2031st BLOG POST
26th
Book of 2022
There comes a phase
when suddenly I start reading books from a specific genre back-to-back
co-incidentally. And mostly, this happens with the mythology/religious genre. I
read Desai’s Mayabharata, Amish’s War of Lanka and now I completed Kapil Dabur’s
“Krishna Series – The Beginning”. Even the next few books I am about to pick up
are related to either Ramayan or Mahabharat. Anyway, let’s talk about Kapil’s
version of Krishna story – the 278 pages book published by White Falcon
publications. To start with, the cover page of the book is very serene and
almost poetic displaying the image of Lord Krishna in his blue body playing
flute with his closed eyes – The reason I picked it for reading.
This book, in
particular, speaks about the life story of Kansa and how he turned from being a
normal boy to a villainous character briefly. Yes, it’s less about Krishna and
more about the evolution of Kansa as a big villain. Author has majorly tried to
build a whole set-up to make us understand what kind of great figures Krishna
fought in his childhood in unawareness and what kind of devilish-natured people
like Kansa he would be fighting in the further parts of this series. There’s
involvement of many other characters in the book from different regions of
India who are all either ally or enemy with each other. How the message travels
between all of them regarding mysterious things happening is nicely conveyed through
the story.
The book starts
slowly in quite a confused manner where it seems author found it difficult in
order to how to begin telling this great epic story. He eventually finds the
rhythm just before the 1st half of the book where he is able to
develop few characters properly such as of Kansa, Vishwamitra, Sulochana, Putna
etc. The book takes a good leap in terms of quality when the story of
Kansa-Rati begins. I don’t know if it’s as per the epic or author’s creativity
but I wasn’t aware of any such tale. Hence, it came out as a surprise and
author’s portrayal of both of them meeting for the 1st time, then
converting into acquaintance and finally finding romance between them is
innocent and beautifully imaginable as a reader. All the other characters
developed around them are treated well in this whole section.
The story goes into
a flashback mode in between where Putna’s tale is been narrated as to how she
turned into an ugly-looking person whereas once, she used to be one of the
beautiful girls around the kingdom. Reading that story and also how, it
impacted the life of Rati was chilling. Vashisht and Vishwamitra’s enmity and
competition is also been highlighted every now and then – in the same manner as
you can find in Amish’s Ram Chandra series. It’s nice to read the camaraderie and
strong personalities that they were for their respective people. The Law of
Karmic cycle is given a great prominence in the story and you’ll like its
references and examples whenever provided. Similarly, the pre-climax and climax
of the book are something where you’ll be excited as a reader because you know
something big is about to happen and I liked how author ended the 1st
part at the right place which gives you the feeling of fulfillment as well as
excitement to read what would happen next.
Talking about author’s
writing, I must say it’s written in very basic language hence the book can be
gifted even to the children of 10 years and above. They’ll be able to understand
the story easily. Rewriting an epic consisting of multiple characters and
storyline is not an easy task at all. At some places, Kapil does a great job
but otherwise, keeps on failing here and there. Like, the book is about Krishna,
but he’s one of the least mentioned characters in the book. Even in the scenes
where he is doing powerful stuffs, the scenes are not being narrated properly
but completed within a page or two. Even his growing-up part has many stories
which author has excluded and showed him grow from an infant to a boy so
quickly that you feel disappointed as you want to read about him when you pick a
book based upon him.
Talking about the
drawbacks, I would say that the typos and grammatical mistakes in the book
pisses off as they are repeated in almost every 5 pages. As I said above,
Krishna’s development is not being portrayed descriptively which had a lot of
scope to take this to a next level altogether. Similarly, the characterizations
of few characters are left for the readers to comprehend. The start of the book
is quite slow and scattered – not in an appropriate flow to hold your attention.
The story of Krishna and the whole development pre-birth and post-birth is
written on a very surface level without digging into the intricacies which
could have made avid mythological readers like me find something new in the story.
Overall, I rate
this book 3 stars out of 5 – and this is recommended strictly for beginners in
this genre.
Thanks.
WRITING BUDDHA
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