Book Review: The Walls of Delhi
What is the colour of fear? Is it the colour of dirt, or of stone? Is it yellow, charcoal? Or the colour of ash left over from a burning coal – ash that coats the coal still glowing red-hot, that still has its heat! Or a colour that masks a terrifying silence behind it? A small tear that exposes a frightful scream suspended behind.Have you ever seen the bloodshot, dying eyes of a fish thrown from an ocean or a river, onto a sandy bank or shore? That’s the colour.
The Walls of Delhi is a collection of three stories originally written by Uday Prakash in Hindi and translated into English by Jason Grunebaum. In the title story The Walls of Delhi, a sweeper discovers a cache of black money and escapes to see the Taj Mahal with his underage mistress. In the story Mohandas, a lower caste man struggles to reclaim his identity stolen by an upper caste identity thief. In Mangosil, a baby is born to an elderly couple with a rare disease in which the baby’s head gets bigger and bigger as he gets smarter and smarter, while his poverty stricken family struggles for a cure.
All three thematically aligned stories are tragic, with the author focusing on poverty, exploitation, corruption, and communal divisions that by and large still afflict sections of Indian society. I am not particularly fond of literature that thrives only on cons of any society. Yet, although the individual stories build up on the painful and neglected aspects of Indian society, the collection as a whole stands out uniquely having a distinct and original voice. The characters are complete and very much human so that their tales keep lingering in the reader's mind even after finishing the book. In all three stories, the author has succeeded in exploring the grave subjects in an intriguing style of narration and with complete command of a language that disturbs the reader.
I've already told you about this kind of life: a man who you see everyday can suddenly disappear, and never be seen again, not a scrap to remember him by. Even if you went looking for him, all you’d find – at most- would be a little damp spot on square of earth where Ramnivas had once existed; and the only thing this would prove is that on that spot some man once did exist, but no more, and never again.The review remains incomplete without commenting on the excellent translation done by Jason Grunebaum. A translator's task is always difficult. Yet, in these three stories, Jason Grunebaum had never allowed the stories to detach themselves from the original smell and taste of their definitely Indian root.
| 
|
It is a good read. I had received the review copy from Hachette India. Thank you Hachette India for giving me this opportunity. You can buy this book at amazon or at flipkart in case you live in India.
You may also like similar reviews available in the
archive
0 Thoughts:
Share a thought