Just how different in language can two works of fiction be? The difference has been particularly striking ever since Team BookChums has been delving into the lives of varied authors and genres. There are three books that presently make up our reading list: Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra by Ruskin Bond, Corridor (A graphic novel) by Sarnath Banerjee and the provocative Londonstani by Gautam Malkani.
Corridor was touted as one of the first serious works in the Indian graphic novel genre when it first came out in 2004. It starts with striking unconventional illustrations and an engaging storyline. You see the by lanes of Delhi and the jostling streets of Kolkata in the background as the characters go about their bumbling business. The characters: A seller of second hand books also dispenses free advice, often unsolicited. A newly married man is worried that his sex life needs a little help from quacks and medical practitioners. Another one lives his adventurous, mind-boggling, heroic life – in his dreams. This character personification connects well, after all so many of us escape life’s harsh realities in our dreams.
Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra is a charming collection of short stories by India’s vintage storyteller Ruskin Bond. As Bond mentions at the start of this collection in a short introduction: So this is old Dehra of mangoes and lemons, where I grew beside the jackfruit tree planted by my father on the sunny side of the house since sold to Major-General Mehra. The town’s grown hard, none knows me now or knew my mother’s laughter. Most men come home as strangers. And yet, the trees my father planted here, these Trees – old family trees – are still growing in Dehra.
Thing is, even when Bond goes down the road of nostalgia, there is never a tired, trodden or repeated approach to it. Always, something new spurts out of the writer’s ink, thus filling the book with old world charm and quiet imagination.
Londonstani is a book written from the point of view of a 19 year-old Jas, a rich brat of London, with his own slang of narration that gives the book a unique urban vibe.
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