Ashray

An Asutosh Mukhopadhyay novel that is important for two reasons. Firstly it became a book after 8 years of its 1st publication as a novel in a Puja magazine. Secondly the reason for this surprising delay was that Mr. Mukhopadhyay dictated major part of the story to his daughter, Sarbani while lying ill and wanted to write the whole thing by himself before it appeared as a book. But his untimely death dealt a major blow to this and left Sarbani torn between her father’s wish and her own that was to reveal the work to the greater audience.
This was probably the final work of Mr. Mukherjee and probably one of his best according to me. The intricate web of emotions that the author has woven not only shows his mastery with words but also it reflects how deep his study was of the human nature and the social bounds that shape it.
The story involves Nandita Bose, the only daughter of a barrister father and a writer mother, who suddenly finds herself a victim of an impending separation between her parents. Torn between the love for her father and hatred for her mother, she gets involved in a strange battle of principles that not only affects her family but also her personal life and ends in an unique style that can only be described as a copybook short story ending with the reader left to conceive the final chapters of the life of each character.
With the frequent use of contrasting perspectives in consecutive chapters, the author has forced readers to be overwhelmed with the various emotions ranging from hatred to love and fury to tranquility and his passionate zeal of expressing the plot, according to Sarbani Mukherjee’s introduction, is vividly felt as the story unfolds its various hues.