โDeewaar mein ek khidki rehti thiโ by Vinod Kumar Shukla is a tale that inhabits a vivid ordinariness at its core. The characters seem familiar to us, verily they wander around us unassumingly. Raghuvar Prasaad and Sonasi are a newly married couple who live in a urban milieu for livelihood. The thick plot is absent here, it only narrates the life of Prasaad and his wife. The marriage is arranged. There is that now lost innocence, strange and pure that undergirds their marital life. Prasaad attends to his filial duties with conscious effort and dignity. He also pines for his wife when she's away. The amenable domesticity and familial relations in the story is treated with gentleness. The novel celebrates the mundane and the ordinary life. The eternal search for fulfillment, the endless hustle for the perfection in love is replaced by small joys that the couple share together: the experience of an elephant ride, the cheerful play with birds, the act of caring when one is ill, the gazing at the sky and the stars, crossing a trail, spending time near a pond or a river, discussion for the choice of how to address the significant other in a letter and so on.
The world of mundane so disdained by the characters of Flaubert and Chekhov is here restored to its silent glory with a quiet demeanour. Vinod Shukla has weaved magic with his pen.