On the one hand, the social world the characters inhabit appear utterly meaningful to them yet, there is a tragic absurdity to their situation that does not make sense. It is, above all, about lives that are marked by disappointment the sense of not beingĪble to measure up to the norms of success or feeling wanted.Īlipura pulls off the interesting feat of suspending the reader between two contradictory dispositions. It is about the passage of time, where time changes, but little else does other than the slipping away of dreams. This is, perhaps, something that changing the title of the book to Alipura might not quite capture. It is more about a condition than a location. In some ways, the novel is far more than just about a place. Like the town as a whole, they are stuck in the gap between dreams and reality. For all their volubility, each of the siblings has a strange inwardness. But it is also deft in its portrayal of characters. It is worth reading just for its recreation of a vanished world. It conjures up a whole world by placing telling details in all the right places. Alipura is precise and evocative in its physical descriptions. This is a place where the ability to wield a lathi is a badge of honour and being a dacoit is an open social role, not a crime.
In the translation, the title has been changed to Alipura, suggesting the novel is about a place, with all its texture and thicket of social relationships.
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