Surge On Like a River is a collection of essays that highlight the various aspects of our lives and the society that we live in. Each essay tackles a new topic and issue, sometimes subtly and sometimes head on. From the tribulations of motherhood to the time tested friendships to the gender based harassment - the book covers a wide rage of topics that is so relevant to us in this day and age. The titles of the essays give a hint at what it is about, but I made the mistake of assuming that I knew what it would be about for the first two times. Each time I was pleasantly surprised to realise that it offered much more than I had expected.
Surge On Like a River is the translated edition of a Tamil book by Bharathy Bhaskar. The Author's and Editor's notes in the beginning clarifies that the essays are based on true life events and stories of women that Bharathy Bhaskar had the chance to meet and interact with. This fact made me both curious and apprehensive. I can walk away by learning a lesson from a hard hitting fiction, knowing in my heart that it is fiction after all. Real life stories always make me stop and take notice in a different manner and I cannot walk away from them easily knowing there are real people who have had to learn the hard way. I need not have worried. The author has delivered most of the stories with a dose of with and humour in them. Some of them were more hard hitting than the others. And, for a while I lived the life of each character in the book like it was my own. I could relate to the 'rasam' incident very well.
At the end of the book the translator has provided a Glossary for the Tamil terms used in the book. I found that particularly handy as I didn't have to interrupt my reading to google them. Thankful to the translator and the editor for bringing me this slice of Tamil Literature that I would have otherwise missed out on.
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