Here's a book that will bring the memories of pre-independence era. Munshi Premchand has given such a beautiful picture of the life in that times, one feels like living with the characters especially RamaKant. The book moves ahead slowly and has a certain flavor of simplicity.It may appear too heavy and tragic but its really worth moving till the end. Typical of his style, Munshiji uses a very commonplace dialect instead of highly sanskritized Hindi (as was the practice during his period).
Jalapa, the daughter of a small time Munshi of a Zamindar is fascinated about jewelery since her childhood days. She got married to Rama ( son of a court babu DeviPrasad who earns a meager Rs. 50 a month and refuses bribe)... who is an 'avara' college drop out. Deviprasad buys a lot of jewelery for the marriage and spends a lot of money in show off hoping that the bride's father will give a lot of money and he can pay the debts of the Sunar.All the money that came from Jalapa's father was spent in other arrangements.Rama finally ends up stealing the jewelery from Jalapa and giving it back to the Sunar.Finally Rama gets into a job but ends up spending government's money due to Jalapa's obssession with the yellow metal. He runs away to Calcutta to avoid being arrested.. As soon as Jalapa comes to know this.she gives away her jewelery and pays back the government money.. but Rama doesn't know this and is still hiding in Calcutta.He stays with an old couple in Calcutta who start loving him like their son.Rama somehow falls into the police trap who make him give testimony in a fake dacoity case leading to one life sentence and 11 others being jailed.Now the story moves really nice.Its Jalapa's turn now to move her husband out of this mess.
The story is really moves your heart and depicts that the root to all misery in life is man's obsession to accumulate material wealth more than what is required and in fact more than that possible by the means available at his disposal.A great read..
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