---

Editor’s Note: This letter is from me for the readers of DoubleSpeak. So far I have only written letters to talk about how DoubleSpeak has come this far. This time I thought I will do something else.

Dear readers,

Saikat Bakshi is a seasoned old timer, when it comes to writing novels. He already has a few best-sellers under his belt. What can or should he offer now to his readers, both old and new? How does a book named Almost Love can assert itself in significance of the name and content? These are the primary questions with which I started reading this novel, Almost Love, by Saikat Bakshi. The novel has its undoubtedly highly intense moments when the reader can get disgusted with an artist’s apparently incomprehensible and somewhat attention-seeking frustration with art and life, when the reader can marvel at simple conversations leading to a deep and true understanding of art, when the reader can feel the same primordial instincts an artist and his muse go through or even when the reader can sense the thrill of finding the much awaited plot twist. From run-of-the-mill urban-smart dialogue between friends through prophetically poetic conversations to short reminiscing soliloquies, the novel has a healthy mix of all. There is a portion in the novel where the painter (protagonist if one needs to identify) Neil sees his muse as the blue sky. There is a sense of actuation of the name that Saikat gives his hero in the novel. And that comes at a very important point. This makes the novel balance on a delicate plot pivot. Then there is Palki, the essential muse of Neil. Palki is the Bengali word for Palanquin and people who have grown up on the stories and songs of the Bengal palanquins can associate two very important attributes to the word Palki. One that it is carried on shoulders and secondly it has a swinging rhythm to its motion. Here as well the motive of the author can be traced to that layer of finding actuation of the name of his heroine. The muse is always carried within the artist, always and almost in everything. And Palki’s conversations, her life, the incidents and choices, all swing from one side to the other. I believe Saikat made a conscious layer to weave the plot through till the end. He makes sure to find a fitting stimulus for a dejected and rejected painter to feel the rush of blood in his fingers again. He also makes sure to let us see the way a magnificent muse carries on with a perfect life and yet dead in art. He creates a grand finale in the plot to celebrate art, and to celebrate business of art in some sense as well. The plot element that includes the celebration of the business of art, though, poses an antonymous effect to some of the most craftily written dialogues about art, in the entire text. But that I believe is a design which one needs to explore through a number of perspectives.

To give away the plot of the novel will be a crime and I won’t do that. But I would say if one wants to read a novel, simple in language and yet layered with a modern celebration of art, one should try this one. What is a muse, how is it different from a lover or a life partner, how can one live with the disparity, contradiction and yet necessity of being or not being able to differentiate between love and musing, are some of the most intriguing things that we will find in this novel. After a long time, I read a fiction of this kind and I liked it. But I couldn’t agree with what the snippet-text reads on the back cover of the paper back. It talked about a fitting revenge which Neil somehow exacted at the end. An artist perhaps is much above revenge for revenge is a lowly act for a mind that can give life to abstraction. But well, I leave such judgement to other readers. I would also perhaps look forward to read more from Saikat, where he would bring more experimentation with language and layers of deep philosophical introspection in art. I would hope that my readers of DoubleSpeak would buy and read the book.

Arpan Krishna Deb

Founder and Managing Editor, DoubleSpeak Magazine