The Story Of Being Useless And Three Contexts Of A Writer (Ratna Translation Series) Hardcover – 15 May 2019

This book is made up of two novellas. The first novella captures the inner workings of an unknown man that is constantly narrated by an unknown narrator. His feelings of useless-ness and his tendency of suicidal Ideation is shown.In the second novella, there are three parts or three contexts. In each one, the narrator picks up one of his friends or someone he knew and talk about them and their life events. He also talks about himself at the end and talks about his writing journey.The language is lucid. The translation is free flowing. The crisp description of the sceneries and simple moments make the reading of the book a beautiful experience.

“The Story of being Useless” which features the story of a Sub-editor who is young and interning with a Marathi Newspaper and his place of work looks at things that are useless if one considers it to be of any value considering what one considers as news. Delving further, the first chapter is titled “One” which starts with stating certain news incidents and their co-relation with being useless. The next chapter of the book is titled “Fourteen” which starts with a scene depicting Pune University where a man is featured and further connotations of uselessness are shown in the same. As the chapters go further, the reader can find that each of the stories gets complemented by the central theme of the book, however, there may arise certain difficulties in surmising the same because for someone new the writing style may be a little obscure, but the same is not capable enough to take away the essence of the story.

This book is for those who want to take a break from the usual fiction and want somehting more chellenging. The first part is about a sub-editor and his reactions to those around him, in journalism school, the paper where he works, and the street life around him. The second part is about a businessman who gets married, and is more accessible. In both stories, intimate details about the protagonist are described by another character. This adds a certain clinical detachment to the stories, making them stories about stories. Makes you think ablout the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Very nicely written.