This is a book that captures the reader immediately. There is mystery and intrigue of a kind, but it is the lyrical prose of Gupta that carries the story so effortlessly through three generations.

It is a story of love: love unrecognised, love denied, love freely given and love triumphant. The sin, if there is a sin, is certainly one of 'colour', making the tale satisfying and eerily accurate.

Gupta is a writer of some substance.

Sunetra Gupta's 'A Sin of Colour' took me some time to read. Not because it was a difficult read, but because I kept going back and forth to savor the words and language, something that very few books have made me do, for some time now.

'A Sin of Colour' is about the choices made by its two main protagonists, Debendranath Roy and his niece Niharika during two different time periods, when both are in their late youth. The book oscillates between Calcutta, rural Bengal, Oxford and the US, with most of the action occurring in Calcutta and Oxford. Both are the victims of unrequited love; this colors their lives profoundly, eventually leading them to their sins. Debendranath Roy with Reba, married to his brother, famous, an artiste, musician and actress and Niharika with Daniel Faraday, married, friend of Morgan and the last man to have seen Debendranath alive.

Sections of the book are named after different colors, starting with amethyst and progressing through indigo, azure, jade, saffron, ochre and ending with crimson. Multiple sins of color, all revolving around the one sin which forms the basis of the book; Debendranath's retirement from this world, his ultimate freedom from the clutches of relationships and demands that are foisted upon most of us by the very fact that we live in the society that we do, a retirement that starts when he is assumed drowned in the waters of a river in Oxford. The sin of wanting true freedom, away from all bindings, social or otherwise; the ability to do what you want, when you want, the way you want to. The sin of 'sanyas'.

The book keeps jumping back and forth in time, sketching the lives and times of three generations of the Roy family and the house of Mandalay. There is a lot of repetition, yet it does not affect the book's intent. So, though we know of Debendranath's love for Reba in the first ten pages or so and of Niharika and Daniel midway through the book, each repeated paragraph throughout the book unveils a new vignette, a new facet that further enhances our understanding of the relationships and keeps our interest alive. Almost like a Lego building block, to be built a little at a time, slowly and suspensefully.

Sunetra Gupta's use of words is brilliant. The words play with each other, falling and tumbling, in long, uneven sentences, describing people, events and thoughts with the same verve as a film scene capturing the delicate nuances between the protagonists using gestures and mood-lighting with a minimum of action. For example, "The earnestness of their exchange is tinged with the candour of lovemaking, the desperate need to lay bare the soul before divesting the body of its wrappings, the need to delight in common goals and to rake out the differences of opinion before entering into a concourse where nothing of that sort is likely to matter, the need to establish faith and hope before progressing to love." Each character also evolves over time, a paint stroke at a time, such that even near the end of the book, there is still some new aspect that we delightfully discover. So Reba at the beginning of the book is "a beautiful woman who decorated her rooms nicely, baked excellent cakes, played exceptionally well on the esraj, and could scorn a person's indelicacy of manner with the faintest tilt of her eyebrows." Towards the end, "A formidable hush seemed to descend upon the forests of pine and cedar as she walked in stately silence through them with her daughter, and when upon the seashore she burst into song, the waves would foam in awe at her feet. She was still as aloof to strangers, but now she seemed more distracted than dismissive..."

Gupta's sentence constructions are interesting. Long sentences, some going on for almost half a page, filled with adjectives, descriptions, double metaphors, meandering through different thought processes and coming to a halt only when she seems to have run out of breath. The narrative unfolds in the nature of a conversational story-telling, picking one thread and jumping back and forth into the past and future, sometimes taking off on tangents and then coming back to the present to start another thread which also unfolds similarly. The dialogues interestingly, are all without quotes, and just blend in as part of the general narrative.

This is a book that has to be savored, like the last few licks of a honey nut crunch ice-cream swirling through our mouths, making us want more and more. There are three earlier books of hers, just waiting to be read.

Although this book got excellent reviews, I was annoyed by the lengthy sentences (sometimes over a page long), by the prose,
that was so dripping with imagery that it became distracting.
Although the other reviewer loved it, she didn't realize that
Moni had a daughter (rather than a son), which was a key part
of the novel. Gupta liberally quotes from Tagore, who is
wonderful. Try reading some of his works instead.

Sunetra Gupta's deeply absorbing tale simply took me away with its meandering stream-of-consciousness narrative cloaked in rich prose. With passionately rendered impressions, she weaves a tale that is at once truthful and heartbreaking. I *felt* this story as much as read it. Even though this is fiction this kind of human drama surely occurs again and again. What makes this telling of it so interesting is the way it is told--with thick slices of experience slathered with the truths of human feelings. Having been to India myself (though not in the rainy season) the mood, the feeling of the place, is captured in these pages. When I finally put down this book and looked around, the world around me had changed. I felt as though waking from a long dark dream with eyes that now looked more closely at the world and my own story of how I had lived it. Like coming out into the light from a very dark place--the way sadness can give depth and girth to life. Though some might find it's run-on style tedious, I relished every passage. Take some time and feel your way through this fine literary work. It'll move you.

I read Memories of Rain over a year ago, and even though I've read many books since then, I find myself often thinking about this beautifully written novel.

Immerse yourself in the stinking, steamy, strangely beautiful city of Calcutta. Moni, languid, imaginative, ready for experiences beyond the cloistered life she leads, falls hard for the polished, sophisticated British student.

Married in London, Gupta brilliantly exposes Moni's fears and insecurities as she watches her new husband lose interest and stray. She is paralized and shocked by the disintegration of the relationship and humiliated by his blatent disrespect for her being.

Her emotions are heightened and accented superbly by the gray of the British weather, the drab buildings, and the bewildering pace of life in a new country. Gupta masterfully contrasts the fecund, languid beauty of faraway home with the bleak internal and external circumstances in which Moni now finds herself. Gupta's images rise exotic, beautiful, yet instantly recognizable, from her twining, flowing coils of sentences.
The action, which is mostly internal, takes place over the course of a weekend and leads up to Moni's final departure with her young son. Tension builds as she weighs the consequences and finally makes her decision.

I hope this author is working on her next book right now, I am greedy for more of this! I highly recommend this wonderful book