Hidden India Revealed: Amit Sengupta’s ‘A Sudden Golden Smile’ Shines Light on Untold Stories

Amit Sengupta's new collection, A Sudden Golden Smile, is generating buzz for the evocative description of resilience and humaneness in India's forgotten nooks and crannies. In fifty-five essays, Sengupta effortlessly interlaces gritty reporting, poetic prose, and sharp analysis and presents readers with a rare marriage of passion and lyricism amidst political and social upheaval.

 

Key Highlights:

 

The book travels far into the hinterlands, recording the trials and achievements of Adivasi activists such as Sokalo Gond and Nevada, and the everyday lives of people in areas like Dudhwa National Park and Manipur.

 

Sengupta's prose is renowned for its "resonant moment of accord"-a marriage of intellect and emotion, of immediacy and timelessness-that puts the tales of India's marginalized into biting, human focus.

 

The essays are not acounts of misery, but are charged with hope, beauty, and the potential for transformation, recalling readers to the indomitable spirit in even the most unlikely places.

 

Sengupta is remarkable for his uncompromising adherence to truth, frequently going against injustice, discrimination, and decline of democratic values, both nationally and internationally.

 

The poetic tone of the book, with its dense allusions to literature, cinema, and visual arts, defies the violence of the times and makes a case for the need for beauty and compassion in public life.

 

Critics laud Sengupta's skill in humanizing figures, personalizing the stories and not letting them be forgotten, and in not conceding journalistic ethics even if it involves being alone.

 

Sources: The Tribune, The Citizen, Times Headline