Book Description

THE SNOWS OF KANCHENDZONGA is an assortment of writings, not unlike a box of chocolates; some sweet and others bitter sweet. It has in it short stories, anecdotes, essays and even a memoir or two. The author has borrowed the title of the book from an article on his father’s brother who died the same day his father went to visit him. LETTING GO OF MY FATHER’S SOUL is about the author remembering his father, the grief the family suffered and how they finally came to terms with it taking solace in the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the holy scripture of the Hindus which literally translates to The Song of the Lord and is equivalent to the Holy Koran of Islam and The Christian Bible. THE ABSOLUTION OF SISTER AGNES is pure fiction about the ordeals of a nun who came from England to teach in a convent in Darjeeling, India. It is a heart warming story. The other short stories, A PATCH OF BLUE, THE COOLIE, THE SEEKER and A TIME IN THE LIFE OF COLUMBUS TIRKEY are all fiction but could have been based on some real life characters the author may have been acquainted with. They are all stories about ordinary people going about their lives as people everywhere do; suffering and seeking solace and finally finding that patch of blue as it were. The anecdotes, A DRIVER’S STORY and PANDITJI are about ordinary people trying to make changes in peoples’ lives by their acts of kindness. They are the sort of people who are the true unsung heroes. In the essay, THE COMPASSIONATE PHYSICIAN the author who is an eye doctor writes about the qualities a physician must have to be able to cure his patient’s body and spirit because curing the body alone will not help his patient. He laments about the paucity of compassion in a physician today and warns that the bench mark has been set so high that hardly anyone including himself can qualify as a compassionate physician. In the essay, MY EXPERIENCES WITH EYE CAMPS IN INDIA AND NEPAL, he describes how this decade long work has helped him to carry on doing more of the same in his home, Darjeeling, and sometimes resents how strongly he has been tethered to the emotional umbilical cord which has bound him to his home and family but all said and done, he feels it has been worth it.