It’s nice to be taken by surprise, once in a while, you know. Of course, one only has the pleasant kind in mind here. And better so, if this surprise comes in and through the form of a book. Fiction, if you please.
There were many reasons for the surprise that I am talking of. For one, I hadn’t heard of the book itself. Nor did I know a fig about the author or the publisher. And the query (whether I would like to read and possibly write about it too) came from someone who I barely knew at the time. But then which bibliophile says no to a book, the greedy pigs that we are. There’s nothing like devouring a book, after all. Yet, this one did leave me ravenous for more. But, more of that later.
It is not always that I get the chance to start reading a book the day I buy or get it. But on this occasion, the book that Ruchira Mittal sent across to me was all that I had about me that melancholic evening. I skipped the author’s note and took a moment to adjust to the opening sequence of a dank, dark night. Before I knew it, the plot had leapt out of the darkness and had me in a vice-like grip. The riveting narrative of a young man’s rollercoaster ride through violent, feudal Bihar was simply put – unputdownable.
Prey by the Ganges is vivid in imagery, graphic in detail, spellbinding in narrative. It is a gritty, visceral, and taut account of intrigue, gore and determination. And like the enthralling soirée by the ghat that the author brilliantly describes early on while the protagonist patiently waits for the steamer that would take him upstream the Ganga, his lyrical style sets off the tale on a languid note and gradually – you would miss the gradual bit unless you were looking for it – beats up to a crescendo. You read with the flow. And somewhere in the background, all along, the river flows quietly. A silent witness.
It’s true that this is Hemant Kumar’s first work of fiction, but for that calling him a “debutant” author would be too much. You only wonder why didn’t this man not write anything earlier. The answer I think lies in the fact that he probably spent too much time pursuing journalism, like all old school good journalists do. We, er, have this morbid tendency of sitting on good stories.
[PS: I couldn’t help noticing that the author and I have some things in common. Like Hemant, I started my journalistic career with the Press Trust of India. And like he, I have seen Bihar of the late Sixties and early Seventies. And yes, the Ganga is dear to me—I was born by the river, in Bihar.]
