Gripping anthology

In sync with the sombre mood that the pandemic has brought along, Aleph under its Olio series has come out with an anthology of stories and essays, titled ‘Ways of Dying’.

This volume is a compilation of already published works by eminent writers like Amitav Ghosh, Ruskin Bond, Amitava Kumar, Mahasweta Devi, Munshi Premchand, Khushwant Singh, George Orwell, David Davidar, Atul Gawande and Kolakaluri Enoch, but as an anthology, it can’t get any better than this! It brings all the luminaries on a single platform, where they share their deep insight into the final truth of life — death.

While a reader moves from Amitav Ghosh’s first-person account of the 1984 riots in Delhi to Ruskin Bond recounting the memories of his father’s funeral, Mahasweta Devi’s fictional account of the caste-related atrocities to Munshi Premchand exposing the hypocrisy of the rituals surrounding death, the attention does not waver even for a moment. Each write-up may belong to a different era, backdrop and style of narration, but the simplicity and honesty make for a strong connecting thread that secures the anthology seamlessly.