Shirt is Teesra Button (Manav Kaul)

 I have been meaning to read a book written in Hindi for a long time now and i finally got down to it with this gem of a book by Manav Kaul. I am glad i finally did this and I have promised myself that this will be a regular feature for me from now on. Ideally this review should be written in Hindi, but since I have not downloaded Devnagri script on my iPad, doing it in English here.

Shirt ka Teesra Button is a coming of age story of a young boy growing up in a village in the Hindi heartland of the country. He lives with his mother and grandmother (Nani) in a small unpretentious dwelling.  His life is defined by two friends who he has grown up with. Age steals innocence and so it is with this boy. The story starts on the day his grandmother dies and he starts realising that life cannot stay the same for him too. He struggles with the changes that are happening around him and keeps wishing he could somehow halt the process of growing up and becoming an adult. The name of the book comes from his realisation that he has avoided most unpleasant things in life by staring at the third button on his shirt, and ignoring everything else around him. It is as if this third button had a life of its own and provided him an escape whenever he needed it.

Life’s unpleasantness has a way of catching up and soon he discovers that his friend is facing abuse at the hands of his uncle. Wanting to help his friend, but at the same time hoping the problem will go away by itself, not really knowing what to do, caught up in his own romantic escapades - nothing seems to make sense. Add to this the realisation that his mother, who was abandoned by his father, is also a multi faceted woman who he does not have a monopoly over. Things come to pass when his friend, unable to take the abuse any more, and finding no help from any quarters, dies by suicide. 

The treatment of each character is mature and wholesome. The young boy’s imagination, his struggles with himself, his inability to take decisions and be swept away by circumstances, all are expressed very well without belabouring the point anywhere. My only complaint is that there is too much dependence on the books Chitralekha and Crime & Punishment, to explain his mental state. Some parts become too esoteric esp the letters that he writes towards the last part of the book. Was he writing to himself all the time? Was he being bipolar in order to deal with the trauma? If that is so, then the prologue would also fall in place for me.