![]() ![]() Stories are wound around simple everyday aspects of a way of life many of us have forgotten. ![]() ![]() The river,’ he adds, ‘is a profound mystery.’ The result is a lyrical and visually rich text that feeds the reader’s senses and fuels the imagination. As she flows, she hums or gurgles with laughter, or turns playful or solemn, or even angry. Shyam’s story-telling includes frequent personifications of Nature, as when he talks of the same river, as knowing no rest. The rural backdrop of the book adds its own charm, and descriptions such as the one of a ‘night of crisp bright moonlight,’ when ‘the river in the distance looked like flowing silver’, transport the reader into a world far away from the chaos of urban living. The stories range from the humorous to ones that are touched with sadness, but each narration has the power to hold the reader’s attention, and the simple style makes it acceptable to many levels of readers. The short episodes, that are stories told every evening by Shyam to his young peers, centre around the simple wisdom contained in the life lessons his mother has taught him, through advice and example. The prose runs softly like a smooth flowing river that, even as it meanders its way through tricky terrain, manages to avoid any hurdles. Shanta Gokhale’s translation carries within it what I believe is the spirit of the original. ![]() Sane Guruji’s home-spun wisdom has endured through two centuries and this translation may enlarge his reach to include young readers not only in India, but across the world. The simply told stories that reach out to both children and adults, hold within them grains of truth that are perennial and can lead to where peace of mind and compassion walk hand in hand to pave the way for a better life. Shyamchi Aie is to the reader of Marathi literature, what The Alchemist is to an entire universe of readers thanks to its various translated versions. ![]()
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