It's amazing how when you decide to do something with all your heart, there's nothing stopping you. After 3 semesters of book-starvation at Kgp, I finally decided to make time to read a good book, no matter how loaded I was. And that's how I came to read "A Train to Pakistan" this week with sheer dedication, ignoring my forthcoming mid-semesters. It was worth it.
I've heard Khushwant Singh to be a great critique, but this book is different. I'm guessing it's one of his first, since it was published in 1956! The book beautifully captures the India-Pakistan partion, not from a wide perspective but from an insignificant village on the border. It portrays how human emotions harden, how man changes in terrible times such as these. It makes you wonder about the value of human life, rather the absense of it. The riots between Sikhs and Muslims, trains filled with slaughtered humans crossing the border both ways, people fleeing their homes only to be murdered elsewhere have been described vividly by many a writers. But what makes Khushwant Singh unique is his book dwells not on the inhumanness of these acts, but the inevitable change for the worse that the human mind and heart go through in times when men are mindlessly wiped off the Earth.
Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blosson flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.
-from A Train to Pakistan.
I've heard Khushwant Singh to be a great critique, but this book is different. I'm guessing it's one of his first, since it was published in 1956! The book beautifully captures the India-Pakistan partion, not from a wide perspective but from an insignificant village on the border. It portrays how human emotions harden, how man changes in terrible times such as these. It makes you wonder about the value of human life, rather the absense of it. The riots between Sikhs and Muslims, trains filled with slaughtered humans crossing the border both ways, people fleeing their homes only to be murdered elsewhere have been described vividly by many a writers. But what makes Khushwant Singh unique is his book dwells not on the inhumanness of these acts, but the inevitable change for the worse that the human mind and heart go through in times when men are mindlessly wiped off the Earth.
Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blosson flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.
-from A Train to Pakistan.
Thanks to my extremely generous neighbour who willingly lent me this book, and expected nothing in return, but a word of gratitude in this post :)
