Gone are the days when only celebrities wrote their life story. These days, there is a growing trend of memoirs by non celebrities and biographies of people we know nothing about. Kaushal Vijay, a civil engineer by profession, also tried to catch that train. He penned the struggling formative years of his life when his family endured a lot of financial hardship to give his career a desirable shape, in the memoir Kikki.
Story Of Kikki
Life is never a bed of roses. The unpredictable ways of life throw challenges to test your mettle from time to time. Kaushal Vijay’s story displays exactly this quirky part of life where future plan fails when it doesn’t match with what life has stored for you.
Whenever things appear settled for Kaushal and his family, a new wave of problems starts circling around like a cyclone, knocking the doors violently almost threatening to tear apart their lives beyond recovery.
But even the threatening ways of cyclone couldn’t uproot Kaushal and his family who stood together facing the financial problems and adjusting the ill fate with new hope. And one who never gives up so easily, nature is always kind enough to send sunshine amid all the coldness of winter.
The continuous perilous health situation of his father jeopardizes the financial well being of the entire family. But they fought together and strived hard to not let this hamper the career of Kaushal. Despite of all the hardships and disappointments, Kaushal with the help of the undetering support of his family managed to launch his dreams towards the sky.
My Thoughts
The struggling story of Kaushal resonates the story of almost every lower middle class and middle class household in India. But the way this memoir has been written doesn’t impress or connects with the struggle of Kaushal.
The memoir has been written in a passive narrative style. More like writing in causal speaking English where the author has jotted down events and incidents of his life like a journal. Without any insights and deep reflection, the narrative sounds monotonous, almost predictable and boring to read.
Kaushal’s writing doesn’t breathes life into his story. I was not able to feel his and his family’s hardship, couldn’t bring myself to emphasize with his struggle, couldn’t care less about his career, to be happy or sad for him. It was a sheer failure on his part to present his story in an extraordinary manner.
Dialogues were not impactful, plotting was not interesting, faulty narrative style and glaring grammatical mistakes further puts dent in the reading experience.
The Verdict
Even the ordinary man’s common story becomes extraordinary when written in poignant and intriguing style, creating hooks for readers that the character’s story becomes theirs. This book seriously lacks it. The memoirs of non celebrity if not written properly always fails to catch fancy and falls flat than compared to celebrities memoirs who at least find some takers. Will not recommend it.
Memoirs of Non Celebrities
I remember reading a non celebrity memoir, a few years ago, Woman, Everything Will Be Fine! By Rashmi Trivedi. It was written in hilarious style with lot of insights and pearls of wisdom which the author gained during her period of transfer away from home and family. I loved it. As a consequence, I became more receptive and enthusiastic about reading such memoirs by non celebrities.
After that I read a biography of an artist and painter from Bengal, Shaymal Datta Ray. His memoir In Loving Memories was written by his daughter Haimanti Datta Ray as a tribute to this great artist in water medium. The biography turned me misty-eye remembering my own mother.
