a powerful but unostentatious love through migration, the rising tide of racism, fast changing landscape of communities and the stoicism and dignity through illness.

About the Author

Sehdev Bismal has been living in his adopted home, the United Kingdom for over 42 years and has made a substantial contribution to relations between different ethnic and faith communities in Wolverhampton. He was a Head of Service in Education for over 20 years and witnessed seminal changes in schools, local authorities and a range of contradictory responses to the  increasing presence of people from different backgrounds, ethnicities and faith traditions. He has regualrly written on these issues emphasising the need for dialogue, understanding and cohesion between different communities. In 2004, his wife Rajinder's sudden death found him trying to cope with the big hole left in his life and this book is an attempt to make sense of  the unrelenting pain that left him writhing following his bereavement. It is an accocunt of his journey through hell and how his loss changed irrevocably  his views and perspective on life.