The Kite Runner - my take

Seldom comes a writer with a novel that touches the hearts of the readers in such a manner that they start to feel a strange kinship with the characters he built. As readers, we start to understand the behaviour and nature of the protagonists such a way as if they are none but our blood relatives. Or at least it seems that we know each other for years....sharing a long cherished bond. The journey taken by the characters don’t merely remain confined in the black printed letters, but we also seem start to take an active part in it.

This is the same feeling I had while reading The Kite Runner by Khalid Hussaini. It is difficult to describe in one word what I felt for this novel. The words fail. The sentences never seem to be complete to describe the completeness. There are some novels that give you some food for your thought and there are some that give you an eye opening exposure to an unseen world. The Kite Runner doesn’t follow any such trend. Kite Runner just lets you feel the warmth of an extraordinary relationship, the sheen of loyalty, the coldness of cowardice, the colour of courage and above all a tale of humanity.

As I was lost in the book for two days of my last weekend, I was wondering what the last time was when I had the similar experience of knowing some unknown people who are still in my heart. Quite surprisingly, the search took me to 1996, when I read Jagori by Satinath Bhaduri. Jagori tells the tale of Nilu, Bilu, Maa and Baba spending days and nights in different cells of a jail in pre-independence era …living every moment a threat...a fright.

Thanks to Saif for lending me the book. Thanks to Tareq for telling me about the novel for the first time.