Updated:
February 04, 2021 16:35 IST
The uniqueness of Gujarati writer Dhumketu’s craft lies in deflecting attention from the craft itself
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The uniqueness of Gujarati writer Dhumketu’s craft lies in deflecting attention from the craft itself
Dhumketu is regarded a pioneer of the short story form. A contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand and Manto, Dhumketu the pen-name of Gujarati writer Gaurishankar Govardhanram Joshi (1892-1965) wrote short stories, novels, plays, literary criticism and more. The translator of this collection, Jenny Bhatt, contextualises his work in the introduction while providing insightful details about his craft. The translations of Dhumketu’s own introductions to his work help the reader understand the writer’s approach to the short story form.
Pallabi Dey Purkayastha
Story: In order to keep his band-baja business afloat, Bharat Lal (Pankaj Tripathi) approaches a local bank in Uttar Pradesh for a loan. Soon after, he realises that his uncle and his sons have declared him legally dead and snatched his share of the piece of land that the family had jointly owned.
Review: When they joke about nasbandi (vasectomy) and the Emergency losing steam, it dawns on you that the setting is late 70s. And during that remarkable period in the history of India, there lived a man – in a small hamlet in the northern part of the country – who was stripped off his family inheritance by fraudulent means. And the worst aspect of this unfortunate occurrence is that it was his own kin who had declared him legally dead over the tiny fraction of a land he co-inherited with them.
yep. you know, it s kind of degrading. really. being all shackled up like this, like an animal. this isn t who i want to be. i don t want to be jailbird denbraven. i want to get out of here and be an upstanding citizen and good boy and not come back to jail. shotgun. i call shotgun! coming up excellent back then. cheeseburger, fries, shrimp. boiled eggs with toast. don t have that no more. randy hudson recalls a bygone era and sean denbraven faces a brand new world. getting out. where we going? quite a bright t-shirt. that s quite the outfit. i know. pajama pants!
to put it together. was that a very large emotional burden? i mean how do you cope with you have grief, you have memory loss and also this enormous project? oh, yes. it was difficult. i felt this pressure both because of his great legacy and the death of making sure this book was finish and finished well. and initially it seemed like an enormous project. you know, i had masses of notes to work with and then as i got more and more just in the story, i heard my father s voice but i started to hear sasha and emma s voices as well. the story sort of picked me up and helped carry me along. from such a bygone era, but emma golden is so modern. talk about her role as a leader and sort of an icon even for those that don t agree perhaps with her politics but she broke
intimidation through history? many of the laws were put in place for the purpose of keeping down minority votes. especially black votes. after reconstruction, for example, in ohio, for example, in 1968 868, we had challenger legislation saying you could challenge people on if they have a distinctive mixture of african blood. those were the grounds of challenges. maybe this made sense in a day when you could tell whether or not people were eligible to vote based on what they looked like, color of their skin or gender. we don t live in that society anymore. this is a relic from a bygone era and doesn t make sense in modern elections. we saw the local news coverage in houston, if they are coast to coast and focus on