IMAAN
- Publisher : Westland
- Publishing year : September 2022
- Binding : Paperback
- ISBN : 9789395073530
- Imprint : eka
- Age Group : Adult
- Language : English
About the Book FROM A WRITER WHO’S LIVED MANY LIVES—THAT OF A REFUGEE, A CLEANER, A NAXAL, A RICKSHAW-PULL ...
About the Book
FROM A WRITER WHO’S LIVED MANY LIVES—THAT OF A REFUGEE, A CLEANER, A NAXAL, A RICKSHAW-PULLER, A COOK, AND NOW AN MLA
Imaan Ali had entered Central Jail as an infant with his mother, who was charged with the murder of his father. Zahura Bibi died when he was six, and he grew up, shuttling between a juvenile remand home and the boys’ ward in the prison. Now, twenty years later, he has been released. With no family or home to return to, he ends up at the Jadavpur railway station, becoming a ragpicker on the advice of a former jail-mate, an expert pickpocket.
The world of the free baffles him, and although the people living in the shanties by the railside—rickshaw-pullers, scrap-dealers, tea-stall owners, and those who sell dead bodies for a little bit of money—welcome him into their fold, life on a platform is both disillusioning and frightening at once; far more frightening than the precincts he was familiar with. This, too, is a prison, like the one he came from; that was small, and this is much larger. But no one went hungry in the jail he came from. If nothing else, one had a roof on their head, got three square meals, a blanket to sleep on.
To get away from this odd world, Imaan wishes to return to the secure existence of a prison cell. He finds out that while there is only one door to get out of prison, there are a thousand doors to return to it—like theft, murder, rioting or rape. But is Imaan up to the task? Is he capable of committing a crime?
Manoranjan Byapari was born in the mid-fifties in Barishal, Bangladesh. His family migrated to West Bengal when he was three. They were first resettled in Bankura at the Shiromanipur Refugee camp. Later, they were forced to shift to the Gholadoltala Refugee Camp, 24 Parganas, and lived there till 1969. However, Byapari had to leave home at the age of fourteen to do odd jobs. At age twenty-four, he came into contact with the Naxals and with the famous labour activist Shankar Guha Niyogi, founder of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha at the Dalli Rajhara Mines. He was sent to jail during this time, where he taught himself to read and write. Later, while working as a rickshaw puller in Kolkata, Byapari had a chance meeting with Mahasweta Devi, who urged him to write for her journal Bartika. He has published ten novels and over fifty short stories since. Until recently he was working as a cook with the Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Blind in West Bengal.
