Book Review - Museum of Memories: A soulful journey of many lives, through many eras and across many worlds

Amrita Mukherjee’s book ‘Museum of Memories’ (http://www.amazon.in/dp/9385854194/) is a collection of 13 short stories which, as the blurb suggests, are tales inspired by reality.

Reading through the stories, you find yourself looking into a kaleidoscope of emotions and Amrita, with her lucid language and superior storytelling skills, draws you into a world inhabited by characters you have grown up with, characters you run into everyday, and the person you look at every time you stand in front of the mirror.

In terms of structure, these are short stories that speak volumes and mostly end unpredictably. One can breeze through the book from cover to cover. However, they leave you with images, questions and thoughts to reflect upon long after the last page has been turned.

How do we embrace those close to us before they turn into memories? How does a woman who sells her womb for a price then grapple not just with the empty womb but an empty heart? What does destiny have in store for a sex worker when her estranged son returns to take her home? How does a girl cope with the murky realities of the corporate world, growing up in a North Kolkata household with its archaic values? How does the ‘edited reality’ of lives on social media affect us? How does a learned man challenge social stereotypes by taking up chores of the household? How does a son undo the despicable wrong of a father in the face of the same abject poverty they both face? How does love emerge triumphant in a world torn apart by atrocities provoked by religious sentiments?

Extremely relevant in the context of the contemporary, yet so beautifully seeped in our traditions and in settings of days by-gone, seasoned with the scars, wounds, tears and smiles that we hold so close to our hearts.

You take away one learning from Amritas’ book – live your life before your dreams turn into regrets, before the present turns into memories.

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Book Review - Poems by Subhadip Mukherjee

Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Reading the poetry of Subhadip Mukherjee in his book ‘ ছেঁড়া চিন্তার Scribbles’ (Offtrack Publishers, co-authored by Dr. Kausik Ghosh), I am convinced that he is bleeding. And that’s good news. Subhadip is a nagorik kobiyal. His poems hold mirror to the stifling urban life with its rat race, with its mindless pursuit of materialistic ambitions, and with its consumerism. নাগরিক ব্যস্ততা নানা জটিলতা... দাশু বারবার কিস্তিমাত He mocks the same judgemental urban society right in his introduction when he says: যদি তাকে চিনে থাকো যদি তাকে জেনে থাকো Boss, বেশী . মিশোনা তার সাথে সামান্য নেশা হবে ... তুমিও " খারাপ " হবে দেরি হবে রোজ রাত্তিরে Subhadip’s poems paint love in its myriad hues – from extreme euphoria to brooding despondency. Subhadip depicts the unadulterated purity of love when he says: তুই ক্লাস নাইনৈর খাতার...

The Sinners: Extract #1

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Decoding Marriage - An excerpt from 'An Autumn Turmoil'

Most of us have a glorified idea about love. I think it comes from the staple diet of Bollywood movies we are all brought up on. Couples strolling on the beach, watching the sunset together, whispering promises of eternity into each other’s ear, and making love on satin sheets in wooden cottages overlooking the Swiss Alps. But life does not play out like this. The movies do not show the truth, what happens backstage. The love fades. The promises lose meaning. And the lovemaking goes from being a passion to a duty, something a married couple ‘is supposed to do at bed time.’ Before long, you reach that stage, where you can count the number of times you do it every month on your fingers, with a couple of fingers to spare. And you surrender to the monotony. The husband and the wife start living separate lives under the same roof – all in the name of security, comfort, marital bliss and sometimes, the fear of what ‘everyone would say’. Abhishek and I are fast approaching that stage in...

Mukherjee Musings

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