Book Review #70: Ooru Bangha By Viveka Shanabagh

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 2^nd 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 2^nd marriage. This eats up the 3^rd 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

Book Review #27: Sita - An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana By Devdutt Pattanaik

This is yet another good book by my favorite mythological author Devdutt Pattanaik. We might have heard many versions of Ramayana's till today from our parents, teachers, grandparents, friends, colleague, etc.. But, this book stands class apart. This book tries to give us the various details of Ramayana not only a regular Valmiki Ramayana as in practice, but various versions of Ramayana that have been foretold around the world. It even includes the plays and folklore tales through which Ramayana has been passed on from generations to generations.

As I finished reading the book. Not only many of my questions have been answered. But also, many of the misconceptions have also been demystified. It is certainly a well researched book.

I am not going to give you all a regular review of the Ramayana. As most of us know the overall story, at least the overall Ramayana happenings. Instead, I will mention only those things, which I found worth to be noted in my review.

Sita:
First and foremost, the character Sita. She is one of the main protagonists of Ramayana. Is that enough to be known.? Certainly not. This book gives us the various traits of Sita and her tryst with the entire Ramayana. She is a well educated, well versed woman, full of wisdom, love and courage. She assesses the situation from her own point of view. We all admonish Rama as a bad person when he sent out Sita to the woods after their 14 years of exile, by questioning her chastity. But, in this book, Sita assesses her situation from Rama's point of view and she was happy to go!!. She tries to reason with her situation and comes to a conclusion. At sometimes you may feel, Sita is more mature than Rama in terms of actions, decisions and what not. I can say it aloud that, from this book, my respects for Sita has been multi folded.

Hanuman:
Another character worth to be noted is of Hanuman, the monkey god. He was the greatest devotee of Rama that mankind ever came to know. He actually teared down his chest to show the world that his lord, Sri Rama resides in his heart. But, that is not enough. He is full of knowledge and wisdom. He is a vedic scholar. The main section of the book, where Hanuman sets out to find Sita in Lanka. And, when he finds out Sita, the dialogues between them is a treat to read from the book. It is captured in such a fashion by the author that, you actually feel, this might have happened for real between Sita and Hanuman.


Hanuman the funny side: 
A funny incident which I would like to mention here. When Rama's 14 years of exile was over and they come back to Ayodhya. During Rama's coronation ceremony. Sita gifts Hanuman a pearl necklace for his help to fight Ravana. As Hanuman receives the necklace, he starts to bite every pearl and throw all the pearl one by one. Surprised Sita asks Hanuman why he was doing such things?. For which, Hanuman replied, "I was finding Rama in each of those pearls, and I threw it one by one after checking there was no Rama in it!!". This shows us that Hanuman's unconditional love for his master, lord, Sri Rama.

Hanuman the "generous":
It so happened after all the Ramayana tales that. Valmiki, supposed to be the original Ramayana writer was about to complete his writing of Ramayana. Then suddenly, a voice from the space told him that, Hanuman's version of Ramayana is better than yours. Saddened Valmiki thought no one will read his version of Ramayana. So he meets Hanuman and borrows Hanuman's version of Ramayana. To his astonishment, it was indeed a better version than his. So, Valmiki told Hanuman that, "Your version is way better than mine. And, no one will read my version of Ramayana". By hearing this, Hanuman tore down his version of Ramayana once and for all. Surprised Valmiki asks Hanuman, "Why you did that, your version was better than mine!!". Then, Hanuman replied "I wrote Ramayana because, I didn't want to forget my Rama and all those days I spent with him. You expect your version of Ramayana to reach to public, hence your Ramayana deserves to be saved than mine!!". This again shows us that, Hanuman is not just a mere monkey, but above all a generous, wisdomful person, who rose to be a godly figure.

Ravana:
When it comes to Ravana, there was no greater details in the book. As this book mainly focuses on Sita. Still, author had covered Ravana in greater detail and let his readers amuse by reading the knowledge and power that Ravana has possessed. The interesting section arrives when Ravana was shot by an arrow and he was about to leave his physical body. Rama asks Lakshmana to go and learn all the possible things from the greatest brahmana Ravana to gain his knowledge. When Lakshmana was not so welcomed by this idea. Rama himself will go to Ravana and lay down in front of him and asks him to educate him by his vast knowledge. This shows us that, even when you are fighting with your enemy, respect your enemy for his knowledge!!

Not only these tales that the author wrote, he also mentions the cycles of the Yugas and its a repeating phenomenon. Thereby, justifying his writing that, there may be thousands of Ramayana's that have happened in this never ending cycles of Yugas. As per the author, the 4 yugas (4 - Kritha Yuga), (3 - Treta Yuga), (2 - Dwapara Yuga) and the final one (1- Kali Yuga) that marks the end of the Yugas as proclaimed by Brahma. And this cycle repeats from Krita Yuga again. So, there are possibilities that, there may be many many Ramayana's happened that can't be imagined by humans.

This kind of surprising things are lot to find in this book. As a signature writing of Pattanaik, even in this book, he has produced some of the modern age practices that were directly linked to the practices that were followed in the Ramayana times. He also traces some of the modern places that can be directly or indirectly linked to the ancient Ramayana tales.

I would highly recommend this book to everyone. It surely helps you to gain and expand your knowledge on Ramayana.

My Rating:
5/5