Skip to main content

Book Review: The Six by Pratik Dey Sarkar

The Six by Pratik Dey Sarkar is an engaging book of short stories. It offers six stories of different timelines, of various human circumstances, and of independent backdrop. The book is poignant in exploring the human emotions under various circumstances. Some of the themes that dominate the collection are love, aspirations, fear, bravery, and so on.


The book is just 59 pages, except one story, other ones are of medium length. The first story Hawa-Tari is set in the medieval Maharashtra. Hawa-Tari is a name of the kite, which was flown by a girl named Hemanti. She defied the patriarchal rules of the society and flew a kite from a hidden place. Her kite flying skills were matchless and people had hardly any inkling about her. Her kite led to the discovery of enemies hiding in the forest. She was killed but did her job perfectly. From the Medieval Indian history, this was a good piece of literature.

The second story in the book is Happy Birthday, it is the longest story. This story may evoke an ocean of nostalgia for 90s kids. It is a love story of Proyas and Soi. They fell in love during their school time. They would meet at tuition center. Their love was strong but juvenile. In fact, the story says that love doesn’t stay the way it begins. This is a brilliant love story of two school goers. But little did they know that life doesn’t stay the same forever. They part. Will they meet again one day somewhere in future? If so, what will be their feelings for each other? Changed or same? The author tried to paint a picture of true love through this story. Read on to know the exact fate of these lovers?

The Namesake is a lovely discovery in the collection. It tells the tale of three ordinary persons who are the namesake of three famous persons – one is terrorist, another one is a cricketer, and the last one is a detective. This story clearly indicates that one’s name carries vibes of fate and much more. For instance, in this story, the tram driver’s name was Osama. He was never looked upon as a good person post the 9/11 attacks. He wasn’t at fault. It was his name destiny.

In each story, the author has put some conflicting situations that nudge its characters to take action and get into drama. By doing so the author perfectly searches for a gamut of emotions through his frail yet intriguing characters. It is a different type of collection. The language is lucid…but the twists and turns are totally unexpected. Pratik Dey Sarkar is a brilliant storyteller, if he comes up with a full-fledged novel, it is likely that he will get good amount of attention. The way Mr Sarkar weaved a tapestry of emotions tied to diverse human situations is something that not all short story writers can pull off. All in all, this is a nice book of short stories, if you love exploring independent stories, probably you should try this.

Buy from Amazon.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r