Yatrik: A Review

Disclaimer: This is my first book review, so might not be a perfect one. I’ll try to do it my way.

Arnab Ray, the popular blogger greatbong, has delivered a story in which the protagonist realizes he is dead at the very beginning of the story. This comes as a shock! What follows is an extremely interesting cocktail of relationship surprises, human ideology and 90s Kolkata (Bengal in general). The hero, Anushtup, is given a boon of observing three events in his lifetime for which he still doesn’t have the answer. For example, how his test score ended up a 2 out of 100 in his board mathematics examination. Anushtup gets to observe all three incidents, which, then change his notion about respect, luck and life in general.

Out of the three stories written by Arnab, the first two are extremely intriguing and capture images of Kolkata in the 90s immaculately. They bring out the insecurities of middle-class bengali family during that period; how ideology is often prioritized over pragmatism, how protests become a part of the lifestyle and how ideas and the reality clash at times. Anushtup’s conversation with Ataluya Sir, I feel, is the best part of the story, where, if you were born during the 80s or 90s, can actually feel your own thoughts getting reverberated.

With such a gripping plot till almost 70% of the book, the remaining portion of the book is a big letdown. The third story is rather unconvincing, while the part which describes how Anushtup died is extremely cliched. Though, it was a surprise when the identity of the mysterious person whom he met after death is revealed. The final chapter was a big letdown. It seemed like the last portion of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”; when you don’t know why the story is not ending and characters are going on talking.

Arnab has the potential to be a good story-teller. He has imagined an unique concept here and tried to weave around it. If he had been more careful in penning the dialogues and let the conclusion of the book to be more precise and taut, this would have been a great read. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty decent effort, and I feel, people, specially Bengalis of our generation will like it.