Book Review by Trailokya Jena
Ashok Kumar Bal’s latest book – A Various World: People, Places, Perspectives (Penguin Random House India, 2025) -will be hard to describe within genres. In fifty four essays of ensemble memories and impressions from ordinary course of life cased into ten subject categories, the book offers a tapestry of his personal world that can easily constitute a canvas on which one can see both a micro and a macro cosmic world. These fifty four pieces of personal narratives are clearly autobiographical in nature presenting short, focused snapshots of moments in the author’s life emphasising varying details while capturing specific essence from the key emotions narrated therein. Though most are intensely personal narratives, these essays expand the focus through the stories and imageries to more than plain memoirs that can constitute almost a vignette-based universal experience.
There are interesting subject classifications in the book, like family ties, bonds of friendship, booksellers and bookshop, cityscapes, starry portraits and makers of history. The stories centre around the author’s childhood memories, student days recollections, imprints of influencers, adult life experiences, and interactions with personalities. Going through each narrative, one gets discernible impressions of life shenanigans of the author together with the flavours of time and space in which he has traversed. In that sense the book exposes the various autobiographical styles of narrating a life including thematic, spiritual, historical, even dramatic formats each focussing on different aspects of the author’s life presented with unique perspective and level of detail.‘A Bridge of Relationship’ reveals bonds of the author with his ancestors and their deep influences on him and the environment surrounding him. It urges the important need for missing social bonds to be rebuilt, strengthened and sustained.
‘The bridge of relationship that suffers erosion due to cultural and social disconnect was in urgent need of restoration and revitalisation’ is a worthy observation.‘The Portrait of a Fireman’ is a perceptive reminisce of a friend, a legendary fireman of the Mumbai Fire Brigade, whose life story is poignantly inspiring in teaching us the importance of giving our ‘today’ for the ‘tomorrow’ of others in the society we live in.
‘My Father’s Bookshop’ is a profound tribute to a father where the author narrates the story of an iconic bookshop, Gyan Bharati, that was conceived, opened and nurtured by his father in Bhubaneswar that immensely served and educated many enlightening generations including the reviewer here. It is more than a story for the son of the bookshop owner to publish this book which his father would be proud to sell!My personal experience with Gyan Bharati bears a direct connection to Bal’s book under review here. In December 1980 while with friends in Bhubaneswar I had an urge to read Virginia Woolf’s ‘To The Lighthouse’. As we were nearby, I walked across to Gyan Bharati to buy a copy. While browsing the shelf storing authors with ‘W’, I came across Woolf’s newly published autobiographical memoirs ’Moments of Being’ and bought that too. And it is now so uncanny to find a connection between that book and Bal’s ‘A Various World’. Moments of Being is a collection of five autobiographical memories by Virginia Woolf, published posthumously in 1976. This collection is of memoirs where Woolf reflects on her childhood, her family dynamics, and the tragic losses that influenced her. These are collection of personal essays that offer a profound exploration of consciousness, where she delves into fleeting moments of intense awareness and connection to reality, often referred to as “moments of being,” which she contrasts with the more mundane, routine experiences of daily life.So as is Virginia Woolf’s “Moments of Being” is a collection of personal essays that offers a profound exploration of consciousness, where she delves into fleeting moments of intense awareness and connection to reality, often referred to as “moments of being”, Bal’s A Various World is a work where he too delves into his own stream-of-consciousness narrative that insightfully examines his experience, particularly in relation to memory, identity, and the passage of time. A Various World is an interesting ensemble “moments of being” comprising those rare instances where one feels fully present and connected to the world around, often triggered by a sensory experience or a sudden insight. It should be a fascinating read as tales from our yesterdays to our progenies for tomorrow.
(Trailokya Jena is the retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax)
