I finished reading Saikat Majumdar's 'The Firebird' last night. There are books you finish in one go, and then there are stories you wish did not end. You are in no rush to reach the destination, as you have fallen in love with the journey. This story is like that chocolate bar in your refrigerator, which an uncle coming home for the holidays from abroad, gifted you in your childhood. You would take bite-sized chunks every day, wrap the rest of it carefully, and keep it back inside the refrigerator, your heart content with the assurance that, there was more to savour tomorrow. This book plucked me off my everyday routine – familiar and often mundane – and took me on a journey to a world that lives now only in my moist memories. To lanes and bylanes of a Kolkata that I knew like the back of my hand, and my footprints on them have now been swept away by winds of change. To houses abuzz with warm voices, many of which have been silenced by time. To headlines in yellowed pag...
Everything bookish