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Book Review: Voice of the Silent Creek


Vikkas Arun Prateek's 'Voice of the Silent Creek' deserves a review, a recommendation and an applause. I'm going to give it all three for one rarely comes across a book that combines empathy with new-world bravery. Rarer still is an Indian book and author that bring about the naked truth of Indian society, both rural and urban, with such poignancy and courage. We always stumble across an incident which we digest with great difficulty but we seldom discuss it or if we do, we do it with third person's perspective thinking and believing that it wouldn't occur to us. Vikkas helps us here in a way, coming up with a book that describes gruesome truth with horrifying details and thus letting everyone know that such incidents do take place around us and that they need our empathy and if possible, some actions too.

The book tells us two stories which I believe are running parallel. Arti and Shanti both belong to India but whereas Arti looks to defy all the odds with her personality and education, Shanti falls victim to the same. I wouldn't like to go through all the hardships and painful treachery that Shanti has to go through for they send a chill to your spine and you feel almost embarrassed having been a part of such society. May be Khap Panchayats and Devdasi Incidents from two different parts of our country come across your mind and you would be able to correlate their aftermaths with Shanti's plight but I believe it still wouldn't amount to the same. 'Voice of the Silent Creek' is a difficult read but if you stick to it, rewards could be handsome.

However, again like the most of new-age Indian books, it falls seriously short of technical accomplishments. Its title 'Voice of the Silent Creek' albeit is a marvelous one and suitably depicts the book story on cover page and that too is fantastically designed. But inside the book, all is not right. Paragraphs are left-aligned and while that could be a specific demand of a book's plot and thus can be used likewise but I don't see that here and thus all of them must have been 'justified'. Grammar is again weak and this book could have been an absolute eye-opener if those weak-links were absent. These mistakes leave a bad-taste in a reader's mouth. Proofreading is an essential part of book-publishing but I strongly believe it's getting less and less importance with each passing day. Still it comes across as an important work and a very timely one which for once deviates from all too familiar rom-com territory of Indian book-writing and stops at something substantial.

Rating: 4/5

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