As The River Flows by Ranjita Biswas

As The River Flows Reviews

• 
  Pronoy

  I picked up this translated collection of Assamese short stories for the sake of nostalgia. My heart melts for anything Assamese – food, weather (from late Fall onward!), festivities, language, and the pace of life, among others. Personally, this book did a splendid job of bringing Assam alive in my mind as I read through pages of the most beautiful literary fiction India has to offer. This book, as the title of the collection suggests, is marked by temporality. We read stories that present to us rural Assam of the colonial era and end with Assam (both rural and urban) struggling in a space of fear and vulnerability arising out of conflict and violence. Regardless of the place/s where the stories are set, what comes out vividly is the landscape of Assam - beautiful, glorious, and violated in ways more than one. If you’ve only read American short stories all your life, be ready to unlearn how stories end but I will leave that for you to figure out. I am no expert of Assamese literature and so I am unable to comment on the quality of translation and the selection of the stories but I have no quibbles about how they fit and speak with each other. I was only disappointed a bit with Pradip Acharya’s ‘An Introduction to Assamese Literature’. Why is this piece toward the end of the book and why is it so wordy? I am not sure. Except for this one glitch, I have little to whine about this book. 'As the River Flows' is a rewarding voyage and I would encourage you to ride along.