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Ritwik and Hriday: Tales from the City, Tales from the Town
Siddharth Chowdhury’s Diksha at St. Martin’s, Patna Rough-cut and Day Scholar collected together in a single volume: Novels and stories about provincial life set in the gritty cities, towns and badlands of Bihar and in Delhi University campuses.
448 pages, Paperback
Published September 20, 2016
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July 2, 2018
Somewhere around the second part of the first little book that makes up Ritwik and Hriday, I understood. I understood the acclaim, the praise, and the idea of Chowdhury being the writer's writer. I got it.
I have always loved the idea of the Indian small town. But never have I felt it come alive and breathe, hold its nose and sneeze, like I did in these stories. Patna, I thought, had a great chronicler in Amitava Kumar. But here's another, and boy does Chowdhury do justice to that specific melee he writes about: the Bengali middle class of Patna. The nuances, the subtle asides, the throwaway comment: The effect was that of watching a particularly engrossing TV series unfold, character after character, situation after situation.
But the romance of it all deserves mention, and I dare say, may be the entire point. The Delhi university scenes Chowdhury writes of are some of the most vivid in the book, and in the end, they are the ones that stay with you: A boy and girl, from another town - their ancient, brow-beaten, poor town - walking in the streets of their capital, doomed to dream things that they know will never come true.
Masterful. Read.
I have always loved the idea of the Indian small town. But never have I felt it come alive and breathe, hold its nose and sneeze, like I did in these stories. Patna, I thought, had a great chronicler in Amitava Kumar. But here's another, and boy does Chowdhury do justice to that specific melee he writes about: the Bengali middle class of Patna. The nuances, the subtle asides, the throwaway comment: The effect was that of watching a particularly engrossing TV series unfold, character after character, situation after situation.
But the romance of it all deserves mention, and I dare say, may be the entire point. The Delhi university scenes Chowdhury writes of are some of the most vivid in the book, and in the end, they are the ones that stay with you: A boy and girl, from another town - their ancient, brow-beaten, poor town - walking in the streets of their capital, doomed to dream things that they know will never come true.
Masterful. Read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review