Review: Rukhsat The Departure

Rukhsat The Departure by Sujit Banerjee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dark and moving



Will touch you, no "hit" you, unaware.

I am not sure where do I keep this one. Anthropology? Disjointed short stories?

To begin with, these 26 stories are named after 26 characters. Those fabled twenty six letters of the alphabet that you and I know.

How things move and change in their lives, covered in pages less than the fingers in your hand. There was a touch of O. Henry where Sujit crafts the entire story up for up and sets up the table for an ending your mind is configured to.

Well, that is how we are, we start finding patterns in the books we read. And we start expecting, guessing as to what the end might be.

But not with this one.
With the table set, the author overthrows it more than once, with a single closing sentence that turns the story upside downwards.

" The failed, the departed, the separated and the forlorn souls and their stories.

Sometimes connected and sometimes just stand-alones, like the characters themselves. "

The author is a name in the story collection genre for me!

Poignancy at its striking best.



We all have a home that's figurative. It might not be the house you live in.
But the abstract sense of comfort you get when you are there.

No, I can't point that out on the latitude and longitude of the globe.
Told you, it's abstract.

Well, tell you what, some people never reach home.

Verdict : Melancholic and dazzling to the eye.

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