My love for short stories grew from the innumerable text books that my dad used to buy for me. Yes, you read that right. My dad used to buy English textbooks from different schools of the same class I was in, so that I can solve the exercises and learn from them. I don't know what I learnt from them but of this I am sure that my love for short stories grew from there. You can tell so much in such few pages. You can hide so much in plain sight. You can write so much in so little.
This book has a good collection of stories from stalwarts of Bengali literature, storytellers like Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay, Ashapurna Devi, Satyajit Ray, Sunil Gangopadhyay and some more. I didn't quite like all of them, because obviously mine and Abhinav Sinha's likes cannot match, but some I found quite intrguing. Like...
'India' by Ramapada Chowdhury- tells the story of how giving of bakseesh by American soldiers from a passing train, turned a whole village of hardworking farmers into beggars.
'Raja' by Ritwik Ghatak- tells us how a young promising college lad turned to thievery and vagrancy. When back to his village for a reunion, he tells all lies about his life and when he decides that he will give up his bad ways anf turn good, he cannot ultimately. The way the story is narrated, shows what a master of storytelling Ritwik Ghatak was.
'The Offering' by Pramatha Chaudhuri- this one really churned up my emotions. Tells the story of a village laid to waste because of the arrogancy and ruthlessness of the ruling zamindars. Tells the woes that the women of the warring families had to witness.
Then of course there are 'Mahesh' by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and 'Kabuliwallah' by Tagore. Have read them so many times and yet they pull at the heartstrings each time I read. Timeless tales.
This maybe a collection of short stories but the stories are so heavy that I took more than 5 months to finish it. I could never read more than one. They have churned up so many emotions within me that I had to take my own sweet time to finish the book. Definitely not a light read in between books. I rather finished 3 other books (two Harry Potter spin offs and Verity) in between reading this book.
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