PitraVadh

A conscious writer often realizes that the ancestors to whom he has been offering oblations, whose ancestral debt he wishes to repay, have actually captured his consciousness. This struggle to free himself from them culminates in the realization that paying guru-dakshina is perhaps impossible without killing his guru. But it is not easy for a writer to accept that his creative work is a funeral service for his grandfather, for this desire plunges the writer into unbearable guilt. That ancestor is not unaware of his successors desire; perhaps he too desires the same. This is his liberation. A rebirth greater than before. There is a Sanskrit verse: Sarvato jayamicheth. Putraachchishyatparajayam. I want to conquer everyone, but I desire defeat at the hands of my son and disciple. Defeat here has another meaning. Para + jay means ultimate victory. In this defeat at the hands of my son and disciple lies my ultimate victory. This astute book by Ashutosh Bhardwaj examines novelists like Tagore, Nirmal Verma, Ananthamurthy, Arundhati Roy, and the poetry of Muktibodh, Shrikant Verma, and Ashok Vajpayee with a completely new perspective. Exploring its creative relationship with luminaries like Agyeya and Ramchandra Gandhi, it emerges from a self-criticism rare in the current landscape. Another achievement of this book, which speaks to various genres of prosediary, essay, memoir, and moreis its intimate discussion of the Indian novels dialogue with modernity. This is the first critical work on the solitude of the novels women in any Indian language, including English. The unspoken aspirations of Sucharita, Chandri, Bitti, and Ammu find their expression in these pages.