Flights from my Terrace:The Boy in Yellow Knickers and Other Essays
Author: Santosh Bakaya
Publisher: Authorspress
ISBN 978-9352074884
Price ₹ 595.00
Book Length 354
 |
| ISBN 9789352074884 |
The book containing fifty eight essays in total, has been divided into
three sections- the first section comprising the essays talking about the
recollections of the author’s childhood brewing with nostalgia, the second
section expatiates on the friendly encounters of the author, and the third one,
constituting most of the essays, though shorter in length than those in section
one and two, revolve round the general subjects.
The essays are an odyssey of childhood memories, nostalgia, and
internal journey mirroring universal human feelings. All the memories
of the surreal encounters in childhood are fraught with sensitive emotions of
delight, loss, wonder, and bewilderment. It is true that memories do weave the
warp and weft of these essays as the essay, ‘The Persistence of Memory’
mentions of “…a chunk of memory here, a
sliver of memory there”, but it will be premature and fallacy to aver that
these are the photographic representation of the author’s memory. One is
flabbergasted as to with what deftness and delicacy, the memories, sprawling
deep in the subconscious of the author and popping up their heads at times, are
soothing as well as agonising at times, scary as well as exhilarating at times.
The author’s memories about her father do flash the
picture of a towering personality and his love and care for his daughter in the
inward eye of the reader as well by travelling along with the author on the wings of her imaginative flights to her
nostalgiac past. The lines, “Yes it was
cold without dad’s warm presence. That is why I had come looking for him in the
blissful past” speak volumes of the attachment of the essayist with her
father.
The beauty of the essays lies in the
exaltation of the mediocre and the commonplace like the neem tree, family pets, the family dog,
Nipper, and the cat, Lazy and scads of other ordinary things and incidents of
everyday life, to which human heed is seldom
riveted. The power
of essays lies in the immensely captivating pull of the narratives where the reader,
oblivious of the world, falls to the ‘alienation
effect’ and identifies himself with that shabby beggar, feels his ubiquity
around, sways away with his craze for cricket.
Another ravishing essence of the essays is that they uphold a world
all-pervading a perfect harmony in Nature where the human world and the world
of animals overlap so peacefully that both the worlds seem singing in chorus
the hymns of Oneness in All. Umpteen animals, gardens, clouds, flowers, birds,
and other manifestations of Nature are dovetailed in the essays with a peaceful
and blissful way.
Coming to the diction and language, Santosh Bakaya because of her wide
spectrum of knowledge by reading the classic as well as the modern literature,
seems very much influenced by way of writing employed by Elizabethan, Neo-classical, Romantic,
Victorian and Modern literary giants. That is why she seemingly rebels against
the diction in vogue. Her writing is peppered by Victorian as well as the
Romantic smack. Besides, there is always musicality and symphony vivid in her
writings. The line “I stumbled and
tumbled, grumbled and mumbled, fumbled and then almost crumbled on the
staircase” is a testimony to her love with rhythm and symphony that her
heart wishes to feel in the world as well.
Santosh Bakaya paints people as well as the incidents bracketed with
them with a brush of Dickensian humour and highlights comically their
eccentricity, idiosyncrasy, the comic facet of their life through
caricaturisation. The reader visions the characters like Pickwick, Artful
Dodger, Oliver Twist and others laughing and weeping on the pages of the book.
In fact, Flights from my Terrace throngs with characters and caricatures that
make the reader excursion to the world of Dickens. It will not be out of place
to assert that Santosh Bakaya’s world is more spacious than the world of
Dickens, as the world of the former encompasses and opens its welcoming bosom
to even animals, birds, trees and other creatures, showering rain of love and
warmth on all equally. Her world sings with Coleridge:
“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
To sum up, it can be cogently said that “Flights from my Terrace” is such a precious treasure added to the Indian English Literature that it will always be a pleasure to the reader to have his hands on it and cherish its reading again and again.
Wani Nazir
Pulwama, J&K, India
