Sunday, October 11, 2009

Mahashweta - Sudha Murthy (2005)

An excellent story on how leukoderma can kill hopes of a beautiful girl and shatter her life. Leukoderma, though a non-communicable disease nor hereditary is still social taboo in India. Particularly, for girls it can ruin prospects of their getting married. Overall theme is nice and it really brings out an important social issue less talked about in the Indian context. May be we do not see as many leukoderma cases as much as we see more communicable skin diseases like leprosy which though curable is still a bigger stigma in the Indian context.

Like every Sudha Murthy story, the book moves fast. Good wins over evil and there is a sense of poetic justice delivered with the girl getting a moral victory of sorts when her husband who had abandoned her earlier comes back to her but she decides to turn him down.

Overall the plot is good. The message is delivered and if someone gets a reason to live by reading this book as described in the postscript why not. But do not expect too much of an intellectual food in the book. Still a good read for a couple of hours or for a flight.

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