Sunday, December 16, 2012

A Bihari woman, Manna Bahadur, 63, has become the first woman English novelist from the state.

http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/sites/default/files/styles/book_cover_page/public/author/author_picture/Manna%20Bahadur.JPG
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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