Write It, I Must!
Amazon Baba did not approve of my review of The Scent Of God and I sincerely hope Blogger Baba won't decide to emulate them. Below is the review I felt like writing and wrote.
Unwrapped
A potent, poignant and most unusual love story
Saikat Majumdar came to my awareness quite unexpectedly via his foreword to the anthology
"Escape Velocity", an offering of short stories in thirteen diverse voices, compiled and published by Kiranjeet Chaturvedi. And I picked up his latest book The Scent Of God straight thereafter on Kindle because I was so very curious about the theme as well as about the author, whom I have since been honored and delighted to meet more than once at his Kolkata readings and launch. Add to all that, the tantalizing effect of the exquisitely designed cover that has its own powerful and poignant story and I was helplessly hooked.
There is so much to say about the book so I’ll start by quoting what I said to Saikat the moment I finished reading.
“The book was everything AND nothing like I thought it would be. I am recovering from two things right now - one is sensory overload and the other is my tears through the last three chapters. What an ending! The after effects are like waking from a dream. You are not quite sure you are back in reality – if there is any such thing.”
I read The Scent Of God with three of my inner eyes open - one was the eye of my inner gay boy, another the eye of my inner rebel and the third of my inner mystic-ascetic. I blanked out all reviews and conversations from my mind as I dived in. I chose a good-eye-day (I have eye problems) and consumed it in one huge gulp, non-stop. I allowed the book to take me wherever it willed and it was full of surprises. I felt this deep hum in my being when it ended.
The book is a sensory, sensual, erotic and emotional roller coaster, yet written in such a deceptively calm tone. There is so much inner turbulence that he has conveyed with his delicate Bengali sensibility – something that instantly connects with my own.
There are passages I want to go back to and savor all over again. Saikat uses words and metaphors in such unusual ways. Like this one. "What a beautiful tiffin box it was. Old, but old like a house in which families had lived for many, many years."
Anirvan’s speeches make some magnificent stand-alone pieces of writing. I would love to use them in a writing class but I'll have to start a writing class first. The book is a bold, brilliant, beautiful work of art that had me quite charged me up as it ended in a wonderfully unexpected yet appropriate non-resolution that I believe left some other readers frustrated, but me all the more excited in anticipation of the future.
And I love the way the author rips both the political parties apart, almost picking at them vulture-fashion.
There is so much I could say about the book but the less spoilers we put there for readers, the better they will connect and feel the impact of the book. My own reading experience brought a special awakening in me for which I thank the author. I eagerly await his next offering even as I plan to dive into the previous one – The Firebird.
PS1 - As always the post is replete with links. Feel free to visit them. That's why I put them there.
PS2 - Kiranjeet, late though it may be, I have not forgotten and will write about my experience of the phenomenon of Escape Velocity on this space as soon as I can.
BONUS: That Mystery Called Monastic Celibacy
