The Blessed Curse

The book, The Blessed Curse ,  is the  fulfilment of my long cherished desire to take, through memory lanes,  young learned  readers,  back   to Fifties and early Sixties   when India just began to breath fresh air of freedom after centuries of slavery, so that they , who  now have  smart phones in their hands and laptops  on their laps,   can  see for themselves, what may look to  them utterly primitive, their great grandparents holding black slates in  their hands   solving  arithmetical questions with white  chalk and  learning  to write with mud-ink (white kharia) on a wooden sheet (Takhti).

They need to know it because the present generation, with their wildest imagination, cannot visualize the impact of massive tragedy of partition and  the plight of families   who lived with most wretched living conditions prevailing then?   They need to know about their great grandparent’s day to day struggles for survival on the face of ignoble scarcity; their pain and agony in the absence of basic amenities like light and water and the roof over their heads.

The young generation needs to be transformed into living with them holding their hands to realise that they have the best of the world today because their fore-parents struggled to ensure smooth sail towards future for the coming generations. And they should know all this , not  as  a dry stuff of history, but through their active involvement in talks  punctuated with interesting tales and  anecdotes which  would  only  be  possible  when a person, who lived during that period, becomes a natural bridge connecting the two distant ends of time.

 And this responsibility I took upon myself by virtue of being the one who   lived that period as a child, a toddler and then as teenager, born as I was on the eve of independence.  Now, I  have  good fortune to enjoy the company of my grand-children. Having sojourned in two different worlds, I have attempted to do  through the pages of this book precisely what I had witnessed then, watching with observant eyes the phenomenon of  changing  India gradually  in  preceding seven decades.

The plot of the book has been woven with an Indian middle class household   holding together three generations in generous harmony with all those ifs and buts about the generational  gaps. It is  the story of Jagdamba Prasad, the grand old man, and  his wife, Pushpa Devi living with their son, daughter- in- law and grandchildren in one of the colonies of East Delhi. While the readers, through this book are taken through good, bad and ugly about each generation, it does not come as a bout of episodes but as “cosy chats” between the members of the family, the son, the grandchildren and Jagan Babu himself. The conversations that happen at the family’s Dining Table, at the Birthday Cake Cutting function, during   family Train Journey or drive through Delhi roads keep the spectrum of readers happily engaged in the family chats. And, at the same time,  the flash back pages, interwoven in the book, have been used to  turn the focus on moments of emotions.

The   books is   available at Amazon.in and Flipkart alongwith my other books.