rites of passage

 

Churma

 

This is a Hindi book that I have read after a long time, written by an educationist and a poet Mrs Dolly Dabral belonging to Uttarakhand, India. She has a long and extensive experience of dabbling in the literary world of organizing and reciting poetry at various fora and been lauded with much recognition. Having carved a niche there, she has now put her penmanship to prose starting with reminiscences of various bitter-sweet events throughout her life. Before writing ‘Churma’ she has already written a previous book, again a memoir noir in Hindi called ‘Africa House’.

Both books are an interesting sprinkling of events and characters that she came across. This is evident by the fact that they stayed on her mind adequately to be recorded in the written word and relished by the reader. The title ‘Churma’ is as most people would know, a Rajasthani delicacy and is a retelling of an old story that she had heard as a child. She clarifies in an interview that she chose it to be the first among the other stories to also indicate the mix of things that is life, just as there are different ingredients that go into the making of churma.

There are a plethora of books out in the market and discerning readers will definitely be aware of the particular mould in which most are written, that are Anglophonic in sound and craft both. At most times it feels that they have been written with the western audience in mind- a veritable disconnect with the local sentiments and thoughts that makes a read unrelatable however lucidly or skillfully written it may be. But then this is mostly seen in books written in English. To get the local flavors in a read, one must delve their teeth in the Hindi books to be instantly transported to the familiar and the forgotten.

So I was pleasantly occupied in reading these two books that are a nostalgia trip of the author and it is even more pleasant discovery that I am not averse to such trips. Mrs Dabral talks about the Dehradun and its people of yore- a time when sitting and chatting was a social norm that thrashed out knotty problems over tea, knitting and company. A time when cows were kept in the homes of most, learning classical music, donating, sewing etc was part of the home set-up. Try and imagine that Dun with today’s- it’s irreconcilable! Since I too belong to Dehradun, I found the stories relatable but it’s not as if such scenario was not there in other parts of the country.

The writing is a straight off narration of how things transpired without any literary embellishments to distract from the conversational tone of the telling. This makes the readability immense and you keep turning pages to know what happens next. The writer has impressive command on languages that she displays with Punjabi, Garhwali and Hindi with acute proficiency. She has started her journey in prose with interesting autobiographical accounts in form of stories in two book forms that have been well received by the readers. 

I hope she comes up with a work of fiction soon that regales its readers with the Dehradun/Uttarakhand of the 60s and 70s about which not much literature is available. This unavailability is also one big reason I feel why youth of this region are not suitably connected with the culture and ethos of the hill station. It has never been projected to them. And as such Mrs Dabral's books help fill that gap we find in the Garhwali literary scene.