19/11/2016
(Novel) Varanasi by MT Vasudevan Nair
(National award winner, multiple)
Pages: 189
MT's latest novel is Varanasi is an emotional journey to Varanasi, a pilgrim centre in North India. Varanasi opens with Prof. Srinivasan’s letter to Sudhakaran, the protagonist, referring to his unfinished thesis among his old books. The professor invites him to his home in Varanasi. Sudharkaran, in his sixties, and recovering from a prostrate procedure, decides to take the professor by surprise. On arrival, he realised that the professor has recently died. The story evolves with a series of reminiscences, like a stream, in time transitions. The narration involves the third, first, and second person. In the train to Varanasi, Sudhakaran fishes out the book Kashi: The Eternal City by Sumita Nagpal, in which he is also acknowledged. By the time Sudhakaran finishes the book, he has traversed his life, his women, seen the demise of his well-wishers, moved through Varanasi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Paris, and Madras. He sees no need to complete his thesis — 'about the possibilities of Caliban' as once suggested by his professor for a scholarship at the university — and lets it go into the Ganges. He does the professor’s last rites as also his own Atma Pindom (One's own funeral rites in anticipation of death). At the Dashashwamedh Ghat, Sumita, now an elderly woman, merely passes him by, not even recognising him. With no intricate plot, the novel is an experiment. It was well received in the literary circles.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._T._Vasudevan_Nair
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