Book Review: The Life and Times of Banka Harichandan by Dipti R. Pattanaik (Originally written in Odia and translated to English by Himansu S. Mohapatra)

Mitra Samal reviews Dipti R. Pattanaik’s The Life and Times of Banka Harichandan (Published by Simon & Schuster, India & Yoda Press) and observes how it made her reminisce her childhood.

• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-9392099991
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster India and Yoda Press
• Date of Publication: 7 November 2023
• Language: English (Translated from Odia)
• Number of Pages: 272

Banka’s escapades with life from his childhood to his young adult days made me reminisce much of my early life in Odisha. The life and times of Banka Harichandan is majorly set in Cuttack over a period of nineteen sixties to seventies. So, it also bears a striking similarity to the tales about the city that I had heard from my parents, who lived in and around Cuttack which was a flurry of activity even in those days. It is a gripping narrative of a typical Indian middleclass household, with its strict observances of ordinances for a rather befuddled boy Banka and I could very much relate to it.

Banka was never very happy with his grandma, Chacha, and his siblings when his parents were away on their visits to Bombay. He sensed favouritism and backbiting. He would curse them in his mind but then some of the unprovable beliefs passed on to him by his mother would only put him on the horns of dilemma. It always scared him that Bajrangbali would punish him for having maleficent thoughts and he would start reciting Hanuman Chalisa. His continuous prayers to Lord Hanuman asking for forgiveness only made me aware of the kind of helplessness I had often felt as a child, but then also made me laugh a bit at the innocence of childhood. Childhood is the time when we are still developing our reasoning power and that made Banka ambivalent about people around him. He sometimes adored them or even pitied them but at times didn’t quite understand why they had to be so cussed.