Crossed & Knotted is India’s first Composite Novel, a book written by fourteen authors in close collaboration with each other. The chapters, each a story in itself, are knotted with one another through characters, events, settings and emotions. The result is a read that criss-crosses through a multitude of emotions bringing out deep rooted human desires. They narrate tales of love and betrayal, suspense and mystery, courage and dilemma, along with hope and resilience. Read it for a taste so tantalizing, that your mind will surely be craving for more!
My Take On It :
Crossed & Knotted as a composite novel comes out as one
whole bunch of flowers in a bouquet, varied in colours and design yet joined at
a common point. This being an experimental genre gives a unique opportunity for
creative writers to excite their creative juices and bring in an individual voice
unique to each one of them. The novel is therefore naturally not a straight
take off about a single story but has a different takes on the various
characters as a separate entity with every writer’s imprint on them. All in all a
very interesting and enjoyable read all through the 14 stories. Here’s a brief
look at what the stories have to offer:
Beginning with Sutapa Basu’s story ‘A Curious Dalliance’ which has
Sudip Roy’s wife Megha dying of a curious disease leaving behind a daughter
Shivi, in-laws and of course her husband. Shivi is a grown up girl in the next
story by Ayan Pal- ‘The Diary of Joseph Varughese’ who is inordinately fond of
collecting old diaries and which could turn into her undoing in this
thriller-ish story with her boyfriend James emerging as someone we wouldn’t
think he would be. The novel diverges
into the lives of various characters not holding on strictly to the original
characters or story line so that we have Shivi’s friend’s Siya getting a lead
place in the next story by Sanchita Sen Das- ‘The Web of Life’ and we venture
into the esoteric realm of karma and regressive hypnotherapy. The novel takes an unexpected route into
fatalism and rhetorical musing regarding the aim of writing a story in ‘The
Real Fiction Of Illiana Braun’ by Arvind Passey as he effortlessly merges real life characters of the novel
within his own story to surprising results while also propagating the diary as
a perfect prop to advance a story line. ‘A Burning Candle’ by Mithun Mukherjee
has Illiana make a new friend in
Catherine and find her nemesis in her quest to find the truth about Lily Brown
whose story took shape in Kochi and where Illiana found herself in on a trip to
India for a workshop on Architecture. Her brief acquaintance with Illiana leads
Catherine- a journalist on a mission to Afghanistan to cover a story on
situation of women and children there in the next story ‘Relic to Ruins’ by
Avanti Sopory. Through her, we get a peep into the life of people in present
day Afghanistan as well as that of Jameela and her children. ‘Leap of Faith’
by Bhaswar Mukherjee, moves the story of Jameela- a fiercely
independent and progressive woman in an
atmosphere that encouraged the subjugation of women and the weak but who
manages to fight it while her daughter Rukhsana is able to break free of it all completely and make a life for herself
in India. ‘Reclaiming Life’ by Anupama
Jain shows an aspect of women in India not really in control of things concerning
themselves as portrayed by Poorni, who is a friend of Rukhsana aka Dimpy, and
is helped by latter to gain her lost ground in a patriarchal society as ours. Kamu
aka Kamala Devi is the ‘Dragon Lady’, also Poorni’s vampish mother-in-law who
has been illustrated vividly by Deepti Menon
in this story that explains why and how she came to be called the
‘dragon’. Her scheming and machinations lead everybody become afraid of her and
thus making her succeed in her plans. This is how she also manages for her
under qualified son Pankaj to have a better educated and simple girl Poorni as
his wife. Pankaj’s younger brother Binoy leaves his mother’s home to find his
own bearings in ‘For a Speck of a Moment’ where Amrit Sinha brings to light the
terrifying moments of the Cafe Leopold and German Bakery bomb blasts through Binoy
who has reached Pune to make a life for himself. He moves ahead in life in ‘To
Ma & Pa, Con Amore!’ by Monika Nair, managing to find a wife in Mona Lisa
who brings out the struggle between two generations, one- her father Shankar
preferring the small town while she her self, the city life.
‘Look Beyond’ by Amar Lakshya Pawar reconnects the lives of
a happy couple namely Aditya and Meena, destined for a tragedy as Shankar tries
to lend a helping hand in the melee. A recently widowed Meena tries to build a
new life with Sudip Roy without knowing much about his past in ‘Dawn to Dusk’
by Bhuvaneshwari Shankar. This penultimate story brings around the story line
to the cast of the first story and gets anchored in the end chapter called ‘The
Last Act’ by Arpita Banerjee. It attempts to bring a logical closure and peace
to the demons raised by Sudip’s actions although quite dramatically!
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Sutapa Basu is an Honours scholar from Santiniketan and holds a Masters degree in English Literature. Her professional career has seen her as a teacher, editor, and publisher. She has worked with renowned international publishing houses like Oxford University Press and Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the last five years of her professional career, she has launched 111 educational titles, 33 CDs and digital products, a language lab and a website. She has also developed and edited over 450 books over the last thirteen years.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER : READOMANIA
India has traditionally been the land of storytellers and a lot of us have an inherent skill of creating good plots, stories and narrations. With a little encouragement and support, many more authors can be widely read. This is the essence of Readomania-an initiative that nurtures emerging stars of the literary world.
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