Hello
All,
I heard of "A Bowstring Winter" during my holiday in Shillong
last week. I mm told captures the Shillong of the 70's very accurately - I
have not had the chance to read it as yet.
Dhruba and his sibling were our heroes in
those days, especially his brother who was a black belt in Karate - a sixth
dan I was told by another kid from their neighbourhood - so that was
huge. I am told he is still as fit as ever, which I guess he has to be being
the commandant of the India Reserve Batallion in Dibrugarh.
A book review is attached.
A Bowstring
Winter
Dhruba
Hazarika.
Penguin. Pages 343. Rs
295.
![A Bowstring Winter]()
D hruba
Hazarika's realistic novel is set
against the lush-green hills and the mist-laden mountains of Shillong. The
pristine silence of the valley suspended in time and space stands in direct
contract with violence and bloodshed in the work. The story deals with one
winter, the book itself being divided under the headings November,
December and January.
John Dkhan, a teacher of political
science at St Edmund's College, enters into a dangerous friendship with
James Kharlukhi and his gang. These gangsters had connections with the
bookies and made money out of manipulating the number of arrows. These
occasions never went unscathed without incidents of violence and killing.
Loneliness is inherent in each of
the characters. Without family and friends, John Dkhan craves nostalgically
for a world that now existed only in his mind. James Kharlukhi, an orphan
and a philanderer, makes dirty money and spends his entire life playing with
dangers. Dor Kharkonger, who finds poetry in the bow, fails to relate to a
similar situation in his marriage.
Friendship is what knitted James and
his companions together: "It was the code of friendship, like a bowstring:
tight, like an arrow: straight." The blind faith and loyalty to James lands
all of them into trouble. John Dkhan walked tightrope between friendship and
love, guilt and justification. He now finds himself a stealthy lover, a
hypocrite friend and a coward with no guts to face the truth. Was it James'
personality that swamped his or was it Jemmifer, the woman he fell for?
The mysterious hands of destiny work
their way unexpected on human beings. One can try to be what one can be and
if one is pulled away from it by other things, then that is the way it was
meant to be. John Dkhan had the least premonition when he first met James
that instead of holding pen and paper, he would pick up a knife.
There is an unending yearning for
love. John was looking for love, but instead enters a circle of violence
over which he had no control. Life at the Kaizang was a feast all the way
until love came in, but finally when it comes, it feasted on all of them.
Almost all the characters are swayed by a ruling passion. James Kharlukhi
has a passion for danger, Charles has it for hatred, Dor Kharkonger for
friendship and John's for his woman. Passion leads all of them into serious
consequences. The book is on the whole an amalgam of human instincts and
emotions. The context of the work makes the use of swear words necessary.
The narrative is racy and the use of vernacular makes it even more charming
to read.
AND ANOTHER
