Bend in sarayu

Bend in Sarayu
Posted On: February 6, 2007

I happened to be stranded in Chennai Central on my way to Bangalore. There was nothing much to do and hardly felt like taking out my laptop and see at the barge of mail that i feared would have accumulated while i was away. So found myself getting into Higgin Botham stall on the platform. I usually find the vendors on the footpath good enough to meet my needs for books but this occasion called for spending some extra bucks for a book.

And since it was one off occasion, i decided to go for a kind of book i normally dont go for. Consiously ignoring the Paulo Coelho, Ayn Rand and Richard Bach sections i moved on to a section that held books by indian authors. Certainly a bend in the way i behave in bookstores!!
Bend in Sarayu is a book by GK Kameshwar, who professes to belong to the IT industry like me. Picked it on an impulse and joined him on his journey from Delhi to Lucknow to Ayodhya and Neemsharanpur(he has made this place look real important) .

Frankly speaking, he bores you in the begining trying to translate sanskrit slokas into english, but things get better as charachters join in and he begins his journey often meandering into Hindu mythology. It is more like a travelogue and he tries to give you a view of rural india. May be it would be interesting to you if have never seen it. The other kind of people who would like it is people who have been travellers in the same path.

The storyteller(Soota: thats what he calls himself) does a good job of describing his journey. Now that the Narmada verdict provided me a chance to finish the book, i wondered if i would have been able to complete the book but for those 6hrs at the station and a forced day off for a bachelor in Bangalore.

Anyway I am moving on to Shantaram--Hopefully it would be a more gripping story line.