The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter by Shilpa Raj is a book which cannot be supposed to be the very debut book by an author because the book shows far more maturity and seriousness in theme and narrative than that! Shilpa’s book, for the starters, is a nonfiction while most of the authors decide to jump into writing with a convenient fiction, much easier than penning a serious book with graver social issues that Shilpa has done. Launched on 28 July, The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter has been received very well by the readers across the country. Shilpa’s efforts to highlight and mirror where we lack and fail as a society has been successful!
In the book, the author has wonderfully divided the issues into different chapters. Even wonderful is writing style of Shilpa Raj which has enabled her to speak for many as she speaks for herself. Without being so flowery in language or heightened in the tone, she has simply written the story of her life and which eventually becomes the story of many others who share the same.
The major issues that Shilpa has raised are feminism, discrimination, social and economic disparity, lack of education in the lower sections of the society and the very division of the society into different sections. The best part of the memoir is that Shilpa does not point her fingers on the issues directly. She lets the readers decide what could be the possible ramifications of her arguments and moves ahead. For example, when she writes in a chapter that she was to marry her maternal uncle at a very tender age and was supposed to quit her education and settle inside the walls of a domestic life, she speaks for herself only but the readers are wise enough to understand that she is striking at the very conscious of our society which thinks that women are to be settled, ultimately!
Buy Shilpa Raj’s The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter from Amazon
Other than that, when she uses the narrative of her father and memories of her grandparents and mother, she describes the issues of suppression in detail. She exemplifies her own family and her own ancestors and puts forth her arguments about the discrimination in our society which has been there for the ages… If opportunity and support can make a poor girl from an untouchable society an author and a successful person, why not the society can be free of these over-rubbed traditions? Why cannot we all be just society rather than the ramifications of the society into the terms such as Dalits and Sawarns?
There are the tough questions which Shilpa asks of the readers! There are the serious issues which Shilpa raises in her memoir. There are the emotional sides of her characters which she writes about in her book. There are many stories to be read in her debut book and all it requires is getting a copy of the book and read what the daughter of an Elephant Chaser has to say. You can get a copy of the book from the Amazon link below:
story by Rajdeep for BRO