The Wednesday Soul is
the debut book by Sorabh Pant. It also happens to be the 1st book I
have received as part of the Book review system of Blog Adda. I honestly hadn’t
read the description of the book which was put up. Rather, I was told that
Sorabh Pant himself was due to perform at our college within the week. I
figured it might give me an idea about his show.
In my opinion, we’re
still looking for that one truly great Indian author of the generation. Sure,
we had Tagore and Narayanan, but today? Agreed, Sumit Basu and Amitav Ghosh are
very good authors in their own right. And while they haven’t reached the level
of fame that they deserve, I doubt we could call them the finest Indian
authors. If you’re reading the Wednesday Soul to see whether Sorabh Pant is a
truly great author, I suggest you stop right now and find somewhere else to
look.
Perhaps that was a
little harsh. Thankfully, this book isn’t about sparkly and cuddly vampires.
Nor is it about life in a IIT hostel or the turbulent relationship between a
Punjabi and a Tamilian.
The book starts off
well enough. I was rather optimistic after reading the ‘Note to the readers’ .
Perhaps this was the comedy book that I’d been looking for. I’d had my hopes up
when Cyrus
Broacha released his book "Karl, Aaj
aur Kal". I was sorely disappointed. Once I got past the first five pages
of this book, I realized it wouldn’t be much better. Just when you think the
book might be interesting, he throws in this ridiculous concept of an
eye-score, which can determine how evil a guy really is!
So what’s the book
really about? It’s a description of the afterlife, or what Mr. Pant imagines it
to be. And, like any good Bollywood movie, the afterlife is in a turmoil, and
only the protagonists Nyra and Chitr can help. It doesn’t hurt that Nyra is a
recently deceased self-appointed vigilante known as the Bombay Belle, famous
for shoving down a pair of undies into the mouths of rapists. I guess it’s
about time to throw Pant a bone. He’s put a lot of effort into creating his own
afterlife. He’s created fictional versions of long dead famous people.
Pythagoras is now a soul who gets reincarnated as other famous scientists. I
guess that would help keeping up with the times. This is quite similar to what
Jonathan Stroud had done in the Bartimaeus trilogy. For a while, this might
even help you turn the pages. That being said, this is definitely not an
afterlife I would like to find myself in. Purab Kohli has gone on to call this book
‘brilliantly silly’. I really wouldn’t use the word brilliantly. I will
congratulate Pant on one thing though. It requires skill to write a book as
nonsensical as this! At some points, it even seems like he’s trying too hard to
be funny.
Bottom line. The
storyline is passable at best. The problem is that reading this book requires
tons of concentration. You’d think for a book written by a comedian, that
wouldn’t be necessary! Then again, I doubt this book was written to win the
Pulitzer or the Booker. Sure, this book is a one-time read. Though if you do
have enough time to read this book, I suggest you go ahead and do the
crossword. You’d probably learn something more important there.
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