Title: Ooru Bangha
Author: Viveka Shanabagh
Publishers: Akshara Prakashana
Genre: General Fiction
Pages: 250+ (Paperbound)
Source: Personal Copy
There are few books where it gets popularized without a
reason and when you read it, you're left with a big disappointment. This book
titled “Ooru Bangha” by the well acclaimed Kannada author Viveka Shanabagh does
comes under this category. This novel tries to convey a message using story
inside a story concept, but failed large at the idea. I am not sure whether
author was trying his best to finish this novel or he just wrote because he had
to. I was totally disappointed after reading this book. This is not a
contemporary styled novel, nor a philosophical novel, neither a romantic novel
nor even a story oriented novel. But where do I categorize this book at the
first place?
The protagonist of the novel is Manamohan, a corporate
employee, a writer and a romantic person to say the least. One fine day he gets
an invitation from his colleague to attend house-warming ceremony. As expected
he visits his colleague’s new home and after all the party, he accidentally meets
a person called Shami, a young girl who is probably in her 20’s and our hero
offers her to drive home. With all the initial greetings, our hero develops an
interest in this young girl and he often finds trivial reasons to meet her and
wanted to spend time with her. He joins her in the morning jogging hours and
due to his writing background, he created an interest in this young girl about
his village story and other details. So this girl pleads him to tell all those
stories. Our hero begins to narrate few stories every day.
Cutting the story back to 70’s, our hero narrates a
dramatic story about his village and about a person called Lawyer Kimani and
his lifestyle. The dry narration by the author couldn't make it enough for us
to read this story further. There is lot
of disconnectedness as it gets boring further. This Lawyer Kimani’s story
occupies almost 2nd half of the book. There was no concrete end to
this story.
As the book progresses further, now our hero is much into
this young girl Shami and he gets his long awaited chance of having sex with
her. With no clear intentions whatsoever, they both started to make out in her
house, in car, and in some stupid places. Shami, being a modern girl, never
forces our hero for a 2nd marriage. This eats up the 3rd
part of the book.
From nowhere, the author brings up a character called Dr.
Sunkapur, a legend in our hero’s village. Author tried to connect the stories
of Lawyer Kimani with this Dr. Sunkapur and failed miserably at that. Both of
these stories end abruptly without a logical end.
Cutting the story to present, our hero and this young
girl Shami will have some heated arguments over a trivial reason and will go
apart. Our hero, guilt ridden and feeling sorry for his wife and son tries to
forget this young girl. But, he couldn't get over with the charm of this young
girl. He tries to meet her again. To his disappointment, he failed to do so. That’s
the end.
I have omitted few parts from the book for the sake of
the review. It just couldn't get any worse than these kinds of books coming to
market and lure people to buying it. May be the author would’ve waited for some
more time to perfect this story than to publish it unfinished.
My Rating:
2/5
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