Weaving of Arachne

  Precious Me, Today is the last day of this stranger-than-fiction year, 2020. This year had derailed normal lives all around the globe. If I could meet my 2019 self and forewarn her, I am sure she would have dismissed it as one of my innumerable imaginary scenarios. Nevertheless, as every thing that begins must have an end, today 2020 has reached its tail-end. This is the time that we must retrospect and introspect about how we dealt with 2020. The year through its strange ways taught us valuable life lessons that I want to abide throughout my life. 2020 had unleashed upon us a pandemic and I am thankful to God that I lived through it, granted that the pandemic is not yet over; but atleast I made it to the end of 2020 and this in itself is a huge achievement. I want to confess that though there were times when I was very scared but mostly I remained unbothered by this raging virus which brought the whole world to a standstill. This made me aware of my privileges and induced a de...

Life Over Two Beers  is an anthology of short stories and a few poems by Sanjeev Sanyal. The book had been lying on my shelf for a couple of years but I had always deferred reading it because I had inexplicably presumed that the book will disappoint me. However, after finishing the book, I am pleased to be proven wrong. The book is a gem hidden underneath the piles of mass-manufactured popular fiction by Indian authors, waiting to be discovered. The writing is crisp, lucid, and vivid. The stories evoke a vivid picture of the 21 st  century India and Indians belonging to different social strata. The writer relentlessly yet in a playful manner exposes the hypocrisies of society, and the double standards of the apparently ‘eminent’ and ‘illustrious’ personalities. Each of the stories successfully holds the attention of the reader and keeps her enthralled till the very last word. I hardly finish reading books in one sitting but I just couldn’t bring myself to put down this one un...

I  first read My Name is Red  by Orhan Pamuk some five years ago. I didn’t retain even the broad plotline much less the subtleties of the narrative yet I clearly remember the sheer pleasure and awe that I felt while reading it. Instigated by that awesome feeling I decided to reread the novel. All I can say is the awe that I felt on first reading it is now increased fivefold on my rereading it. The novel is like an immense, exquisite and intricate medieval miniature painting which is a treat for the eyes as well as the soul. I am simply amazed to see the attention paid to the minutest detail by the author. I am at a loss for words to define the novel; it in fact transcends every attempt of categorisation. The novel converges diverse genres such as, ekphrastic, historical, detective in keeping with the postmodernist tendency to transcend divisions and merge genres. The novel evokes a vivid picture of Istanbul of the 1590s through diverse narrators and multiple points of view. T...

Beatrice and Virgil  by Yann Martel was an unsettling and disturbing read for me. The novel features the story-within-a-story narrative trope, which contributes to its disorganized appearance. The novel primarily features a play, named A 20 th -Century Shirt  written by a taxidermist who happens to be a namesake of the protagonist, Henry. Along with the play, which takes up a lion’s share of the narrative, the novel also partially features a short story by Flaubert, ‘The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator’. A 20 th -Century Shirt  which is in fact, the essence of Beatrice and Virgil  is an animal allegory featuring the eponymous characters, a donkey and a monkey, respectively. Through the “irreparable abomination” faced by animals, the taxidermist symbolises all the hatred that is directed towards certain groups by their fellow humans at regular intervals. But “the Horrors” faced by the animals explicitly refer to the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews. Beatrice...

  Midnight’s Children  by Salman Rushdie is simply an amazing phenomenon. However it would be an injustice to use the word ‘simply’ while describing this book. It is one of the most complex and enjoyable book that I have ever read. Midnight’s Children  encompasses the history, politics as well as social mores of the Indian subcontinent through 1915 to 1977. In doing so it employs all kinds of genres starting from fable, magic realism, mock epic, poetry, farce, history, autobiography, and many more. The novel shuns all the conventions of a traditional novel and employs unconventional techniques such as time shifting narrative, highly unreliable narrator in order to drive home the fact that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and history is a mere narrative which may very well have alternative versions. The novel is highly symbolic and unpredictable. You can never guess what will be thrown at your face in the very next line thereby echoing life in its unpredictabilit...

 Reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth was one of the best decisions I ever took. A Suitable Boy, a humungous novel of approximately 1500 pages can confidently be claimed as one of the longest novels in English, if not the longest. As the blurb of the book says, at its core it is a love story, it portrays the young protagonist’s journey of finding love and its meaning. But, it will be a gross understatement to label it as merely a love story because the scope of this immense novel extends beyond all such conventional labelling. It explores every spectrum of life, or to be precise Indian life, encompassing within its ambit politics, law, religion, academia, Nawabi culture, geography, etc. I doubt whether there is any aspect of everyday life that doesn’t find mention in this book. The novel leisurely unfolds before the readers a panoramic view of India, including the marvellous and praiseworthy as well as the abdominal and ugly.  The novel is set in the 1950s; it covers the ...

    আজ অনুরাগের মেজাজ বেজায় গরম। দিনটা শুরুই হলো বিশ্রী একটা ফোন কল দিয়ে। ঘুমের ঘোরে কল রিসিভ করতেই অনুরাগের কানে ভেসে এলো সম্পাদকের রুদ্ধ কণ্ঠস্বর। তাকে কিছু বলার সুযোগ না দিয়েই ঝড়ের গতি তে নিজের বক্তব্য রাখলেন সম্পাদক মহোদয়। –আর কত সময় লাগবে অনুরাগ তোমার গল্পটা লিখতে? –ইয়ে… –পত্রিকাটা যে আগামী মাসের পহেলা তারিখে প্রকাশিত হবে সেইটা আশা করি তোমার মনে আছে। দেখো অনুরাগ, আমি পরিষ্কার বলে দিচ্ছি তোমাকে আরও চার দিন সময় দিতে পারবো। এর মধ্যে যদি লেখা জমা দিতে পারো তাহলে ভালো, না হলে তোমার সাথে আমাদের সব কন্ট্রাক্ট বাতিল করতে আমি বাধ্য হবো। এখন তাহলে রাখছি, মনে থাকে যেন চার দিন সময় রইলো তোমার হাতে। মোবাইল পাশে নামিয়ে রেখে এক দীর্ঘ নিঃশ্বাস ফেললো অনুরাগ। অনুরাগ যে খুব জনপ্রিয় লেখক না তা সে নিজেও জানে। বহু প্রকাশক কে নিজের লেখা পাঠিয়েছে অনুরাগ, কিন্তু সবার থেকে একই উত্তর পেয়েছে, “আপনার লেখা ভালোই লাগলো কিন্তু এই গল্প আমরা প্রকাশিত করতে পারব না। আসলে কি জানেন আপনার লেখায় কোনো জৌলুস নেই, এই গল্প পাঠক কে আকর্ষিত করতে পারবে না।“ অবশেষে একটা মাসিক পত্রিকায় লেখার সুযোগ পেল অনুরাগ। এক ...

Farzana was lying on the tattered mattress and looking at the grimy ceiling with unseeing eyes. The day she dreaded the most has finally dawned, the first day of the new session at school. It was very unlikely of her because each year she looked forward to this day. She is an inquisitive and diligent girl and is always eager to learn new and exciting stuff. But things are going to be different this year and there is nothing she can do to avoid it. Her eyes darted to the clock on the wall. It was quite a simple clock sans adornment yet it did just fine what it was meant to do, tell the time, albeit ten minutes late. The face of the clock showed it was 6:30 and the wedge of the sunlight sliding in through the ventilator attested that it was 6:30 a.m., or more accurately 6:40 a.m. Farzana let out a resigned sigh. The least she could do to redeem herself in the already doomed day was to reach school in time. In their tiny, shabby one room house it wasn’t difficult to guess what the other f...

Chronicle of a Death Foretold  by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the finest examples of powerful writing. The title of the novella gives the exact description of what it deals with. The novella is a chronicle of a murder that has been foretold, so much so that the entire knows about it. However, we should not let ourselves be deceived by the straightforwardness of the title because the ambiguity of the narrative can said to be directly proportional to the unambiguousness of the title. In contrast to other murder stories, the author in this novella clearly states the identity of the victim, the perpetrator and their motives from the very beginning. However, the author remained equivocal to the end about the culpability of the murdered man. It is not revealed whether the murdered man was actually guilty of the crime imputed to him, though throughout the novella we find several hints that try to establish his innocence. Nevertheless, one must bear in mind that the unnamed chron...

A Man Called Ove  by Fredrik Backman is not simply a book. I will describe it as a warm snuggle for want of better words to express my emotions about it. The eponymous protagonist of the novel, Ove can be best described as a curmudgeon. He is the archetypal grumpy old sod who will surely come across as extremely unlikable when you meet him first. But, if we are willing to look beyond the crass façade of the grumpy old sod we will discover the gem that lies hidden within. We are very quick to judge and label a person based on our first impression of them without making the slightest effort to know their story, to know why they are the way they are. Perhaps that is why Backman introduces us to this extremely unlikable character and obliges us to take the journey with him, to know his story and then form our opinion about this grumpy old sod. The narrative oscillates between different phases of Ove’s life thereby interweaving his past and present. It is a simple yet profound s...

While facing a pandemic nothing can be more relatable and relevant than The Plague  by Albert Camus. As is suggested by the self-explanatory title this novel brings forth the plight of the people of Oran who had been besieged by the epidemic of plague. Though set in the fictitious town of Oran during the 1940s, the novel has become more relevant than most of the contemporary novels, given the abnormal and tumultuous times that we are facing. The novel is styled as a chronicle narrated by an unnamed narrator whose identity is revealed at the very last chapter. Though the novel emphatically portrays the suffering of the residents of the plague-stricken town yet nowhere does it get mushy. Rather, it maintains its stoic, objective tone throughout, which I feel is quite an achievement given the poignant nature of the events that are described. Another feature of the novel that appealed me was the impersonality of the chronicler. Though the novel is styled as a personal chronicle of...

“Finally, the day has arrived” Andrew smugly mused. No, it isn’t his birthday; or perhaps by a contorted logic one can say that it is. After all, wasn’t this day destined to usher in a new phase in Andrew’s life? This day will bestow a new lease of life to him; hence, one is justified in calling it his birthday. The beeping of his phone pulled him out of his reverie. It was a message from Ajay, his office colleague. It read, “Congratulations!!! I want a grand party, no excuses shall be entertained. And don’t forget your hapless friend once you fly off to America.” Andrew smiled indulgently, evidently Ajay adored him. In fact almost all of his colleagues admired and adored him. Andrew’s charismatic personality, coupled with his good looks and pleasant disposition won him a great many friends and admirers. However, this deluge of admiration had deluded him into thinking that the world revolves around him. But in this case it wasn’t presumptuous of him to think that since last few da...