THE WORDKEEPERS by JASH SEN

 

Author: Jash Sen

Publication: Duckbill

ISBN: 978-93-82618-16-4

Price: INR 225

The book begins with an account of some war. This is followed by a letter from Vibhishan, the immortal king of Lanka and the brother of Ravana, of the time of Lord Rama.

A normal life of a regular busy teenager of the year 2028 is thrown topsy turvy when she receives strange messages from her mother and notices that her father's body casts no shadow in the mirror. A very strange sequence of events make her realize that she is no ordinary human, but the child of a 'wordkeeper' and is expected to live up to and act as per a prophecy. And she must rescue her mother.

Through the journey, she meets many people, who have, in their existing forms or their earlier incarnations, been characters from the great Mahabharata or the Ramayana. She discovers that she herself had been one.

Meanwhile, in the other world, in the world of the the nemesis of these wordkeepers, a handsome plan is being hatched to ensure that relevant information is collected and a trap is being laid upon the wordkeepers. This world is headed by God 'Kali'(not Goddess Kaali), the forth yug of the Hindu mithology. He has in his control, all the vices, the personifications of foul acts and all the existing demons and aims to become the sole God of the humanity.

A string of trustworthy friendships, bitter betrayals, family union, happy and sad phases, lead the teen-aged girl to discover something more about herself and take her a little further on the journey prescribed for her. And eventually, what has to happen, happens!!

An enormous eye keeps a track of all of her activities, until just before the end. 

It is interesting how the story, a very very common story of a child suddenly discovering his/her special powers (much like the characters of Harry Potter, Lexi , Henrietta and so many more in the contemporary fiction arena) is mixed with the complex story of the Hindu mythology, with a twist that incorporates all the other religions. (Kaalki, the last avatar of Lord Vishnu, is depicted through a Muslim boy here). Though the concept is brilliant and the author has done her homework really well, the final outcome falls short of the expectation that such a storyline would ideally demand. The theory of the child discovering gifted abilities has become too commonplace and childish to carry the heavy wight of the mythological tales. Though a racy narration, it becomes hard to convince oneself to read on and it gets too complex and ambiguous at places. 

A point I liked about the book is how the people, especially those of the other world, the Vishasha have been named. Dambha, Mrityu, Bhay, Vyadhi, Jara, Trishna, Shoke, Krodhe and so many more are basically the personified versions of the vices and problems we all face. For someone with a decent base of mythological knowledge, all this seems good, for others, it would have been better had a detailed glossary been give at the end.

A first of the trilogy, I think it is a fairly decent job. I hope the other two books are nice and make up for the loopholes in this one.

Out Of Place In Time And Space

Title : Out of Place in Time and Space

Author : Lamont Wood

Publisher : New Page Books

ISBN : 978-1-60163-178-7

'Out of Place in Time and Space' is a delightful read highlighting the things, incidents and situations from the past which resemble the ones that happened or were invented many years later. How is it possible to see things in the past that look similar to the things in the present? The picture of children holding toy helicopters, toy airplanes on the tombs, the presence of planetary objects in the tribal art, writer having written about the doomed gigantic ship getting into an accident with just a few lifeboats - eventually happening much later in Titanic , movie on the President creating an artificial war as a façade to distract the attention of the public away from his personal affair, the mention of Pacific Front of the World War II more than a decade before the war began, UFOs being depicted in the paintings of medieval period - are some of the examples brought into notice by Lamont Wood.

Wood offers a detailed reference list of such cases appropriately supported by illustrations from some very reliable sources like National Geographic and Scientific American. The facts of the knowledge from the past are thoroughly analyzed form logical angles and are presented in an easily readable fashion adequately stirring the curiosity of readers to know more as the book progresses.

The book does manage to initiate a few basic questions in the minds of the readers - Have we understood the time dimension completely? Is time a much more cryptic dimension than it seems to be? What else have we not understood completely ignoring it as just flight of imagination of a set of people in different times? These and some more will surely incite the curiosity of many readers.

A book, full of substance and evidences for the large array of observations that have been made throughout the book. The information packed book is not devoid of humour so it promises to give an enjoyable reading experience to the readers. This is definitely one of the books which offers 'something different' from the regular content.

The pictures and illustrations added to the text, bring out the point much more effectively.