Manavi

Almost like William Blake, the Sanskrit scholar and writer of repute, Professor Radhavallabh Tripathi has responded to the call of the hour by creating an inter generic “echoing green” text for young adults where a school boy from a drought affected area creates a unique bond with Manavi, a Rajhansini left behind by her own flock. With a delicate sense of humour, the novella goes on exposing ministers, and bigwigs who pay only a lip tribute to noble projects like the one initiated by Salim Ali. The novella is commendable also for its keen insights into the lives of common masses, peasants and other people who have nowhere to go and nothing to spend. The story is an inter generic mix in the sense that it carries the flavours not only of a fable and an allegory but also of a travelogue and a decent romance. The circus goes to places, even to Moscow where Raghu meets Valentina, and soon after that he succeeds in connecting Manavi to Anant, Manavi’s old friend from the flock. We keep dreaming of a universe where men, women and this Cosmos with its great fleet of creatures, great and small, live together in perfect amity. Prof Tripathi has built a Utopia around the notion of the Universe being an interconnected web. Manavi suffers a burn in her own throat when Raghu tells a lie. Such a tender connect has a poetic import of a high order. We have heard stories of saints like Paramahans bearing the marks of lashes on his own back when he saw an English officer thrashing a poor- fisherman on the other bank of the river. Tripathi has done justice to many such inter texts which keep flying in the novella with the grace of swans. -Anamika Recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award Author, poet and critic