on rereading 'Aronyok'...

Rereading 'Aronyok'
Is my favourite pastime...
It had become so...over the years...

When first I got hold of that Bibhuti babu's book...
I was only fifteen then...
Young, dreamy, adventurous, erratic...
So...'Aronyok' made me wild...
I ran after wild berries, wild blossoms, wilderness...
And that led me to stranger realities...
Realities of sitting on the bow of a country boat under the soft, insane moon...
And humming tunes of 'Holud pakhi...'
And then...
I grew older...
The book grew older with me too!
It brought before me...
Realities of different kind the next...
Realities of Kunta...
Her piteous eyes...
Her rustic innocence...
My mind led me far and wide...
My 'Aronyok' led me to the depth...

It led me to Poesy, philosophy, people,and dreams...
It helped in a transgression...of a different kind...


'Aronyok'...
You made and spoiled me!

('Aronyok', is one of the greatest works of Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee(1898-1950). It presents beautifully, in the most wondrously romantic manner, the life of the country people living near Mohanpura Reserve Forest and its fringes...it is a fiction, but it is somewhat journalistic in design, presenting great details of life of rustic people of Bengal and Bihar...)