Folktales of Faujpur: 11 tales set in an imaginary land
The tales aren’t folktales and Faujpur does not exist.
Stories abound. They are everywhere we go. They exist also in our imagination free of our experiences. Gaurav Bajpai’s Folktales of Faujpur weaves together 11 stories from Faujpur. These are stories of individuals, of families, of friends and of lovers going through everyday life and faced with everyday situations.
The tales aren’t folktales and Faujpur does not exist. The place is born out of the writer’s imagination and his characters are set in this land. The land itself has no distinctive features. Faujpur could be anywhere in the country. It probably just helps the author bind the disparate stories together. The other thing that is common to the 11 stories is their ending. There is no gloom, no pathos, all’s well when it ends.
The book opens with The Beach, the story of Poonam Jaisingh, an actor past her prime and yet unable to come to terms with the fact that the spotlight has long shifted from her to the others.
That people no longer care about her birthday photos making it to the newspaper. She is distraught and finds solace in a friend. But as is the case with friends, they can’t always be around.
The actor, however, goes on to see her career revived while watching a man by the beach ‘trying to die by suicide’. In saving him, she gets to save herself. Any more detail, would be spoiler for those planning to read.
If you were a nervous wreck while taking your first flight, fearing you’d do something wrong and miss the flight, Folktales of Faujpur has a story – The Airport - for you. A family of three – father, mother and son – taking their first flight. They have all the preparations in place but they falter (with confidence) a lot. Partly due to the mistake of the airline and partly due to their own ignorance, they come close to missing the flight. To find out what happens next, you will have to read the book and you may not agree with the author’s imagination of the extent to which people can make mistakes. But imagination is blameless because its essence lies in being free.
All stories in the book are parables. There is a lesson to be taken. There are lessons for parents, children and individuals. The Police Station is a lesson in modern parenting. A busy father has no time to check on why his daughter has been asking for unjustifiably large amounts of money suddenly till in a dramatic way he gets to know of the reason from an unknown girl in his own police station.
The book also has a story named The Bookstore. It details the coming together of a man, being pressured by his family to marry, and a woman while reading. They meet, they party and sparks fly even as the man’s family keeps getting new proposals for matrimonial alliances. Numerous people in South Asia experience this pressure from family and the pleasure of their dalliance at the same time. For many the dalliance can make way for serious, sweet relationships and lifetime partnerships. For what happens to the couple in The Bookstore, you may have to turn the pages of Folklores of Faujpur.
Folktales of Faujpur is a beginner’s book. Story books are always good for a start for those who find thick books daunting to start with. You can finish individual stories faster than you finish a book and that gives you the confidence to move from one to the other. Before you know it, you have read it all.
Gaurav’s maiden book is not high on literary merit. The stories aren’t very imaginative either. It has simple sentences that do not run into miles. The short sentences make small paragraphs and put forth the author’s thoughts lucidly. The stories are linear. The characters aren’t layered. The plots have no sub-plots.
Why should you read? If you are trying to start reading or if you want to introduce a close young one to reading.