Book: 12/52
Sarvshreshtha Kahaniyan (Hindi) - Jai Shankar Prasad
My Rating: 4/5
Last month, I received an Amazon Gift card worth 1000/- from my credit card bank, and guess what I did with that :). Bought a pack of 4 Hindi books from the iconic literati of Jai Shankar Prasad, Tagore, Sharat Chandra and my personal favourite Premchand. I believe my Hindi has gone way too weak, or shall I say below standard, when it comes to reading (let's not even talk about my writing skills), hence I have decided to at least read 30% of my yearly quota in Hindi to keep up with the language. And on top of that, I vow to impress my parents by sending them the same books once I am done reading them, and give them another reason to be happy that I haven’t forgotten my roots yet ;) If you know what I mean. This was a terrific read from Jai Shankar Prasad, which took me back in time as most of the stories are from the mid-19th century, some as long as 30 pages long, while some were as short as one page (back to back though). But I must say a lot of them will remain in my memory for a long time to come. One of them was a young widow who hosts a warrior in her humble abode as he somehow gets lost from his own men. She feeds him and lets him rest one night in her hut. Cut to 47 years, his associate comes looking for the hut and realizing that the lady had passed long ago, makes an eight-sided temple in her memory (as ordered by the warrior), but couldn’t name it after her as he had no clue what she was called. Now, guess the warrior she hosted that night? None other than Humayu. And many more such gems he has penned in this collection of stories.
One thing common to all his stories is the beautiful flora and fauna from across India. It took me quite a while to understand the city and state that he was capturing through his character's stories so beautifully, yet not at all easy to read for me, the fragile Hindi reader with almost nil vocabulary. This will surely qualify as the first book in my reading history that actually made me Google some chaste Hindi words so I could get to know them better and draw the relevance in the story. No doubt he made my vocabulary stronger with each story, and I was surprised to read so many old school names that stood for so cool references that I could never imagine. There is another memorable story that I will never forget, which was based on the last few days of Shah Jahan when his son took over the kingdom and put him under house arrest. How his own daughter Jahanara takes care of him till his last breath and how he pleads with his own son to spare him, but in response, he reminds him of their own history when it comes to taking over the empire was totally heart-touching. But I wonder, even after the story taking place in Agra, that too very near the Yamuna river, he deprives the reader of any mention of the great Taj Mahal, I can’t say for what reason. And a top third favourite will another terrrific story of a Nomad woman who falls for a married man just because the man who she asks to read his letter to her mentions that that the guy was in love with him whereas the letter says otherwise. How the matter gets resolved as the man in question visits the letter reader with his family and what happens to the woman, you need to read the book and find the story :).
Do let me know if you have read this one or any other works of Jai Shankar Prasad. Although I am not much into poetry, otherwise I would have given his Epic Poetry collection - Kamayani, a try for sure.
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