Let’s ExploreJasoda

  • Author: Kiran Nagarkar
Jasoda
Jasoda

A journey to escape drought leads a woman away from her husband's control

From Kiran Nagarkar comes Jasoda, a stripped-down epic about a woman who leaves her parched village with her children to make a new life in the city by the sea.

Jasoda is the taciturn and dutiful wife of the violent and cruel Sangram Singh, attending diligently to her mother-in-law and her three young sons - the earnest and studious Himmat, the charming and street smart Pawan, and Sameer, a malformed toddler. Kantagiri, the village in the 'arse-end of the world' that they live in has been suffering a terrible drought for years, forcing many of their village's inhabitants to move away till Jasoda and her family are some of the last left standing. Eventually, the lack of water and income opportunities force Jasoda to move along with her children and mother-in-law to Mumbai, where she finds a life outside the strict confines of her marriage.

ABOUT THE AUTHORKiran Nagarkar

Kiran Nagarkar was born in 1942 in Mumbai. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Cuckold, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. One of the sharpest critics of India's socio-political scenario, he is also the author of the play Bedtime Story, which was banned for years, and the screenplay Black Tulip, published as a single volume in 2015. Nagarkar also writes in Marathi. While editing a Marathi magazine for a friend's father, he began writing his very first short story in his mother tongue, with which he had lost all contact for nearly 18 years. From that emerged his first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis, in 1974. "We live in a country that has at least 24 major languages but we are so narrowly self-centred. All you need to do is learn two or three other languages and you will be lost forever in the world's greatest treasure houses."

He enjoys music, books, travel, movies, nature and life. Any genuine art, he says, has always got its mouth, ears and eyes open to swallow what it sees, hears, tastes, so that it can transform whatever it has imbibed when the situation and the art demand it.

Kiran Nagarkar

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