{"id":23088,"date":"2023-02-03T15:11:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T09:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper?p=23088"},"modified":"2023-02-03T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T10:11:15","slug":"storytelling-at-its-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/2023\/02\/03\/storytelling-at-its-best\/","title":{"rendered":"STORYTELLING AT ITS BEST"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishnupada Sethi has a winner at hand with \u2018A Fond Remembrance\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n

Siddhartha Tripathy<\/p>\n

In this day and age of instant gratification and Instagram reels, it has become increasingly hard to come across heart-touching tales, riveting narratives, honest accounts and heartwarming anecdotes. These stories used to come mostly from regular people and everyday life, but were made forever memorable by wonderful storytelling \u2013 the kind that was replete with vivid imagination and easy articulation, all honed over years of practice and perfected as a way of life.<\/p>\n

Senior IAS officer and poet Bishnupada Sethi\u2019s latest literary effort, \u201cA Fond Remembrance\u201d, published last Tuesday on BigWire (https:\/\/bigwire.in\/2023\/01\/31\/a-fond-rememberance\/<\/a><\/strong>), is \u2013 broadly speaking \u2013 a throwback to that storytelling of old. But it is also a lot more than that.<\/p>\n

Sethi goes back in time, his early years in the administrative service, to recall his experience of meeting \u2013 and then trying to help \u2013 an elderly lady by the name of Janhabi and her leprosy-affected 20-something son.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe astonished all the people around her, including me, with her indomitable spirit, determined resolution to settle her son and survive in an environment, where all the cards have fallen against her,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

Sethi\u2019s account of her trials and tribulations is a grim reminder of the troubles and discrimination that women used to face \u2013 and continue to face, even if much less than before \u2013 in a patriarchal society like India. It also hammers home how poverty makes their lot a lot worse.<\/p>\n

With consummate ease and subtlety, the writer has weaved a true story that sheds light on the normalisation of cruelty and apathy in the real world. \u201cThe feelings of Dillip that the doctors of Sonepur killed her mother was more upsetting and distressing to me,\u201d he writes, as he also admits to being haunted by Janhabi\u2019s request to him, during their last meeting, about taking care of her son.<\/p>\n

Details about the help and assistance that Sethi gave to Janhabi and Dillip in (and beyond) his capacity as a government servant not only serves as a welcome contrast but also comes as much-needed relief for readers. Although not overtly stated, the story clearly suggests how immensely grateful the writer has been for the opportunity to help poor and unfortunate people throughout his administrative career so far.<\/p>\n

Despite being something of a sombre reminiscence, \u201cA Fond Remembrance\u201d evokes a deluge of positive emotions. And that is storytelling at its very best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bishnupada Sethi has a winner at hand with \u2018A Fond Remembrance\u2019 Siddhartha Tripathy In this day and age of instant gratification and Instagram reels, it has become increasingly hard to come across heart-touching tales, riveting narratives, honest accounts and heartwarming anecdotes. These stories used to come mostly from regular people and everyday life, but were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23088"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23098,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23088\/revisions\/23098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}