Das Mädchen meines Herzens

by Buddhadeva Bose, Hanne-Ruth Thompson (Übersetzer)

Ein bitterkalter Winterabend auf dem Bahnhof einer indischen Kleinstadt: Vier einander unbekannte Herren müssen die Nacht im Warteraum verbringen. Sie hängen ihren Gedanken nach ? als plötzlich die Tür aufgeht und ein verliebtes junges Paar zu sehen ist. Dieser kurze Augenblick verändert etwas: Erinnerungen an längst vergangene Tage kommen auf, und die vier beginnen ein Gespräch über das Glück. Sie vertreiben sich die langen Stunden mit Geschichten über ihre erste Liebe. Als im Morgengrauen der letzte von ihnen endet, schließt der Leser einen der schönsten Liebesromane des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, India, Novella, Asia, Novels, Asian Literature

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Buddhadeva Bose (also spelt Buddhadeb Bosu) (Bengali: বুদ্ধদেব বসু ) was a major Bengali writer of the 20th century. Frequently referred to as a poet, he was a versatile writer who wrote novels, short stories, plays and essays in addition to poetry. He was an influential critic and editor of his time. He is recognized as one of the five poets who moved to introduce modernity into Bengali poetry. It has been said that since Tagore, perhaps, there has been no greater talent in Bengali literature. His wife Protiva Bose was also a writer.

Buddhadeva Bose received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967 for his verse play Tapaswi O Tarangini, received the Rabindra Puraskar in 1974 for Swagato Biday(poetry) and was honoured with a Padma Bhushan in 1970.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1951 novella, originally written in Bengali, which I read in English translation. Four middle-aged men, who don’t know each other, are stuck overnight in the first-class waiting room of a railway station, having been told their train will be delayed for many hours. The men catch sight of a young newlywed couple, obviously in love, and the scene takes them back to their own youth. To pass the time they agree to each tell a story of romantic love that they experienced as young men. I mention that it’s a waiting room for first-class passengers as each of the men is wealthy, or at least middle class, and their stories are taken from that part of society.

I liked the first three stories very much, especially the second one, which is about a lifelong unfulfilled love between two people, each of whom is married to someone else. The stories derive from the social conventions of 1920s Bengal. Marriages of young people are arranged by their parents, there are rules of etiquette, and physical intimacy between the sexes is only really possible in marriage. Elements of these stories reminded me of the “courtly love” tales of pre-modern Europe. Courtly love, so I am told, involved emotional rather than physical displays of affection, and men proved their feelings by constantly performing tasks and services for the objects of their desire. This was certainly true of the last of the stories, which seemed to me a bit overdone.

I would probably rate the first 3 stories at 4 stars each, with the last at 2 stars. That averages out at 3.5, which I have rounded up.

This is an undemanding read, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The book only stretches to 138 pages so unlike the train it features, it won’t detain you for long.

[Rowena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

"And yet it was in Bengal that I was born, that I grew up, that the first chapter of my life was spent. Back then, in that distant childhood, could I ever have imagined myself as I am now? Nor, for that matter, can I now picture that boy, that shy young man, as the first edition of myself. All those memories seemed to have been wiped clean, I thought I had forgotten them all-- but suddenly, after our conversation, it's all come back so clearly."

This was a relatively short and simple read about four middle-aged Indian men, strangers, sharing a train compartment. After witnessing a young newlywed couple, they decide to tell each other stories (four in total) about first loves in their youth.

I found the stories quite readable and compelling, funny at times too. Each story looked at a different aspect of love, as well as being interesting looks at nostalgia and memories. There was also the constant reminder about how back in the day marriage was the be all and the end all of a lot of people's lives.

[Smitha Murthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across Buddhadeva Bose in the dusty shelves of a second-hand bookstore in Bangalore earlier this year. While 'It Rained All Night' was impressive, it is 'My Kind Of Girl' that really made me understand why Buddhadeva Bose is considered one of the finest Bengali writers.

Told through four narrators, the book traces love - the aching failings and occasional winnings of love. Four men are forced to spend the night in a railway station lounge while waiting for their train. They recount stories from their past of their lost loves. Not all the loves were lost, don't despair. Bose weaves in beautiful descriptive narration with the utter poignancy of emotion. If the translation itself is so good, I can't imagine how good the original Bengali must be!

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always read some translated literature in my mix of books. This year I decided to create a challenge to read one translated novel a month. I did make a list of countries, especially ones from which I had not read much, but then I remembered I had quite a stack sent to me some years ago, without charge, by Archipelago Books. Being me, I felt guilty for never having read and reviewed those so I started with the one on the top of the stack.

My Kind of Girl takes place in a cold room one December night. Four strangers have been given this room in a Bengali train station to wait out the hours while some rails are being repaired. All these men have is coffee and a few blankets.

A young couple, obviously deeply in love, maybe on a honeymoon, come to check out this room but go away. After some discussion about how these young people probably want to be alone and a bit of reminiscence about being that young and that much in love, each of these middle-aged men tells the story of his first love.

The pattern of this novella is based on the great story-cycles of the past such as The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron by Boccaccio. The difference is this is Bengali in the 1940s and the tales take place in the 1920s when India was still under British rule. It was a time when traditions concerning marriage and women were beginning to change.

Each of the four stories is as charming and various as are the ways of the human heart. Though the point of view is decidedly male, or perhaps because it is, I was captivated by this look into young men's hearts told by looking back from their older selves.

Buddhadeva Bose (1908-1974) was a celebrated and award winning writer who brought modernism to Bengali literature, as well as a translator of European literature.

I am off to a good start on my challenge.

[Smita Beohar · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Kind of Girl

Author: Buddhadeva Bose (In Bengali)
Translated to English: Arunava Sinha
Publication: Random House India
Price: 350/-

I always saw this book cooling its heels in the rack of my book store. The cover & packaging was classy and so was the price. I always felt that for a 171 page book the price was too much. And then on a rainy day I picked the book sat on red couch of the book store & was hooked to it in no time. Needless to say the book was bought & possessed.

On a cold December night a doctor, a bureaucrat, a contractor & a writer are stuck in the waiting room of Tundla Railway station. Ill at ease & uncomfortable they were worried about how the night will pass when the door of the waiting room opened. A newly wed couple peeped in and retreated after seeing four pairs of prying eyes. Behind them they left a sad room and the men inside started wondering the reason for their departure. All of them had a theory and the one which stood out was
‘They look like a couple in love, they will find a cozy, private spot for themselves, they will enjoy it. They don’t want anything else, they just want privacy.’

This small incident propelled these old guys into talking about love and its intricacies. One thing leads to other and they start sharing their stories, stories of their love, marriage et al.

Each story shows us a different face of love, if in once case it is a synonymous to sacrifice then in other it is blind faith or sometimes it is friendship which is love. There is one common thread between each stories and that is innocence.

The book was originally written in 1951 and the stories have the charm of that era. There is certain magic in each story which manages to touch a chord.

If I want I can summarize each story but in the process I would kill the magic that I had felt & experienced. I fell in love with each story and am sure so will you. The book has the making of a slow book but it never meanders on that path. It keeps you gripped and enthralled.

It is a sweet little book which endears you with simple language and innocent love stories.

In the present times of fast paced life and faster love life’s the book makes you sit back and yearn for the times when you could not pester your boy friend with unlimited missed calls. All you could do was to wait for him to turn up. It makes you yearn for the times when the best way to pass time as a couple was to go for a walk not mall hopping.

Sigh!!!

A lovely book about love!!!

5/5 from me.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four middle-aged men sharing the first class waiting room on a cold winter night, their train ride interrupted by a derailment ahead, catch sight of a young couple looking for a quiet place to settle. Their thoughts turn to the fleeting joy of first love. To pass the time, then, they decide to take turns sharing their own personal stories of first love.
This simple premise is the basis of this lovely mid-century Bengali novel. Each of the four tales is unique, with a distinct character and voice. A thoroughly enjoyable novel.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2023/03/10/th...

[Megha · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

Having loved It Rained All Night, I picked this one one early morning after spending a sleepless night. A short book with about 100 pages, this book kept me further away from sleep, and I ended up reading it in one sitting. I really wish I could write an eloquent review befitting this book, but I can't. Such simple writing for such simple, unadulterated feelings!

Throughout the book, I couldn't stop thinking about love. Both, the feeling, and the person who is the recipient of it. Maybe it's the lockdown and the physical distancing, but stolen glances and silent longing for love have never felt more real. 🥺

[Rajat Ubhaykar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four middle-aged strangers - a doctor, bureaucrat, contractor and writer - regale each other with stories of unrequited adolescent love in the waiting room of a railway station on a bitterly cold night.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would rate this about 3.5, but it is probably more worth reading than some of my 3.5 books. Four love stories from their youth shared by four mature strangers, all trying to answer the question posed by one of four storytellers at the start: “Is the memory of happiness that has passed, happy or sad?”

It seems that the answer depends in part on the character of the person who formed the memory, and part on the particulars of the events. The interest in these stories lies more in the complex psychological portraits that Bose paints than in the answer to the question, however. The men are recounting events of an India still under British rule, although politics don’t play an obvious part. The constraints of traditional culture are evident, even if starting to be challenged here and there. All four men were uncertain, awkward, lacking self-confidence, at the time of the stories they recall, and their fates in the realm of love suffered accordingly.

Moody, melancholy, nicely translated.

[Apoorva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading books by Indian authors, and it's always a pleasant surprise when I come across a great one. This particular book contains four stories by four different authors, each touching on themes of love, heartbreak, passion, and death. It's a quick read that I enjoyed. I read it on my Kindle while travelling, and it was a good companion.

[Rise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four men, complete strangers to each other, were stranded on a night train. They met a young couple ("clearly newlyweds") who appeared very much in love. This sight of the couple triggered memories for each of them. They began reflecting about love. They decided to pass the time sharing stories with each other. Each of the four stories that followed was rendered in very simple yet beautiful prose. They were all simple tales but together they form a subtle whole.

Romantic love is the subject of My Kind of Girl (1951, English 2010) by Buddhadeva Bose (1908-1974), a prolific Bengali writer. Though primarily known as a poet, Bose wrote in various genres, including novel, short fiction, drama, and essay. He is often considered in the same breath as the Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore.

The novel is a slim one, 138 pages, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, who is said to be presently at work on Bose's magnum opus Tithidore (1949), a family saga. Bose himself was an accomplished translator of European poets like Rainer Maria Rilke and Charles Baudelaire.

If being in love is a natural subject for poets, then Bose was one of its purest practitioners. He explored the theme in a very likeable way, even if the stories did not have fairy tale-like endings. There are no special pyrotechnics in his writing, but sometimes the sentences will stop one in his tracks –

In the ashen first light of dawn we saw his lips move. We were so still as we watched, and it was so silent all around, that we seemed to see his words, not hear them.

There's something oddly fantastic about that seeming ability to see words in complete silence. There it was. Utterly compelling.

The descriptions of characters can be cartoonish but the unusual circumstances they found themselves in allowed them to easily surpass their cartoonish-ness. There's a sense of humor, hesitant, poker-faced. Here is a striking passage, a handsome parody of Austen's "truth universally acknowledged":

   ... Theirs was an affluent household, and a bride would only make their cup of joy brim over. And the boy wasn't one of those typical, bespectacled midgets – just see how handsome he was.
   Yes, he was indeed handsome – there was no denying this. I know – knew – Makhanlal very well; at twenty-one he was a burly, powerful giant who looked thirty-two. Large and ungainly, he had prominent teeth, a manly, hair-covered chest, enormous shoes that caused great consternation when they were sighted lying around. Seeing as he could easily pass for a father of three, it didn't seem suitable for him not to be married.

The stories may be sharing the same topic and setting, yet their diverse viewpoints formed individual portraits of the social and cultural contexts of India in the early period of 20th century. The stories formed a whole because they seemed to spring from the same source of feeling. Being in love was mixed in different states of being: disillusion, loss of idealism, pride, kindness, compassion. The simple telling was an assurance that the novel was devoid of mawkish chick lit-ry.

The stories build on each other. They enlarge. Like love, they can be beautiful and in that sense, inspiring and life-affirming. Also, they can be cruel and heartbreaking and yet still enlarge the heart, by a few millimeters at least.

"The more I heard about love, the more I wanted it," a dejected character cried out at one point in the story he was telling. For love can be addictive. The four voices in My Kind of Girl, spun in a kind of addictive prose, somehow tells of it.

The novel reminded me of another book set in the region. Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra is also structured as a book of independent love stories, seemingly linked by the writer's fine sensibility and poetry. It also reminded me of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. The characters were also in search of a suitable boy or girl to spend the rest of their lives with. Marriage and matchmaking were the book's provinces.

The two wonderful books by the two Vikrams can be traced to the same (romantic) tradition as Bose's. It was a tradition that was not blind to historical and cultural shifts in Indian society – to a time when attitude by, and toward, women was starting to change. These attitudes are increasing liberality and independence. The passing references to them in Bose's stories are constructing a map and milieu of this new understanding.

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Kind of Girl is ok -- a very mild, unassuming set of stories that four men stuck in a train station share to pass the time during a long, cold night. The book was originally published in 1951 & the almost knight-like quality of putting women on a pedestal from afar is certainly reflected in the modest stories these men tell, stories prompted by them seeing a couple in love, stories they share of some type of love from their own pasts. Supposedly Bose was/is considered one of the great talents of Bengali literature, but while I thought the stories were fine, I wonder if something wasn't lost in translation just a bit? There just wasn't a spark there for me.... I had hoped to like it more than I did. In the end, I'll say it is a solid 3 star book; I'm glad to have read something by a Bengali author, the tales were mildly interesting, but there was no great pull for me.

[S M Hridoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

মোনালিসা,
আমি ছাড়া কে তোমাকে মনে রেখেছে ।।

[Tika · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was like having a random conversation with somebody on the subway and learning about the tiniest snippet of their lives. I enjoyed all the different perspectives and also the book cover.

[Maitreyi]

I really don't know how to describe the experience of having read this. This book is something else - chilling, joyful, melancholic, introspective, intimate, wry, dry, nostalgic, and all the things love and life can be - when looked at in the rearview mirror on a cold North Indian winter night, in the first class waiting room of an insignificant railway station.

The mystic nature of the setting is captured so uniquely, I can feel it on my skin. I can smell it. I have experienced this. I know what this is.

There's too much I want to say about this book, but I simply cannot put it into words.

Thanks for the rec, Ellie.

[Salima Akhtar Nabila · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all love someone special in our random stages of life, but fate never lets us stay close.
Still, we get a glimpse of those short yet deep feelings and incomplete emotions in our memory lane sometimes. Maybe in a lazy afternoon, or (in this case) a waiting room in a random railway station with some strangers, reminiscing about those young loves when time feels like it has halted for a moment.

[Cyrus Colah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sort of a fix-up of short stories. Overall it was nice, sentimental, pleasant. There was one particularly remarkable line: “this walk is lovely, but it’s because we’re walking along it that the road will end.”

[Preethiba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure if the translation could have been better, or if the story just seemed a little too trite. I didn't feel like I cared too much about any character and their love stories.

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
On cold winter night, four men swap tales of first love, the memory of which they still hold in their middle ages, as they wait for the train. The stories are lovely, filled with parental influences, loaded exchanges and the awkwardness of the age. This is still 20s India, a society that's not moderate, restrictive in its boundaries and gender lines and Bose gently nudges his readers to the biases that already exists. The stories are told from the men's point of view, their experience and the memories they have carried well into their adulthood.

[Darryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a cold December night four strangers, a contractor, a government official, a doctor, and a "writer", find themselves stranded in a railway station in a small mid-20th century Indian town. The men sat together in a compartment during the first portion of their journey, and decide to keep each other company for the night, while they await the morning train that will carry them to their final destinations. As they sip coffee, the door of the station opens, and a young couple, clearly in love, briefly enter, look around the room, and then exit back into the frigid air. The four middle-aged men are moved by the sight of the betrothed couple and their embodiment of pure love, while realizing that such passion is fleeting and short lived. The men decide that each should share a personal story about their own experiences, in order to make the night pass more quickly.

The narratives of these four stories comprise the remaining chapters of the book. Each story is one of unrequited or impossible love in its purest form, and through them the reader learns more about each man, the Indian middle class after independence, and the hurdles that made it difficult for young people to find true love in a society that was becoming more Westernized and modern.

My Kind of Girl is a light hearted and beautifully written short novel, which was originally published in 1951 and reissued in English translation for the first time by Archipelago Books this month. Despite its potentially depressing topic of unrequited love it was a book filled with hope and possibility, and I look forward to upcoming translations of this famed author's works.

[merve 🫧 · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Kind of Girl von Buddhadeva war von Anfang bis Ende eine absolute Freude. Diese Geschichte fand die perfekte Balance zwischen herzlichen Emotionen und fesselndem Geschichtenerzählen, wobei die Charaktere so authentisch und nachvollziehbar waren, dass ich mich wirklich in ihre Reisen investiert fühlte.

Das Schreiben ist sowohl elegant als auch zugänglich und verbindet nahtlos Momente der Zärtlichkeit, des Humors und der Leidenschaft. Die Chemie zwischen den Leads war elektrisch und doch geerdet, so dass sich ihre Verbindung real und verdient anfühlte, anstatt gehetzt oder gezwungen zu werden. Ich schätzte besonders die Tiefe, die ihren persönlichen Kämpfen und ihrem Wachstum verliehen wurde, was Ebenen der Komplexität zu einer ansonsten einfachen Romanze hätte hinzufügen können.

Was dieses Buch jedoch wirklich ausgab, war seine frische Perspektive und Stimme - Buddhadeva brachte etwas Einzigartiges und Unvergessliches in das Genre. Es ist eine Geschichte über Liebe, Identität und die Suche nach jemandem, der dich wirklich so sieht, wie du bist.

Fünf Sterne ohne zu zögern. My Kind of Girl ist eine wunderschön gestaltete Romanze, die dich lange nach der letzten Seite bei dir bleibt. Sehr empfehlenswert!

[Winna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. The premise is intriguing and after years of just putting it on my wishlist, I finally ordered and bought it.

With clean but sophisticated prose (I'm reading the translated version), the author manages to convey four people's love stories in such a simplistic way. I enjoy reading each story and the meaning in them, what love means to each person and how their love story begins, then ends. My favorite is the first and second stories, and my least favorite is the fourth but somehow the last one contains more sorrow and meaning than the rest.

There are tragic first loves, death, marriage, matchmaking, family, stolen glances, misunderstandings, and a happy love story as well. It gives insight into the lives of people in India in that era, as well as their customs, which is a pleasure to read about.

The ending is quiet, nothing dramatic but it gives us a long pause to think about the whole book. Somehow it is more perfect that way.

I'm not sure about the rest of the author's books, but I think I'll seek them out and give them a try.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet, lovely stories-on-a-theme book from India. Stuck in a train depot on a cold night, four middle aged men each recount the tale of a girl from their youth, that One Girl that each of them could never forget. As a whole, the book achieves a vivid, wistful, bittersweet tone. The stories--dealing with memories of adolescence and early adulthood years--all center on the conflict between the Ideal and the Real, on the “mystery of womanhood,” and on those turning-point decisions, roads that are memorable because they were taken or not, in one’s past. (The plots involve a fair number of misunderstandings and lack of nerve.) Each of the men gained access, for a short time, to an exceptional window on womanhood, and in each case they came away from it only more mired in enigma and emotional mysticism than before.

[Portia Renee Robillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bose writes with clarity, simplicity, and tenderness concerning matters of the heart, and the unexpected paths life takes. My Kind of Girl is a novella perfect for escaping with into a lazy, reminiscing sort of afternoon.

[Capítulo IV]

"La manera de narrar del autor indio es efectiva y sobria, huye de los dramatismos y consigue distinguir bien a los cuatro protagonistas". Más en https://capitulocuarto.wordpress.com/...

[Henrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trata-se de um pequeno “Decameron”, bem mais lírico, que se passa na Índia moderna. Aqui não é uma terrível peste que reúne um grupo de pessoas para contar histórias, mas o simples atraso de um trem. Um grupo de quatro homens já com certa idade se vê obrigado a passar a noite na estação de trem e, para passar o tempo, põe-se a contar histórias de amor como as do clássico do Boccaccio.

As histórias do livro de Bose (são quatro apenas), no entanto, não possuem absolutamente nada da verve satírica do autor italiano. São contos essencialmente poéticos e com uma acentuada nota melancólica. A própria motivação para que o grupo desse início às histórias tem a sua beleza: enquanto esperavam em uma sala na estação de trem, um jovem casal assomou à porta, irradiando felicidade amorosa, olhando para dentro e logo saindo. Esse simples episódio fez cada um se lembrar de antigas histórias de amor que viveram ou que tomaram conhecimento.

Assim como o “Pequeno Príncipe” não é um livro para crianças, por trazer justamente a mensagem da infância, talvez esse não seja um livro para apaixonados, por trazer a mensagem dolorosa que, com frequência, está por trás das nossas paixões.

Há a paixão que não se realiza nunca, a que leva à vingança, a que começa na juventude e, com o passar dos anos, não se torna mais do que uma persistente idealização, em oposição aos próprios parceiros atuais. Há aquela paixão arrebatadora que ameaça levar tudo de roldão, mas que no fim das contas passa, e então se aceita outro destino, um que talvez seja até mais feliz. E há um tipo de paixão que leva à sujeição do seu portador em relação ao objeto amado, a uma adoração praticamente religiosa que não se importa sequer que o ser amado ame outra pessoa.

Tudo passa pela pena de Bose, todas as incompreensões, os desacertos, os desencontros, os erros, os acertos do tempo. É um livro pequeno, singelo, adorável, uma graça.

E pensar que eu, quando o peguei, havia pensado: “Bá, só mais umas historinhas de amor”. Eu não sei de nada.

[Abhi S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always had a thing for rustic, period stories. Bonus points, if the story is set in India.
When I have stumbled upon Buddhadeva Bose’s My Kind of Girl, it sort of soared my hopes, of having found the exact genre I was willing to read.
Yet, My Kind of Girl is more than what the blurb allows it to be.
The story is fairly simple. On a winter night, four strangers sit in the waiting room, in a railway station, awaiting their delayed train.
A glimpse of a young couple rekindles old memories and they decide to pass time by recounting their first love story to each other.
It was clear from the beginning, none of the stories they would share are going to be epic romances. They were more on the side of subtle, fleeting stories that were about to happen, but did not take up, maybe because of lack of pursuing from either sides, or maybe because of them being one-sided.
Whatever it was, there is a glimpse of Old Calcutta, of pre-independence westernized cities of Bengal, of more unassuming stories, that were nostalgic to read. Is it possible to feel an ache of nostalgia for a period you haven’t even known?
But then I guess the narrators of these four stories bring along the nostalgia of youth that has passed, of the women that they thought of sometimes, on nights like these, on mention of their first love.
The beauty of anthologies is they are beautiful together, than their independent stories. I for one, enjoyed the less romanticism and subtlety of their stories a lot.

For more reviews, check out : http://abbysreviews.com/

[Krishnakumar Mohanasundaram · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading 'It rained all night' and being captivated by the powerful storytelling that book held within it, I went on a hunt to purchase all available translated works of the author Buddhadeva Bose and this book was one among the translations I managed to get.

As expected, the book doesn't disappoint you, not a bit. The story and setting are so well done that you sit with it on a late evening with a cup coffee and soon you lose yourself within it.

Four middle aged men, well doing in their lives, travel to Calcutta, but get stranded up in the first class waiting room of a railway station because of a derailement on the track that had delayed their train for the night. On that very cold and hard night, isolated within the first class waiting room, with a pot of coffee to keep them warm, the men find themselves talking and soon venturing into the subject of young love. To spend the night, they propose that each of them tell their own story of such a love from their younger days, and the next set of chapters follows each of them recounting a couple of decades back, as they just venture into their youth, ready to face life as it is and soon meeting the woman of their heart.

Each of those four stories are very unqiue, bringing in the late 50s' India into life, portraying the culture, the people, the romance, the society, the freedom, the restriction and everything that prevailed - in addition to a beautiful story.

[Siddarth Gore · Rating 4 out of 5]

How strange it was that the world does not expand, that everything remains the way it is, but only we wither and fall.

About a girl yes. But this time through the eyes of old men. And what difference it makes when we reminisce about our youth!

The dearth of money certainly hurt, but the pain of earning it was even more intense.

The setting is very typical. Three men end up in a railway waiting room and start talking to pass time. A village elite who had to work for the first time when he came to the city. A bureaucrat who knows nothing but work and a writer who knows everything but work.

We did not have the ability not to all fall in love with her.

Love stories appear sad in hindsight, even the happy ones. And most guys don't have those.

That’s the worst thing about the age we are at now, where it seems all happiness lies in the past.

What is gone is gone. But is it really. When we reach the end what do we remember?

And I admit with shame that I see nothing to be proud of in having gray hair – I consider those who can leave this earth before they have gone gray fortunate.

Indeed they are.

Once again that moment of greatness, when there was night in the sky but dawn in the air

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A contractor, a bureaucrat, a doctor and a poet meet in a first class waiting room on a bitterly cold night. They gain a brief glimpse of a young, newly-wed couple, and begin to reflect on their own memories. Their train has been delayed and, with little chance of sleep before morning, these four middle-aged men agree to tell their individual stories of first love. These are set in 1920’s India, at a time of great cultural and social change.
This book was a delight to read; the writing is evocative, full of warmth and humour. The story telling is deceptively simple, yet it made me think about the nature of memory, innocence, choice, regret, failure and loss. These themes featured, to some extent, in each of the stories, and all were linked by a sense of melancholy. These similarities began to feel rather repetitive but on reflection, maybe this was unfair, and Bose was accurately depicting a universal human condition.
I can only wonder why it has taken sixty years for this book to be translated into English, and hope that much more of this acclaimed writer’s work will be made available. A small niggle, I didn’t care for the title; I understand that Girl of My Heart would be a more accurate translation of the original.