Tiyasha Chaudhury

When a certain type of writing moves one, how does the after effect feel? And where can one feel it the most in their body? If I could measure the excellence of the author by bottling up the number of sighs I have taken whilst reading this novel then I would certainly keep them as showpieces. Here is a story about a woman, in the first-person narrative, doing a Ph.D. in the early twentieth-century music in Tamil Nadu that is in halt until she treads the threads of her family and its past. Where Yamuna (protagonist) gets drawn towards the enigmatic life of her late grand-aunt Lalitha, a famous Carnatic Musician. Yamuna is shown as a character who is impulsive, has anger stored in her cells, and has the urge to explore the mystery as closely as possible. And here starts the story which will always be close to my heart. A certain type of writing that embraces you without intending to. A certain type of writing that calls you towards itself, like poetry, lulls. A certain type of writing that leaves you with the thought- I have read a while long after a novel of such simplicity in expression, complexity in the story, and wonderfulness in the craft. I got goosebumps right after the last line. The story and the storytelling have an equal amount of fascination for me. I could see in my brain everything that I was reading. And if a certain type of writing has the power to give wings to your imagination, it has unlocked a part of you and has chosen to stay there. As long as one could recall the places in the novel that managed to raise shudders in my body, one could tend to the book as a bird does to its offspring, providing as much warmth as one could.