Gourahari Das

The Address of God Gourahari Das

The Address of God, which is, at first sight, a collection of columns written on different occasions to reflect upon or make sense of particular incidents experienced or witnessed by its central character reminds one of a pointillist painting. Each piece in this volume can be seen as a dot on a richly complex canvas which, in combination with other dots, illuminates the shifting contours of a moral and social universe in flux. Apparently unconnected with each other and recounting seemingly isolated events in the lives of ordinary, unremarkable characters, these pieces cumulatively create a living mosaic of impressions that helps one pierce to the fundamentals of existence. The Address of God is studded with such luminously evocative images, which lead us to the rich texture of the meaning underlying the deceptively ordinary surface of the pieces. They disclose the inscrutable wisdom of the heart to which petty calculations of human intellect are utter strangers. The volume draws its intensity from the unobtrusive mastery with which the author employs these images. They stay with us long after we rise from a reading of the narrative the author has expertly woven from fragments of everyday experience.