Book review: Bachhai Pachforon, a collection of satirical writing in Bengali

I must admit that this book is quite unique in its conception.

What I found commendable is that all the articles have been written in a light-hearted style without any malignant intentions, even though the author is talking about pretty serious and controversial topics here.

The tone is light and catchy, friendly even. It’s like the author is having a private conversation with a friend and that style of writing is what makes this book stand out because you get to understand how the common man perceives situations and issues that he can’t deal with directly, but which nonetheless affects his life.

Let’s talk about some of the articles now.

“Apni kintu kichui dekhen ni, master moshai” is a “nostalgic” take on the fact that punishments and discipline is becoming lax in educational institutions today.

The law bans physical punishments for students. But how far is that law helping shape the young generation? What’s the Y-Gen thinking about this?

Students are becoming unruly, the new law is creating lawlessness in schools, and yet there’s nothing to be done here—everything has to be compromised for political and power games.

There’s another article titled, “Mongolei Prithibir Mongol”. This articles pokes fun at the NASA mission that was planned for ferrying space travellers to Mars.

The author says, tongue-in-cheek, that our planet is becoming so inhabitable that people would prefer to migrate to Mars now and stay there forever.

So, normal people like us might not want to be that extreme but the author is bang on about the fact that most of the times we all do feel like escaping all the uncontrollable mayhem around us.

“Tomai Dilam Khola Chhiti” is again a very emotional piece, a little different from the other topics, in fact.

This article talks about an initiative in which collection boxes were placed in religious institutes where unwilling mothers could drop off their babies anonymously. This was in fact a very successful initiative.

Here the author speaks in the voice of the woman who had conceptualised this whole idea.

What might have inspired a woman to come up with such a noble and innovative thought?

As far as I am concerned, this is my favourite piece among all the articles.

Another satirical take is one dealing with fast friendships in this age. It’s titled, “Bah Bah Friendship, Have You Any Bhool”.

What’s the definition of friendship today? What are the expectations? People are looking for “friends” in newspaper ads. Whose mentality needs to be blamed for the flesh-hungry generation today—the needy men or the greedy women? This is again another wonderful piece that needs to be lauded.

Books like these don’t come out every day. And if marketed well among the reading public, this book has the potential to make a mark in the book market and in the hearts of the readers.

Reviewed by Priya Das