Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: V.P. Kale GENRE: Short Story Collection RATING: 3.55 stars. In a Nutshell: A short story collection that serves as a good introduction to this respected Marathi author’s works. A bit dated in content, but has enough of wit and satire to keep you invested. Reading Marathi books has not been on my agenda since long. This is mainly because Marathi has been my weakest subject since my school days. I have had the misfortune of having such obnoxious Marathi teachers throughout my school years than instead of developing a passion for the language, all they created in my heart was dread and dislike. The monotonous textbooks, with the focus being more on esoteric content than on contemporary stories more attractive to kids, didn’t help matters. (Hindi, in contrast, was far better handled and taught.) Moreover, I don’t stay in an area with many Marathi speakers. Simply put, my skills in Marathi were and are very rusty. In the last couple of years though, I have expanded my reading acr...

AUTHOR: Rafaa Dalvi GENRE: Hindi Flash Fiction Anthology RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A twisty collection of short stories in conversational Hindi. This anthology has forty flash-fiction–length stories, most of which have a twist at the end. The stories are quite dark, ranging from crimes, psych suspense, thrillers and low horror. ‘Paasa Palat’ is somewhat like turning the tables or changing the tide. Thus, in each story, you have the ‘paasa palat’ happening at the end. Sometimes, it works well; at times, it feels predictable and/or farfetched. One interesting trivia is that every story is titled after a Bollywood crime movie, and arranged in the order of the movie’s release year. I discovered the first bit while reading the collection; the second was revealed to me by the author. Most of these stories are set in the urban locale of Mumbai. So the Hindi you get herein is not the formal polished Hindi of North & Central India. The stories are in conversational Hindi (which is fin...

AUTHOR: Divya Prakash Dubey NARRATOR: Divya Prakash Dubey GENRE: Hindi Fiction RATING: 4 Stars. In a Nutshell: An easy-going story about a young man who wishes to see his widowed mother in a happy relationship before he moves abroad for further studies. One of the few Hindi books about contemporary India that balances culture and modernity well. I enjoyed it a lot. Story Synopsis: Raghav Awasthi has won the scholarship to go to Stanford for his degree in Data Science. But just a couple of months before his departure, his mom Shaalu is hospitalised due to stress-related issues. Raghav and his girlfriend Nisha decide that Shaalu might be better off if she gets remarried. Thus begins their secret plan of finding a new husband for Shaalu. Crazy, right? Now add in the complication that Shaalu has a secret in her past that no one knew about, until Nisha stumbles across it. The book is written in a dual timeline, in a limited third person narration. Let me first clarify for my Western frien...

AUTHOR: Satya Vyas GENRE: Hindi fiction PUBLICATION DATE: October 19, 2018 RATING: 4.5 stars. (No English translation available yet.) One of the biggest changes in my reading habits courtesy my Facebook reading group has been my foray into Hindi literature. Of course, I'm yet to achieve the reading fluency required to devour Hindi books. So I'm entirely reliant on audio versions for now. But this is a much better way to attempt Hindi literature rather than relying on poor English translations. My best experience so far, and also the most traumatic one, has been the "reading" of Chaurasi. Thanks to the frequent recommendations of my avid Hindi-reading friends, I knew this book would be interesting. But it was far beyond my expectations! The best Hindi book I've read so far! (Yeah, that's not saying much! 🤭🤭) Here's what you need to know about Chaurasi: - Go into it knowing what to expect. The Goodreads summary of the book makes it sound like it is the tal...