Manna Bahadur
Manna Bahadur is a writer, poet, scriptwriter and Painter. She has
written and compered various programs on television and held several
exhibitions of her paintings. She lives in Delhi.
The Dance Of Death by Manna Bahadur. Pub.Penguin India. The story is
partly based on an actual court case that took place in Patna during
Emergency period. Three stories :—one of a demi-god, a Swamiji on trial
for murdering his followers, the other, of a young law graduate, racked
by nightmares and Fits, and that of a judge whose entire family is
threatened because he is presiding on the Swami's case—come together in
strange ways... ..."
Her debut English novel book, 'The Dance of Death', was
released around a week back by Penguin India here, and has found a place
on the shelf of the library in Stanford University in the US. Manna's
husband, Pratap Jung Bahadur, owns a consultancy firm in Delhi.
When asked about the nature of her relationship with Patna, she said the
city is in her blood. Though settled in Delhi for more than 30 years,
she has great affinity for Patna. That is the reason the novel is set in
Bihar's state capital. The novel is a curious mixture of realism as
well as paranormal science which, in the words of Professor Shanker Dutt
of Patna University, who incidentally released the book, "is the USP of
the book". The story, says Bahadur, is based 40% on a petition filed in
her father's court, which found a manifestation in the character of
Justice Shanker in the novel. Incidentally, her father was a Patna high
court judge.
"It is about a demi God who went on killing his
disciples and was finally caught red-handed, but whichever judge handled
the case, faced some mishap. The story finds a twist when in the later
part it comes to light that all the mishaps had a relation with the past
life regression of Kishan Das, another protagonist of the novel," said
Manna. Asked about the response she expected from the readers of Bihar,
whose number is meagre when it comes to English novels, she said she
expected a flood of readers for her book, particularly elders. "My book
is set in the days of Emergency.... the time, the vigour of J P
movement, the aura of the book is all what they could relate their
youthful dynamism with," she said.
Besides being the sole woman
from Bihar in the world of Indian English literature, she was the first
woman anchor from the state to be seen on TV. Asked about her
inspiration for writing, she said that after losing her voice, she had
to quit her job as a television anchor. Losing one form of expression,
she resorted to another form, writing. In fact, she has a Hindi novel,
'Neelanjana', and a book of poems, 'Dhoop-Chanh', to her credit.
However, she regained her voice, though a bit shivering, after constant
music therapy. She also has another manuscript, named 'Controle-X',
ready for publishers. It's a story of two lives of a girl, again with an
element of paranormal science.
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