Banaras Talkies (Fiction)

Bhagwandas Hostel at Banaras Hindu University can be mistaken as being like any other college hostel, but that would be a gross error. For, among the corridors of BD Hostel roam never-before-seen characters: Suraj the narrator, whose goal is to woo a girl, any girl; Anurag De, for whom cricket is life, literally, and Jaivardhan, whose melancholia gets him to answer every query with ‘ghanta’. Follow the adventures of the three friends and others as they navigate undergraduate life in one of India’s most vibrant colleges, plan to steal exam papers, struggle to speak to women, find friends in corridors lined with dirty linen, and forge lifelong bonds amid bad mess food.

First published in Hindi in 2015, Banaras Talkies has remained on the bestseller list since then. A slice-of-life novel, it captures college life with all its twists and turns. Written with the idiomatic flourish that is the hallmark of Banarasi colloquialism, this comic novel is one of India’s great coming-of-age novels.

Satya Vyas was born in Bokaro, Jharkhand. He was told by his family that studying is a good thing. He took this seriously, so seriously in fact, that he studied arts, science, commerce, management, and law. An alumnus of the BHU law school, Satya Vyas is a logistics professional at a Navratna company and has published three bestselling books.

Himadri Agarwal is a fourth-year student of Ashoka University, with an interdisciplinary major in English and Creative Writing. Her previous translation, Three Stories by Rashid Jahan, was published by Bee Books, Kolkata, in 2020.

**Contents and Sample Pages**