Dhara Ke Vipreet

Govind Mishra, recipient of top literary honors and creator of numerous acclaimed and widely read novels and stories, addresses his readers, meaning us, in the first person. Contrary to the Stream is his autobiography. The autobiography of a transparent and simple man who chose to become a writer to express his compassion, his advocacy for human values, and the joys and sorrows surrounding him. Govind Mishra, a professional who held high positions in the Income Tax Department, spent his childhood and adolescence in an environment of generosity, intimacy, and social harmony, despite limited luxuries. The experiences he experienced during those years, fueled by his natural sensitivity and innate sense of right and wrong, became the enduring foundation of his creativity. In this autobiography, he recounts the people in his life and also the works that were the subject of those people. These include not only his childhood but also the people and events of his adult and professional life. It was these primary experiences that inspired him to write, not any ideology, camp, or insistence. Born almost a decade before independence, Govindji always preserved the ordinary Indian within him! A man who grows every day through his encounters. He treasures the amazement he experiences at peoples realities and refuses to let any bitterness poison him. He considers this presence of the ordinary a prerequisite for literary creation, a fact that is also present in this autobiography. If you tell the truth, it washes away so many impurities. It really has weight, he says at one place. This is the unburdened account of a life without blemishes, flowing like a swift river from its source to the sea, becoming increasingly concentrated. In it, writers speak candidly about their works, officers about their challenges, lovers about their love, men about women whose femininity captivates them, husbands and fathers about their families, friends about their friends, writers about the merits and demerits of their literary environment, and humans about their humanity. And even about a time that, despite all its technological, intellectual, and economic prosperity, falls short and narrow precisely where it should be exalted and sublime.