The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At the beginning of the second part of the book Orwell writes

The road to Mandalay to Wigan is a long one and the reasons for taking it are not immediately clear.

He does elucidate his journey along this path.
Based on Orwell’s personal observations while in situ, the first part is an engrossing treatise on the socio-economic status of the coal-mining community in the Lancashire area; it addresses the living conditions, housing, sanitation, food and nutrition, working conditions in the mines, health facilities, roles of religion and trade-unions, recreational opportunities or a lack thereof. I faced the onerous task of deciphering the values of “pounds, shillings and pence” and could not but marvel the British doggedness of not adopting the decimal system. They had inflicted the Indians with the equally puzzling currency system of “rupee, anna and paisa.” The stark landscape, prevalent poverty, the all-pervading smoke and sickness like pneumoconiosis reminded me of AJ Cronin’s The Citadel.

And that is the central fact about housing in the industrial areas: not that the houses are poky and ugly, and insanitary and comfortless, or that they are distributed in incredibly filthy slums round belching foundries and stinking canals and slag-heaps that deluge them with sulphurous smoke – though all this is perfectly true – but simply that there are not enough houses to go round.
A slag-heap is at best a hideous thing, because it is so planless and functionless. It is something just dumped on the earth, like the emptying of a giant’s dust-bin. On the outskirts of mining towns there are frightful landscapes where your horizon is ringed completely round by jagged grey mountains, and underfoot is mud and ashes and overhead the steel cables where tubs of dirt travel slowly across miles of country. Often the slag-heaps are on fire, and at night you can see the red rivulets of fire winding this way and that, and also the slow-moving blue flames of sulphur, which always seem on the point of expiring and always spring out again.

Besides the economic disparity, he also dwells on the prevalent class system in Britain. It may not have been as evil as the divisive caste system in India, but was very much in evidence

You cannot have and effective trade union of middle-class workers, because in times of strikes almost every middle-class wife would be egging her husband ton to backleg and get the other fellow’s job.
That is what we were taught – the lower classes smell. And here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a <>physical<> feeling. Race-hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot. You can have an affection for a murderer or a sodomite., but you cannot have an affection for a man whose breath stinks – habitually stinks, I mean. However well you may wish him, however much you may admire his mind and character, if his breath stinks he is horrible and in your heart of hearts you will hate him.

The second part is more autobiographical. He talks about his experiences as a police officer in colonial India – in Burma, to be precise, and then his experiment with poverty as in Down and Out in Paris and London. Witnessing the poverty and indifference of the governing dispensation, both political, as well as bureaucratic, his inchoate ideas start to crystallize at this stage, as he develops his philosophy on Socialism, Fascism, Communism, totalitarian regimes etc – this tends to go on and on a bit, but is still fascinating, seeing Orwell’s thought processes that culminates in Animal Farm and 1984

In the end I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that punishment always does more harm than the crime and that people can be trusted to behave decently if only you will let them alone. This of course was sentimental nonsense.
I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man.

Not as entertaining as his other novels, nonetheless, it's an important seminal work.

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यशपाल कृत झूठा सच द्वितीय खंड (देश का भविष्य)

झूठा सच : देश का भविष्य [Jhootha Sach: Desh ka Bhavishya] by यशपाल
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

कनक और भाई-बहन तारा व जयदेव की कहानी आगे बढ़ती है। विभाजन की पीड़ा और बाद में नव-स्वतंत्र भारत में उनके संघर्ष पश्चिम से पूर्व तक विस्थापित व्यक्तियों के प्रतिनिधि हो सकते हैं। दासत्व के अंधेरे के बाद स्वतंत्रता की सुबह - एक नए राष्ट्र के खूनी जन्म से लोगों को कई आकांक्षाएं थीं। लेकिन धीरे-धीरे उनकी आशाएं धराशायी हो जाती हैं क्योंकि भ्रष्टाचार सरकारी नौकरशाही और दलाल राजनेताओं के माध्यम से अपने जाल को फैला देता है।

कांग्रेसियों ने गाँधी जी से एक ही बात सीख ली है कि चाहे जिस कड़की या स्त्री के कंधे पर हाथ रख लें। सभी अपने को राष्ट्रपिता समझने लगे हैं

It is a time for enterprising opportunists to set up business and industries. Nepotism, bribery prevails

सभी राज्यों की जनता शाशन में निधड़क कुनबापरवरी, नोच-खसोट और धाँधली से निराश और खिन्न हो रही थी। अंग्रेजी सरकार के पुराने रायबहादुर और खैरख्वाह अमन-सभाई और सरकारी अमलदारी से लाभ उठाने लोग कांग्रेस के मेंबर बन कर सफ़ेद नोकीली टोपी पहनने लगे थे। अब कांग्रेस का चंदा चार-चार आने और रुपए-रुपए की रसीदों से इकठ्ठा नहीं किया जाता था। चुनाव फण्ड में चंदा मिलों और कंपनियों से बीस-चालीस हजार और लाख-दो लाख रुपए के चेकों से आता था। कांग्रेस से सम्बन्ध रखने वाले जो लोग चार साल से सौ-सवा सौ की नौकरियों से निर्वाह कर रहे थे, अब अपने सम्बन्धी के मंत्री बन जाने या किसी महत्वपूर्ण कमेटी का मेंबर बन जाने पर जहाँ-तहाँ हजार-बारह सौ पाने लगे थे। मंत्रियों के मेट्रिक भी पास न सकने वाले सुपूत, सरकारी विभागों के अध्यक्ष बन कर हजार रुपए मासिक से भी संतुष्ट न थे। मंत्रियों के दामादों के लिए मैनेजिंग डायरेक्टर से काम कोई पद सोचा ही नहीं जा सकता था।

लोग धारासभा के सदस्यों (मेंबर ऑफ़ लेजिस्लेटिव असेम्ब्ली) को एम्. एल. ए. न कह कर घृणा से 'मैले' लोग कहने लगे थे।

Indictment on Gandhi and his childish puerile attempts at achieving independence

"और तुम्हारी कांग्रेस क्या करती रही? गाँधी जी क्या करते रहे? पहले नामिलवर्तन (असहयोग) में हजारों लड़कों के स्कूल-कालेज छुड़वाये, हजारों लोगों की नौकरियाँ छुड़वाईं और लाखों डंडे खाकर जेल गए और तुम्हारे बापू को लगा - ओह, हिमालयन ब्लंडर हो गयी। आंदोलन वापस ले लिया। पहले विदेशी कपडे की होली जलवानी शुरू की, उसे बंद किया। नमक सत्याग्रह किया और बंद किया। जंगल सत्याग्रह किया, लगान न देने का आंदोलन चलाया और बंद किया। कॉउन्सिलों का बायकाट किया, फिर कौंसिलों में गए। राउंड-टेबल कांफ्रेंस का बायकाट किया, फिर उसमें भी गए। पहले जंग का बायकाट नामुनासिब बताया, फिर उसी जंग का बॉयकॉट किया। पहले पार्टीशन की मुखालफत की फिर उसे कबूल किया। गाँधी और कांग्रेस के कब, कितनी बार नीति नहीं बदली? ... तुम्हारी कांग्रेस का तो गोल (लक्ष्य) ही चेंज होता रहा है। कभी 'डोमिनियन स्टेटस 'कभी 'फुल फ्रीडम अंडर द एम्पायर' कभी 'इंडिपेंडेंस' कभी 'रिपब्लिक' कभी 'रामराज' कभी 'कैपिटलिज्म' कभी 'सोशलिज्म' !

The latter part of the book starts to dawdle with the love affairs of the protagonists, but the ending is on an optimistic note

अब तो विश्वास करोगे, जनता निजीव नहीं है। जनता सदा मूक भी नहीं रहती। देश का भविष्य नेताओं और मंत्रियों की मुठ्ठी में नहीं है, देश की जनता के हाथ में है।

Just one small extract form the middle of the book when a train overladen with refugees struggles to leave a station

इंजन ने चीख-चिंघाड़, गर्जन-तर्जन द्वारा बोझ बहुत अधिक होने की शिकायतें कीं, क्रोध और बेबसी में बहुत-सी फुंकारों से धूएँ के बादल चोदे। फिर लाचार हो गाड़ी को धीमे-धीमे खींचना शुरू किया। कुछ दूर चलकर गाड़ी की गति ढचर टाँगे-रिक्शा के बराबर हो गयी।

एक विशाल परिदृश्य पर एक मनोरंजक कथा, महाकाव्य।

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Coming Up for Air by George Orwell

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this mild bildungsroman Orwell reminisces the blissful memories of childhood, dwells on the ennui of marriage and middle-age angst, loss of innocence – as in Gilmour’s and Waters’

When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look, but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb

and addresses his favourite tropes – poverty, war, totalitarian regimes (fascism, communism).
The reader can see Orwell’s evolution of thought towards his doctrine which culminates in 1984. He writes simply yet masterfully

Just a prison with the cells all in a row. A line of semidetached torture-chambers were the poor little five-to-ten-pound-a-weekers quake and shiver, every one of them with the boss twisting his tail and the wife riding him like a nightmare and the kids sucking his blood like leeches.

Everyone that isn’t scared stiff of losing his job is scared stiff of war, or Fascism, or Communism, or something. Jews sweating when they think of Hitler. It crossed my mind that the little bastard with the spiky moustache was probably a damn sight more scared for his job that the girl was. Probably got a family to support. And perhaps, who knows, at home he’s meek and mild, grows cucumbers in the back garden, lets his wife sit on him and the kids pull his moustache.

His take on processed foods

Everything comes out of a tin, or it’s hauled out of a refrigerator or squirted out of a tap or squeezed out of a tube. No comfort, no privacy. Tall stools to sit on, a kind of narrow ledge to eat off, mirrors all around you. A sort of propaganda floating round, mixed up with the noise of the radio, to the effect that food doesn’t matter, comfort doesn’t matter, nothing matters except slickness and shininess and streamlining. Everything’s streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler’s keeping for you.

You know the smell churches have, a peculiar, dank, dusty, decaying, sweetish sort of smell. There’s a touch of candle-grease in it, and perhaps a whiff of incense and a suspicion of mice, and on Sunday mornings it’s a bit overlaid by yellow soap and serge dresses, but predominantly, it’s that sweet dusty, musty smell that’s like the smell of death and life mixed up together. It’s powdered corpses. Really.

A bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmare that could be something out of Catch-22, a scenario that Milo Minderbinder would thrive in

The war did extraordinary things to people. And what was more extraordinary than the way it killed people was the way it sometimes didn’t kill them. It was like a great flood rushing you along to death, and suddenly it would shoot you up some backwater where you’d find yourself doing incredible and pointless things and drawing extra pay for them. There were labour battalions making roads across the desert that didn’t lead anywhere, there were chaps marooned on oceanic islands to look out for German cruisers which had been sunk years earlier, there were Ministries of this and that with armies of clerks and typists which went on existing years after their function had ended, by a kind of inertia. People were shoved into meaningless jobs and then forgotten by the authorities for years on end.

Echoes of Yossarian – albeit a matured Yossarian

If the war didn’t happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn’t go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid, You knew it was just a balls-up.

A queer trade, anti-Fascism. This fellow, I suppose, makes his living by writing books against Hitler. But what did he do before Hitler came along? And what’ll he do if Hitler ever disappears? Same question applies to doctors, detectives, ratcatchers and so forth, of course.

Here, the British seemingly living in blissful ignorance, denial of the impending malign influence of Nazism

‘Tell me, porteous, what do you think of Hitler?’
‘Hitler? This German person? My dear fellow! I don’tthink of him.’
‘But the trouble is he’s going to bloody well make us think about him before he’s finished.’
‘I see no reason for paying any attention to him. A mere adventurer. These people come and go. Ephemeral, purely, ephemeral.’

He paints such a vivid picture of something so mundane as a smouldering pile of ashes

You know the look of wood fire on a still day. The sticks that have gone all white ash and still keep the shape of sticks, and under the ash the kind of vivid red that you can see into. It’s curious that a red ember looks more alive, gives you more a feeling of life, than any living thing. There’s something about it, a kind of intensity, a vibration – I can’t think of the exact words. But it lets you know that you’re alive yourself. It’s the spot on the picture that makes you notice everything else.

I don’t mind towns growing, so long as they do grow and don’t merely spread like gravy over a tablecloth.

So what is the title all about?

You know the feeling I had. Coming up for air! Like the big sea-turtles when they come paddling up to the surface, stick their noses out and fill their lings with a great gulp before they sink down again among the seaweed and the octopuses. We’re all stifling at the bottom of a dustbin, but I’d found the way to the top.
…
Coming up for air! But there isn’t any air. The dustbin that we’re in reaches up to the stratosphere.

Such artistry!

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Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On picking up the book I thought that the Aspidistra was some sort of iconic revolutionary flag, like the Indian “Tricolour” or the “Stars and Stripes,” but it turned out to be a mundane genus of flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae. Aspidistra elatior is common worldwide as a foliage house plant that is very tolerant of neglect. Species of Aspidistra can also be grown in shade outside, where they are generally hardy to sub-zero temperatures. They are perennial herbaceous plants growing from rhizomes. The leaves are either solitary or are grouped in small "tufts" of two to four. Each leaf has a long stalk (petiole) and a blade with many veins. The flowering stem (scape) is usually very short so that the flowers appear low down among the leaves. The fleshy flowers are bell-, urn- or cup-shaped. Aspidistras can withstand deep shade, neglect, dry soil, hot temperatures and polluted indoor air (from burning coal or natural gas) but are sensitive to bright sunlight. As a popular foliage houseplant, Aspidistra elatior became popular in late Victorian Britain and was so common that it became a "symbol of dull middle-class respectability". In this book, according to the protagonist, it is a symbol of the need of the middle class to maintain respectability


There is no aspect of British life described that I could identify with, yet Orwell’s evocative but simple style is so gripping that one cannot simply put the book down. He is a master word-smith, painting vivid descriptions with his pen.

A nasty raw wind. There was a threatening note in it as it swept over; the first growl of winter’s anger.

In all bookshops there goes on a savage Darwinian struggle in which the works of living men gravitate to eye-level and the works of dead men go up or down – down to Gehenna up to the throne, but always away from any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the ‘classics’, the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting.

He almost wanted to laugh at them, they were so feeble, so dead-alive, so unappetising. As though anybody could be tempted by those! Like succubi with pimply backsides.

Of all types of human being, only the artist takes it upon him to say that he ‘cannot’ work.

…the sort of dingy, drabby fornication that you can imagine happening between Egyptian mummies after the museum is closed for the night.

All over the darkish drawing-room, aging, discoloured people sat about in couples, discussing symptoms. Their conversation was like the dripping of stalactite to stalagmite. Drip, drip. ‘How is your lumbago?’ saysa stalactite to stalagmite. “I find my Kruschen Salts are doing me good,’ says stalagmite to stalactite, Drip, drip, drip.

Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal, as though the queen of Brobdingnag had upset her packet of Tru-weet Breakfast Crisps won the hillside.

No rich man ever succeeds in disguising himself as a poor man; for money, like murder, will out.

As a rule a dwarf, when malformed, has a full-sized torso and practically no legs. With Mr Cheeseman it was the other way about. His legs were of normal length, but the top half of his body was so short that his buttocks seemed to sprout almost immediately below his shoulder blades. This gave him, in walking, a resemblance to a pair of scissors.

The books were published by special low-class firms and turned out by wretched hacks at the rate of four a year, as mechanically as sausages and with much less skill.

Orwell seems to have inspired the lyrics of Roger Waters

Yes, the war is coming soon. You can’t doubt it when you see the Bovex ads. The electric drills in our streets presage the tattle of machine guns. Only a little while before the aeroplanes come. Zoom – bang! A few tons of TNT to send our civilisation back to hell where it belongs.

The protagonist’s constant hostility towards the long-suffering aspidistra is very evident in the narrative. While attempting to escape the clutches of Mammon in his masochistic journey, he repeatedly encounters his botanical nemesis like a persistent totem

…his eye fell on the aspidistra in its grass-green pot. It was a peculiarly mangy specimen, It had only seven leaves and never seemed to put forth any new ones. Gordon had a sort of secret feud with the aspidistra. Many a time he had furtively attempted to kill it – starving it of water, grinding hot cigarette-ends against its stem, even mixing salt with its earth. But the beastly things are practically immortal> In almost any circumstances they can preserve a wilting, diseased existence. Gordon stood up and deliberately wiped his kerosiny leaves on the aspidistra leaves.

His animosity does not decrease with time

The aspidistra stood in its pot, dull green, ailing, pathetic in its sickly ugliness. As he sat down, he pulled it towards him and looked at it meditatively. “I’ll beat you yet, you b---,” he whispered to the dusty leaves.

It was an aspidistra. It gave him a bit of a twinge to see it. Even here, in this final refuge! Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? But it was a poor weedy specimen – indeed, it was obviously dying.

The seemingly immortal shrub responds to a change in the weather

The aspidistra, it turned out, had not died after all; the withered leaves had dropped off it, but it was putting forth a couple of dull green shoots near its base.

The protagonist’s antipathy seemingly gets attenuated

They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’ – kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.

As he yields

’I expect we’ll settle down all right, though. With a house of our own and a pram and an aspidistra.

Finally, an epiphany dawns

The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.

One small but profound phrase

Poverty is spiritual halitosis

There’s so much more to George Orwell than Animal Farm and 1984.

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मनोहर श्याम जोशी कृत क्याप

क्याप by Manohar Shyam Joshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

जातिवाद, साम्यवाद, समाजवाद - सामान्य तौर पर राजनेता, नौकरशाही पर शानदार तीखा व्यंग्य (satire)। वन्यजीवों, लकड़ी, जड़ी-बूटियों, खनिजों आदि जैसे प्राकृतिक संसाधनों के शोषण का एक तीव्र आरोप, जैसा कि कुख्यात पहाड़ी विल्सन The Raja of Harsil: The Legend of Fedrick "Pahari Wilson" द्वारा शुरू किया गया था और वर्तमान व्यवस्था द्वारा भी जारी है - दोनों - कानूनी रूप से सरकारी एजेंसियों द्वारा और अवैध रूप से 'माफिया' द्वारा।
इसमें आरएसएस के आदर्शवादी श्री हेडगेवार की ओर संकेत है - यहां वह कम्युनिस्टों के पार्टी के मुख्यविचारक (party idealogue) हैं - 'डाक्साब'।
कथा उत्तराखंड के एक काल्पनिक क़स्बा व जनपद में स्तिथ है। यह विफल एवं अनबिलाषित प्रेम (unrequited love), प्रतिशोध और पागलपन की कहानी भी है।
अत्यंत रोचक व हास्यपूर्ण रचना।

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A Matter of Honour: An account of the Indian Army, its Officers and Men by Philip Mason

A matter of honour;: An account of the Indian Army, its officers and men by Philip Mason
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Why did Indians join the British Army when the latter was all out to conquer their land and impose taxes on them?

The princes of the past had ‘hereditary troops’ and hired troops; the former served in recognition of feudal overlordship, the latter were hired for the campaign. Neither had any expectation of a pension. Again, neither the Mughals nor the Marathas paid a man regular monthly pay for the period of his career, nor did they accept any responsibility for him after he left them. The permanence of the Company’s service had been a strong point from the first.

The book may be of some relevance if one is interested in the history of the Indian Army's regimental system, which, in any case, is in danger of slowly disappearing due to the Agniveer style of recruitment.
The narration is more anecdotal, even the sources of factual material are conjecture. However, at times, remarkably prescient

but a sufficiently intelligent observer should have been able to see that Pakistan would find it more difficult than India to keep the army out of politics. Pakistan was from its foundation an islamic state; in islam, there is traditionally no division between Church and State, no distinction of priest form husband and father, of citizen from soldier… But the division of function is an essential part of Hinduism, and though India after partition was supposed to be a secular state, its thought and the structure of its society are still deeply Hindu. It was traditionally the brahmin who was counsellor and the Rajput who was warrior; the new officers became in a modified form a new occupational caste and they perform their proper function outside politics.

Here the latter argument seems to be stretching credulity a bit. This is how the book ends

The soldier seals his devotion to his craft with his life. He may by chance also win hour in the eyes of other men, but not in the highest degree unless his concern is with his own honour, with his own determination to perform his proper function to his own best ability. This is a central virtue of Hinduism and it is close enough to what is best in islam and in Christianity to have made it possible for men of these three faiths to live and work and die together.

Strongly biased views of the author labelling the British as ‘us’ and the native Indians as ‘them,’ and the tone is undoubtedly patronising. There is an occasional nugget. The account of some loyal servants/soldiers - archetypal stuff of Kipling – are shown as representational of all natives, but in truth the feelings were more ambivalent. Better books for Indian military history for he lay person would be: India's War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia, India's Wars: A Military History 1947-1971, Full Spectrum: India's Wars, 1972-2020, Ayo Gorkhali : A History of the Gurkhas.

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फणीश्वरनाथ रेणू कृत पलटू बाबू रोड

पल्टू बाबा रोड by फणीश्वर नाथ रेणु
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

इस मनोरंजक और प्रफुल्लित करने वाले उपन्यास में नव-स्वतंत्र भारत के राजनेताओं, नौकरशाहों, व्यापारियों और आम लोगों की कमजोरियों को खूबसूरती से चित्रित किया गया है, विशेष रूप से एक छोटे से काल्पनिक कसबे (mofussil township) के निवासियों की गतिविधियों का वर्णन उल्लेखनिय है। 'रेणु' की लेखन की निराली अनूठी शैली छोटे शहरों के गरीबों की क्षेत्रीय बोली और परंपराओं का सार दर्शाती है। Homophone शब्दों का यह अभिनव प्रयोग कथा के वातावरण को सटीकता से दर्शाता है।

ब्रेसरी: brassiere
धनभाग: धन्यवाद
पाट: part
फुटगोल: football
भोलंटियर: volunteer
डिस्टीबोट: district board
हरमुनियाँ रोग: hernia
हिमापोथी दवा: homoeopathy
ठेठर: theatre
नारवास: nervous
हनिबूल: honeymoon

स्थानीय हलवाई की दूकान के बाहर यह छोटा सा अंतराल जहां ग्राहक एक खड़ूस वृद्ध और एक युवा महिला-वकील के बीच होने वाली शादी के बारे में गपशप कर रहे हैं

फत्तू खलीफा ने कचौड़ी खाते हुए स्टूडेंट से पुछा - कहिये तो बाबू, हनीमून का क्या माने होता है अंग्रेजी में?
विद्यार्थी ने कहा - हनि माने शहद, और मून माने चाँद।
- तो टोटल माने हुआ जाकर के - शहदचांद?
- शहदचांद
- क्या कहा? कुन्तला क्रिस्तान हो जाएगी?

यह राजनेताओं का व्याप्त पाखंड तथा लज्जाजनक कामुक्ता का एक उदाहरण है

यह मुरली बाबू जिसको देखते ही मैं, तुम एवं हमारे परिवार-भर के लोग श्रद्धा से, आदर से सिर झुका लेते हैं, जिसके भाषण को सुनने के लिए दूर-देहात के लोग उमड़ पड़ते हैं, जिला कांग्रेस में जिसको नए खून का नेता माना जाता है, वही मुरली बाबू चोली-अंगिआ, ब्लॉउज-ब्रेसरी के समस्या पर बीजू-दी से बात करता है। छबि के साथ अभद्रता कर सकता है। लेकिन, सारे समाज की समस्याओं को सुलझाने का सूत्र भी यही देते हैं। आश्चर्य की बात है न? तो, तुमने देख लिया कि किस तरह व्यक्तिगत रूप से, एक विकारग्रस्त व्यक्ति सामाजिक कल्याण के बातें सोच सकता है। कर सकता है ...।

गृह क्लेश की एक झलक

सभी तो देश का काम करते हो। फिर, आपस में यह लड़ाई क्यों? एक घर में वैष्णव और शाक्त रहते हैं, लड़ाई तो नहीं करते?
घंटा बोला - यदि वैष्णव की बिल्ली, शाक्त की मछली चुराकर खा जले - तब भी नहीं ?

जहाँ परती : परिकथा में लेखक का वैकल्पिक-अह्म (alter-ego) 'मीत' नामक एक कॉकर-स्पैनियल था, इस कथा में वह 'रूपन' नाम का एक पिंजरे में बंद तोता है।
एक अत्यंत रोचक व अविस्मरणीय लघु-उपन्यास …

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