Shelflite: Overwhelming Yuddham

Book: Odayan: Yuddham Authors: Suhas Sundar and Deepak Sharma Publishers: Pop Culture Publishing Pages: 92 Price: Rs 200 One of the joys of reading Suhas Sundar and Deepak Sharma’s sequel to Odayan, Yuddham, is the Kalaripayattu sequence between the protagonist, the anti-hero Odayan, and the man who hunts him, the assassin Ambuttan. In a revenge […]

Book: Odayan: Yuddham
Authors: Suhas Sundar and Deepak Sharma
Publishers: Pop Culture Publishing
Pages: 92
Price: Rs 200

One of the joys of reading Suhas Sundar and Deepak Sharma’s sequel to Odayan, Yuddham, is the Kalaripayattu sequence between the protagonist, the anti-hero Odayan, and the man who hunts him, the assassin Ambuttan. In a revenge tale set in feudal Kerala, everything leads up to this one moment. After all, it is the blood of his enemy, the Zamorin, that Odayan lives for. His warpaint is reminiscent of a Kathakali dancer, his body sinewy and his arrogance overwhelming. But that is what makes Odayan a vigilante and a leader of the oppressed masses.
In Yuddham, the plot makes for several fight sequences and Sharma’s black and white artwork is quite striking and elevates the narrative significantly.
However, Sundar’s dialogues are rather choppy and the timeline of events vague. The other problem one might face is one of context: without reading the first book, Yuddham might be overwhelming in parts.

Book: Calcutta London Return
Author: Arindam Banerjee
Publisher: Self published
Pages: 375
Price: Rs 500
This book, which addresses two niches, would never have been printed before self-publishing went mainstream. But the numbers in these two niches could add up to minor success: medical students and nostalgic doctors, and people who have been students of any discipline in Kolkata. For the former, there’s hospital politics, the all-night dhabas that sprout around teaching hospitals, Love & Bailey’s classic Short Practice of Surgery and an easy familiarity with speed and grass. For the latter, there’s 29 (the card game), and holidays in Sandakphu and the Andamans. And then there is the unfathomable challenge of moving to East Ham…

Like many debut books, this is fictionalised autobiography, the text that almost every writer must bash out before he or she can move on to the realm of the imagination. Banerjee, an orthopaedic surgeon who has practised in several countries, has pulled off the rite of passage competently, smoothly telling what was probably a complex coming of age tale in real life. If he has another book in him, it will be something to look out for.

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Deepak Sharma