Between mid-February and mid March, I picked up four books and needless to say, I surprised myself by finishing all four of them. What began as a quiet intention to ease back into my reading routine, turned out to be quite an immersive journey.
I loved the days of quiet reading, especially during the afternoons; occasionally, on the road, between chores and post my work meetings in the evenings.
Surprisingly, I also noticed that during this time, I actually spent much less time on the phone, which makes me feel super chuffed. What was striking about these four books was how each one of them allowed me to slip in and out between the past and the present, or shift between myth and reality, as the books spoke about the fragility of life and the threads that bind all human experiences.
Book #1 – Ghost Eye by Amitav Ghosh
Ghost-Eye was my very first book and it turned out to be a beautiful tale of magic realism about our ecologically-threatened present times. Right from the beginning, the book held me in its grip. As the story unfolds we see a three year old girl named Varsha, (born into a strictly vegetarian family who reside in Kolkata), suddenly demands fish to be served to her. The family is shocked and the mother devastated. What’s more, the girl also has the ability to recall recipes of fish being cooked in her home, an obvious reference to the memories she has from her past life.
Intriguing, I thought! I found the reincarnation theme and the karmic connection very interesting, and this got me hooked from the very start. What unfolds hereafter is an ambitious and layered work, where the author blends reincarnation, memory, and ecological crisis to ask a difficult question: how do we emotionally process climate change? Through intertwined timelines and characters shaped by loss and anxiety, the book talks about climate change not just as science, but as lived experience and moral unease. Overall, I found it to be a very engrossing read that held me glued from start to finish.
Book #2 – We Do Not Part by Han Kang
My first reading of Han Kang’s work left me with mixed feelings. l found the book to be almost poetic and meditative, yet it turned out to be an intensely emotionally piercing read. The story mainly unfolds through memories, dreams and a dangerously precarious journey, where reality blends with the subconscious. Most of all, it is an exploration of friendship between Kyungha, a writer, who travels in the midst of a severe snowstorm to Jeju island, at the request of her friend Inseon, whose pet bird needs to be saved. While on the journey to Jeju, Kyungha uncovers the reality of a brutal, buried history that her friend, Inseon’s family endured, years ago.
The story is as much about profound love in the face of unspeakable pain and the refusal to let go of the dead, as much as the resilience of human bonds, against a horrifically violent past – an obvious reference to the Jeju uprising and massacre that took place in Korea in 1948-49. Another important theme in the book is the connection between life and death. The two are inseparably linked to the human experience. Han Kang plays with the idea that humans are capable of bringing life and taking it away in horrendous acts of violence. Overall, a very emotionally draining and tough read. Certainly not for the faint hearted!
Book #3 –The Vegetarian by Han Kang
This was highly recommended by a friend when I told her that I was reading Kang’s We Do Not Part. The book, which had won a Booker Prize in 2016, is about mental illness and is deeply unsettling too, but despite being a tough read, I found it to be an absolutely unforgettable read. Yeong-hye, the protagonist has violent dreams of blood and death and decides to turn vegetarain almost overnight, much to the shock of her husband who does not understand her and neither does her family. The book questions if one woman’s small act of autonomy could possibly cause her well-maintained life to fall apart?
Through the story of the central character Yeong-hye, Han Kang opens up questions about control, identity, and societal expectations. The narrative grows increasingly intense, almost surreal at times, yet remains grounded in emotional truth. It is both disturbing and thought-provoking, refusing to offer easy answers. To me, this book felt like a less intense read as compared to ‘We Do Not Part’.
Book #4 – Murmurs: Silent Steals With Soumitra Chatterjee by Amitava Nag
This book is an unusual memoir written in the form of a series of conversations with Soumitra Chatterjee, the well known late Bengali actor, who was nothing short of a vertiable institution himself. The conversations led by Nag feel intimate and reflective, capturing the personal and professional journey, alongside the twists and turns of the actor’s life. Nag writes with sensitivity, drawing attention to moments that shaped the actor’s life right from his earliest years to his youth and the sunset years, and one finds references to Satyajit Ray, Balraj Sahni and Utpal Dutt, as the narration unfolds gently, allowing the reader the space and the time to absorb the details at their own pace. All in all, a lovely, refreshing read for anyone who is an admirer of Soumitra Chatterjee!
*****
Together, these four books created an experience for me, that were, in equal parts, both enriching and introspective. None of the books rushed me. On the contrary, the more I read, the more I realised what it meant to reflect, ponder upon and sit with discomfort for what the characters endured.
To sum up, it was as if I had entered and exited from very different worlds, reliving experiences that I would never have known otherwise.