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Brief overview of Books - September 2016

Hey all,
During the last visit at the Central Library, I issued two books.....

  1.)  “Koik var thai ke…” by Varsha Adalja.


This book contains different Gujarati short stories. Varsha Adalja is a Gujarati feminist novelist, playwright and negotiator who won the 1995 Sahitya Akademi Award for Gujarati language for her novel Ansar. She is also a dramatist, writing for stage plays, screenplays, and radio.
This collection of short stories reflects the human desires and how these desires are suppressed time and again by the society, family and other sources.
One of the stories which I liked the most is “Koik var thai ke…” It is a story of a girl named Shalini, who reflects the typical obedient girl. She always listens to her parents and the important decisions of her life are also taken by them.
Shalini loved Solanki and wanted to marry him, but she had to marry some rich guy. After 15 years they meet again, and the things have changed. Shalini represents not only every girl but also every human being as somewhere in life everyone must have suppressed their desires in one or the other way.
As the writer is a female we might think that it must be highlighting plight of women, but the writer very well portrays male characters.

  2.)  “Yayati” by Girish Karnad.

Girish Karnad is an Indian actor, film director, writer and playwright. His playwright was the beginning of the age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada. His plays were written in Kannada and translated in English and many other languages. Karnad is well known for his use of mythology to tackle the contemporary issues. Some his famous plays are Tughlaq (1964), Hayavadana (1971), Nagamandala (1988) and many more.
Yayati (1961) is a debut play by Girish Karnad based on the story of king Yayati found in the Mahabharata – Adi Parva and also Bhagavata Purana. In simple words, it the story of the love triangle of King Yayati, his wife Devyani and maid Sharmishta. The play is divided into 4 acts
  All the plays by Girish Karnad are always an amalgamation of myth and reality. Myth is reconstructed by interweaving reality.
All the characters represent the psychological plights which they get from the people closer to them. The complex nature of women is excellently represented. When two women crave for the same thing and how the cat fight goes on. Yayati’s character is also given a human touch that represents common people and their mistakes. In Mahabharata, the humans are made God and no one can question them. In this play, Karnad brings out the realistic human behaviour and the complex interpersonal relationships. The desire of every human to be you are young or immortal can also be observed here.

In my graduation, I studied the play Hayavadana and was surprised to see that how the writer portrays a story of general people from the renowned tale of royal ones.


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