I just started reading Amrita Pritam’s Rasidi Ticket (The Revenue Stamp) — it’s her autobiography. I’m reading regional literature after years. The original was written in Punjabi and I know some of the intrinsic beauty was lost in translation. I haven’t read much yet, but I think it’s more poetry than prose, and it is understandable as Amrita Pritam was a renowned Punjabi poetess.
The last autobiography I read was two years ago and it was Gabríel Garcia Márquez’s Living To Tell The Tale and there is a big difference how both the writers have traversed through the lanes of their past lives. Garcia was more real, and then surreal and then again real. Amrita Pritam is philosophical in her book more often than not. She gets lost in her own thoughts and then somewhere she forgets that someone is reading the book. Garcia, on the other hand, as he is known to do, mixed magical surrealism with the actual events. He was more interesting, I must confess. But this could be because I’ve been more exposed to western literature (I’m not sure if Garcia is western, but his style, sort of, is). Indian writers bore me because one, they focus more on kismet and two, they relish in defeatism. I’m not saying all of them do it, but this is the style somehow I’ve been exposed too. But I plan to read the entire autobiography because even her prose sound like verses, though, logorrheic at some places.
Oh, I forgot. Living To Tell The Tale was not the last autobiography I read. Recently I read Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. If you can somehow get hold of this book, I insist you read it. You’ll love it. I’ll write more about Rasidi Ticket when I’m done reading it.
