In Quest of One’s Roots

Prabhakar Acharya’s The Suragi Tree is a delightful novel. The 400 plus narrative is surprisingly a quick, absorbing read: racy, but relaxed, spanning over six decades but time-warped, tale of a solitary man but peopled with an enormous number of characters; each one vivacious and memorable, the intertwining of a rural landscape with a distinct community orientation and the metropolitan anonymity that seeks to strike up a bond with strangers, the creative turmoil of a writer who writes brilliantly but quotes from good old Englisih canonical writers on every third page — these are some of the defining elements of this novel which hold the reader’s attention rather consistently till the end.