Happy unhappy ending
Some weeks ago, Vrunda Juwale called from Sakal Times and asked me to write about the book I was reading at the time. You can read the article by clicking this: The Happiness of Discovering a Literary Gem.
It took me a while to finish the book since I was reading it aloud to my friend Gladys, a two-hour weekly routine on Tuesday mornings. Both of us enjoyed it and the very realistic insider’s view it gave of a world remote from us. Of all its characters the one I found most intriguing was Murli Compounder – once a village boy like Ramu Hajjam’s son Pawan. By a combination of luck, hard work and personal initiative, he rises to a position of security and prominence few villagers have the opportunity to create for themselves. From the acknowledgements at the end of the book we learnt that Ramu Hajjam is a real person Taj Hassan once met, and that the symbolic dreams he has, well told and evocative, are derived from the Jatakas.
When writing the Sakal Times piece I had been nervous about praising it so much because I hadn’t finished reading it yet but luckily it ended well too – a sad, inevitable end but with the same even pace and simple but powerful language it uses right through.
I enjoyed The Inexplicable Unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam so much that I bought copies to give away, including one for my thirteen-year-old nephew who reads and knows quite a lot but lives in the UK and is unlikely to visit an Indian village.
Before I started writing this blog post, I did a google search on Taj Hassan and was disappointed to find the top three links were to three different Taj Hassans on facebook. There was not a single mainstream review of this book. Why is this wonderful writer unknown? Is this very special book going to sink without a trace? I hope not. I did learn from the publisher’s website that Taj Hassan is in the IPS and is presently Joint Commissioner Security, and that he has served in the north-east and has won the president's medal for gallantry.
Some weeks ago, Vrunda Juwale called from Sakal Times and asked me to write about the book I was reading at the time. You can read the article by clicking this: The Happiness of Discovering a Literary Gem.
It took me a while to finish the book since I was reading it aloud to my friend Gladys, a two-hour weekly routine on Tuesday mornings. Both of us enjoyed it and the very realistic insider’s view it gave of a world remote from us. Of all its characters the one I found most intriguing was Murli Compounder – once a village boy like Ramu Hajjam’s son Pawan. By a combination of luck, hard work and personal initiative, he rises to a position of security and prominence few villagers have the opportunity to create for themselves. From the acknowledgements at the end of the book we learnt that Ramu Hajjam is a real person Taj Hassan once met, and that the symbolic dreams he has, well told and evocative, are derived from the Jatakas.
When writing the Sakal Times piece I had been nervous about praising it so much because I hadn’t finished reading it yet but luckily it ended well too – a sad, inevitable end but with the same even pace and simple but powerful language it uses right through.
I enjoyed The Inexplicable Unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam so much that I bought copies to give away, including one for my thirteen-year-old nephew who reads and knows quite a lot but lives in the UK and is unlikely to visit an Indian village.
Before I started writing this blog post, I did a google search on Taj Hassan and was disappointed to find the top three links were to three different Taj Hassans on facebook. There was not a single mainstream review of this book. Why is this wonderful writer unknown? Is this very special book going to sink without a trace? I hope not. I did learn from the publisher’s website that Taj Hassan is in the IPS and is presently Joint Commissioner Security, and that he has served in the north-east and has won the president's medal for gallantry.
