Book Review:Translation of खिलेगा तो देखेंगे

Once It Flowers by Vinod Kumar Shukla
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An Alice's Adventures in Wonderland type of book, खिलेगा तो देखेंगे is narrated in a dreamy, surreal, poetic style.

There must be a silencer mounted on time as well. Try as one might, it’s hard to make out time’s passing. Maybe the silencer in Guruji’s rooms has tiny perforation that let time’s ticking through

The nightingale sang while the sparrow was visible. Using playback technology, the sparrow sang the nightingale’s song.

The bucolic pace meanders along with lethal wooden guns, seismic events, conversations like Vedic incantations enlivening the narrative.

A person can’t run his hands over the day to feel out its shape the way he can run his hands over a flute to tell it is a flute

At one point there is a crescendo of ticking clocks like Pink Floyd’s Time.

Families painted a safety charm on the wall of their huts. They would pick up a fistful of cow-dung and paint the image of a man and woman protected by a circle. The charm was painted during the rainy season. The pain families bore in their routine life was sufficient for them. The circle was intended to prevent their suffering from brimming and overflowing, to keep the suffering in their own houses rather than have it leak out to a neighbour’s

They played small flutes as was their custom. Only now did the morning truly arrive. The other morning had been false. People who owned watches reset the time. The sum moved back and started the morning all over again.

Dirt went into the cracks when she walked on dry earth. When she walked over cracked soil, the cracks themselves stuck to her feet

Such evocative descriptions are littered all over the book, strongly recommending further reading of Vinod Kumar Shukla's works.

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