The novel starts
with a bouquet of superlative verbiage, beautifully weaved together with an
incomparable words like a colourful flower garlands. First fifty odd pages, is
composed of sentences with elegant literary styling which is a delicious read.
As the book progresses, it narrates the difficult conservative customs and the
tradition of the Corpse bearers of the Parsi community. It is written in first
person, where the Corpse bearer narrates the story. Set in and around the Parsi
temple with the people connected with the temple. The discriminatory treatment
meted to them by their community was an incredulous information for me.
Book is a real
account of the life of a Parsi dock worker son of an egoistic priest,
sacrificing his decent profession of being a dock worker to become a corpse
bearer fulfilling the condition of the father of the girl whom he loved and
married. Among many issues, the protagonist discusses the rational and philosophy
of snake bite, which a young kid finds difficult to understand; the reasons
behind the snakebite of her animal loving mother who died of the poisonous
venom. The emotions of love, hatred, and suffering is immaculately described to
touch the readers.The treatment
meted to the Corpse bearer by the community is an eye opener to me. It was
surprising to find such blind faith and superstitious beliefs amongst the
people of such forward thinking community.
After reading
this book, I felt that my adage about the religious practices as being ‘relevant
to the time and place’ found its relevance. The age old traditions may not be
an acceptable norms in the present civilisation. Life has no answer to our
understanding or which may have a higher level of justification beyond our comprehension.
The book has its enjoyable intellectual
dosage, loaded with serious stuff with style and craft very unusual but the
story……
Comments
Post a Comment