The lace of romance, the cobweb of sheer effervescence and indeed that quintessential brilliance of love and of course the pain of a disastrous marriage weaves the magic story "Memories of Rain". Steeped in rich prose the novel depicts the story of Moni, the female protagonist who happens to marry Anthony the British gentleman and finally moves to England. The monsoon climate, the hushed mumble of the rainy days sets the backdrop of the story where Moni for the first time meets Anthony. The story is the saga of falling in love and the tale of feeling the very pain of love. In the midst of the drab London climate, amidst the stiffness of the inhabitants Moni starts missing her good old Indian days. In her tears she hid the memories of those languid Indian noons, in her reminiscences the memories of rain remains.
Born in Calcutta in the year of 1965, Sunetra Gupta completed her education at Princeton University in 1987 and did her doctorate from London University in 1992. She worked as the Research assistant at the Department of Biology at Imperial College, London during the years of 1988-89. Sunetra Gupta belongs to that Rushdie and post-Rushdie generation of `Indian English` writers whose members are essentially cosmopolitan in their cultural and linguistic affinities. These writers are often read and marketed as predominantly `Indian` writers in the West. Sunetra Gupta spent her childhood in Bengal and Africa, studied biology at Princeton University. She now lives in Oxford with her husband and daughter and divides her time between writing and researching infectious diseases. Sunetra Gupta is the author of four novels: Memories of Rain, The Glassblower`s Breath, Moonlight into Marzipan, and A Sin of Colour. She has been described as `a prodigious talent` by the Independent on Sunday and her work has been pronounced `brilliant` by The Times.
Synopsis:
`Memories of rain` by Sunetra Gupta is a story depicting many faces of life. Moni is a college student from Calcutta who is full of dream. Her head is full of British literature and Rabindranath Tagore`s romantic poetry. She marries an Englishman who takes advantage of her passivity and cultural obfuscation to pursue a new love affair with sadistic ease. The gap between the Britain adored in India and the claustrophobic reality of the actual place is charted in exquisite detail. The gap between Tagore`s high art and Calcutta`s violence and poverty also dawns on Moni as she awakens painfully into adulthood. To round out the Anglo-Indian ironies, Gupta includes numerous echoes of scenes from Virginia Woolf`s 1925 London novel Mrs. Dalloway. This is a nicely depicted story from a prominent writer who`ll be even better once she cuts the umbilical cord to her British predecessors.
The book by Sunetra Gupta is published by the Grove Press in the year of 1994.
`Memories of rain` is a unique collection by Sunetra Gupta. This is a deeply absorbing tale weaving stream-of-consciousness narrative draped in rich prose. With passionately rendered impressions, she weaves a tale that is at once truthful and heartbreaking also. Even though this is fiction this kind of human drama surely occurs again and again. The narration of the story is excellent that takes the story to its height. The Indian mood, the feeling of the place, is captured in every pages of the book. This book has the capability to open one`s third eye as the reader will be able to understand what is what.
