Brothers Sen Gogh by - Manik Bal

 

Brothers Sen Gogh

The story revolves around the life of two brothers, Soubhik and Sourav. Their story seems to be inspired by the legendary Van Gogh brothers, Theo and Vincent. Sourav is the younger brother and is practical unlike his brother, an idealist musician, who was pampered and inspired to be idealistic by their father. 

What I liked the most about this book is the strong based characterisation. Where you can actually understand the person, identify with and relate to. This combined with a powerful story has made the book a complete piece according to me. 

The struggles of a creative and talented artists, complexities of relationships, middle class misfortunes, inevitabilities of certain decisions in life are all cocktailed up perfectly in this musical journey of brothers who are tested time and again by their fate and society. 

The sensitivity of Soubhik’s personality touched me the most because I have read and have been attracted to read similar characters. Sourav’s knack of handling conversations, Nethra’s courage to speak the truth which most people would avoid, Indrani’s smart and caring nature, Suresh’s admiration, all of them were most relatable characters. 

I like how the story unfolds, hooks you up from beginning till end, doesn’t bore you at all at any point. Storyline is great. Sometimes makes you wonder if this is a real story because it reaches every corner of the society and brings you the unfortunate facts. 

Now I must say Prashanth was a weirdo here and the base for his character could have been made stronger like, more detail on his physical description, more depth to his personality and a few of his life incidents for his genuinity. It was hard connecting to him and upon that his weirdness. Also Soubhik’s character is a very sensitive, deep and a difficult fort to penetrate, so he could have been described further or some more insights from his perspective would have been even better. It’s a difficult category of character to build.

All in all it was an entertaining read. Book gets 4/5