The book opens with one of the most sensitive parts of the author s autobiography which was first published in Assamese. It deals with her childhood at Shillong, her obsession about death and her intense love for her father, the European teachers of her school. She goes on to tell us about her youth hounded by death and darkness. She writes about her various admirers, and her first love and life with her husband who was killed in a terrible accident.
An introduction and two excerpts from her classical Assamese novel, "Une Khowa Howda (Motheaten Howda) are also included. This novel gives a picture of a remote "sattra (a religious monastry), on the south bank of Brahmaputra when India was on the threshold of Independence. She writes about the acute poverty of the common people, who were mostly opium addicts. Lives of young Brahmin widows are shattered by cruel rituals and customs, and they are also exploited.
Another complete novel, Ahiron is also included. Here she writes about the workers and engineers of a large construction project over ahiron river. The central figure of the novel is Harsul Sahib who sacrifices his life for the construction company he works for. Ultimately the remains an unrecognized soul.
There is also a short story, The Offspring , which revolves round a young and beautiful Brahmin prostitute who sells her flesh but hesitates to conceive a child for a low caste mahajan.
The Sahitya Akademi award winner, Indira Goswami, who is also known as Mamoni Raisom Goswami, is a celebrated name in modern Assamese literature. She has written twelve novels and hundred of short stories. Some of her short stories have been translated into various Indian languages, including English.
Dr. Indira Goswami had done her Ph.D. on comparative study of Ramayana in Assamese and Hindi. She was Reader in the Department of Modern Indian Languages, Delhi University. Her research papers have been published by various University journals. Besides getting the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award in 1982-83, the writer has been honoured by several institutions for her commendable contribution to literature. A deeply sensitive and perceptive writer, Indira Goswami writes mainly about the have-nots of this world, the exploited and the downtrodden. Her canvas covers not only the life and scenes of Assam, but also those of other parts of India.
The well-known Assamese writer, Indira Goswami (who bears the pen name, Mamoni Raisom Goswami) needs no introduction. She has carved out a name for herself even outside the boundaries of Assam. Not because she has wielded her pen in dealing with problems which transcend the boundaries of her own state but because she is in sympathy with the problems of man, irrespective of their regional limits and has dealt with them with great virtuosity. Her writings are leavened with them. In her writings even dead characters are galvanised and come alive at the touch of her magical pen.
She writes about what she has directly observed and tried on her pulses. To put it differently, she has given the garb of reality through the medium of words to what has come within the ken of her experience. The autobiographical portions included in this selection will bear testimony to this fact. The pain and agony she has suffered as reflected in these experiences have not ended in bitterness but have been transmuted into sympathy. She has not seen human suffering as a mute spectator standing by the sideline. She has grappled with problems and has not contented herself by analysing them as an investigator but has delved deep into them touching the very bedrock of reality or its quintessence.
Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) is a celebrated name in modern Assamese literature. Rightly was she awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her Assamese novel Mamare Dhara Tarowal (Rusted Sword) in the year 1982.
Indira writes under her pen-name Mamoni Raisom sGoswami (hereafter MRG for brevity's sake). She started her literary career as a short story writer and soon made her mark as one of the ablest few in the language. Of her short stories, she has published two collections. But today she is mainly known by her readers as a novelist and all her published novels have been warmly accepted.
Chinavar Srota (As the Chenab Flows) is MRG's first novel a work marked by a sympathetic rendering of the life and situation of a group of men and women engaged in building a bridge over the River Chenab. The work is further marked by vivid realism, penetrating insight and deep poetic sensibility. On the whole, it is an impressive work full of promise.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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