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uditnair24's review
4.0
This book is a collection of essays which revolve around a common theme which is loss or more appropriately death which is the inevitable aspect of life. Since it's a collection the greatest strength it has is its diversity. One can witness the aftermath of assasination of a political leader and also murder and revenge in rural India.
I must say that the Pyre essay by Amitava Kumar was really moving. The author correctly sums it all with one line " Grief makes you a stranger to yourself and for momentarily one is pierced with loss."
Another highlight of the book is an essay "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. I have heard a lot about the author and other works but this one truly stands out. Hopefully will be reading more by the same author soon.
Another timeless classic was the Shroud by Munshi Premchand or better known as Kafan. It lays out the multiple realities or hypocrisies of Indian society as a whole. Even death cannot escape those societal compulsions and a common man gets crushed by the weight of it.
As a whole it's a great collection to read for sure. Some of the other regional translations might have lost the true meaning but yet they are worth reading.
I must say that the Pyre essay by Amitava Kumar was really moving. The author correctly sums it all with one line " Grief makes you a stranger to yourself and for momentarily one is pierced with loss."
Another highlight of the book is an essay "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. I have heard a lot about the author and other works but this one truly stands out. Hopefully will be reading more by the same author soon.
Another timeless classic was the Shroud by Munshi Premchand or better known as Kafan. It lays out the multiple realities or hypocrisies of Indian society as a whole. Even death cannot escape those societal compulsions and a common man gets crushed by the weight of it.
As a whole it's a great collection to read for sure. Some of the other regional translations might have lost the true meaning but yet they are worth reading.
anushareflects's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide, Animal death, and Death
deepan2486's review
5.0
Death to me, is both of an underestimation and an overestimation. In the truest sense, reality is incomplete without death. Death isn't darkness, but it casts a shadow and only light can cast a shadow. Is death like light? Death here is like the heavy mist, that hangs atop the soil and wriggles between strands of grass blades. Here death swerves past and hits hard on the people too, bringing forth turbulence but a strange, residual emptiness. Is death emptiness? In here, Death takes the lead role, and he dances without a crew, but he does surely have orchestration. His orchestration is the ways of the people, who are also assisting and violating terms of reality. Is death a true performer?
'Ways of Dying' takes times to go through. It got presented to me quite minimally, but I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. This collection catches Death quite abruptly, almost like a doe caught in a headlight. The prose is thick and viscous, and I needed through wade through it. There is some sort of music to the lines, a melancholy note of departure, and of restlessness. I had to listen to it carefully to hear it clearly, but even when close, it appeared distant and muffled. The exploration of death here is haunting and makes me pause. From a vantage point, I peer down on life cycles, on the teeming multitude doing their business, and as said before....Death hanging like a mist on a winter morning, touching cold surfaces and forming dew.
'Ways of Dying' has authors talking quite personally in a sentimental, diverse diction. Their characters are smitten by death, and in the essays, we see ourselves as humans greeting death. They have explored death over the horizons of deeper sympathy, resilience and raw tidings. There is a surprising truth accompanying the literary pieces, almost like a silent spectator allowing us to play in its yard.
Be it Amitav Ghosh in "The Ghost of Mrs. Gandhi", charting out trauma and disturbance that sprouts from communities and how it affects the masses in times of crisis. Or be it Premchand once again delivering fluently the gaping wounds of discrimination and universal agony, in "Shroud". In "The Funeral", Ruskin Bond strips death of all ceremonial gaudiness, and exposes grief and void in complete nakedness through the eyes of a child who has just lost his father. Khuswant Singh's "The Portrait of a young lady" paints death in colours from our personal reservoirs of half-used tubes of paint, as he talks about the aftermath of the death of his doting grandmother. Mahasweta Devi, George Orwell, Atul Gawande, and many more--I met them all here.
Death is very personalised here. It is for the people, within the people, and towards the people. But a lot thrives in those interpersonal gaps too, and in the slow whispers. The authors here take up a raw voice, unleashing their fiercest emotions and letting them pounce: making the impact profound. Death becomes omnipresent here, as we watch it go around, it watches over us too. I never knew Death so closely, never felt it rise up through so many voices and it was always distant to me. But now I feel it close and hidden, as the unwelcome but expected visitor in every scene of drama and turmoil: and it is up to him which role will he take, that of the saviour or that of the usurper.
Thanks Aleph Book Company for the copy.
'Ways of Dying' takes times to go through. It got presented to me quite minimally, but I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. This collection catches Death quite abruptly, almost like a doe caught in a headlight. The prose is thick and viscous, and I needed through wade through it. There is some sort of music to the lines, a melancholy note of departure, and of restlessness. I had to listen to it carefully to hear it clearly, but even when close, it appeared distant and muffled. The exploration of death here is haunting and makes me pause. From a vantage point, I peer down on life cycles, on the teeming multitude doing their business, and as said before....Death hanging like a mist on a winter morning, touching cold surfaces and forming dew.
'Ways of Dying' has authors talking quite personally in a sentimental, diverse diction. Their characters are smitten by death, and in the essays, we see ourselves as humans greeting death. They have explored death over the horizons of deeper sympathy, resilience and raw tidings. There is a surprising truth accompanying the literary pieces, almost like a silent spectator allowing us to play in its yard.
Be it Amitav Ghosh in "The Ghost of Mrs. Gandhi", charting out trauma and disturbance that sprouts from communities and how it affects the masses in times of crisis. Or be it Premchand once again delivering fluently the gaping wounds of discrimination and universal agony, in "Shroud". In "The Funeral", Ruskin Bond strips death of all ceremonial gaudiness, and exposes grief and void in complete nakedness through the eyes of a child who has just lost his father. Khuswant Singh's "The Portrait of a young lady" paints death in colours from our personal reservoirs of half-used tubes of paint, as he talks about the aftermath of the death of his doting grandmother. Mahasweta Devi, George Orwell, Atul Gawande, and many more--I met them all here.
Death is very personalised here. It is for the people, within the people, and towards the people. But a lot thrives in those interpersonal gaps too, and in the slow whispers. The authors here take up a raw voice, unleashing their fiercest emotions and letting them pounce: making the impact profound. Death becomes omnipresent here, as we watch it go around, it watches over us too. I never knew Death so closely, never felt it rise up through so many voices and it was always distant to me. But now I feel it close and hidden, as the unwelcome but expected visitor in every scene of drama and turmoil: and it is up to him which role will he take, that of the saviour or that of the usurper.
Thanks Aleph Book Company for the copy.
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