Chasing the Rainbow: Growing Up in an Indian Village

ISBN-13: 9780198065210 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 180 str.

Manoj Das

Opis

This collection of memoirs recounts the author's childhood experiences in the quiet and supine India of villages. The Indian village in the first half of the last century was not a fairy tale world, as numerous accounts of human misery set against its backdrop have testified over the years, but it was still a world where a child could run across a green meadow studded with palm trees, dreaming of catching the end of a huge rainbow spanning the sky.
Set in Sankhari, the author's village by the sea in Orissa, the reminiscences are imbued with a childlike sense of wonder: the dreaded butcher thus turns out to be messenger from a goddess, while a princely exterior hides a hapless vagrant. Chasing the Rainbow is a homage to a way of life that was until recently so real. This book will not only appeal to readers nostalgic for a bygone world, but will also serve as an invaluable record of village life in early twentieth-century India.

Spis treści

Preface o A Village by the Sea o An Evening with Woo o The Cyclone o Two Nights to Remember o A Twilight Encounter o The Forgotten Fragrance o Flames Without and Flames Within o Meeting a 'Crown Prince' o Mystery of the Missing Toes o The Repentant Deity o The One Left Behind o The World beyond the River o A Crashing Bolt from the Blue o The Tiger of the Goddess o The Last Sacrifice o Murder Atop a Tree o The Lunatic o Befriending the Dangerous o Two Grandfathers o The Calcutta Adventure o The Invisible Radha o The Lost World of the Little Rajas o Love Stories o Some Early Teachers o The Red Red Signature o Descent of Freedom on a Sandy Stretch o The Tree is Dead o The Big Boss of the Thousand Islets

O autorze

Manoj Das is one of the foremost bilingual authors writing in English and Oriya. The Sahitya Akademi has conferred on him its highest honour--the Fellowship--which, according to its constitution is 'reserved for immortals in literature'. He is currently Professor of English at Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry.