Chandana: Book Review by Ashok Karn, senior photographer ?
Chandana another very interesting book written by Dr. Brajesh Verma ji, which is like a detective novel and forces the readers to go through in one go. He has weaved the stories so well that it looks like a well knitted garment. This book gives three stories first Mangal Singh a retired army man who become the victim of Cyber crime and his close friend Ramdhani Singh a constable in Arrah police and how they cracked the network of cyber criminals. Second one is Rajmahal mountain range which becomes the subject of severe exploitation for stone chips and is on the verge of devastation. And the third one in pivotal role is Chandana one and only a well educated (Pahariya) tribal young girl from that area whom people of that area consider her as ‘Van Devi’, according to her the trees can be grown again but once the mountain is decimated it can’t be raised the same again. A funny character is a police cop Stephen Murmu whose pet word is ‘Joto ko Johar’. Mamuni, Keshav and imaginary character ‘Markos’ have also added some spices in it.
The writer mainly tried to draw the attention of the readers, the concern government, politicians and other agencies, towards the severe exploitation of Rajmahal mountain range which will turn into dust and destroy all the flora fauna, species and tribal population of that area one day and how to save it from this tricky situation. As this situation erupted after bifurcation of Jharkhand from Bihar about 20 years back.
The book is so well written by the author that it can be translated into a good feature film.
Once I had the opportunity to travel in that area in 2009 along with the writer who is my close friend and got the opportunity to photograph the beauty of that area. I must thank Brajesh ji for giving some space and credit to my photographs in his book but as the photographs printed in B/W have lost the essence and impact. At the same time there are no captions in the photographs so people get confused which picture says what?
This book consists of 222 pages, 16 chapters, printed by Namya Press, 213 Vardhan house,7/28 Ansari Road, Darayaganj Delhi, e-mail [email protected], costing Rs 299/-