A weekend spike of purchases has taken Brothers Sen Gogh in the bestseller list. Hopefully this lasts. Please grab your copy at the promotional price of INR 49/- or for USD 0.99, only till end of this week.
Inspired by the brotherly love of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh, Brothers Sen Gogh ruminates about the pains of a sensitive soul, the inability of society to identify artistic talent and the heartbreaking tragedy of a flawed brotherly relationship.
Inspired by the brotherly love of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh, Brothers Sen Gogh ruminates about the pains of a sensitive soul, the inability of society to identify artistic talent and the heartbreaking tragedy of a flawed brotherly relationship.
Soubhik Sengupta is an indie musician with emotional fragility.
Sourav Sengupta is an indie music producer who is unable to launch his brother.
Will their life follow the script of the life of Van Gogh brothers? Will Soubhik be appreciated for his talent? Will he find his lady love? Will Sourav be able to convince people of Soubhik’s talent? Who is Prashant, who calls himself the modern Gauguin? Will Indrani be able to leave her checkered past to lead a family life with Soubhik? Is Nethra a better guitarist or a better mother? Will Sourav have to support Soubhik all his life?
With their life script following the brothers separated by one and half centuries, Brothers Sen Gogh is a journey into the real nature of artistic freedom, the intricate relationship between talent and destructive sensitivity, struggle of the life of an indie musician and the perils of an alternate life. Traveling in the bylines of Mumbai, the story tracks the tragic lives of the Sengupta brothers as they try and build an alternate life following their passions.
To be available on Amazon in the first week of March 2021.
These precious days is a heartbreaking long read by Ann Patchett about an unlikely friendship developed between her and Sooki Raphael, Tom Hank’s assistant. It is written from Ann’s heart and is a great display of the healing power of storytelling.
Tom Hanks writes a short story book that is reviewed by Ann. Tom asks Ann to accompany her for a book tour. It is then Ann gets a little closer to Sooki. Eventually after finding that Sooki has cancer, Ann invites her to Nashville since Ann’s husband is a doctor in a hospital known for the treatment. The relationship between the two is the subject of the book which is almost a novella size book and an emotional roller coaster. Ann’s writing is magical and she treats the real life event as unfolding of a story. Anyone who has written anything fictional, knows that the characters take over the story and the story goes in directions you never intended it to go. A similar thing happens with life too. Narratives are mostly woven looking back. When things actually happen in real time, you do not know how your life is going to unfold.
When you start reading the story, you feel that it is going to be about Tom Hanks, but it turns out that he is a bit player in the story. There are many places where similar things happen. You expect the story to behave in a certain way, but it has its own mind. Ann makes sure that the reader understands the unpredictability of life and the highlights the myth of a difference between fiction and reality. In several places, she seems to talk to authors and ask them in a mocking tone, “Do you think you are writing the story?”
It reminded me of Anand, the emotional masterpiece by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, in the sense of a cancer patient getting in a totally different environment and making the best friends of his life in the short period he stays with them. Anand has a lot of emotional melodrama but the core point of life being short, comes across very effectively in the movie. There is a similar thread of philosophy in “These precious days” as well and the reader is surprised to find out the transformation in the personality of the leading characters due to the defining event.
Considering much of the proceedings are happening in the coronavirus pandemic days, it is amazing to see the impact of these events on the author’s life. It is as if the pandemic did not exist in their lives since much more was happening. The seed of the reason why the story became so interesting is also in the existence of the pandemic. The pandemic is what made us stay at home for months. A kind of period that allows intimacy to build or bonds to break if they are weak. In case of Ann and Sooki, the former turned out to be the case.
Please do yourself a favor and read it. It is a long read, almost the size of a novella, but is a magical read.
Less, with all its stream of consciousness rambling, exquisite use of language, psychoanalytical text, is ultimately a novel about love. Love lost, love gained, love showered on someone, love made and love wasted. It traces the journey of Arthur Less, a gay author who is turning 50 and whose lover has left him to marry someone else.
Less is sad but does not want to accept it. He does not want to attend the marriage as well. Instead, he takes a tour around the world accepting invitations to events that he would not have attended normally. They include an interview with an arrogant author, a writing class, an award function, a writing retreat and a food review assignment.
His mind is still going on thinking about his life, his 50 year long life, living in the shadow of more famous partners, more handsome partners. Living on the fringe, not being known, a life of humiliation as he sees it. Or is it? Less is a journey in exploring the midlife anxiety where everyone starts thinking about the life they lived for a long time. Has he made any difference? Has he lived a good life at least for himself? The language reflects the anxieties of Less, it mocks the literary culture, its own narcissistic agenda and bloated sense of self-importance. It rambles like Joyce and is recursive in the vein of Borges. It gets boring, becomes interesting again and then gets trivial and important alternatively. I
s it worth reading? For the plot, no! A big no! Some people may feel its an ego trip, a book written by a writer for other writers. For the love story? Yes, the language is subtly romantic, the love that exists in subtle glances, the bored mundanities of having a coffee together, tired love, decadal love rather than glorified love-at-first-sight. The self pity, the self doubt, midlife anxieties and heartbreak is dressed in a humorous, self-mocking language that becomes very slow at times. Slow enough for you to feel like flipping a few pages. But the toil is worth it, much like the incident of the protagonist reading Proust’s masterpiece. It deserves the accolades but makes you work hard for the same.
Kindle free promotion (Buy now with the link Below)
I published “Whiskey and Suicide” on 8th October, 2020 amidst the pandemic. It was a very emotional book that tackled a number of issues facing the middle class in India. I knew it was an intense book and has limited appeal to the thrill seeking, impatient reader stereotype that we have today. In fact the first reviewer for the book warned me that the book will not appeal to the millennial population. Three month down the line, the sales of the book have exceeded my expectations, many people have reviewed the book and it has reached the Amazon bestseller list in the short stories category.
More importantly, the book has made writing a part of my life. I am on my second draft of the next novel, scheduled to be launched this quarter. As a token of gratitude, I am planning to give the book free for a day this Sunday(10th Jan, 2021). The hope is to have more people discover my writing. Please share this with your groups, your contacts and any online forums you belong to. Please do not forget to download it yourself and leave an honest review.
Whiskey and Suicide paints a kaleidoscope of myriad emotions of the Indian middle class families. In a very informal storytelling style, it narrates the dilemmas of the urban families in dealing with the conflicting emotions arising due to contradictory desires. It is the bonds of family and friendship that allow the protagonists to deal with these crises which are depicted by Manik Bal in a detached but empathetic narrative style reminiscent of the great “slice of life” storytellers of the east and the west.
Now a bestseller with rave reviews :
— This book is raw and real and these people can be anyone truly. It is remarkably heartfelt, endearing, it claws at you at times with its depth and emotion. Hard to put down. One of those books you hand to a best friend and say “Read this!”
— The stories are all very good but out of all my favourite of all these is Her Father’s Killer such an interesting, emotional and unpredictable short story and it really touched my heart.
— Variety of intricate topics and unusual metaphorical contrast become an accustomed feat of the author.
— I loved the author’s style of narrating the incidents. Minimal yet precise.
— Bapu and Her Father’s killer plots are weaved around two completely opposite emotions.
— The heart or the author is easily felt with every line, as the lives of the characters seep in, and it is impossible not to get carried by their wave.
— It’s a fascinating inside glimpse at dysfunctional family life in modern India in real-world times, subtlety told with enough detail to make your hair curl.
— Whether it is the alcoholic father who takes the wrong path after his wife’s death or the sensitive couple in “Subtlety”, most characters are sketched in details.
Modern India is a complex place with the variety of demographics ranging from the multi billionaires to people who are not able to get a day’s meal. The financial liberalization and the IT revolution has created a middle class that is ambitious both in economic aims and spiritual aims. Whiskey and Suicide is empathetic without being condescending.
Got my first interview opportunity(Oops, “Writers Leak”) today, thanks to “The Wordicle”. Please read to find out more about me and my book.
An excerpt “The book is shaped by some real life events including the suicide of one of my close friends that impacted me a great deal. It talks about the “Third Thing”, a concept the great poet Donald Hall introduced while writing about his wife and another great poet Jane Kenyon. There are stories about people in forties coping up with career frustrations, spiritual ambitions and increasing complexity and stress in modern life. It gives the readers a feel about the life in modern India and takes them on a tour of an inside of an Indian home. It is intimate, friendly and informal and has a conversational tone.”
Does it make sense To own one’s desires And hold you in My arms, closed and Warm like a phosphene Memorised, drunk and dead Looking in your eyes, Trying to make sense Of the patterns of Life with what you Have to judge and classify Sensual emotions, letting Go the anarchic impulses And try to make sense Of one’s own desires Holding my arms in Closed, memorised emotions In encrypted phosphenes
Manik Bal’s short story collection, “Her Revenge” is available now. With this diverse collection of short stories, Manik Bal continues to explore the, and the mundane in the bizarre.
