Review: Paraja by Gopinath Mohanty

Don’t we all love a book that transports us to a different place? If you are looking for something like that, Paraja is the book for you!

Paraja is an Indian modern classical book that I was supposed to read for my class. And, boy, did I enjoy it! Which is a good thing because, this book is a ginormous monster of a book. I’m usually a slow reader but when I was reading this book, I ended up finishing this book in less than two days. So, you get the point right. Once you start this book, you won’t be able to put it down.

The plot revolves around a family from the Paraja tribal clan that inhabits the hills of Odisha. The novel begins with Sukru Jani remembering his now dead wife but still being content with life, thinking about his land and his children, two boys and two girls. Jani daydreams of the days when he’ll finally be rich, have many grandchildren to look after his land and wishes then to die a peaceful death. Everything is perfect. His eldest son and elder daughter are already bethrothed in good families. But as fate would have it, everything goes down hill from there. When his elder daughter, Jili refuses to pay heed to the rich forest guard, the latter starts fining Sukru Jani to cover up a mistake he didn’t even commit. To pay the large amount of money, Jani has no choice but to become a Goti (a bonded labourer). As the story moves forward, you’d notice how slowly one thing leads to another and tears apart everything Sukru Jani’s family holds dear- from their ancestor’s land to love and friendships, even honour.

I have so much to say but I’ll start with the writing style. Trust me when I say that, when I read this book, I forgot that there was a distance between the characters I’m reading about in a book and me, holding the said book in my hands. I was bewitched and it made me feel like I was in Odisha. The writing is so atmospheric. I usually don’t like books with a lot of description because that slows me down and also makes things boring but here, I just couldn’t resist myself. Every sentence was beautifully written and so full of meaning! It was perfect in that sense, like not too purple descriptive prose but also ‘I-might-use-this-quote-for-my-instagram-caption-because-its-deep-and-aesthetic’. There are also many traditional songs translated from Oriya to English to accompany the mood of the prose, which made things even more interesting as a reader.

The novel mostly talks a lot about class conflicts and privileges of a rich person against the backs of poor people’s exploitation, who get nothing in return. It also had an almost colonial aspect to it, having Sukru Jani give away his land to someone else and cultivate cash crops in them while working as a bonded labour under a moneylender that never lets him and his family let off for some free time.

I don’t have a favourite character, although I found many I could kill with my bare hands. Each character is flawed and highly unpredictable but in a good way. I kept forgetting that these were just characters and not real human beings. Having to express all those emotions and complex thought processes in writing is something that I do not see a lot in books. It’s a classic for a reason.

The main story that I could follow throughout the novel was how a weaker class’s desires and dreams are deliberately stomped over, and how the passion behind it drives him to his ultimate negative arc. It talks about the fact that more often than not, for a poor tribal person every dream is just a dream. It never comes true, no matter the effort or the passion.

However, the only thing that I did not like about this novel was the ending. It was definitely justified but still I wanted more from the ending. I wanted something definite or something less tragic. Like, normally I don’t mind sad endings as long as they make sense to me but the ending in this one made me feel like I was left midway and the story is pretty incomplete still so.

But overall, I loved everything about this book. I skipped no part of it, despite the largeness of this novel. I guess, I would give it a 4 out of 5 stars and I highly, highly recommend it! It’s one of those books that makes you think that you live inside the book. I don’t think you’d miss on that opportunity. So, go, grab it!

Thank you for reading!