17 October 2014

Review #10: The City of Palaces by Sujata Massey




The City of Palaces by Sujata Massey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I always feel so ecstatic and proud whenever I get to read books about my own old city- Kolkata-a city where I was born, a city which I call 'Home'. Well I was born in Calcutta and grew up in Kolkata. The Nawabs and the British coined Calcutta as "The City of Palaces". But this proverb changed during the reign of Queen Victoria, and thus Calcutta changed to the sprawling, bustling capital of India. Dennison Berwick has quoted in his book, A Walk along the Ganges:

"There is poverty; there is squalor in so many places in our country (India). It is our disgrace. At least in Calcutta we have also culture and poetry."

And as Dominique Lapierre, the author of the book City of Joy has quoted:

"Calcutta produced more writers than Paris and Rome combined, more literary reviews than London and New York, more cinemas than New Delhi, and more publishers than the rest of the country."

I found another great author named Sujata Massey, a British author having Bengali roots, and when I stumbled upon her book named The City o Palaces, I never imagined that book will be so overwhelming and remarkable. I can bet that people of my city will go crazy over this book. Especially, given the fact that still to this day, Bengalis love to spin the tale of their old Calcutta during the British era to their grandsons and daughters. Being a Bengali, I had also the privilege to inherit such tales about the British era from my grandparents. And reading this book, I felt nostalgic, about all those old stories that my grandparents used to share with me.

I cannot thank enough to Penguin India and especially the author, Sujata Massey, for giving me this golden opportunity to read and review her new novel, The City of Palaces.

This book is about a journey of a young girl to her womanhood which is so profound and striking that it's going to melt your heart and soul and will make your heart fall badly for the city as well as for this young woman.


Pom, Sarah, Camilla, Kamala-These are the names of a single woman!- Have you ever wonder how a woman can get so many names in her single lifetime! Well, as a matter of fact, yes, the protagonist of this book had donned so many names and identities.

Pom was born in a small village near the sea beach town, Digha, Johlpur. Left orphaned by the floods, she survived to the towns and finally bagging a job as a servant in Lockwood School run by the British women, where she was called as Sarah-a Christian. But her fate has stored torture and pain for her, ending up in a false accusation of thievery; she again survives to Kharagpur, where her name changed to Camilla. This was the most torturous and painful period of her life, this is the town, where, she became a woman, where she became mother for the first and the last time and which changed the course of her life drastically. Next she finally survives to her dream city- Calcutta, known as The City of Palaces. And the time when she reached Calcutta, was quite vulnerable. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has already formed his army; Mahatma Gandhi has already started his movement to liberate India from the clutches of India. And here we see, Camilla changes her name to Kamala, finally once and for all and this is the city where she developed a crush on a man who hardly responded to her feelings and this where she fell in love for the very first time. And the day Calcutta was liberated was the day when Kamala's soul finally found peace and freedom that it longed for. Although it was a long and hard journey to the road to freedom, we saw the riots, the famine due to rice-shortage, the war between England and Germany and finally the night of 15th August.

The author has woven this tale so vividly. From the very first pages, I felt that I was time-traveled to the 1930s and most of the time I looked up from the pages of the book to make sure that I was actually not time-traveled. Hats off to the author for making each line of the book sound so real. After all it's a fiction based on the real life events, so sometimes it become so hard to tell the difference. It is quite evident that the author must have drowned herself in the history of Independence in Calcutta, and she did her research quite well. And thus making the book thoroughly bewildering and compelling enough to keep the pages of the book turning till the very end.

The characterization is quite strong and striking. Also she has tried to depict the pain of a woman, how she survives from it and how she fights hard with the world to help protect her own flesh and blood. Kamala was portrayed as an innocent girl, who was smart and brave even at the age of seven to run from the clutches of an evil man, who sweet-talked her into working as a dancer in the Jagganath Temple in Puri, Orissa, brave girl fighting with Cholera and flood, ambitious woman looking for a job in the posh and sophisticated offices of Calcutta, a protective mother, who fought like a warrior to save her daughter from prostitution. All in all, Pom or Kamala, is represents the face of modern women of our country who fights and thrives hard to make a name. Maybe she is emotionally weak, but she is a one true great fighter. Even the other characters are also quite remarkable like Rose Baker being the cunning owner of the Rose-Villa, who knew how to deal business like the back-of-her-hand, Pankaj, a lawyer, thriving hard to bring freedom to his country, I loved how Pankaj’s mother used to say that he is married to India, then the best character of the book is Simon Lewes, a British employee working in the Indian Political Services. I really adored this character with all my heart, how being a British, he remains loyal to India and even he utilizes his governmental power to protect the poor people during the time of famine and poverty, how after learning all those cold hard truth about Kamala, he still embraces her with his full heart and mind.

Wrap up yourself in this tale of freedom of a woman from her pain and misfortune and find yourself astonished to see how this tale drags you into the past.



View all my reviews

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your feedback!