A Mirrored Life by Rabisankar Bal , translated by Arunava Asinha

There are stories. Always. Stories about people , about other stories , about people telling the stories , about stories new and old and forgotten alike. Stories liek books reach you by fate. And its fate that sent Ibn Battuta on his travels , reciting and collecting tales of Rumi known to most as Maulana.

Followers of Rumi present Battuta with a manuscript of Rumi's life stories and he goes away from Konya spreading them. It is like he takes all the beauty and love form Konya ( the birthplace of Rumi ) in his heart and the gifts from fellow travellers and followers. The stories he shares are amazed as much as amazing 'cause they flow endlessly entwined with daily life of commoners.
For me these were all conversations , like snippets from an evening , the aroma of favorite cup of chai on a relaxing day. I was hooked to the book from the first page and more when the author mentions that no one can reproduce the stories as they were born. We can only share the qissa but not the physical surroundings or the emotional state of the people involved. And this is the same for this review I am writing.
I am so lucky I got to read this book that questions the answers and answers new questions. It was a difficult book to finish within a short time and I am guilty of avoiding reading more than few pages every now and then.
Do yourself a favor and read this book. ASAP.
My rating : 5/5 

Buy the book here 

Illicit by Dibyendu Palit

--

Author: Dibyendu Palit
Translator: Arunava Sinha
Binding Type - Paperback
ISBN 13: 9780143067726
Publisher: Penguin Books India
No. of Pages:128
RATING: 3.5/5

What's that they say about great things coming in small packages? Dibyendu Palit's 'Illicit', translated into English by Arunava Sinha, is just that. With an artistically designed cover and a title like that, the book is a pick-me-up, and thankfully it doesn't disappoint.. ahem... even between the covers. One wouldn't expect any less from Palit, who is a renowned short story writer.

The plot spans just three days and is a slice of the protagonists' illicit life. Jeena, an attractive young housewife is bored of her 'wooden relationship' with much older husband, Ashim. Partha, her neighbour, is married, a father of two, and equally bored in his marital life. We are introduced to them in the high point of their illicit relationship when the two are planning a secret sojourn to Puri. Quelling her self doubts and pangs of guilt, Jeena takes the bold step to be with Partha.

In the next three days that Jeena spends with Partha, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Partha's lust takes an aggressive turn and Jeena feels violated. Beguiled by shame, self pity and doubt, she decides to head back home and put to an end everything illicit.

Illicit is a deliberate and intense book. The author takes his time to build upon his Jeena's guilt, purposefully punctuating it with the mundane. We see her squirm uncomfortably under the weight of her feelings one moment and pondering upon a cup of tea the next. Now she is losing sleep calculating her risks and now she is flowing with the moment. Palit's skill is apparent in the way he juxtaposes these contrasting elements, much like real life. He takes no moral stance and simply tells the story of the greatest kind of conflict - one that a person has with himself.

The language is simple and accessible; at least the translator, Arunava Sinha, makes it seem so. The lucid prose makes for easy yet thought-provoking reading. Palit is a gifted writer for he leaves you sighing at love's (sometimes) futile cause at the end of its 128 pages.

My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose

Some books grab you by the throat, some lie next to you under shady trees on summer afternoons in companionable silences, and some, you must coax and cajole into a friendship. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose started out being the third kind, but by the time I finished, it had become the second. My relationship with this book was one of old school romance - just what the book is about.

In the 'literary' age where more people know of E L James than say, Jane Austen, where consummation comes before courtship, My Kind of Girl is a 'difficult' book. It is a book that forces you to slow down, a book that will take you back in time to an inhibited world, where the only way of loving was longing.

My Kind of Girl, a translation of the Bengali 'Moner Moto Maye' is really a collection of four short 'love' stories held together by a looser, larger plot. Four stranded travellers - a doctor, a writer, a bureaucrat and a contractor - find themselves in the waiting room of a railway station and must spend a night together. They seek the warmth of each other's love stories to fend off the cold in their air and their hardened hearts.

Stories of young, and mostly unrequited love are narrated, transporting the reader to a time of innocence, a time purity, a time where a brush of the beloved's hand was enough to last one a lifetime. There is the thick-headed Makhanlal's story of  love for his neighbour that never comes to pass; Gagan Baran, the bureaucrat's story of Pakhi, who loved him as a 16-year-old and forever after; Dr. Abani's story of how he met his wife through a friend who broke her heart; and the writer's story of 'Mona Lisa', who he and his two best friends loved and lost together.

Every story is told with a tenderness we, as a people, as readers, have forgotten. To those who've grown on the fodder of Mills & Boons and Sidney Sheldons, Buddhadeva Bose's book will seem painfully primitive in the beginning. But one must give it time; one must open their hearts to the kind of love that is not about easy, sweaty sex and porn-perfect characters. One must slowly dance to the plaintive flute that a lovelorn heart plays. One must partake of the pain of longing, a pain that has no recourse or end. There are no happy endings, just twinges of sorrow to take back from these elegiac love stories. These are stories about 'Your kind of person', but one you can never have. Through its stories and its style, My Kind of Girl harks back to the romantic in you, the romantic you thought was gone forever.

Kudos to Arunava Sinha for translating not just the words but the delicate sentiments bound within the pages of this book. But this book is only for those who know how to take it slow.

Dozakhnama by Rabishankar Bal

Author: Rabisankar Bal
Translated by: Arunava Sinha
ISBN-13: 9788184003086
Publisher: Random House India
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 544

Have you ever been burnt by a book? Been trapped between its pages, gasping for air? Have you felt that if you read any more you'd die; but if you didn't read, you'd die anyway? If you've not had the pleasure of such a pain, read Dozakhnama.

Page after page of this book, I've been burned. Page after page, I've suffered as a reader. Page after page, I've yo-yoed from heaven to hell and back. I've seen creations divine, and endured the labour pains that every creation demands. Author Rabishankar Bal takes you through the agonising journey of two creators of beauty and if you are a writer/poet yourself, the book feels like a kick in the gut. And yet I held on, read it as slowly as I could, wishing this sweet pain would never end.

Dozakhnama is originally a Bengali novel by acclaimed author, Rabishankar Bal and it has been translated into English by Arunava Sinha. Between its pages lie Saadat Hasan Manto and Mirza Ghalib conversing with each other from their graves. The sutradhar is an author who has stumbled upon an unpublished work of Manto's and has set out to translate it. In this mysterious manuscript is recorded this fantastical conversation between modern Urdu writer, Manto and one of the greatest poets in Indian history, Ghalib.

Speaking across nearly a century, Manto and Ghalib share the stories of their lives with ghosts for company in the night. Manto and Ghalib take turns in every alternate chapter to share a piece of their lives and soon the line between historical facts and fiction is blurred. Bal owns their voices with such confidence that one is loathe to believe that the words are not really Manto's or Ghalib's. Sprinkled with little dastaans and poetry by greats like Mir and Rumi and of course, Ghalib, the book charts not just the life of these two artists, but also the literary ethos of India from the 19th through the 20th centuries.

Though far removed from each other in time, Ghalib's and Manto's journeys seem similar. But then, all artists have journeys like these - travelling through their personal dozakhs, their private hells while creating honest art. Ghalib and Manto both had their share of love, poverty, victory, heartbreak, alcoholism, and persecution for their truth, their words. Ghalib's India at the end of Mughal rule, and Manto's India at the end of British rule are very different, yet the trials of an artist's life are the same, the cycle of pain and creation neverending. Bal chronicles their lives and poetry and pain in one seamless breath, creating this masterpiece of a book. A thought must also be spared for Arunava Sinha and how he too must have partaken of this fire when translating this book. It's brilliant and I believe none of the effulgence of the original work was lost in translation.

Do yourself a favour. Read this book.

RATING: 4/5