Not many have the gift of thinking in a language in which they write. It sounds simple but it certainly isn’t. While we have a plethora of ‘new age writers’ willing to write about anything from socks to rockets (all within their flamboyant ‘colleges’ or workplace), in came a book which made reading a pleasure by literally giving some new dimensions to the stories which always existed but never really penned down. The way these thoughts have found their way to a book clearly speaks volumes about the way Prem nath thinks…and this is a rare gift.
I would love to go down story by story but that can spoil the excitement a little bit so I would rather touch upon few themes from this collection of short stories.
Be it an obsessive collector of lamps who gets into a bit of trouble thanks to some ‘weirdos’, or be it a television set that chases you to death, the author hasn’t really tried to make caricatures out of characters. The characters are very abstract yet a tad predictable. The pick of the stories has to be a description of rain in a locality in Bombay but you will definitely get a smile on your face once you read about an officememo which got transformed (almost magically!) to a pile of paper!! The way a story about the rain in Bombay (mentioned earlier) ends has ‘simply brilliant’ written all over it.
Touching a somewhat familiar topic in ‘urban’ collection of short stories, you will encounter a story about separation. Read it to know why Premnath (the author) deserves to be read. The simplistic yet layered story telling is something I haven’t really come across much off late. Also, do not miss the story of a ‘typical high class crime’ which appears otherwise when the inspector goes on to solve it. (No, it is not a thriller story but read it to know more). The best part about all these short stories is that in spite of reading this write up (or other reviews of this book), when you get down to reading it, you will definitely come across something which will be new and might give a new dimension to the way you interpret the characters/story/both.
As I end this post, I will shamelessly ask you to read this book once and judge it for yourself.
Welcome Premnath, Welcome to our book shelves (or shall we say – Thank you for coming?)
Rating? really? seriously? 5.00 out of 5.00.