Literary

Book review: Bambino is an English translation of Pratima Dhar's Bengali book Nabajatak

by Trans World Features | @twfindia 26 Dec 2020, 02:03 pm

Bambino, an English translation by Ankita Banerjee of Pratima Dhars Bengali book Nabjatak, is a collection of everyday yet unique stories, based on Bengali families.

Life is an amalgamation of various shades and each shade holds a specific significance for each one of us.

Sometimes life becomes our best teacher, and at other times life turns into a motivator.

It is said that humans are mere puppets in the hands of God but are we always puppets?

Or, do we pay the price for our actions, our decisions in life?

Perhaps, it is a mixture of all the things because destiny cannot decide everything, our actions do play a significant role in it.

The various forms of relationships are meant to make our lives easier and happier but at times, we complicate a simple bonding until it is too late to realise our mistake.

Life offers us various challenges, sweetness, complications and sometimes a strange situation which we cannot overcome quite easily.

In ‘Bambino’, the stories reflect a sense of awe and surprise and some of them can make the readers quite emotional.

‘Bambino’ contains 15 stories, reflecting various phases of life, and therefore highly relatable.

Most of the readers will be able to connect with the stories to a great extent and since the translation is lucid, it makes the book all the more interesting.

Multiple shades of life have been portrayed in the stories and the characters are very realistic as well.

It may not take long to finish reading the book but the impact is sure to last for a very long time.

The author of the book has explored and experienced the life events in such a unique way that readers are bound to flip the pages and get involved in it soon.

Readers can get a better insight into life after completing Bambino and perhaps several events will become easier for them to understand.

Each story has been named appropriately so that the readers can get an essence of its content.

A new sense of mystery and surprise can be revealed in the stories and each story will surely teach something great to each reader in different ways, in the ways they wish to understand and perceive the story.

Hence, there is something special for everybody.

(Reviewed by Sayantani Sengupta)