Dark Circles-Udayan Mukherjee

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Dark Circles

Udayan Mukherjee

 

Udayan Mukherjee had a two-decade long career as a television anchor and editor. This is his first novel. I read a couple of good reviews of the book by his old colleagues, writers and columnists, whose writings I admire. This book was an abject disappointment. I do not want to suggest that seasoned writers gave inappropriately complementary reviews to the first book of their former colleague, in spite of it’s too obvious mediocrity. Perhaps it is very difficult to be unbiased in evaluating the work of your dear friend.

 

Plot of story, its twists, portrayal of characters; all is insufferably trite. Mala dies in an Ashram on the banks of Ganga. She has been living here for more than two decades, after she walked out of her home. She leaves her two young boys, Ronojoy and Sujoy in the care of her mother. These events are precipitated by the tragic death of her husband. She leaves a letter for her elder son, Ronojoy, to be handed to him after her death. Letter reveals to Ronojoy family secrets, in light of which he has to re-examine his past and plan his future, and his relation with his younger brother Sujoy. What follows is a mumbo-jumbo of sentiments, storyline that is more hackneyed than a well-worn Bollywood film theme, characters which are so jacketed to their roles, that you can predict the dialogues like a simple arithmetic. Prose is run-of-the-mill too, like everything else in the book. I could not glean a single redeeming quality, that the aforementioned reviewers had discovered in abundance. Complete waste of time and money. Shortness of the book was the only feature that came to my aid as I bewailed my predicament as I read the insipid pages.