A Life Misspent

Suryakant Tripathi Nirala

Translated from the Hindi by Satti Khanna

In this memoir originally published in 1939, Nirala, India’s first modern Hindi poet, recounts the story of being married off at 16 years and sent to his in-laws’ in the town of Dalmau. There he meets a man called Kulli Bhaat, who claims to have come from a family of bards, and to whom he finds himself drawn. Set in pre-Independence India, A Life Misspent is a coming-of-age story and an account of an unlikely friendship.

Harper Perennial, 128 pages, Rs 199