Randomly happened upon this while looking up a text for my postcolonial fiction class. Unfortunately I have yet to see a full Satyajit Ray movie but I sat down for a couple of hours and read the shit out of this (it was a 108 page novella with children’s book size font, so NBD). Deceptive in packaging and aesthetic (the aforementioned children’s book thing) it’s good ageless stuff (though i’m kind of illiterate so who knows).
So this boy wakes up amnesia’d and nameless next to a fatal car crash and gets taken in by street fair juggler while being pursued both by his rich father and two surviving kidnappers. It deftly weaves together the gritty crime novel, romantic street philosophy (this one bit about the universe being one giant juggling act, WHOA MAN) and class war polemic (his dad is one cheap rich fucker, imbueing all kinds of class consciousness in the son). Executives somewhere are pitching a remake, coking out in a boardroom with “THINK NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN MEETS THE LITTLE PRINCE BUT LIKE SOMETHING SOMETHING DARJEELING LIMITED” (see how I saved face there?). It was already made into a movie by Sandip Ray (the son!), obvs unavailable even as a search result on netflix.
Wish it had the popularity of Siddhartha or The Alchemist, but there’s way less bullsh in it, so go figure.
