Sulajhti Kadiyaan is a collection of four novellas in Hindi. All the novels are for young teenagers and deal with the protagonists solving a mystery in each story. It reminds me of the Hardy Boys series in English, though these are not about the same boys, as the authors are different and the locales in which the stories are set are also different. What is worth mentioning about these four books is that, in each story history has been woven in deftly, so that the reader gets a flavour of the local history, without it reading like a boring history lesson. There is just the right mix of information and imagination in each novel to hold the readers’ interest. The first novella in this collection Khayi Ke us Paar by Sripad Vishnu Kanade has the difficult terrain of Nepal as the action scene. Three teenagers, Ramesh, Vasant and Jangu set out with the help of just a map in search of the Kanchangolden cave. Their journey takes them through the dangerous jungles of Nepal. The boys are confident that they will get what they are seeking.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11