A Literary Musing

A book, which I brought from an acquaintance turned out better than my expectation. In fact, it was an all-new landscape for me where I wandered & wondered open-mouthed.

‘Freedom at Midnight’, which is a narrative of events taking place in the crucial year of 1947, gives a unique & distinct perspective of all the happenings & incidents. As the book is extremely researched it smells of a rare authenticity & is written in a fictional manner. The writers have an exceptional eye for details. The book doesn’t talk about the big shots only it also tells the accounts of various unknown faces.

The language is engaging & enriching making the work a linguistic treat. The writers doesn’t seem to bombard the reader with their assumed (by me) arsenal of English vocabulary which could have left the poor reader bewildered & bedazzled by the sheer depth of their knowledge instead of looking for the info. & content in the book. However, the book does provide me (an English lover) a rich & interesting vocab. With tailor made usages & variety. In a nutshell, I found the language pleasurable & better than that of many other books.

However, there is one specific quality that makes the book stand out of all their well-researched previous works, its Indian connection. After all, I am an Indian. If i do not enjoy it then who else will.

One more thing, the book paints Lord Mountbatten in a very angelic picture that my cynical mind found hard to digest. I imagine in my wildest fancies that it may be a meticulously planned & brilliantly executed PR exercise by Mountbatten. But note that, it doesn’t disparage any of the main characters. In that case it is a disarmingly dispassionate account.

‘Gitanjali’, the worldwide acclaimed & most famous work of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is the latest addition to my humble library. I had acquainted it earlier through ‘The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success’ (Dr. Deepak Chopra) & during my stay at DehraDoon. Its original edition is in Bengali, its English version was awarded the Nobel Prize & I have brought the Hindi translation, as it is my mother tongue thus closest to my heart.

Talking of the content, though I haven’t read it completely yet I can comment on it with some surety & precision.

The poems are highly mystical forcing you to comprehend their meanings with the help of all your creative talent & spiritual insight. In fact if you are able to get through the all-pervading mystique you will find certain new vistas open & waiting for you. So plunge deep & rise high.

There is couple of more things to be added. Some knowledge of Srimad Bhagwat Gita proves much help in understanding the message of Gitanjali. The poetry is so much extraordinary & classic that I am thinking (though casually) to learn Bengali to read the verses in original & unadulterated form. Even I have made an almost final decision of getting the English version.

Apart from this, George Orwell’s ‘Down & Out in Paris & London’ is also perhaps a fascinating read. The book is his first hand account of his experiences of living on the streets of Paris & London in mid-1930s. One expert suggests that the book should be read ideally when one is in college.

Few days back I was reading the review of a new novel called ‘The Simoqin Prophecies’. This well-written novel can be a source of inspiration for me as its author ‘Samit Basu’ is a lad of 23 years only.