Books

Sunset Club - Khushwant Singh

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

About a week ago, I was loitering in Sector 17, whiling my time away, window shopping, waiting for a friend to arrive. I usually stop by at the bookseller that spreads his 'wares' on the pavement just outside the Mochi showroom. One time I was lucky to get a one volume, second hand prime condition set of Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien for just Rs.125/-. This time round my eye fell on Sunset Club, a book by Khushwant Singh. I leafed through the book and liked what I saw, so I picked it up.

Khushwant Singh wrote this book about the events that took place in the year 2009, seen through the eyes of three old friends who make it a point to meet every evening in Lodhi Garden. There is Pandit Preetam Sharma, an Oxford Graduate, retired from Civil Services, a bachelor who lives in Khan Market with his sister. There is Nawab Barkatullah Baig Dehlavi an affluent businessman who lives in Nizamuddin with his devoted wife. Last but not the least there is Sardar Boota Singh, a widower and a retired newspaperman (ahem!) who lives close to Sharma. These three men like taking a walk in Lodhi Garden every evening and have taken to congregating on a bench right opposite the Bara Gumbad. In their honor the bench has been renamed as 'Boodha Binch'.

There is one chapter for each month which recounts the political happenings, weather, and whatever going on in the lives of the three men. The men talk, argue and reminiscence about their lives. They talk about politics, love, women, nature and of course, their ailments. The book starts on 26th January 2009 and ends, a bit sadly, on 26th January 2010. (For this reason, it is fortuitous that I am writing this on 26th January as well.) There is not really much happening here, but the events are an interesting mishmash of the political scene and weather during the year 2009. Khushwant Singh throws in a bit of religion, some lovely poetry and nice descriptions of trees and flowers. In fact, the book is quite like his column.

I enjoyed his book Delhi very much which I reviewed on mouthshut.com. I have pasted the writing onto my blog here. This book is not a patch on Delhi, but yet, if you compare it with the kind of stuff being printed these days, it is miles ahead. KS's language is pretty non-decorative, but has the advantage of being direct and functional. The poetry he has picked to describe seasons is lovely.

The autumn comes, a maiden fair

In slenderness and grace,

With nodding rice stems in her hair,

And lilies in her face...

-Kalidas

More Reviews More Books

2012-01-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

I have been lax in reading, lax-er in reviewing books. I had picked up Dan Brown's Deception Point on my last foray into Browser, Sector 8. Chandigarh, a private library I am a member of. Along with it, I took 'Yes Prime Minister' of the famous TV series and Sikhs a book by Khushwant Singh. I had enjoyed his book Delhi very much. It was nice mish-mash of history with fiction thrown in about the unparalleled and grand city (previously, now it is a state) of Delhi.

The latter two books are still being read by me. I raced through Deception Point. It had a good start. It is election time in US of A. The contending candidate for presidency, Senator Sedgewick Sexton is a jerk, we realise as we get to know how his daughter views him. Rachel Sexton is an intelligence analyst for NRO, who soon finds herself embroiled in a series of events that find her nearly freezing to death in the Arctic, and back to Washington DC, to find out who did it.

Nothing wrong with the pace of the thriller. Its Dan Brown, he knows how to pump the adrenaline into inert bodies lying on the couch and flipping pages of his book. Its just the premise, finding alien rock with evidence of life stamped all over it is surely a biggie. But then, the claim fizzles out faster than fizz fizzles out of a coke bottle left open. The mystery is, who is behind the killings and why. The suspense ends in a supposed twist, but the twist is not too well qualified with good reasons. That was the deception point for me. I must say Dan Brown does better with his ecclesiastical mysteries and his symbologist Dr. Robert Langdon, even if he seems to skedaddle around the world a little to much.

My old old friend, (she is not old, its just that we go way back) Smita of Bookslifeandmore has picked up several formidable challenges for the year 2012. I wish her all the best, and choose for myself, admittedly the wimpiest of the challenges that seems do-able to me. Here goes - Amen.

The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas

2011-11-12T08:16:00.001-08:00

Amish has come out with a trilogy (the third one, The Oath of the Vayuputras is still pending publication) that retells the story of Shiva.

All Gods were men once, we assume. They did extraordinary things which caused them to be worshiped like Gods. In India these myths are still alive. These stories are integrated into religious tracts and listened to with devotion and complete faith. In such a scenario, it is difficult to fictionalize mythology further. The initial mythology is so oft repeated and believed that it is taken as a fact. If you mess with that, it can be viewed as blasphemy. A while ago I had read The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattnaik which was peripheral mythological story expanded into a beautiful novel. Would the retelling of Shiva's story succeed? Can Shiva be depicted as an extraordinary man who was later idolized as a God?

The Immortals of Meluha:

The story begins with Shiva fending off yet another attack on his tribe high on the mountains of Kailasa. He is visited by Nandi with an offer to join his brethren in Meluha where they can live a civilized life. He is reminded of his uncle who had prophesied that his destiny lay far beyond the mountains of Kailasa. He decides to accompany Nandi. On his arrival at one of the border towns of Meluha in Kashmir, his tribe is quarantined and given medicine to cleanse them. The medicine has a strange effect on Shiva, it gives him a blue throat, a Neelkanth. He is thence catapulated into centre-stage of Meluhan aristocracy where things are expected of him, where he finds love, but also many barriers. He has to fight wars for a cause that is rapidly becoming his own.

The Secret of the Nagas:

Shiva finds himself undertaking a journey across India to uncover truths. Nothing seems to be as he had first perceived it. The Chandravanshi's are not the murderous terrorists they had been portrayed as. The Brangas have a genuine reason for being hand in glove with the Nagas, now seen as the enemy No.1 of India. But are they? They have a secret too. Shiva finds he cannot rest until he knows the absolute truth. His quest is for the evil that he is supposed to destroy. But where is this evil? Who are the Vasudevs? Are they misleading him?

The pace of the books is breathtaking, they are quite a page-turners. The conceptualization of the story is simply fabulous. As Shiva is himself learning about the Meluhan and later, many other Indian civilization, we get to learn many 'facts'. The world of the time, 4000 years BC is well mapped. The fictional world is drawn with accuracy and confidence. The author is extremely surefooted about his subject.

The only point where the book falters is the conversation. It can get a wee bit irritating to read 'You are extremely intelligent My Lord' for the umpteenth time. At times the intelligence of the reader is insulted when the proceedings are explained painstakingly. A little more skill in writing could have come in very very handy. Especially as the subject is so overpoweringly strong. Despite this, the books are a must read.
They are as heady as Shiva's chillum.

Three Loves - AJ Cronin

2011-09-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Citadel and The Judas Tree are the magnificent novels that introduced me to AJ Cronin. A J Cronin was a doctor till an illness required him to be idle for six months at a farm, taking complete rest. During this time, he wrote a novel which as an immediate success. This set him on to writing as a career, abandoning his medical practice.

Three Loves, his novel about Lucy Moore, charts the life of the lady from her happy married life to her sad end. At the begining of the novel, Lucy Moore is a young married woman, devoted to her husband, home and child. She is imperious, and often tries to influence her husband Frank, unduly. However Frank is happy to be tethered to Lucy until his cousin arrives on the scene and suggests that Lucy is bossy. Anna has been invited by Lucy to spend a few days with them. But she turns out to be a colourful woman, Lucy on learning this, begins to beset by doubts of relations between Anna and Frank. It upsets her happy existence and culminates in her husband's death. From here on, her life goes into a downward spiral and her only hope and happiness lies in the hands of her son, Peter. After Peter she latches on to her love of God for succour.

The novel charts all that is pitiful in the life of a woman who is dependent on others for happiness. All is good for the woman who is safe within her chosen sphere, as long as she chooses to be subordinate to the man, even if she rules from beneath. Eva is happy as long as her husband Richard - Lucy's brother - is around to provide for her. Polly has accepted her brother's charity and is happily overfed. It is when Lucy is forced by circumstances to be independent, that she faces hardships. Her brother and brothers-in-law abandon her to her own devices, being too selfish to help her. She is forced to take up a menial job and pinch pennies mercilessly in order to put her son through a good school and a college. At the end of her labour, she finds no solace.

Though the men in her life often try to put her down and make her feel that it was her own poor judgement that caused her downfall, it is evident to the reader that all these people who never lifted a finger to help poor Lucy had no right to judge her. The world is quite like this, there are very few people out there who will help you, there are many who are ready to stand by and judge.

There are many shades of his own life in the novel. His father, a travelling salesman, had died early from tuberculosis. His mother also worked, like Lucy Moore, unlike the other women of her times. Lucy Moore put her son through medical college, Cronin also was a doctor. How autobiographical this novel is, however, it is hard to tell. But it is clear that AJ Cronin had an intimate knowledge of the mind of men and was privy to how it is that our failings and strengths make us what we are - human.

The book is hardly a barrel of laughs, the subject makes it a grim study, as poor Lucy finds hardly any reprieve in life. It is magnificently written and very incisive, sharp as a surgeon's knife. I have resolved to find as many of Mr. Cronin's books as I can find, and read them all.

The Gin Drinkers and my Library Loot

2011-08-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

I went to the Library on 14.08.2011 and picked up these books after much delibration.

1. Blind Willow Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
2. Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier
3. Blandings Castle - P G Wodehouse.

I looked high and low for Silmarillion by JRR Tolkein, but could not find it. I also looked for Tristam Shandy, again, nah.

I am reading The Gin Drinkers by Sagarika Ghose at the moment. It was pretty engrossing at the begining.in the middle it has palled a bit. It is a story of a bunch of privileged class youngsters. Sons and Daughters of IAS bigwigs, who are educated in Oxford and are expected to settle abroad and do something wonderful and lucrative. Like any youngsters at their age, they are a confused lot. To spice things up, there is a mysterious gang of kitab chors running around, picking up priceless books from private libraries at homes. There have been a couple of tantalizing clues about the thieves, so far.

Sagarika Ghose writes fiction with a practised hand, to the manner born. You can't say the same about many other journos who venture into book writing. There will be more on the book once I finish it. But at the moment, despite the sagging middle, it looks like a very good read. I love it when books are based in Delhi. I love the city, its my second most favorite city in the world. That is from my slim repertoire of course, once I have globe trotted my preferences may change.

Adrift A Junket Junkie in Europe - Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu

2011-07-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

It was a discarded ticket by a 'gainfully employed' sibling that set Puneet off on a trip to Europe. It helped that she had a string of relatives and friends scattered across Europe, willing to put up with her. At times even inviting her. That's an offer not many of us would refuse.

She starts at London, moving on to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Hungary, Austria and France. She discovers mitfahr, a sort of a carpooling between countries, very soothing to the pocket of a person who is a junket junkie, not a millionaire tossing away some black money casually while 'doing' the world.

Here is a first person account of an unusual trip. We get to know these countries as a person sees them, not as some travel brochure describes them. Hence it is easy to feel her passion when she talks about the most romantic city in the world - Vienna.

What I liked best about the book was the insouciance of the author. It is so typically Punjabi. I am a fan of the author's blog as well.Cutting Loose Her writing is simple, yet pithy and fetching. I have met her briefly once, and she is as large hearted and friendly as any Punjabi can be.

Susannah's Seven Husbands - Ruskin Bond

2011-02-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

I am a fan of Ruskin Bond, have been so ever since I read his little articles in The Tribune. I discovered his short stories and anthologies later, when I read some of them in my daughter's prescribed English textbooks. Till date I love Rusty best, and his wastral of an uncle who tried his hand at many things.

His books have been made into movies before, Junoon was based on A Flight of Pigeons, both great in their own way. The Blue Umbrella was made into a fabulous movie by Vishal Bhardwaj. Needless to say the promos of 7 Khoon Maaf had me hooked and I was double hooked when I learnt that it was based on a short story by Ruskin Bond, Susannah's Seven Husbands.

I hied off to see 7 Khoon Maaf last Sunday and came back a wee bit disappointed. Not that it wasn't good, it just wasn't brilliant. I expected more out of the Bond-Bhardwaj combo. The first couple of husbands were good, but after that the story seemed to falter, bolstered a bit by the Keemat Lal episode and then, alas faltering again.

But yet, such is my mania for Bond, that I ordered the book containing - hold your breath - the original short story, the novella that Bond expanded it into and the screenplay of the movie. Just this morning I finished reading the story and the novella, in that order.

Bond's original short story is exactly what you expect of him. It is short, intriguing, contains all his masterstrokes, it leaves you feeling mystified and satiated. This Susannah was born long back, was tremendously rich, and was supposed to have a cellar full of treasures with snakes guarding it. She was seen riding around the town in a buggy, rich and beautiful, admired and feared by all. She had several husbands that she was rumored to have sent to their early graves. Her ghost was said to have haunted the house and the surrounding areas, waylaying good looking men as she was said to be looking for a ideal mate.

The novella lists her husbands, expanding the story. It introduces the character of Arun, Susannah's neighbour who was too young to be a lover, but was old enough to be her friend. He is in love with her and talks to her and her gardner often, and is privy to the goings-on in the house. In his characteristic style, Bond leaves an element of mystery about the husbands' death. So we are not sure if these deaths were brought on or an accident. An excellent ruse, I think.

It makes for a fairly good read. Bond has this admirable quality of saying just enough, not more nor less. It stands him in good stead and as long as the husband is interesting, it carries you along. It is not his best offering though. It lacks the brilliance of many of his stories and novellas. The packaging does not help either, with the poster of 7 Khoon Maaf on the cover. Ruskin Bond does not need cheap tricks to sell his books. In my opinion he is a living legend. His books and stories are going to live forever and we are watching history in making, he is going to be a classic.

The Alchemy of Desire - Tarun Tejpal

2011-02-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

I have a bit of a connect with Tarun Tejpal. He worked once at the same newspaper as I do now, both he and his wife. I have just one memory of him talking to our garrulous telephone operator and laughing. Much later, after he left Chandigarh, I read some of his articles here and there and liked them. It was even later, after Tehelka, that he became a household name. Gosh, I thought, its that same thin fellow who used to work in my office. I knew he had written a book called The Alchemy of Desire. I read the blurbs, but not the book. A couple of weeks back, I picked up the book in the library, egged on by a positive recco from a friend.

His book seemed to be autobiographical and began with his Chandigarh phase. So far so good. I love Chandigarh and love reading about it. The mid eighties were a wonderful time, journalistically speaking. A lot was happening, militancy was on the rise, assassinations and emergencies, and journalism had not yet plumbed the depths it has. It was fun (ooops, I hope there is no 'g**d phat ke haath me aajati' type around to chastise me). I mean 'fun' in the adrenaline pumping way, there was so much happening, there was excitement in the air. However, though Tejpal does include the political happenings of those times, his concern lies elsewhere: his relationship with his wife. He tells us how crazy he was about her, but alas, he takes a long time telling us this, again and again. His interest in his wife is deeply carnal, so we are given descriptions of his sex life. He avoids (prudishly?) the use of names for sexual body parts. "Engorged, Tumescence, Wetness, Inside" are used liberally in his frequent listings of his legal sexcapades. It makes for a tedious reading at times, not titillation. I skipped and jumped through these bits and wondered if anything was going to happen at all, or was he going to harp on and on about how he loved sex with his woman.

I nearly gave up reading further. But then, I stuck with it. Suddenly things took a turn. Tejpal finally came to the crux of the matter. Somewhere along in the story, the young couple came into some money that Tejpal's grandmother left for him. With this money the happy young couple buys a house high in the hills. The cottage had been built by an American woman who had married a Nawab during the British Raj. During renovations to this cottage, they chance upon a locked chest which is filled with diaries written by the woman. It is while pursuing these detailed diaries that Tejpal finds himself hallucinating about the descriptions of the sex life of the lady, and finds himself unable to 'come up' for his wife.

The story of Catherine is told with the pithiness that all journalists are required to have. From then on, it turns almost into a thriller, as Tejpal is obssessed with finding out more and more about Catherine and what happened to her. It makes for a compelling read. After he attains closure with the Catherine story, he is able to return to his feelings for his wife. In the last chapter, he goes back to the story of how he met this girl that he loved to distraction all his life, his first and his only love. Now, without the cumbersome need to list his sexual encounters with his wife, he is much much much better. The final two chapters of the book are the best that I have read in recent times. It was worth wading through the first few tedious chapters.

Of course, I loved the references to two of my favorite places in the world, Kasauli and Chandigarh. Like many Chandigarhians, Tejpal too goes often to Kasauli. He does make them come alive with his accurate descriptions of the place and people. Curiously, despite his attempt to write up his wife, she seems like a very flat character, he is to be unable to bring her alive. It is only in the final chapter that he succeeds in fleshing her out.

Better scores have to be given to his attempts to write a book. One of the themes of the book is also how Tejpal tries to write a novel often and fails. His wrestling with his creative side is also very real. Also, of course, the political scenario that he has to grapple with. No marks for this one, because it is something all journalists do.

It could have been a great book, had he edited it a bit better. The first few chapters could have done with some chopping. Who should have known this better than a guy who is an editor?

The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith

2010-08-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

I had long wanted to read something by Alexander McCall Smith having had positive recommendations for the writer famous for his No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Isabel, the protagonist of the series would probably note, isn't a recommendation positive to begin with? Isabel Dalhousie lives in Edinburgh, is in her early forties, is reasonably wealthy and edits The Review of Applied Ethics. Edinburgh is a quaint town to the south-east of Scotland. It is famous for its old buildings. Parts of it has been declared a World Heritage Site. It has a temperate climate which makes it a very good place to live in. McCall Smith's descriptions of the place are so affectionate and warm that it makes you wish you lived there. Isabel's age is perfect too. She is not a giddy youngster skidding through life, she is more settled and more apt to observe and mull upon what she sees. She does this also because she is a philosopher. Her job brings her in contact with philosophical tracts that she has to edit for the journal - Review of Applied Ethics. Her comfortable circumstances and single status also give her a freedom to follow her heart.

She is old enough to be an old fashioned girl. She likes the telephone to be answered in a certain way, she adheres to certain routines and likes good manners in people. She likes to be very moral and is constantly mulling over whether a certain act is morally right or not. She is also young enough to sometimes forget her own philosophy of life and be rash, outspoken and imprudent. In fact she usually does something 'wrong' right after she has debated the issue in her mind, which makes it all the more funny. At one time, she does not shy away from following an unpleasent man who is dating her neice, just on a curious impulse.

And, oh, of course, each book solves a mystery.

I read Friends, Lovers and Chocolate first, which is second in the series. I was a bit undecided about the book, but picked it up anyway. This is the beauty of a borrowing books from a library. If you don't like the book much or find it tedious, you can just return it half read. This makes you pick up a book more indiscriminately than you would if you were to buy it. I read the book as fast as I could, it was that good. It also made me buy the first in the series - The Sunday Philosophy Club.

Isabel and a group of fellow philosophers used to run the Sunday Philosophy Club. The name of this series is ironical, as the Sunday Philosophy Club is now defunct. Isabel would like to revive it, relishing the idea of discussing philosophical issues with her friends, but as her two close associates - her neice Cat, and friend Jaime - note, Sunday is not an easy day on which to meet.

The story moves at a gentle pace and is full of delightful descriptions that is reminiscent of Jane Austen. A lady mystery solver is reminiscent of Agatha Christie. Like Agatha Christie, the mystery is not always earth shaking. The first novel deals with a possible murder, but the second one deals with visions that a person has. However, unlike Agatha Christie mystries, the mystery itself does not seem central to the plot, nor is Isabel always commissioned to solve the mystery. The mystery seems almost like a sideplot. It is Isabel's philosophical musings that take the centre stage.

It is the general drift of Isabel Dalhousie's life that is so charming. Her laidback lifestyle, her appreciation of the arts, her tendency to philosophise over even mundane events, her sharp observations, her close friends, all these lay a grip on you and you want to read more and more about her. Isabel is close to her neice Cat, who runs a delicatessan. Jaime is a musician and a close friend um, pretty pretty close. Her housekeeper Grace is full of surprises and Isabel finds it edifying to consult her on several matters at hand. Lovely Edinburgh is always in the background. It is all these that make the series so captivating. I am listing the books in the series here to prevent you from hitting the wikipedia page, which is shamefully full of spoilers.

1.The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)
2.Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (2005)
3.The Right Attitude to Rain (2006)
4.The Careful Use of Compliments (2007)
5.The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (2008)
6.The Lost Art of Gratitude (2009)

The last book came out in 2009 as we can see. I hope the author continues with the series which would surely delight me.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Jonathan Stroud

2010-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Stroud

These books are strictly for fantasy fiction fans. Bartimaeus is a djinni with a formidable lineage. He is ancient, 5000 years old. Here is what wikipedia has to say about him:

The title character, Bartimaeus, is a five-thousand year old djinni, a spirit of approximately mid-level power. There are five basic levels of spirits; in order of increasing strength they are: imps, foliots, djinni, afrits and marids. Above these levels exist even more powerful entities, who are rarely summoned. Human magicians use spells to compel these spirits to perform feats of power.

Bart loves to hang out in the Other Place, where can while his time away in nothingness. The earth is NOT his favorite place, he seems to dislike humans who can summon him through spells and incantations. If he were to have his way, he would like to spot a mistake in the spells and gobble up the upstart who dared to disturb his peace. It is merely because the spells are so binding that he is forced to do the bidding of his master.

At the start of the story, Bartimaeus finds himself pulled back to earth (London, to be specific) by a very correct pentagram and proper incantations by Nathaniel, a very young magicians apprentice. He is give the difficult job of stealing the Amulet of Samarkand. Soon we learn all about the precocious Nathaniel. His parents gave him away to be trained as a magician ever since he was a little child. He was taken in by Arthur Underwood as an apprentice. Nathaniel is gifted, but his overbearing master is not in a hurry to teach him, hence he takes to educating himself, by reading books.

The place he lives in is London, but apart from the some shared geography and history, Stroud's London is a different place, peopled by magicians and commeners, djinns and spirits. It is a tumultuous place, ready to burst into a revolution, as the commoners are weary of the ruthless and ambitious magicians (politicians?).

Nathaniel is an unlikely hero, bumbling at times and a bit of a prig. He is overambitious too, and Bartimaeus is an unlikely sidekick. There is barely any love lost between them, or so it seems. Bartimaeus is anything but a fawning or a supportive helper. He is acerbic and loves bringing Nathaniel down a peg or two. Not exactly a Batman-Robin kind of a situation, we see.

Jonathan Stroud takes this unlikely team and gives us a trilogy that is funny, imaginative and full of all the things that we love in a fantasy, an alternate world, lots of magic and magical creatures. The dangers that the major characters face are huge and seem real. I don't know if the word 'funny' is enough to explain the humour in these books. If you like British humour, Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse and all that, you will just love Stroud. In fact, if this magical world had been real, Stroud's books would have been described as a satire. As the magicians play the role of a politician, I am not sure if it really IS a satire.

The Trilogy comes in three parts:

1. The Amulet of Samarkand :

Here the story starts with a very young and scared Nathaniel summoning the ancient djinni Bartimaeus and sets him a task to steal the Amulet of Samarkand. What starts as a prank to teach a fellow magician a lesson, turns into an adventure that seems clearly beyond the scope of Nathaniel. In this book we get introduced to several characters that we will meet again during the rest of the trilogy.

2. The Golem's Eye:

A couple of years have passed, Nathaniel is more ambitious than before. He is no longer the child he was. But yet he finds himself facing troubles for which he can think of no other ally than his old acerbic friend, Bartimaeus. Kitty, a character we meet in the passing in the first book has a larger role here. She is the part of Resistance, the commoners' answer to the atrocities committed by the ruthless magicians.

3. Ptolemy's Gate:

The grand and the satisfying finale to the trilogy. Kitty, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus find themselves facing a kind of danger they could not even imagine. The solution has to come from ancient history, which is very painful for Bartimaeus. Nathaniel must quit his supercilious ways if he is to spot the truth.

Comparisons are inevitable with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, but really, how can you compare? Lord of Rings is in a class by itself. It is an epic. Harry Potter is, well, very popular, very different, it is more like a whole franchise. Perhaps in scope, Jonathan Stroud's series is not as vast, but it is very sure. There is no misstep anywhere, the humour in his books and the world weary Bartimaeus are the USP of the series.

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet - Colleen McCullough

2010-07-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

This is not the first time we have encountered an Austen derivative. I loved the movie Clueless which is a modern re-telling of Emma. Gurinder Chadha's movie Bride and Prejudice was colourful and interesting, if not a favorite. A couple of book sites on my bloglist regularly come up with reviews of books on some aspect of life of Mr. Darcy or some other Austen character. At one time I looked high and low for a book called 'The Jane Austen Book Club', to be sorely disappointed by it.

This book came highly recommended by a book site I subscribe to, and it is written by Colleen McCullough, the author of Thorn Birds which is supposed to be the Australian Gone with the Wind. I have read the Thorn Birds and loved it, not as much as GWTW, but well enough.

The book begins with the death of Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet died a couple of years after Pride and Prejudice ended. Elizabeth and Jane are safely ensconced in their homes as Mrs Darcy and Mrs Bingley. Kitty is a rich and merry widow thanks to an advantageous marriage. Lydia is in shambles, Wickham is at war and she is an alcoholic and sex crazed. Mary has spent the past 17 years (since the big wedding between Darcy and Lizzie) caring for her mother and keeping her away from causing any further embarrassment to her daughters. Many is no longer the ugly duckling, but rivals Elizabeth in handsomeness. She has spent her exile reading books and developing a mind, and now, with her mother gone, she is looking forward to doing something with her life. All this information is stuffed into the first chapter, just like Jane used to do.

The first time I picked up the novel, I dropped it in disgust because Mr Darcy was addressed as Fitz. I am not sure if even Elizabeth would have deemed it proper to address her husband as anything but Mr. Darcy, let alone his sister-in-law. If I remember correctly, even Elizabeth's father referred to his sons-in-law by their surname, Wickham, Bingley, Darcy.

Anyhow, the novel gathered dust for nearly a year. A week back I picked it up again and this time, expecting the worst, read it through. Jane is still her sweet (cloyingly?) self and popping babies. Elizabeth and Darcy (no Fitz for me) have troubles. He is back to being the stiff and starchy one, she is disappointed in him because among other things, ahem .. he is a beast in bed. Wooo, I say, bring him on. On top of this, their firstborn, a son, is allegedly effeminate. Kitty and Lydia are marginalized in this novel too. Mary gets the center stage here, sort of. (Even now, Elizabeth and Darcy cannot be shoved into a corner. At times it seems as if the novel is more about them). Mary is on a mission to write a book about the British poor. Cough. She has some hair raising adventures, the rest of the family also gets pulled into it.

The story is interesting enough on its own but there is nothing Austenian about it except the characters, that's for sure. People use four letter words and foul language as if they lived in nastier times. There is even ess ee ex .. phew ! It messes with the kind of an image you have of the characters and the times. What I like best about Austen's books is its faithful rendition of life in her times. The leisurely walks, the formal way of addressing each other, the dresses, the balls, the MEN. The way the ladies and the gentlemen spent their times. Even though the books are really romances, they are also a mirror of their times. I hate this book for shattering that beautiful image.

Even Jane's worst critics admit that she had a faultless style. I am amazed to say this of the author of Thorn Birds, but I found that lacking woefully. There were many repetitions of phrases and words, which rankled. Did Ms. McCullough have a bad editor this time round? No, as an Austen sequel the novel failed badly. Not surprising really, which sequel has worked? The sequel to Gone With The Wind, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley was awful. Mrs De Winter by Susan Hall was a terrible sequel to Rebecca. While one can understand the itch writers get to try to imagine 'what happened afterwards?', one wishes they desist, if this is all they have to offer.

Spoiler Spoiler dirty Spoiler : In case you don't want to read this novel and are wondering what really happens to Mary, she does not write that book, but settles down with a rich Scottish newspaper owner in the vicinity of Pemberley. Spoiler Ends.

As if you expected a Bennet girl to do anything different - now that is so Austenian

Super Spoiler: She has sex with him before marriage - GASP! Super Spoiler ends.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

2010-07-17T01:06:00.000-07:00

After I read Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, I picked up Norwegian Wood by the same author. Norwegian Wood was a sad love story about a young frail girl Naoko, whose high school boyfriend commits suicide. She falls into deep depression after that and has problem fitting in with life. Her boyfriend's best friend, Toru, befriends her and falls in love with her. However, her depressed state prevents her from forming any relationship and she leaves for a mental asylum. Toru meets Midori and they are drawn to each other. But with the shadow of Naoko hanging over him, Toru is unable to move on. It is a good book but I was fresh from the magic realism of Kafka on the shore and the book was kind of depressing.

Last Saturday, I picked up After Dark by Murakami from the library along with other books. I saved After Dark for the last, wanting to savour it. A couple of days ago, the other stock exhausted, I opened this book.

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

The first line read. And I knew I was hooked. It is a slim book, mere 200 pages of the small size.

The novel delivers gloriously... Inventive and alluring

says David Mitchell of Guardian, on the blurb. Ditto, say I.

The novel is about what happens to people after dark. In the few hours from midnight to 5 AM when the world sleeps peacefully, there are some who choose to stay awake. Why do they do that? What is behind their wish to spend the night waking?

Mari chooses to spend the night waking as she seems to have missed the last train home. She sits in Denny's with a cup of coffee and is hunched over her book, reading with deep concentration. She is disturbed by Takahashi, a trombone player who knows her and more particularly, her beautiful sister Eri. Takashahi is here because he plays with his band in a nearby basement and is at Denny's for a midnight snack. Later he sends over the manager of a Love Hotel called Alphaville. A Chinese girl has been hurt and they need someone who knows Chinese to talk to her. All this time, Mari's beautiful sister Eri sleeps a sleep that is too perfect to be true.

At the root of everything is the troubled relationship between the beautiful Eri and the homely Mari who chooses to drown herself in studies. Takashahi has a troubled past too. He is an orphan who has been brought up by his criminal father and a stepmother. He is at a crossroad, having to choose between a career in Law and Music. He is very fond of Five Spot After Dark which made him learn how to play a trombone.

It is a night full of happenings and conversations and introspection which will transform the lives of Mari and Takashahi, and Eri's too, perhaps.

Murkami's magic is all over the book. You hear the music the characters talk about, you feel what they feel. He has this ability of making you see right into the soul of people.

Diamonds from Goa

2010-05-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

My blogger friend Ashwin Baindur of The Butterfly diaries has often adorned his blog with nature poems. It was on one such post that I came across a poem by Ashok Mahajan. I was instantly smitten by it, and begged him for details. The poem was taken from Goan Vignettes and Other Poems which was sadly, out of stock on book sites.

A flurry of emails on the issue followed and at the end of it Ashwin kindly scanned the images from his copy of the book, converted it into a PDF, copied it into a cd and mailed it to me.

In doing so, Ashwin has gifted me a handful of diamonds. Thank you, Ashwin.

I don’t think I will be ever able to find appropriate words to describe these poems. (I thought of something very clever to say about them when I was driving yesterday, but have forgotten now.) They are indeed little vignettes of life in Goa and other places. If you are fortunate enough to read a few, you will realize that the Author has the knack of using just the right word for the right thing. So I will beseech you to look up the words you do not understand, I promise that your understanding of the poem will multiply hundredfold when you look up the meaning.

On reading the poems, I get the sense of a ruminative poet who looks at the world and sees things that lesser mortals like us do not. Maybe we do, but we do not remark on it; we have no talent to freeze the moment forever in a perfect little poem.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour

(William Blake)

These are the lines that best describe the poems of Ashok Mahajan. It is time for me to vanish and present some poems of the author that struck me particularly. Click on the images to enlarge them. If you want more, send me your emails and I will send them to you.

To start with I will quote a small poem here called metamorphosis. I have kindly (thank me) provided the meanings so you (philistines) may better appreciate this picture.

But a week ago

This hill that was

A rugged

Topaz of dry grass

Is now a nowy

Smaragd of green.

Nowy Smaragd = new emerald

Sunset at Colva is the poem I would pick as a favorite if pressed. It is evocative and creates a perfect picture of a sun slowly slipping, red and resplendent, into the sea.

Estaminets=A small café

Incarnadine=red color

Aubade

(An aubade is a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.

Aubade has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak)

This comes next because of a leisurely and detailed listing of things we see if we stroll out at daybreak for a dozen eggs. The author does not shy away from listing scenes that are not pretty. Dhobi’s boy taking a dump on the roadside is as assiduously noted as the pretty rhododendron sun. You can see a further example of this if you check out the poem featured on Ashwin’s page

I picked Channo’s Tandoor because it reminds me of summers in Delhi when we used to pick up rotis from a tandoor nearby, to save our ladies the bother of making endless rotis and also because we loved the crispy earthy taste of real tandoori rotis. Again, the poem paints a perfect picture of the Tandoor which is turned into a community centre in an instant.

Majorda Jaycees Princess. I knew one such Veronica Dias; she won a minor beauty contest, and thought she was too good for our little town.

Grandmother is such a lovely look at a crabby old lady, I could cite several ladies who could qualify for this portrait.

Truck Driver gives you a peek into the world filled with machismo and vulnerability. In a few deft strokes you get the picture of a life condemned to greasing palms and easing loneliness with a bottle of the local brew.

Vasco Da Gama takes a cynical look at that renowned adventurer. Ah, how many heroes of yore are the result of good publicity agent? How many real heroes have passed on unsung?

All I wish is that this lovely slim little volume were illustrated. I know, it is much better to get a picture into your head, but like Alice, I like a book with nice pictures. A set of drawings by one of those renowned Goan illustrators would have been like a cherry on a yummy layered black forest choclate cake.

There are a few glimpses into the goodies that Ashok Mahajan has presented to us in his lovely book. As I said earlier, the full feast is but an email away (or maybe some kind soul will teach me how to upload large file on some sites like rapid share so that many more people may have access to his poems).

Totto-Chan, The Girl in the Window, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

2010-04-27T19:17:00.001-07:00

What do parents do when they realize that their child can not fit into a normal school? Where is a child to go if he cannot be affiliated to a school or college? What will children do if they do not score good grades? What kind of a life will they have when they have to be on their own?

Surely these questions have plagued all parents, especially when they see that their child is not in the top bracket. Some parents try to turn their children into machines, forever at their books. Children are scolded if their grades are not up to the expectations of their parents.

What does a child feel when faced with all this? When they find themselves being forever pushed to do what they are unwilling to.

On the other hand, aren’t children the flower of this earth? Shouldn’t they be allowed to grow and prosper at their own pace?

The most important question of all is what is more important, knowledge or education?

Many educated people will agree that knowledge is more important, it is more important to let a child learn at his own pace, that material possessions are immaterial. But how many people have the courage to let their child tread on a path of his own making. When faced with the crucial issue, it is easy to wish that one’s child lands a place in a prestigious university, taking up a course that will lead to a cushy job.

We have seen this issue under a scanner in movies like Taare Zameen Par and Wake Up Sid. But before all this came a lovely little book called Totto-Chan

The heroine of this book is a little child called Totto Chan who is expelled from first grade because she keeps disrupting the whole class. The worried mother hears of a school run by eminent educator Sosaku Kobayashi, which is different. Instead of foisting its system on the child, it adjusts to the need of each child. This is a school where the personality of the child is what matters, everything else is secondary. Totto-Chan’s mother hopes her child will be accepted here, and is able to get some education without the stigma of being expelled. What she forgets is that the child should like the school too.

When she saw the gate of the new school, Totto-chan stopped. The gate of the school she used to go to had fine concrete pillars with the name of the school in large characters. But the gate of this new school simply consisted of two rather short posts that still had twigs and leaves on them.
"This gate's growing," said Totto-chan. "It'll probably go on growing till it's taller than the telephone poles!"
The two "gateposts" were clearly trees with roots. When she got closer, she had to put her head to one side to read the name of the school because the wind had blown the sign askew.
"To-mo-e Ga-ku-en."
Totto-chan was about to ask Mother what “Tomoe” meant, when she caught a glimpse of something that made her think she must be dreaming. She squatted down and peered through the shrubbery to get a better look, and she couldn't believe her eyes.
"Mother, is that really a train! There, in the school grounds!"
For its classrooms, the school had made use of six abandoned railroad cars. To Tottochan it seemed something you might dream about. A school in a train!
The windows of the railroad cars sparkled in the morning sunlight. But the eyes of the rosy-cheeked little girl gazing at them through the shrubbery sparkled even more.
“I Like This School!”

Here is how Totto Chan’s interview with her headmaster went.

With a hasty bow, Totto-Chan asked him spiritedly "What are you, a schoolmaster or a stationmaster?"
Mother was embarrassed, but before she had time to explain, he laughed and replied, "I'm the head-master of this school."
Totto-Chan was delighted. "Oh, I'm so glad," she said, “because I want to ask you a favor. I'd like to come to your school.”
The headmaster offered her a chair and turned to Mother. "You may go home now. I want to talk to Totto-Chan."
Totto-Chan had a moment's uneasiness, but somehow felt she would get along all right with this man. "Well, then, I’ll leave her with you," Mother said bravely, and shut the door behind her as she went out.
The headmaster drew over a chair and put it facing Totto-Chan, and when they were both sitting down close together, he said, "Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to talk about."
"Anything I like?" Totto-Chan had expected him to ask questions she would have to answer. When he said she could talk about anything she wanted, she was so happy she began straight away. It was all a bit higgledy-piggledy, but she talked for all she was worth.

Never ever was Totto-Chan’s hyperactive behaviour, which got her expelled from her first school, mentioned. Rather, every time the headmaster encounters Totto-Chan he pats her on the head and calls her a good little girl.

The children are allowed to study in the order that they like. They are not punished for being inattentive, and are not required to follow a curriculum. They are encouraged to learn more by practical means. If they have to learn about botany, what better way than to spend a day in the fields with the farmers and grow something of their own? Sports day’s are organized in such a way that the handicapped children win prizes. Children take turns to speak on a topic every day after lunch. There are ballet classes too. They are organized in such a way that the children feel these are fun events instead of a burdensome chore.

Totto-Chan grew up to become a famous TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. She attributed her success to the valuable lessons she learnt in this school. The book was her tribute to her beloved old teacher, Sosaku Kobayashi. The book became a huge bestseller and Tetsuko instituted a Totto-Chan trust out of the proceeds that undertakes education of deaf children.

Our children are our most precious thing. In our eagerness to produce a clone of several other successful models, don’t we push them to alter their personalities? It would be so much better to have children with distinct personalities who lead happy lives doing things they love.

It is absolutely imperative for every parent to read this book once.

Tomoe School is a wonderful school;

Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!

The Pregnant King by Devdutt Patttnaik

2009-12-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

After I read the book through, I put it down and cried. Like Jayanta, the king’s younger son, I cried for “the imperfection of humans and for our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between.” We are limited in our perceptions by our limited imagination, and having learnt about the world from persons of limited wisdom, our intellect is not allowed to form to its fullest. We no longer have teachers and thinkers of high caliber amongst us to challenge our minds. Our education is filled with pre-set syllabus and pre-set ways of understanding it. No wonder, as each generation develops, we find ourselves less tolerant of people who are not like us and pick fights over petty issues of region, religion and class. We follow customs and conventions of the society without trying to understand them, discarding them or adopting them for our convenience.

The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik is a tale told of a man, a king of a prosperous kingdom who finds himself bearing a child. Due to this ‘aberration of nature’ he finds his mind in a turmoil. His feelings for his child are more maternal than paternal and he finds himself grappling with issues of Dharma and of existence itself. Although this mythical tale of Yuvanashva is set in time more ancient than Mahabharata, the author takes the liberty of setting it parallel to parable of Pandavas.

Through the tale, we learn the ambiguous roles that many kings had to play. There were both feminine and masculine sides to them, their subjects learnt to revere them for their ability to portray the best of both sexes as an additional blessing instead of a curse for their multi-sexuality. We learn many of the old traditions that were coined for the good of people, the vedic way of life that ensured harmony and prosperity. The caste system which is much reviled now, was a means of allowing people in different walks of life to live with dignity.

However the fissures in this perfect way of life were already evident. When Ashwathama discarded his varna to become king, when Kshatriyas used deceit to win the war, when Dharma was abandoned in an attempt to cling to power. Then, as now, the final message is that it is Love that is most important, in its most sublime form, Compassion.

Here is a gem from the book – “Careful of the word unnatural. It reeks of arrogance. You are assuming you know the boundaries of nature. You don’t. There is more to life than your eyes can see. More than you can ever imagine. Nature comes from the mind of God. It is infinite. The finite human mind can never fathom it in totality.”

The tale is carefully woven. As in Mahabharata when the seeds of discord were sown generations before the actual war, here too we go back to the story of Yuvanashva’s mother, the widowed regent Shilavati and go on to learn life in Vallabhi the kingdom into which she is married. Yuvanashva is a sheltered child and needs to fulfill his primary function, father a son and provide and heir to the throne of Vallabhi before he can become king. It becomes hard to fathom whether Shilavati is hanging on to power for its own sake or as a maternal instinct to protect her son and allow him time to procreate. Kaliyuga is about to dawn and it is indicated when people use dharma to further their own end.

The wisest of Rishi’s Angirasa laugh when the Chief Priest Mandavya wonders why power corrupted the mind of Shilavati, she was a woman after all. “He thinks women are not corrupted by power” they laugh. The Angirasa also descend on the Pregnant King and seek to pray to him as they think he is a special signal from Gods. They open his mind to the ambivalence of human forms. Not all are rigidly male or female.

Myths are philosophic tales to educate us through entertainment and exist to inform us that nature is more powerful than any of us. Those readers who loved reading stories from Chandamama, tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vikram and Betal stories will love this book. I was able to devour the 149 page book in 5-6 hours of continous reading, I found it gripping and unputdownable. The finale was satisfying and disturbing at the same time.

Devdutt Pattanaik has made a career out of studying the ancient myths and decoding them. He has his own website here.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2009-12-05T04:24:00.000-08:00

I can be highly suggestive when it comes to picking literature. I am more likely to pick up a book that has been written about well, and spoken of as a classic. It was this instinct I followed when picking up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Why this one by this writer? Because Kafka is my favorite author and I liked the use of his name.

Some books are not written asking for appreciation. They exist and wait for you to pick them up to read. If you do so, YOU are rewarded, if you don't its YOUR loss. This is that kind of a book. It does not hang around waiting for you to award it 4 or 5 stars, it is 10 stars already, and if you recognize that fact, its your good luck.

Now, what kind of a genre does the book fall into? Is it a romance? Drama? Fantasy Fiction? A coming-of-age tale? A combo of the last two? It does defy compartmentalizing. What do genres exist for anyway? So that the bookstores and librarians know where to slot it?

I am asking a lot many questions, mainly because I am trying to find words and phrases to describe the book best, knowing I am going to fall short. Ok here goes.

Kafka on the shore is about a 15 year old boy who is trying to escape a horrific prophesy. To avoid it, he has to run away from home. On his travels he learns about life and that even if he cannot avoid fate, he learns to deal with it. He is also trying to find the answer to a question that dogs most children who have to do without a parent - Were they loved?

"Every time we wish for something with our whole heart, the universe conspires to fulfill it." We have heard this phrase a lot recently. Here in this book we get to see how exactly the universe conspires. We get a bit of 'behind-the-scene' activity that can qualify this books as fantasy fiction. But as the setting is our world, the 'other world' element is so well integrated, that it seems like an everyday happening. The 'niceness' of everyday happenings soften the blow of the bad things that are actually happening elsewhere.

Murakami is an intellectual with varied tastes, you can see as you read his book. And he wears his it on his sleeve proudly, quite like TS Eliot. His literature shows up his taste for western music, philosophy and literature quite unabashedly. He references a lot of a music and books and speaks about them through some knowledgeable character. I quite like the 'international' feel of the book. Though it is set in Japan, it is so contemperory, it could have been in any corner of the world. There are no overt 'cultural' references. No Japanese tea ceremonies or bowing or references to the ancient cultures being best.

The book is crazy, wild, sexy, original and simply fantastic.

What am I going to do next? GRIN. I am going to pick up some Beethoven music that Murakami talked about. I am also going to pick an anthology of Prince, a musician that I love and so does Murakami, and so did Micheal Jackson. Oh. I am going to pick up Norwegian Wood by the same author.

The good old intrigue

2009-09-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Among the books to fall into my lap recently (link) was The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry.

The novel starts with a bit of an epilogue the purpose of which becomes clear later. The second chapter is when the action starts. Cotton Malone, ex- US agent finds his ex-wife on his doorstep in Denmark to inform him that their son had been kidnapped. Within minutes he finds his house and shop burned to ashes, and is on the run from assassins as he tries to unravel the mystery of his son’s kidnapping.

Several other links open up. Stephanie, Cotton Malone’s ex-boss finds herself embroiled in conspiracies of various sorts. Across the globe in Vienna, another thread in the story is revealed when a mysterious organization called The Order of the Golden Fleece that seems interested in causing economic and political instability by using religious controversies, is found to be embroiled in the kidnapping of Gary Malone.

Soon the kidnapping angle is discarded when it is revealed that the actual quest is the lost library of Alexandria and Cotton Malone is being coerced into tracing it. As the novel progresses, the shit rises higher, and all the good characters seem on the verge of elimination. Sigh !

It’s been quite a while since I read a racy bestseller. As they go, The Alexandria Link is gripping and well written, and keeps you turning pages. Each chapter has this soap opera kind of ‘gasp’ endings which is supposed to egg you on to read the next page without break. It works most times, at times it bugs you. There is plenty of categorical listing of good and bad guys – US, Israel are good guys, Arabs – BAD! Europeans – not too good. All these simplistic allusions get to you at times. Anyhow they are too superficial to really affect you. A lot of heavy tracts of ancient manuscripts are thrown in to make you feel you dealing with serious history. There is a Dan Brown like chase for clues and links that ONLY Cotton Malone is able to decode.

How Sweet!

Now that reminds me of the horribly cheesy ending of Superman II, the Christopher Reeve one (Mind you, I liked the movie). The trio of Zod, Ursa and Non are vanquished, the world is set right. The President of the US is restored to the ‘throne’ of the free world. Supe comes flying in, resplendent in his eye blinding blue suit with the red undie and brings back the top of the White House with the flag with was blown away by bad man. Dhan Tan Na! Superman is here and all is well with the world.

As an aside, I really like the Indian politicians who are so obviously bad, they are human! In books like these, the President of USA is depicted as some kind of an un-impeachable hero. Almost like royalty.

Though this book is better written than the Dan Brown ones, I must say I liked Da Vinci Code better than this. At least he kept the Prez out of it and turned it into a genuine thriller.

The top dog in this genre is undoubtedly Umberto Eco with his The Name of the Rose; these two gentlemen don’t even come close.

Two by Anne Bronte

2009-09-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

The more said about the Bronte sisters is less. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a classic, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is likewise, a classic. However the two books by Anne Bronte are often overlooked. She outlived her most illustrious sister, Emily, by a year, dying at the young age of twenty-nine. In her lifetime she wrote only two books, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Even with my avid readings I have not read the other books by Charlotte – Vilette, Professor and Shirley – mainly because I was ignorant about them. These books and Anne’s books were not readily available at my school library, where I read most of my classics. Recently, a friend of mine (Vani) visited my house and was struck by the amount of books I had. She had been gifted a number of books that were lying unread by her and offered to lend them to me. Never the one to look a book-gift horse in the mouth, I agreed. She offloaded a stack of books on to me and I was charmed to find amongst them The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

I began reading the book and was struck immediately by the way the book avoided the ‘Gothic’ and the ‘Romantic’ traps that were so typical of Victorian novelists. I was refreshed by her normal, colloquial use of language, the simple unassuming style. In fact I read the title page once more to check if the novel had been abridged, and hence simplified, but it was not. Let me outline the plot a little. I had assumed that the Tenant of Wildfell Hall was some Rochester/Heathcliff like creature, prowling amongst great halls full of angst. But this tenant is a mysterious lady called Mrs Helen Graham who is dressed in widow’s weeds and has a little son. She makes her living by selling paintings and seems to be a gentle lady who has fallen on ill days. The parish is abuzz with the new arrival and families start visiting the lady, eager to make acquaintance of her. She seems friendly but a bit standoffish. Her great beauty wins her admirers among the men, which in turn angers their former beaus. Some women are struck with jealousy and spread rumors about her character. It is then revealed that Helen is in fact on the run from an abusive husband, Huntingdon, and is trying to bring up her son away from his harmful influence. What happens to Helen, and how her past is revealed is the rest of the story.

The story was set in Regency and was based on the various young squires (some say the wicked Bronte brother, Branwell was the model) who led degenerate lives, going on wild drinking binges and hunting. Along with this, hitting on each others wives was also a great sport for them. The gentler wives were obviously distressed by the events. To add to their misery, the law was stringent for women. They had no identity or existence without their husbands, could not own money or property independent of them. They could not leave their husbands without their consent, nor claim custody of their children. In such a background the mystery with which Helen Huntingdon has to surround herself is necessary, and the step she had taken was seen as unusually bold for those times. Anne invests strong characteristics in Helen and creates a character of great strength and beauty. Her characters spring out of the book, quite like the one’s created by Charles Dickens. She describes the landscapes beautifully. Her greatest strength however, is her graphic presentation of the society. She is able to bring to life the equally the degenerate lifestyle of Huntingdon and his friends and the family lives of the gentleman farmers that dwell around Wildfell Hall. Her humor is gentle and satirical like her famous predecessor Jane Austen. She is like a bolder and a more decisive version of Jane Austen. While her sisters content themselves with presenting just the lives of Heathcliff, Linton and Earnshaw on one hand and just Rochester and Rivers on the other, Anne meticulously draws the portrait of several families near Wildfell Hall. We learn of the mating rituals of the young and fashionable when Helen is young and is being courted by several gentlemen. Likewise, we learn about the married lives of several people when Helen marries Huntingdon and starts living with him. She gives us valuable snapshots of various lives.

All people who habitually read Victorian or pre Victorian authors like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte among them, should read Anne Bronte too and not treat her like a ‘lesser’ Bronte (a fault I was prone to).

At home I was reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall and at work I downloaded her only other book, Agnes Grey. Agnes Grey lists in useful and entertaining detail the travails of a young girl who works as a governess for two families. The book is supposed to be drawn on her own experiences in a couple of households as a governess. Agnes is a young gentlewoman fallen on hard times. But her betters in wealth treat her no better than a servant and often heap abuse on her, neglect her and inflict her with spoilt children. However, she meets a cute curate and the story ends happily. This book is very slim and not ridden with any lengthy digressions that often mar the classics of that age. She goes deep into the psychology of the character and describes their feelings in great detail. She also describes the environs almost photographically and brings the scene alive to us.

The only fault of this work is extreme piety and often correct-to-the-point-of-harshness attitude of the heroine. She allows no levity to the children and young girls, and often follows the story through to make the reader realize that the girls suffered in later due to some frivolity of theirs in young age.

If I compare both the books, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, her second work, is much better. The story is gripping and the female characters are very strong. In face of Huntingdon’s dissipation, Helen seems too correct, but that is the fault of the times. The character of Helen grows from a skittish young girl to a fine woman who is very sure of herself. When she finds love again, she is not afraid of revealing her true feelings and ends up practically proposing to the young man. Again, like Agnes Grey, Tenant of the Wildfell Hall is a slim book and does not put in any story elements that are unnecessary. Her realistic, flourish-less language is a delight to read even in these times. Indeed she writes more like Anne Austen than Anne Bronte. But she has to be lauded for sticking to her convictions and writing the way she did, so apart from the more romantic style of her sisters. With a will like hers and a talent like hers, who knows what beautiful stories she would have turned out, had she lived longer.

About Planet eBook and Our Free Classic Literature eBook

2009-09-02T19:40:00.001-07:00

About Planet eBook and Our Free Classic Literature eBook

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How Green Was My Valley

2009-08-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Some books, I am sure, seek you out.

I had gone to this second hand bookshop on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was browsing through the books. Actually I was hoping to get some old romances which abound in these shops. Some Georgette Hayer, some Nora Roberts, a bestseller or two, pulp fiction. I did pick up Jackie Collins' Hollywood Husbands, ok, mission accomplished partially. Some more digging and I come across a collected works of Sherlock Holmes, great. And then this book by Richard Llewellyn falls into my hands.

Years ago, sometime in the 80s, Doordarshan (god bless it) used to show award winning (or acclaimed) films on late nights fridays. I was about to snooze off when I saw the start credits rolling for the movie How Green Was My Valley. A few scenes and sleep was far away from my eyes. I watched the movie mesmerised. I had absolutely no idea (as there was no google then) that this was a movie adaptation of an acclaimed book.

As was the movie so was the book. One chapter into it, and I was hooked. Llewellyn recreates life in a mining town in Wales with simplicity and candor. We get to know about a respectable family of Morgans. The father, Gwilym Morgan, the mother Beth and several brothers and sisters of the narrator Huw Morgan. The father is a true patriarch who holds his family together and plays an important role in the community. The mother is, likewise a matriarch who is able to manage her home and hearth well and keep a hospitable table.

The life in this family and the little community is ideal as long as all the members are able to stick to their roles. In such a perfect state, the little village can rival Eden. The local pastor Gruffydd is an able mentor to his folk. Even the owner of the mines, Mr Evans is not too inclined to greed and pays his men good wages. In such a scenario, the valley is beautiful and green despite the mining. The accidents in the mines are fewer, the people less ambitious, more god fearing and happy.

Soon, fissures start appearing in this Eden. Fear of exploitation by the owners bring in the Union which in turn makes the owners more wary. The new owners are greedy and want to dig more without a care for the environment, making the slag heaps rise higher. There are more accidents and women and children are suddenly made vulnerable by the rising deaths. People start leaving the village in search of a better future. The close knit little community crumbles.

This is backdrop in which little Huw grows up, and loves to distraction. He does not want to change this way of life and wants the Eden of childhood intact.

We can feel the love with which the pretty portrait of a conventional life in a little Wales village is drawn. Like Huw, we want it to remain as it is, quaint and lovely. We want to see his father and brothers marching in home from the colliery covered in soot and rubbing it all off with a bath of hot water. Sitting down to a hearty meal with the pastor and later singing Welsh songs in their hearty voices. We want to see Bronwen, his beloved sister-in-law, happy in her domestic life with Ivor. His sister Angharad peeping out of the window to take a look at Mr. Gruffydd, hoping he would return her passion. Little Huw who finds love of his own when he takes Ceinwen over the hills.

It is a novel of epic proportions. I have found that the Huw Morgan saga continues in 3 more books by the same author. I hope I find these books too somewhere.

The movie - Superlative.
The book - of course more detailed and super-superlative.

Warning - I am devouring books these days.

Time is nothing !

2009-08-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

It has been my fortune to read two wonderful novels in the recent times. Novels that have excited and challenged me. Both the novels play with Time. One is a scholarly research into the past of a fictional poet couple, another about a fictional creature who is at the mercy of Time. Past and present are required to be blended seamlessly in both these novels.

Possession by AS Byatt was gifted to me by a blogger friend who I had the privilege of meeting. One chapter into it and I was hooked. It was about a research scholar Roland Mitchell who comes upon a letter hitherto undiscovered from a Victorian Poet (fictional) Randolph Henry Ash to some unknown woman. I have done a year of MA English Literature and am quite familiar with the tracts of texts that delve into the personal life of writers, trying to find clues to their genius. It seems voyeuristic and thrilling at the same time. I have read scholars who tried to decode who the 'dark lady' was that Shakespeare mentions in his sonnets. I can imagine how such a letter would throw scholars like these into a tizzy. So it is. Roland keeps the letter a secret while he tries to unravel the mystery behind it. RH Ash had an unblemished personal life and this hint of extra marital romance is sure to create waves in the literary world. As Roland has a hunch that the lady in question is Christabel LaMotte, he has to take Dr Maud Bailey into confidence as she is the one who knows all there is to know about the Victorian poetess who was thought to be a lesbian.

Together Maud and Roland try to piece the story of the Victorian lovers together, like stalkers from another age they try to follow the steps of the past lovers. They cannot keep their stealth for long as established scholars can sniff out that this couple is up to something. More people get sucked into the story till it becomes a delightful, almost comic, free for all.

The book operates on many levels, it is a work of astounding scholarship, as AS Byatt creates two poets and also a body of their work. It is also a gentle sweet stabbing satire on scholars who get too voyeuristic and too meddling and too digging at times in trying to discover all about their favorite authors. It is also a story of a love of great depth unearthed gradually and lovingly recreated. There is a romantic tension between the two scholars Maud and Roland as well, and they find themselves shedding their inhibitions and bonding as they journey along the path of the lovers past. It is a mystery too, as secrets spill out of Victorian closets. It even has a twist in the end.

A magnificent book to be savored again and again.

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffnegger was recommended to me by
Couchpapaya many times over. When I saw the trailer of the movie that was based on the book, I knew it was time to read it. I received the book from flipkart on thursday the 12th of August, 2009 I read one chapter and was immediately hooked. I devoured the book by late last night, 14th August, 2009. The title of this blog is a quote from the book.

A BIG RECKLESS NOVEL.. UTTERLY CONVINCING says a blurb in the back by Daily Telegraph.

So True.

How can I describe this book? It is so bold and original and so sure footed. Henry DeTamble is a time traveller. His body gets pulled into different time zones by its own accord, and the experience is not pleasent. He arrives naked in a spot that is not always of his choosing, he has to forage for money and clothes and survive till the time he is pulled back. He has to maintain a strict regimen about his time travels and be very moral. He will not use (except for a few notable exceptions) his time travel for profit, nor does he reveal the future too often to the 'straight' travellers. His concern is how to lead a normal life despite his digressions. Clare is sucked into his world when she is six years old and Henry is 36, he knows things about her that she doesnt and he knows he has to be very patient with her. It is like a love story that is constantly travelling back and forth into time. He knows their love will endure and she has to believe it, have faith in him.

The book is carefully dated and timed to make the reader realise at what point in time they are. It is easy to feel disoriented in a book like this, but Niffnegger is sure footed and you travel with her, eyes open, taking in each marvel. Henry has to keep fit, running miles everyday to be able to survive when he arrives in a different time zone, buck naked and vulnerable. He has to learn how to pick locks and steal, passing time sometimes in jail. Similarly Clare has to keep faith, learn to fend for herself when she finds Henry missing. She has to get on with her life and keep her body and soul together.

As I read this book, I was reminded of Possession that I read earlier, and realising that these two books really challenged me. My cup of happiness was filled to the brim when I saw a quote from AS Byatt in the middle of the Niffnegger book. It proabably wont make any sense out of context, but here is a part of the quote anyway.

This is always where I have been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything else ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those times are running elsewhere.

Incidently, both the books have been made into movies. Possession stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as the scholars and Jeremy Northram and Jennifer Ehle as the Victorian poets. The Time Traveller's Wife will star Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. I have not seen either of these. TTW is yet to release and Possession can perhaps be found on DVD if I look for it. If I do watch the movies, I will surely write about them as well. But I do wonder how stories with such 'scapes can be made into films.

Hollywood Husbands - Jackie Collins

2009-08-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

I grabbed this book from the second hand book store. Its been a long time since I indulged in a bit of lit-trash. I have read a couple of her books earlier, Lucky and Hollywood Wives.

Jackie has this trademark style. She introduces several strands of stories at the outset, linking the characters in some way. For instance, in this book, there are three friends who struggled together once upon a time in Hollywood. Jack Python is rich and successful as TV talk show host. He is handsome and scores easily with women. He is dating Clarissa, a noted film actress and is thinking of settling down with her. Howard Solomon is a studio CEO and starlets love to dance at his whims. He is married to Poppy but wishes to play the field. Mannon Cable is a filmstar married to beautiful girl, but still years for his ex-wife Whitney Valentine. Jack Python has an older sister called Silver who has just bounced back from a total washout stage to being the top star on a TV show. She is single and despite being in the late forties, can pick and choose. She has a daughter called Heaven and they do not get along. Heaven is living with her grandfather. Her uncle Jack looks after her well. On the other hand, a famous model Jade has just moved to LA from New York. Wes Money is a bartender and drug runner, he is a survivor and a real man. All these fates are intertwined.

Oh.. there is a side plot of a psychotic killer on the loose. The novel gives us tantalising glimpses of her background and the people she has done away with, making them look like accidents. The reader is kept guessing about her identity. All we know is someone is gonna pay....

In typical Jackie style, we get a quick character sketch of all couples in the first couple of chapters, we get to know their agli pichli. What the chars have been doing and where they are headed. Then the story starts, things happen to this of that person, the story moves ahead. Some chars get together and make violent love. Some chars fall into a flashback, some cheat, some break up, some meet and fall in love and all that jazz.

Jackie Collins tries to be brash and brave and shocking. Errr maybe at one time she was. Now she aint. Despite her characters trying hard to be bad, they wind up being good. Even a drug sniffling, ass-licking, wife cheating b**tard like Howard whimpers tamely by the time the book is to end. Silver falls in love ... jeez ! Wes Money turns straight (in his dealings - his orientation is straight right from the start). All the husbands turn seedha sada at the end.

What Jackie is, is a good read. Her books are racy, fluffy, frothy. Good for airports. I hardly ever fly, but there are times when I feel I am waiting at an airport. When I am home, I am just whiling time till I am back to the kitchen for dinner, or off to sleep, or doing some other chore. Jackie is a perfect read for the waiting period.

She likes to draw a strong character that reminds you of someone in the entertainment business. So Silver is drop dead glamourous and talented and a diva like - say - Marilyn Monroe. Clarissa is a serious actor in the mold of Susan Sarandon or Meryl Streep. Mannon Cable is like Clark Gable (hey it rhymes even ! ). So while aam readers like us dont know these people intimately, we know through gossip rags the kind of things they do. So whatever Jackie tells us about them seems believeable.

Racy Fun and Glamourous. Thats what the book is !

Two - By Truman Capote

2009-06-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

It was the movie Capote that introduced the writer Truman Capote to me. It was a no-holds-barred view, showing the warts of the writer in full. I did a bit of research on the author and discovered that, besides the acclaimed In Cold Blood he had written the famous Breakfast at Tiffany's too. I was floored. I had no idea that the famous iconic movie was a book. Following my usual keeda about reading the book and watching the movie (Atonement, Slumdog M, Love Story, Gone with the Wind and many others I cant remember right away), I ordered the books right away.

Breakfast at Tiffany's:

Holly Golightly is a socialite, to put it politely. She tried her hand at a film career with little success, though the foray groomed her to behave like some hi-fi princess instead of poor trash that she really is. Now she does what she is best at, escorting rich and famous men. They provide her with some immediate social and financial security. Not for her the ruminations on what she will do when her looks fade. She is ridiculously young - just in her late teens, not an age when girls worry about what comes next. The sweep of her ambition is to marry someone rich so she can have what she wishes for.

Paul, the author who moves into the apartment above her discovers that she is a delightful person. She is sweet, caring and totally bindas. She lives in the moment and almost nothing shakes her.

I am not sure whether I can discuss the end where the book and movie make significant departures, but all I will say is that there is no romantic angle between the author and the girl in the book.

The Poet and the Prostitute is a common theme in literature. The assumption is that only the poet has the sensitivity to see beneath the surface and look at the woman in a prostitute (Pyasa). Other men are merely consumers, who look at the goods on offer and take their pick. They will screw the prostitute and take home the pristine to be a wife. Rarely will they stop to ponder at the prostitute in the wife (who will marry only for material benefits) or the pristine in the prostitute (who has a soul that is untouched by the material).

Holly Golightly is so alive, so beautiful, so fragile, so lively that she captures our imagination. Luckily for us, she is played by the incomparable Audrey Hepburn in the movie. Despite the differing fates she has in the book and the movie, she is still the best girl ever !

In Cold Blood

This novel has interesting origins. Truman Capote, already an acclaimed author, looking for new subjects to write upon, chanced upon a 300 word article in The New York Times about the multiple murder of a farmer's family in Holcomb, Kansas. This prompted Capote to go to Holcomb for some ground research on the story. He had a feeling it would make good material for a book. He took along his childhood friend Harper Lee to help him out. Lee and Capote met everyone in Holcomb and took first person accounts of the murdered family, Clutter. Capote also closely followed the progress of case by Alvin Dewey, who was investigating the crime. Subsequently, Dewey and his team nabbed the criminals, Smith and Hickock and trials began. The prosecution had the case neatly sewed up as they had formal confessions and all the evidence in place. As anticipated, the criminals were sentenced to hang till death.

Capote started speaking to the criminals and went into their backgrounds, talking to their family as well. He had material all ready for the book, but had not yet written a word.

However, this is just the background of the book. This is all revealed in the film Capote.

The novel states the details of the crime, traces the criminals, the work done by the KBI. Despite being a true story, it reads like a fictional thriller. It ends with a usual epilogue that tells what the surviving characters of the book (some of the citizens of Holcomb) did after the affair was over. What makes the book so effective is the fact that it is a true story. That feeling stays with you throughout the reading of the novel. Like a master craftsman, Capote keeps you engrossed in a story that you already know and on tenterhooks for an end that you already know. It the facts that you dont know, the little things, about the characters that add to the basic story and make the book so readable. At the end of the reading, the cut-out characters of the drab newspaper reports, the Clutters, Dewey, Nancy's boyfriend Bobby Rupp, her best friend, Susan are turned into people with flesh and blood, people who you may know. Christ, Bobby Rupp and Susan could yet be alive.

Truman Capote :

It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.

Capote was an abandoned child, he grew up at the mercy of various relatives in Alabama. He was a childhood friend of Harper Lee and appeared in her novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" as Dill. Right from an early age, 11, he wrote stories and got them published too. He lived his life kingsize, a toast of the social scene in New York, a braggart (Dill was a braggart too and it seems he kept the habit as he grew up), not humble, enjoyed running others down, used people to further his own ends. Okay ! All said and done, an amazing writer. He is extremely surefooted with his stories, telling us things at their proper place, not a minute later or sooner. It is almost as if he can visulize his story, map it mentally, and put things right where they belong. Writing is a craft as much as art, and requires blood and sweat. But you need talent for this craft to turn it into art. Some people just have it. Truman Capote was one.

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

The above quote has been pulled out of Wikipedia, because it illustrates his writing so well. Only a true author can be dispassionate about his own experiences, and make it seem as if it happened to someone else. In Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is a compilation of some short stories, there is a very personal story about Truman Capote and a crazy aunt who he grew up with, called A Christmas Memory. At no point in the story do you feel it has anything to do with Capote. The story is like a portrait of a poor trash disadvantaged old lady who is determined to live life on her own terms. And, at the begining of the collection, we have a similar story of a pretty young poor girl, Holly Golightly, who is determined to live life on her own terms. It is as if the writer can sense the spirit in people, whether they are beautiful and young or old and decrepit. In Cold Blood gives us the workings of the mind of criminals, how ordinary they seem, and the triggers that set them off that make them commit crimes on an impulse.

A magnificent writer, he should be on the shelf of all book afficionados.

Under a Bell Jar

2009-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

It can be both beautiful and terrifying to look inside a human soul

I think this was said by DH Lawrence. It is hard to show someone the insides of your soul. Do we dare? Not me. Not one person in the whole world know all about me. We have been trained from childhood onwards to put out only a bright good face to the world and keep our demons to ourselves.

Sylvia Plath, the extraordinary poet, dared to show the world her demons by writing a book about her early days of grappling with mental illness in her first and only novel - The Bell Jar. The protogonist of the novel is Esther, a girl from a small New England town who has studied on scholarships and got straight A's all her life. It starts with her internship at a fashion magazine in New York with 11 other girls from eclectic backgrounds. For the girls, it is a step forward into life, to be able to live in New York for a month at the expense of a magazine.

"I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean."
Fever The Collected Poems [Sylvia Plath].

This novel that begins on a note of hope and a promise of a life well spent soon disintegrates as a sensitive Esther is not able to cope with the hurts of life. She can cope with studies and papers and excel at them, but life terrifies her. Soon the month is up and she is back at her small town, with her mother and steps into her first deep depression, followed by an attempt to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

"Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call."
Lady Lazarus [Sylvia Plath].

Death eludes her and she finds herself put into a variety of mental institutions. This was the early '50s when electric shocks and unsympathetic doctors actually complicated the state of the patients' mental health. However, after a couple of bad hospitals, Esther's treatment at a swanky mental resort is sponsored by a philanthropic woman.

Even when her mental state is at an ebb, Esther does not stop experiencing life. We all do it, but are not sensitised enough to feel each moment. That is a gift given to Esther - to feel each moment of her life as it walks past her. She gets into the details of her life with Buddy, her boyfriend, her first witnessing of a childbirth, her blank outs, her curious relationship with Joan- who seems more of an alter-ego or a shadow- than a childhood friend. Her detailing is so perfect that you are let into her murky world and she does not spare you the torture she went through. It is like an autopsy of a soul.

"A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then—"
Black Rook in Rainy Weather[Sylvia Plath].

Such achingly beautiful lines these are. And the novel too, is full of her quiet gift for words, not flamboyant, but precise and perfect. Kafkaesque - yes, that is term I would use for it, especially as Sylvia Plath seems to start, in terms of timeline, right where Kafka left off.

The novel is also described as a feminist tract because of Esther's rejection of traditional woman's role of marrying and keeping house and having children. In the current times it seems as if Esther was merely trying to assert her individuality in times when it was anachronistic to do so. She was woman ages ahead of her times, one of the catalysts for change, no wonder she is still an icon for a thinking woman.

This above line should be end of this blog with my tribute to all budding writers - especially bloggers - in Slyvia's words. But I wish to discuss just one more thing. I have read about the first sexual experience of another writer as well, Han Suyin. Interestingly, Han Suyin describes a void she felt after her first sex, a nothingness. Sylvia leads us into a realm of pain and hemorrage. It is almost as it they want to cut out the passion that lead up to it, and reject any feminine impulses they felt at the moment. I feel that is what the feminist writers missed out on in their literature, in an attempt to reject all feminine myths, they rejected their own femininity. But I guess, at that time, it was necessary to do that to bring about the change. And for that, all women have to be grateful to them. It is because of their sacrifices that we are able to vote, claim right to be educated alongside men, some of us can lead degenerate lives, be single mothers, marry lesbian lovers, heck, just be ourselves.

"Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."
Mushrooms [Sylvia Plath].

These lines are for all my fellow bloggers ! Our tribe multiplies as we talk, our foot is in the door.

Ryan Adams singing Sylvia Plath

An Ode to Edward Lear - Which explains why I selected this Template !

2009-04-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

Edward Lear Home Page
The Owl and the
Pussycat

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Good Things Come in Small Packages

2009-02-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

It was a chance meeting. Smita was passing through Chandigarh enroute Mumbai and the train was stopping for 20 mins here. We met on the railway platform and chatted like old friends, turning our virtual friendship into a real one so easily, you would have thought we knew each other forever. 20 mins was too less, but we have to be thankful for such chances to meet. There was an exchange of books between two book-lovers before the train pulled out. Smita, it was awesome to meet you and your hair really looks good with the red glints.

The Flight of Pigeons is a book set in the times of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. A pathan Javed Khan is struck by the fresh beauty of a very young Anglo-Indian girl Ruth Labrador. A few days later, the mutineers strike Shahjehanbad where Ruth lives with her parents. Her father is struck dead and Ruth is taken in by a kind Indian acquaintance, Lala Amarnath along with her cousins, aunt, granny and mother. Javed Khan is hunting for Ruth, and manages to track her down. He takes Ruth and her mother to his home and declares his intention of marrying the girl. Ruth is terrified of being wooed so roughly by this savage. She is lucky to have her mother protecting her. Miriam Labrador is the daughter of an Indian Muslim and a British man. She is well versed in urdu and the muslim ways, thanks to her mother. She is extremely resourceful and well spoken. She is able to act tough and speak softly as the occasion demands. She is hard pressed to preserve her daughter against the decent but unwelcome attentions of Javed Khan.

Miriam uses the uncertain temperory victory of the mutineers as a reason for not agreeing to Javed Khan's proposal. If Delhi Falls, she will be yours, she says. Luckily for Ruth, Delhi does not fall. Her mother's sagacity saves the girl from a certain ruin.

Like most Novella's of Ruskin Bond, this book is slim. Like most books by Ruskin Bond, it is powerpacked with a terrific story, amazing style and language. The backdrop of Sepoy Mutiny, with its merciless killings, mercenary nawabs and caught-on-the-wrong-foot English rulers is brought out just perfect. Javed Khan, Kothiwali, Miriam are characters that live long after the book is closed. The impatience, impudence and imprudence of Javed Khan. The wise old Kothiwali and her gaggle of womenfolk who love to bond over festivals. The savvy Miriam who is able to turn a bad situation into a tolerable one.

I loved this peek into history. It reminds me that pre-independence India was really a conglomerate of various provinces misruled by lazy, greedy nawabs and the subjects quite opressed. The mutiny was an additional reason for these nawabs to kill and plunder in an attempt to fatten their own treasuries. The British used underhand methods to wrest power from the provincial rulers, but they did give India some form of formal governance.

This superbook is a classic and was turned into a wonderful movie called Junoon starring Shashi Kapoor as the tempestous Javed Khan, Jennifer Kapoor as Miriam and Nafisa Ali as Ruth. Ruth has little to do in the book but look good and be scared. But in the movie, Nafisa quite stole the show with her lovely schoolgirl looks. The movie is as good as the book. Both not to be missed.

I read the book in one go on Sunday, it is simply unputdownable. Thanks ! Smita.. and the title refers to you ;)

Q & A - Vikas Swarup

2008-12-25T07:58:00.000-08:00

I got curious about this book after I read about Slumdog Millionaire, an award winning movie by Danny Boyle. It was supposed to be based on the book by Vikas Swarup.

Ram Mohammed Thomas is an orphan, abandoned as a newborn by his mother outside an orphanage. He is lucky to fall into the hands of a priest who is the best father he could have had. But an unfortunate chain of events force him to lead an eclectic life, trying to survive his circumstances. However the good thing is, his experiences give him enough knowledge to be able to win the biggest prize ever in a quiz show.

The format of the story is interesting. Right at the first, Ram Mohammad is arrested for cheating in the quiz show he has just finished filming. The show has not been aired yet. He is bailed out by a young lawyer, Smita, who is willing to save his skin if he can prove he did not cheat. Ram tackles each question and shows Smita how his an experience at some stage in his life helped him learn an answer to each question. The story is meaty and goes forward quite easily.

What makes the book so pedestrian is the lacklustre style. It is the most unbeautiful language I have read in recent times. Even some crappy chicklit I read a while back was decently styled compared to this. I wish Vikas Swarup had taken some help, I dont think he lacked any. Surely it was his clout as an Ambassador to whereever that helped him in getting his book published in the first place.

Apart from the crappy language, at times the episodes seem a bit jerky, but I suspect, had the style been better, the jerkiness would have been ironed out.

It is a pity, because the idea is good. Ram Mohammed Thomas is an everyman sort of a fellow. His nomadic lifestyle, and exposure to different homes help him absorb knowledge. For instance, it is from his stint in the home of an Ambassador that he learns the Australian lingo, and also the meaning of the term persona non grata. It is from his stint as a servant of a famous but faded filmstar that he learns which movie won her the national award for best actress.

Alas Alas !

Now what remains to be seen is Slumdog Millionaire and whether it is any good.

The most recommended books of 2008

2008-12-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

47 Most recommended books of 2008

1984 by George Orwell (4 recommendations) :
No

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter (4 recommendations) :
x

The Bible by multiple authors (4 recommendations)
yes, the language is good. but gets tiresome at times with all the begats.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (3 recommendations) :
I tried to read this.. couldnt !

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (3 recommendations) :
I saw the movie

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (3 recommendations) :
ew

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (3 recommendations) :
x

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (3 recommendations) :
One of my most frequently read books, and one of the most beloved.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (3 recommendations) :
x

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3 recommendations) :
yes .. serious reading..

Animal Liberation by Peter Singer (2 recommendations)
x

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (2 recommendations) :
oh yes, influenced me tremendously.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (2 recommendations)
yes...

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2 recommendations)
oh yes.. its a classic.by an old master

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (2 recommendations)
wo.. of course, a fab book

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (2 reccos)
This I can try

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (2 recommendations)
x
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (2 recommendations)
x
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (2 recommendations)
x
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (2 recommendations)
x
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2 recommendations)
yes I did read..

Paradise Lost by John Milton (2 recommendations)
bits of it.. very strong prose..

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (2 recommendations)
of course, a slim book. very hippie. anyone who was living in the 70s will remember the pics of a resplendent and bare breasted Simi Garewal

The Art Of War by Sun Tzu (2 recommendations)
x

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (2 recommendations)
Yes, read

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (2 recommendations)
no, alas

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (2 recommendations)
oh yes. i liked atlas shrugged better

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (2 recommendations)
x

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2 recommendations)
oh yes yes yes.. whatta a romance

The Histories by Herodotus (2 recommendations)
x

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (2 recommendations)
Not to be missed. A must read by any human who plans to hitchhike through the galaxy in near future.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (2 recommendations)
A prequel to the Lord of the Rings, and very wonderful, warmer than LOTR

The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer (2 recommendations)
in bits n pieces.. again.. when an ancient master recites, you can but listen in awe.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (2 recommendations)
x

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (2 recommendations)
x
The Republic by Plato (2 recommendations)
x
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (2 recommendations)
x
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (2 recommendations)
x
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2 recommendations)
x ( i read candide though)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (2 recommendations)
I wish to.. I wish to

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2 recommendations)
x
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (2 recommendations)
I think I did

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (2 recommendations)
Oh.. absolutely. The books is like a bible.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (2 recommendations)
yes, a boys adventure

Ulysses by James Joyce (2 recommendations)
noo, has anyone tried stream of conciousness literature?

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (2 recommendations)
no but i can try.. seeing its thoreau

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (2 recommendations)
oh yes.. absolutely the best book ever, second only to Anna Karenina

Thanks to Smita for forwarding me this list. Any of my readers are welcome to make their additions and leave a link please. or discuss in the comments section - anytime.. even if the post is years late.

Make way for the Monkey - Life and Times of Altu Faltu by Ranjit Lal

2008-11-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

How do I write about a book that captivated me, let me count the ways.

I could say the book is delightful, funny and amazing and still feel I have not said enough. These adjectives sound jaded and used. I could hit the thesaurus site to look for better words, but they would feel too high flown. There were passages in the book that made me laugh out loud, but most times the laughter rumbled deep in my stomach, as I recognised characters in the book from real life, and their idiosyncrasies that are so well brought out.

I could say the writing style is unassuming, fresh and very very functional. By which I mean there are no linguistic flourishes here meant to show off the writers superior vocabulary, that when he writes a passage it serves to highlight an event or detail to its best. It does not mean the language is not lyrical, it is, but not all the time which means at no time does the language cloy in your mouth.

Sample this : "The Lodhi Gardens are certainly the most prestigious amongst Delhi's public gardens: if you are rich, famous, bureaucratic and overweight, and live in Central Delhi, that's where you go every morning and evening to vigourously atone for the sin of being fat in a thin country. The gardens, built around the solid, solemn tombs of the Sayyids and Lodhis, are beautifully laid out with pleasent undulating lawns, tall, dark and handsome trees, rainbow beds of flowers (especially in February and March) and a curving waterway where kingfishers flash and egrets fish."

The story? Well it is about Altu Faltu, a skinny monkey who has chosen to while away his days lounging around the Hindu Rao College and is addicted to cough linctus. For some reason Rani-beti, a princess of the Falstaff clan has fallen for him, and Altu Faltu finds his lazy days change. You see Chaudhray Rai Bahadur Charbi Saheb has not taken kindly to his daughter flirting with such a wastrel. The love story of Altu-Faltu the bekar bander of the hazel eyes and Rani-beti the pretty princess with golden eyes and pixie ears is played out on the background of political turmoil, social upheaveals and WAR between various factions of monkey tribes for supremacy. Religion is also mixed with politics when Swami Palang Tode the wise monkey appears on the scene. Sex can never be far away when life abounds with so much vigour. From the pretty bandaris of the Khyber Pass Massage Parlour to concubines and multiple wives, there are plenty of interfering females here to change the course of simian history.

What is the most endearing feature of the book? The names given to the characters and places. Apart from the Chaudhry Charbi Singh, there are his wives named - Bibi-ek, Bibi-do and Bibi-teen whose goings on would put the harem of a Mughal court to shame. Then there is monkey Leechad who wishes to curry favour with the Chaudhry so he could close to the beautiful Bibi-do. There is Brigadier who is ever-ready for war, Chamkili of the beautiful smile, the Kacha Banian Gang run by Kacha and Banian the supari monkeys, Ghungroo the nautch monkey.

On a serious note, the book is a marvellous and a gentle satire on our life and times. Although we may be tempted to call it the modern Panchtantra, it is never ever preachy like those ancient fables. The author is a faithful historian, not a pontificating one.

In these times of shit-lit, when you can print a book faster than a monkey grabbing a sweet off your hands, it is a wonder to come across such an unassuming author, who published such a masterpeice. Ranjit Lal the author is a famous naturalist. His new book on the wildlife of Delhi has just come out.

Here is what Roli Books has to say about him : "Ranjit Lal was born in Calcutta in 1955, and educated in Mumbai, graduating in economics and sociology. As a freelance writer and columnist, he has over a thousand articles, short stories, features and photo-features published in over fifty newspapers and magazines in India and abroad. He has special interest in areas like natural history, photography, humour, satire and automobiles, on which he writes for both adults and children. He is one of the few Indian journalists to write satire and humour on a sustained basis. He has authored several books including The Crow Chronicles, The Life and Times of Altu Faltu, That Summer at Kalagarh, The Bossman Adventures, Enjoying Birds, Birds of Delhi, Birds from My Window and The Caterpillar Who Went on a Diet and Other Stories and When Banshee Kissed Bimbo. Ranjit Lal lives in Delhi."

The book is magnificent and a must read for lovers of good fiction.

This life of ours

2008-10-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

"He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

Wittingly or not, the sins of our fathers (or mothers) have a bearing on us.

The eldest of eleven siblings, Veermati is owed only one duty, to marry well. Fate decrees otherwise and she finds herself treading rebellious paths. After her death, her daughter reconstructs her life. The novel traces her journey to her ancestral home in Amritsar and the places her mother had lived in, Lahore and Nahan. The setting is Pre-partition to post-partition Punjab and Lahore, when a few women were taking tentative steps towards emancipation. The rest of Punjab was mired in tradition that decreed zero personal freedom for women.

The novel is rich in detail. So rich, that it can effective be used as a reference for the life in those times. The novel is so rich in detail, that it is evocative not only visually, but also aurally.

"And that is how Veermati found herself on a train leaving Amritsar, her feet on her bedroll, her metal box pushed behind it, its lock faintly clinking with the motion of the train."

Coming back to the richness of the detail, if Veermati finds herself working in a school in Nahan, we are first given the history of Sirmaur in brief, the mission and work of the Rajmata who promotes education for girls and institutes a school there, the civil management of the place, and then we are shown the connection between this prestigious institution and Veermati. This detail enhances the story to the level of a piece of history rather than remaining just an account of the life and times of Veermati.

The book is extremely true to its time, not judging any of the characters, just presenting them to us as they are, so that we find ourselves loving them despite their flaws. The way the old ladies speak, always trying to say what they should say, using sugar coated taunts rather then a direct attack, never saying what they really feel. It is all so true and so familiar to me, I who grew up hearing my aunts and her cronies talk like that.

The men are rather in a shade, egoistic and self centered. The spotlight is on the women who are usually in subjugation here. But in a way, even in subjugation, the women are very much in control and strong.

The book is like a beautiful tapestery which might have been woven by Veermati herself for her trosseau. An elegant work by an elegant lady is how I would classify it.

The Hunter of the Light

2008-09-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

Once every nine years the sacred elk runs through Eire and the designated hunter must hunt him before Bealtine Day. This year the task is all the more difficult because Shadow has reared his head and Scaileanna and Orcs are abroad, ravaging the villages that lie in their path. There is also a false hunter who wishes to kill the sacred elk and bring the Light forever to Shadows. The Mighty of Eire, the Midhe and the Sidhe align themselves to fight the Shadow and help the called hunter. For only when the sacred elk dies by the spear of the hunter will the Light survive, and magic still aid Eire.

In this world the poets are deemed the greatest because their words can make or mar a person. Mothers are revered for the far reaching powers they have and the Kings fight lustful for the Glory. The women are not consigned to the hearth, but stand in the forefront as leaders, it is the men who seem to be a step behind. This is the world Blackthorn the bard loves, when he is called to be Hunter of the Light, he knows he has to put all he has into the hunt and succeed at any cost or all Eire will suffer.

This fairy tale charms its way into your heart with references to elves, spells and mighty warriors. It harks upon the times when men walked with fairies and were privy to their secrets. But those were not innocent times, life was hard for all and danger lurked at all bends. It was in these times that nature was at its most beautiful and terrible, and men needed to be true survivors or fall.

The words of the tale are chosen with utmost care by the writer, making sure they maintain the folklore-like tone of the tale. The story never falters, never loses its step. The descriptions are almost cinematic, making the world come alive virtually in your mind. We see the long limbed dark hunter stride through the forest, stalking his prey. We see the evil elves, quick to wreck havoc upon peaceful folks, and the greed in the heart of the false hunter who wishes to rule Eire with the aid of the Shadow. The poet Scatach, dancer Meacan, Mother Liannan, King Niall, Reatach the shape shifter and Cessair the Sidhe warrior, Una, all come alive for us. It also tells us that all will be right with the world if Love prevails, for the relentless hunter Blackthorn is also a true lover, who must race against time to lift the spell on his beloved Roisin Dubh.

This magnificent book is written by Risa Aratyr, though it seems as if the tale has come down from a line of bards, like Iliad. Her vivid prose is worthy of high praise, and the book deserves the kind of success Lord of the Rings has.

How did I come by the book is a story in itself and needs to be told in detail, which I will do soon, I promise.

I have to thank couchpapaya for this award. Her blog is extremely interesting and I look forward to her new posts eagerly. I am supposed to forward this award and all the people on my blogroll deserve it. I admire bloggers because they take time out to express themselves. It is art for art's sake, most times. In my turn, I will confer it on Oxymoronic despite his love for Rakhi Sawant, because I think his posts are highly irreverent, extremely entertaining and often shake you up. He even has a stalker, a fact I envy.

You are right there baby!

2008-08-31T06:05:00.000-07:00

It is a dream situation. Girl writes a blog. Girl catches attention of publishers (Penguin for gods sake). Girl gets a book contract. Hey that is one situation I would love to be a part of. It has happened to a couple of girls (Sonia Felaro , Meenakshi Maadhavan) and I would not mind being a part of the hoo haah going on about chiclet .. errrr chick-lit.

I happened to be in a bookshop on Saturday evening and as the store manager was chasing me around and asking if I needed help, I set him to look for Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's book You are Here. After a bit of rummaging, he found it. The price was reasonable, Rs.199/- so I took it.

I started the book and felt a bit let down. After a preamble that seemed a bit high flying, we got down to the business of Arshi trying to shock conservative readers by admitting to a few vices, namely, drinking, smoking, having sex, some bra talk. Hey girl, been there, done that.

However, the story settles down soon enough and we get to know that Arshi is on a re-bound and has just met a gorgeous guy in a pool party. He aint perfect, but is great. Only Arshi does not know where she stands with him. In the meantime, her friends, Topsy, Esha and Deeksha are coping with issues of their own. Topsy belongs to a conservative Hindu family and is in a clandestine relationship with a nice muslim boy, Fardeen, which is the mother of all NO NO's. Esha is obsessing about Akshay and it is obvious to all he is not really that into her. Deeksha is blissfully on her way to getting married to a gorgeous Canadian guy.

So what is the problem? Problem is that Arshi is not happy about where she is. She has this feeling that she should be doing something else, being with someone else. How she comes to terms with her situation is what this book is all about.

I would not call it the perfect book. There are too many digressions, that really take you away from the story and make you forget where you were. Right in the begining, one minute Arshi is wondering what to wear at a pool party, the next minute the story goes off tangent with Arshi reminiscencing about something else. It happens two or three times. She has repeated the phrase - "rolling of eyes" a bit too often.

If she had stuck to the story, and cut out the meanderings, it would have been much better. After a few initial descriptions of lingerie, probably offered up to pander to male curiosity or maybe female approval (yeah-it-happens-to-me-too), she stopped, thankfully. Despite claims of being slutt-ish, she does not really see so much action, often stopping at making out, which is more 16 than 25.

I liked the way she wound the book up, it was refreshing. It wasnt all fairy tale-ish with the handsome prince riding in, but it was with an admission that fuck-wittage happens to the fuck-witee.

Which is true.

Ava is an intelligent computer ---

2008-08-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Luckily for me I picked up the scintillating Sea of Poppies first. Egged on by my friend Oxymoronic who waxed eloquent about Amitav Ghosh, I made bold to order The Calcutta Chromosome too.

Right in the first chapter I was highly gratified when Ava was introduced. It is not often that I find my namesakes in literature and this one is not merely a woman, she is a computer, a worthy successor to Hal. Ava is an intelligent, interactive computer who is equipped to solve ALL the problems of the world.

The story goes something like this. Antar is some kind of a worker for an insurance firm who need not leave his home. He is (sigh – yeah dream on) connected to work from home. His computer, Ava (sounds lovely eh?) pops up some information at him which intrigues him. He finds himself in pursuit of a colleague Murugan, given up for lost since long. Murugan had been hot on the chase of Dr Ronald Ross who was the person who discovered all about malaria. In his pursuit Murugan had found out that Dr Ross, who had conducted most of his experiments in India, had mysteriously acquired two assistants, Mangala and Krishna. Murugan pursues all the leads relentlessly in his quest for truth, culminating in his disappearance.

The book is full of medical-scientific references, after all it is about malaria. Murugan discovers (thru Ross) that malaria, apart from being fatal in instances, also cured syphilis. And that the fever was not all bad. And that the Indian natives, with their acute observation, had cottoned on to these facts and were in fact, feeding the information to the good doctor. It was the earthy, wise and manipulative natives versus the stupid, easily influenced Brits.

From being a racy, cerebral thriller, the book, towards the end, disintegrated into almost an Alice thru the looking glass finale when all the characters turn into cards and fly at her. I felt a little like Alice myself, lost and puzzled and wondering why the pace picked up so much towards the end, why all the clues were coming so fast towards Murugan, why was he making so many discoveries. I almost drowned in the sea of information and forgot what we were all looking for in the first place, Me and Antar and Murugan and Urmila.

The deep dark seas

2008-07-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

The Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh

Deeti has this vision of a ship, and a premonition that it will play a role in her life in times to come. How can a simple native woman, bound to her lands and her husband forever suddenly find herself on a ship is something she cannot envision. All she does is to tend to her small farm while her husband works in the opium factory.

Zachary has signed on as a cabin boy but finds himself rising through the ranks rapidly till he is the 2nd mate to the captain. He just wants to do his job honestly and make it in life. He is just a man of mixed colour from Baltimore, but finds himself stamped as a white gentleman.

Paulette is the daughter of a deceased Botanist living on charity. Her benefactors dont know that she is more native than the natives and has a brother too.

Pandit Nob Kissin Pandey is an accountant with a mission. He wants to recreate the world of Krishna and has already sighted a person who is the latest avatar of the Lord.

Raja Neel is lord of all he surveys, but he know how precarious his financial position is. What he does not know is the devious means that can easily be used against him to reduce him to the lowest form of human existence.

Mr. Burnham himself indirectly controlling the destiny of all these people though he is just a merchant who wants to makes profit.

How all these people, including Kalua, Heeru, Munia, Serang Ali, Jodu and many others find themselves abroad the Ibis is what constitues the story.

It is the first in the series of a promised trilogy by Amitav Ghosh. In this novel, he traces the background of his character and gives us a hint of what to expect in future.

Amitav paints an unhurried picture of his characters, to make us understand them all the better. We are sent back to the times when British were the masters of the world, thanks to their understanding of the seas. However, it is their cunning nature and adaptability that makes them win the game, again and again. They knew how to set up ruses and use their trump cards. They knew how to make a person feel like a king and then .. suddenly throw him down into the deep abyss of sub-human existence.

They knew how to manipulate the seas and the people.

What do I say about the style of Amitav Ghosh. That is smooth and fine as sweet wine? That there is never an extra word, nor a word less? That he uses the language with the finesse of a master? That he is a devious devilish craftsman who can make us see what he sees?

The book - unputdownable. The next in the series - eagerly awaited.

The Jane Austen Book Club- Karen Joy Fowler

2008-07-08T02:44:00.000-07:00

Karen Joy Fowler's book, The Jane Austen Book Club, came highly recommended by some online reviews. The name and theme was highly tantalising to me, being a huge fan of Jane Austen. I ran around trying to procure the book anyhow. I put in a request at my usual bookshop and soon got a call by them that the book was in stock. Off I went like a rabbit to get the book I had long been dying to read.

No doubt the book is a gem. It is subtly crafted and the Jane Austen references are so subtle and gentle that they may not be there at all. Of all the Jane Austen books, it is the closest to Emma. Which is very nice, as Emma is my favorite as well. I even love the derivative, Clueless.

The book follows the lives of six people who form a book club. Their purpose is to read and discuss the works of Jane Austen. For six months, they meet at the home of each member to read/discuss a book. Their lives superimpose the book club and they go through some changes as they keep meeting.

However, I found the book not all that it was hyped to be. I am quite used to 'slow' fiction, I read Anne Tyler happily and usually love her books. They have a charm which is hard to resist.

For some reason, I found the KJF book a little shallow. Sure, her characters are at some kind of crossroads, but they never really unfurl themselves. They dont walk out of the pages and grip us like the characters of Anne Tyler. Her story goes backward and forward in time, trying to give us an overview of her characters, but despite the intense focus on a character at a time, they never come together for us. Of all her characters, I liked Bernadette the best, but she wasnt allowed any 'action' in the story. The love story proceeds too slowly, in fact the love angle took me by surprise.

Um, as the book was on the bestseller list for a while, may be it was the hype that pushed my expectations too high, or maybe I did not read it in the right frame of mind, but this is my first impression and verdict on this book.

Raj, Bohemian

2008-07-03T03:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a reason why I like Hari Kunzru so much. Click on the title

Rage of Angels

2008-07-02T02:48:00.000-07:00

I knew of Sidney Sheldon as a writer of racy books, mostly bestsellers. It was only later, while watching an episode of 'I dream of Jeannie' that I found Sidney Sheldon was a scriptwriter too. I loved IDOJ and began thinking better of SS. Then I happened to see Rage of Angels on TV as a mini-series. It was well made, with Jaclyn Smith, much younger and slimmer Ken Howard, a very twisted looking Armand Assante. A good cast that performed well too. Ever since, it was 'sorta' on my wishlist.

When I finally laid my hands on it via indiaplaza.in, I read it almost (ahhh .. like in the olden days) at a stretch.

It isnt literature, but it is well written. No wonder, as Sidney probably got a lot of practice writing scripts. It is very well presented and reserched. (Or rather the law-references look authentic enough) The plot is ambitious. The characters are definately interesting. All in all, a very satisfying book.

The plot goes like this - Jennifer Parker arrives in New York, a bright law graduate and is recruited for research by a hot-shot lawyer in middle of his big case. She is used by the defendent, a mafioso - Micheal Moretti to threaten a witness. The hot-shot lawyer loses his case and tries to wreck revenge on the unwitting messenger - Jennifer. He wants her de-barred. But fortunately for Jennifer, the case is handed over to Adam Warner who saves her. A lonely, destitute Jennifer falls hard for Adam. Adam is likewise taken by the beautiful and spunky Jennifer but is married, so he cannot make an 'honest woman' out of her, having an illicit relationship with her instead. On the other hand, Micheal Moretti also falls for Jennifer and pursues her relentlessly until, on a rebound, she gives in to him, and causes a lot of problems for herself.

The book was written in 1980 when evil and good were very black and white. It is easy to see that Adam Warner is absolutely Mr. Right, and were he not married, life would have been a breeze for Jennifer. They would have married, she would have wifed him ably and they would have been a perfect President and First Lady. But alas, Adam married his childhood sweetheart when she lost her father. On top of that, Mary Beth wants all the goodies associated with being a First Lady and will not release her husband. Adam Warner is too much of a gentleman to 'insist' upon divorce, bearing Mary Beth like a cross. In the current scenario, he would be a wimp goody two shoes who could not stand up for the woman he loved, rather than the godly figure he cuts in this novel.

Micheal Moretti is the personification of the devil. In fact Sidney compares him to Satan a couple of times. He is totally unapologetic about his business, sneering at the corporate types and says they are 'saintly' because they arent caught. He mentions to Jennifer that she uses devious means to win her cases for bad people at times, so what is wrong with fighting his cases. Jennifer is quite taken in by his reasoning and is smitten by his passionate love-making.

Too bad the novelist chose the beaten path of punishing the ungodly at the end of the novel. If it had been written in current times when the morality is more ambivalent, it could have been an interesting blurring of common perceptions of what is good and what is bad.

"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," Sidney Sheldon explained in a 1982 interview. "I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter."

Yes, the old man knew how to write and made pots of money too - writing similar unputdownables.

Narnia! in books and also The Problem of Susan..

2008-05-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

I still remember where the set of Narnia books were kept. In a cupboard in the dining room, all stacked up in order. I was not more than 13 then. I picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The three things appear in a reverse order in the book. We see the magical wardrobe first. Lucy, the youngest of the four Pevensie children sent out of London to escape the bombings during the IInd World War, discovers the wardrobe first. She finds a magical world behind it, Narnia, where it is perpetually winter. She wanders ahead, comes to the Lamp Post and runs into the faun Tumnus who entertains her for the afternoon and drops her back to the Lamp Post. Next to appear is the White Witch, the terrible ruler of Narnia. Edmund is bewitched by her and promises to bring all his brothers and sisters to her. The Lion, Aslan, the creator of Narnia, appears in time to restore peace to the magical land.

Charmed by the simple parable, entirely missing the message behind it, I devoured the other 6 books in the order they should be. However, years have passed and only LWW, The Magician's Nephew (which explains the birth of Narnia, and how the wardrobe came to be made), The Horse and his boy and fragments from the The Last Battle remained in my mind. When I found the LWW was being made into a movie, I delved back into some of the books.

However, the movie raked up old memories about the books in the press, and I got to read about the latent symbolism and the criticism heaped on them. The most interesting arguments concerned the The Problem of Susan.

Its like this, in the last book in the series, The Last Battle, all the children who had ever been to Narnia reassemble there, with the exception of Susan. In a flippant statement one child says "She is too interested now in nylons and lipstick and invitations to bother about Narnia.'

This statement became a handle for a lot of arguments about the denial of a sexual/feminine choices allowed to a woman. And among lots of literature devoted to the issue emerged this short story by Neil Gaiman - The Problem of Susan http://www.impalapublications.com/blog/index.php?/archives/2396-The-Problem-of-Susan,-by-Neil-Gaiman.html

The Last Battle also tells us that the entire Pevensie Family, with the exception of Susan was killed, and reassembled in Heaven (Narnia). It is implied that heaven was denied to Susan for her silly indulgences. The short story deals with the problems faced by Susan and also questions a god who would punish a young girl so bitterly - leaving her an orphan on earth, for her preference for nylons/lipstick/invitations.

The whole argument is rivetting read, and loosens quite a few bolts and nuts in your head.

Book or Movie - Prince Caspian

2008-05-26T02:47:00.001-07:00

I scrolled the mouse up and down on the list of my blogs. Should I write about Prince Caspian/Narnia/CS Lewis/Neil Gaiman on my book blog or the movie one! The train of thought and research started from the movie surely.

The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian is 2nd in the series after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Pevensie children are feeling miserable away from Narnia. The way they talk about Narnia makes you feel as if they are on some kind of drug, which they are deprived of. Lo and Behold, Susan's magic horn is blown in far away Narnia and the kids are transported back to Cair Paravel. They dont recognise it anymore, and realise after a bit of sleuthing, that time in Narnia has taken a quantum leap. They find Narnia has gone underground and the wicked Talmerines rule it. The silver lining is that they can help restore Narnia to its former glory if they reinstate Prince Caspian to the throne.

Thus begins the battle between the remaining Narnians and Talmerine. After the intervention of Aslan, the battle favours the Narnians and the children can return to London to catch their train to the school.

Some good special effects, a nice story, (and Ben Barnes) manage to keep the movie afloat. Fantasy afficiandoes agree that the movie could be better. It is certainly better than LWW.

We can look forward to the third in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This time around Peter and Susan Pevensie will be missing. Lucy, Edmund and a nasty cousin Eustace Scrubb are the ones who will make it Narnia and join the delicious Prince Caspian on an adventure to the end of the world. Ok, this is the movie part. Now over to www.booksbyrotten.blogspot.com for the book part of it.

The Golden Gate - Vikram Seth

2008-05-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

If I were talented enough, I would write this in verse. Alas, I am not. But Vikram Seth is. He chose to write a whole novel in iambic pentameter quite in the manner of Edmund Spenser and Pushkin. A novel has to succeed in two ways. One - the content should be good enough to grip the reader. Two- the style should be good enough to charm the reader. Seth scores on both counts.

The story is a very modern, a very American, a very eighties story of four friends, John, Paul, Liz and Jan. John Brown is a square IT engineer, workaholic, rather unscrupulous young man in search of a mate. Jan is his current best friend, ex-girlfriend, a sculptor and a musician who lives a solitary life with her two cats - cuff and link. Jan helps John find Liz through the Personals column in the paper. Liz is a rare combination of beauty and brains, the girl is a lawyer and goaded by her mother, is looking for a mate too. Liz and John get along like the house on fire, and start contemplating a future together. Paul is John's college friend, an activist and a sensitive, thinking man. He has recently been divorced and is a single father. The story brings the four friends together and changes their lives forever.

Like I said, the story is very 80s. It was a time when the term 'politically correct' was in vogue. Unlike the preceding decades, no one raised an eyebrow if a hero was a gay or a bisexual. In fact the novel also has a description of a homosexual love affair, the first I ever read about. Will and Grace came a whole decade later. It was uber-cool then, to be committed to some cause. In the novel, Paul is against big corporations because they promote nuclear war-fare, and also left his lucrative job because of that. Environmental issues and animal rights are deemed important topics. Although all the leading characters are strong independent people, Liz gets married and has a child to please her mother who yearns for a grandchild. So there is and endearing bit about loving and caring for your parents in there.

Apart from the leading cast, there are a number of other endearing and real characters in the book, that add to the landscape and make the book sound cheery.

Now for the style. Seth has a vast vocabulary in English and he knows how to use it well. Very handy when you are trying to rhyme words and make sense at the same time. Never ever does the rhyme ever sound laboured! The words trip off easily, readily describing the serious along with the cheesy. There are some amazing alliterations here (examples later). The verse sounds so effortless, that you scarcely notice that it is a novel in verse.

Whether it is love between Liz and John that is being described, a scene that lends itself naturally to poetry, or whether it is a peacenik march that is being described, a scene that does not lend itself naturally to poetry, the effect is always pleasing. I think that is the true success of this novel in verse.

Bel Ami - Guy de Maupassant

2008-05-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

The novel traces the upward curve of the life of Georges Duroy from near starvation to riches and power. The son of poor innkeepers in Canteleu, his parents want him to be a gentleman and educate him well. He joins the military and serves for a time in Algiers. He leaves the army and comes to Paris to try and get ahead in the world. When the novel begins, he is working as a clerk in the Railway and barely able to survive on his salary, often giving up either lunch or dinner. He runs into an old army mate Forestier who is working as a journalist. Forestier gives him a break in journalism and Duroy begins his second life that finds him indulging in all the seven deadly sins, except sloth.

He comes face to face with some remarkable women who succumb to his irresistibile charm. He forgoes shame to accumulate wealth, and plays politics with a seasoned hand to bring himself to the top in any situation.

The chapter where Georges attends the fete thrown by Walter to exhibit his purchase of an expensive painting, is study in the cross currents of sexual and political power fuelled by wealth that run through the party.

There are a wealth of characters that are fullblooded, unholy, flawed and extremely real. Madeleine Forestier, who wants to rule by proxy. She wants wealth and power as much as the next man, and does not hesitate to use sex and manipulation to get it. She is almost like the female counterpart of Georges Duroy. If Georges Duroy finds himself outwitting her, it is merely because he is a man and has some unfair advantages because of it.

Then there is Clotilde de Marelle who shares a lustful relationship with Georges throughout the novel. If women want to learn about how to hang on to their man, they should study Clotilde for the Do's, and Verginie Walter, who lets her passion overrule her reason, for the Don'ts.

If the novel is by Maupassant can humour be far behind? The novel is an ironical study of success and what makes it so. The shenanigans of the ruling (or nearly ruling) class and the moneyed people are exposed blithely. There are passages and whole chapters that are so comic, so funny that they are a delight to read. The humour is cerebral and simply amazing. The chapter where the poor but upcoming Georges Duroy is turned to Georges du Roy de Cantel is so brilliant that you are left speechless.

It is a gem of a book, something all book-lovers MUST possess.

Some Short Stories

2008-05-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

Short stories are like little gems, Cadbury Gems that look pretty, taste good and vanish without cloying. You can eat many at a time and again and again with renewed pleasure each time. Choosing 5 best short stories is an impossible task, and quite self defeating. How can you choose 5 best pearls out of an ocean-full of treasure? It is like picking 5 best stars out of a glittering sky. Leave alone 5 best short stories, it is not even possible to choose 5 best short story writers! Anyhow, I am picking these stories strictly on basis of the ones which have lingered in my mind the most. This is, again, not a very good benchmark. For instance, after I compiled my list, I was reminded of War of the Worlds by HG Wells. What a magnificent story that was! So awfully massacred by Steven Spielberg. Why can’t any filmmaker have the courage to make it exactly like it is? Idgah, by Munshi Premchand, that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Most stories I have picked, barring two, were originally written in some other language, and translated into English. But I read them in English, whereas I have always read Idgah in Hindi.

The only thing to do is to excuse me for the ones I have ignored and just savor the ones I list here. Here goes my list, which is not in any order, I wouldn’t dare!

The Selfish Giant – Oscar Wilde

Now what can one say about Oscar Wilde? His witty writing, short stories, plays, poems are all delightful. His story, The Portrait of Dorian Grey is a masterpiece. His wordplay sparkles, makes you chuckle, and read on and on and on without tiring. But in this little morality tale, he adopts almost a biblical tone:

“And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently in his hand, and put him up into the tree. And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant's neck, and kissed him.”

The repeated use of the word “and” is in the style of the Bible. The sentences are short and descriptive “He was a very selfish Giant”. The simple little tale of a selfish person who realizes the importance of sharing and loving his fellow creatures is timeless, a classic.

The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

If I were to choose the best short story ever, this would be it. The pathetic tale of Gregor Samsa tears your heart out. It makes you wonder at the fragility of our closest relationships, with our parents, our siblings, which seem so strong, but are often based on a mutual need. Good as long as they are fulfilling, cast out the minute they are not. The story has a chilling start

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”

From being a good son and brother, who works hard to support his family, he turns into a hated creature that needs constant attention. At first, his sister pitches in lovingly to care for him. But as time passes, he becomes a useless burden and is shunned by his own loved ones. Kafka paints an inexorable picture of Gregor’s travails that take us through emotions of pity and disgust, but also make us realize that we are human and possess all the frailties associated with our kind.

The Necklace – Guy De Maupassant

One of those tales with a twist in the end, like the Gift of Magi, which was bittersweet, borne of love, ending with a little laughter and love. But The Necklace is almost like a morality tale, chiding and punishing the heroine mercilessly for her vanity. Mathilde Loisel is a young pretty girl who yearns for good life. She is married to a poor man and is discontented with her life. Her husband brings home an invitation to a party, and Mathilde is besieged by the question familiar to all womenfolk, “What will I wear!” With great difficulty she puts together a desired ensemble that is worthy of her beauty. And for that night, she gets all that she wished for.

“She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.”

Alas, this is the last happy night of her life. But then, didn’t DH Lawrence say “Let man go on his way to perdition”?

Old Fashioned Farmers – Nikolai Gogol

Gogol has written umpteen, magnificent short stories. What is so special about this one? In my mind this story is almost like a stately painting, with lovely detailing, that brings an old couple alive. Yes, there is a lot of romance in painting young and beautiful figures, but the painting of the old couple is like looking at LIFE.

Afansii Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanova are old-fashioned farmers. Their life has settled into a series of routines and habits. In their own way, they are a very devoted to each other. They spend their day tending to their farming affairs and household matters. They love welcoming guests into their house and are full of the old world charm. What happens when one of the couple dies? Gogol compares a mad passionate love of youngsters with the staid habits of an old couple who have been together forever.

“Which wields the most powerful sway over us, passion or habit? Or are all our strong impulses, all the whirlwinds of our desire and boiling passions, but the consequence of our fierce young growth, and only for that reason seem deep and annihilating?" However that may be, all our passion, on that occasion, seemed to me child's play beside this long, slow, almost insensible habit”

A Municipal Report - O Henry

This is one story I am very very fond of. I read it through again yesterday while looking for quotes to pull out. Oscar Wilde and O Henry are the only ones on this list to have written in English. In their stories, nothing is lost in translation and we get the full impact of whatever they intend to convey. I could wax eloquent forever about his writing style, if only I could find words to describe it. Is it hard to sketch a character so well in a few lines that it jumps out of the pages of the book to come alive? Yes, but, O Henry can.

Nashville is a dull place that the narrator is commissioned to visit. He has to sign a contract with a lady, Azalea Adair, binding her to write for a journal at 2 cents per word. He also runs into a black cab driver called Caesar whose regal ways seem out of sorts with his ramshackle cab (horse-driven) and tattered clothes. He also runs into a despicable gentleman called Major Wentworth Caswell. There is also a dollar bill in this story, which is almost like a character itself.

“I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability.”

Then there is button which is again a very important element in the story.

"The lone button was the size of a half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.

Our narrator is surprised when he finds a gem in Nashville in the shape of Ms. Azalea Adair.

“While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much - oh, so much too much - of real life.”

Expecting to be bored to death during the visit, the narrator finds excitement aplenty. A murder is done, and the narrator helps in shielding a murderer. To find out the rest, go read the story.

--------------------------------

There are so many other excellent short story writers that I have missed here. Saki, DH Lawrence, HG Wells, Chekov, Dosteoveksy, Dorothy Parker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Antoine de Saint Exupéry to name just a few. I do hope the ones I have listed above whet your appetite for good writing.

To Kill a Mockingbird

2008-04-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

To Kill a Mockingbird is related from the point of view of an 8 year old girl, Scout Finch. Scout and her brother, Jem have a pet game, trying to draw out Boo Radley, a ghostly neighbour who never leaves his house. While they are busy with school and play, their little town of Monroeville is rocked by a scandal. A poor white girl has accused a black man of sexually assaulting her.

Now Monroeville is a conservative town during the late 50s and enlightenment has not touched it yet. It is up to Atticus Finch to try his best to serve justice and try and rescue an innocent man from slander and prejudice.

As is with all amazing books, the story is never just what it seems, but has many layers of meanings that is up to the readers to unfold. There are endearing glimpses into parenting, learning, playing, respecting the rights of other individuals, developing sensitivity to others.

"Once I got to know him, I found he wasnt a bad person." Shares Scout with her father. "All people are good, once you get to know them" says Atticus simply. This displays the deep humantarian message that underlays the novel. Whether it is the misguided, wretched Ewells, or the seemingly fierce Cunninghams, or the overly strict Aunt, or a sick neighbour who seems wicked, but is actually battling a morphine addiction, all these characters are dealt with such a skillful touch that you dont hate them despite their flaws.

The novel comes alive under the magical touch of Harper Lee, and try as you might, you cannot shake its characters from your mind. And forever, Scout playes with Jem and Dill and tries to bring out Boo Radley, while Atticus smokes and reads in a rocking chair inside the house, various neighbours call out, and Calpurnia cooks in the kitchen.

This timeless book continues to enthrall its readers year after year.

A rose is a rose

2008-02-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

Anyone who reads books has heard about The Namesake, written by Jhumpa Lahiri. It won the Pulitzer prize and was on the bestseller list too, the blurbs tell us. Mira Nair even made a successful movie on the book.

A friend of mine who read the book raved about it, and lent it to me. Luckily I had some free time on my hands at the time and read through the book almost at a stretch.

The book started a little jerkily, just before the arrival of Gogol in the world. Ashima Ganguly, displaced from Calcutta to USA, is yearning for taste of home in her pregnancy and has made a bit of chivda (or whatever the bengali's call it). She suddenly feels the labour pains coming on and is rushed to the hospital. She gives birth to a baby boy. Ashima and her husband Ashoke cannot even think of abandoning the conventions of their culture. Back home, the baby would have been named lovingly by some elder in the family. In fact, the name is on the way, posted by way of a letter. The baby's formal name is put on the hold, and the child is given a pet name, Gogol. Through a series of circumstances, Gogol never acquires a formal name.

The story, of course, is about how easily Ashima and Ashoke balance their Bengali and American way of life, and how hard it is for Gogol/Nikhil to do that. His attitude towards his name reflects his attitude towards the Bengali way of life and also towards the American way of life. He goes through his life, picking up american girlfriends, and an indian wife. How he finally makes peace with himself when he says at one time "Actually there is no such thing as a perfect name".

As we live, we learn more about ourselves (atleast some of us do). And it is these lessons that are the most valuable.

However, the standout point of the books is not so much the theme, good as it is. The standout point is the style and language. NEVER PRETENTIOUS. So much so, that the first couple of chapters almost sounded humdrum to me. Then the effect kicked in. The author was skillfully picking up sounds inside the heads of various characters and relaying them to us. She knew exactly how much to tell us about the character and at what time. Some facts are held up to whet our curiosity, and when we learn about them, it makes shivers run through us.

I was blown away because the story is so ordinary, and is so well told that it seems extraordinary.

I have always loved the short stories of Nikolai Gogol. He was a favorite of Ashoke Ganguly as well. He was once in a train accident when he was a young man in India, and reading a book by Gogol at the time. This accident and his surivival is his most life-altering moment, and is inextricably linked to Gogol. When time comes for him to name his firstborn, he thinks of Gogol. His son does not share his sentiments fully and hates Gogol the writer. At the end of the book, when he is at peace with himself, he picks up a book by Gogol, gifted to him by his father, and starts reading it.

Our names are the legacies bestowed upon us by our parents. Ram Khilawan may get a fancy schooling later and try to mask his downmarket name by calling it RK, or Ram K Prasad. Not being named flamboyantly like Amitabh Bachchan, poor Jatin Khanna calls himself Rajesh Khanna. Ava wrestles with her unusual name and bears the jibes of her classmates and some insensitive elders. What kind of a name is Ava? ask the philistines who never heard (in those times) of Ava Gardner.

But alas, I do not have the writing style of Jhumpa Lahiri and cannot write a book about my ordinary life and make it linger in the minds of readers like the fragrance of fresh jasmine.

Breathing Lessons - Anne Tylor

2007-12-25T04:33:00.000-08:00

Maggie is a nursing assistant at the geriatric hospital in Baltimore. Her husband runs a framing shop. Maggie's high school friend is facing bereavement and wants them present at the memorial service. Maggie's life is ordinary and unambitious. All she yearns for is that her life be unchanging and full. She wants her children around her. She wants her son's broken marriage patched up again, she wishes she had her granddaughter around her. She wishes her daughter was not going away to college. She is willing to alter the truth and meddle around till her objectives are achieved.

Breathing Lessons is the a day in the lives of the Morans. It starts from their drive from Baltimore to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, and ends when they are ready to sleep. Throughout the events of the day Maggie re-lives a lifetime. She goes back and forth in time, and acquaints us with the pretty picture of Ira and Maggie, in love and content with each other. Maggie wishes for her world to be fuller and more perfect, to encompass her children and grandchildren too. Ira is content to have just Maggie around him.

The charming ordinariness of their lives comes alive through the magical descriptions of Anne Tyler who crafts her characters with love. She breathes a life into them and makes them come alive for us. She has an uncanny ability to weave a story out of everyday happenings. She knows exactly when to imbue a character with mystey and when to strip it away. In the end, we wind up knowing everything about all the characters, and loving them all the more for it.

We love Ira for his mysterious ways when he is wooing Maggie, and we love him all the more when we realise that he regards Maggie as a huge gift, someone to love when he had no hopes of having anyone. We love Maggie for her scatterbrained way in which she tries to fix things and winds up making them worse. We love Ira and Maggie for loving each other and living their lives and braving the various domestic storms.

"I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things - piano-playing, typing. You're given years of lessons in how to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and rising up a new human being." (from Breathing Lessons, 1988)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

2007-09-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

This book of Mark Haddon's is really difficult to write about. I had picked it up out of the library and had no idea about it.

In recent times I find it hard to read a book at one go. Too many distractions at home, my attention span is getting lesser. But this book I read in one go. I rolled on my stomach, Sat up, lay on my back, my feet up, sat on a chair, kept moving so that my body wouldnt get jammed up. But the book i could not put down. That should describe the grip the book got on me.

What is the book about? Now even describing that will give the story away. So all I will say is that the book is about a young man, a very young man who had trouble dealing with people. He tries to solve a mystery. Someone put a gardening fork right through the neighbours dog, and Christopher wants to find out who did.

His attempt to unravel this little mystery spills secret out of all corners of his little life.

The novel is about growing up and also parenting. Parents think they are doing a favor to the children when they are trying to shield them from Truth. Not True, in fact they do them a big disservice.

THE BOOK IS A MUST READ..

Patiala peg -- tasty but difficult to swallow

2007-05-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Patiala Quartet by Neel Kamal Puri, pages 174

It is easy for me to be overwhelmed by nostalgia while reading this book. It is set during the 80s and 90s when I was living in nearby Chandigarh. These times are my times, this is my language and my culture.

Two sisters of a royal lineage belonging to Patiala marry into different families. Minnie and Monty's mother marries a businessman without any pedigree, Karuna and Micheal's mom marries right Their lives are undone by defunct husbands. One is defunct because his business fails, another because he chooses to while is time away like a rich wastral. Their unhappy life has a bearing on their children. What happens to the children is what forms the story. They go through their lives falling in love, falling into depression, falling from motorcycles. They see happiness, severence, tragedy, accomplishment in the short span of their youth.

The story is plausible and meaty, what undoes it is lengthy digressions that seem to pop up at the wrong spots. You cant write about Punjab in the eighties and nineties without talking about the effect of terrorism on the lives of people who lived there. So it is written about, but again, as I said earlier it does not integrate well with the story and has a choppy effect. The story of the four cousins is touching and you feel for all the characters. They are pretty well etched.

The language, the idiom, the dresses, the ambience of Punjab of the day are well brought out. The peculiar traits of kakas and their ways are well described. It is pretty funny in parts. That kept me turning the pages. I liked the feel of the book. I wish there was a good editor handy to hand out some good tips that would have enabled the author to refine the tale better.
The language goes from lyrical to ok in a matter of one paragraph.

Now, as I said right in begining, I am familiar with the language, place, culture and people. I have no idea how a person who does not belong here feel about it. The novel lacks clarity and a lay person could fail to understand what is going on.

Pulp Fiction

2007-05-03T03:33:00.000-07:00

I knew of Khushwant Singh when he was at the prime of his career. He was editing the Illustrated Weekly of India and wrote some pretty irreverant stuff. He took a lot of flak for being an exhibitionist and mouthing (penning) controversial stuff. His writings seemed to revolve around wine and women and seemed to be delibrately contrary to what people said. That is the image I had of him. His columns were generally trashy and peices of trivia, laced with jokes and shairi. I read a short story or an excerpt of his novel here and there. The pulled out peices were usually erotic and simply reinforced the general image of him as a boozing womanising old man. A Dirty Old Man he was called.

Years later he happened to visit my office with his wife. I was surprised to see an old man walk in with his wife. There was no bulb over his head and no glass of whiskey in his hand. About a year or so back i read an interview where he had described his daily routine. Early up, he listened to direct telecast of kirtan from Darbar Sahib on the radio, ruminated on some shabd or kirtan, wrote some mandatory pages each day, and generally seemed to lead a very disciplinary sedantary life. Highly commendable from someone who is an nonagenarian.

Then I took out a book called Delhi from my library. I am going to digress a little here. I dont have much fondness for pulp fiction. Sometimes I have picked up Mills and Boon romances, some books that seem like light hearted read to pass time. I have even tried to read some Shobha De but found her insufferable. Her book, Sultry Nights, wasnt pulpy or interesting enough to keep me engrossed. But this book is the mother of pulp fiction. Khushwant Singh turns all the rules on their heads. The hero isnt a handsome rich dude, but a middleaged, ugly sikh. His heroine isnt a beautiful woman with a thousand virtues like Tess, she is a hermaphrodite Bhagmati. He lays bare his soul, his lover's warts, and through them both he lays open the grandeur and the grime of Delhi.

The magnificient, the merciless, the munificent, the marauder, the people who uplifted and raped Delhi in quick succession. We are taken from the times of Balban to 1984 when Delhi was shaken by the anti-Sikh riots post Indira Gandhi's murder. Of course not in detail, or it would take a number of books. Rather than relate the history of Delhi to us in a mundane manner, he chooses to let some character of those times tell us the story. Therein lies the beauty of the novel. It is extremely readable, the first requirement of anything that passes through the printing presses.

KS is totally irreverent, liberal with erotic descriptions, and busts many historical myths. He does not fear to call a spade a spade and that is what makes his novel such a mushy pulpy read. I realise now that the fearsome reputation he garnered was probably bestowed upon him by jealous colleagues. He was ahead of his time by decades and stood by whatever he said and believed in.

Of all the pulp fiction I have read, he is the best. He is so good that he threatens to invade into territory usually occupied by Literature.

Two Girls and a Guy

2007-03-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

If you are an avid reader of fiction chances are you have heard about The Girl, Opal and Kirin. Ok so maybe hardly anyone has read about the The Girl, some know about Kirin and everyone knows about Opal. These are the literary offspring of Sonia Faleiro, Kavya Vishwanathan and Samit Basu. They are on my list together just to present the different faces of contemporary fiction by young Indians, I don’t intend to compare them with one another.

Sonia Faleiro’s book, The Girl, was the slimmest and the most difficult to read. The fault could be mine. She has been published by Penguin and quite likely has a niche readership for fiction of her kind. It is a soulful, dark, existential kind of literature. Not my cup of anything. The plot is slimmer than the book There is this girl (always referred to as the Girl in a very Rebecca-ish way) who is coping with loss in a small village in Goa called Azul. Her mother and grandma just died. Her uncle decamped with the all that was worth owning in their house, sold the house, dumped the grandfather in an old age home and abandoned the Girl to her devices. Cruel ! The Girls mom left her a house in Azul so that’s where she lands up. She is kind of passing time, in a haze of depression from the recent events, when a foreign tourist, Luke, enters her life. After a while, maybe bored or restless, he leaves. The girl finds herself pregnant, and unable to cope with the rejection and a baby on the way, she commits suicide. But don’t expect the story to told to you in a straightforward manner. Most time the novel meanders around some small details. The young (and pretty) author does not flesh out her characters and they float through her narrative like ghosts. I found the novel quite tedious to read and the story hard to extract. There are some loose ends, what did happen to the priest who disappeared? Was Luke just lurking around somewhere? Why does he return to Azul after the girl dies? Simon is supposed to love the girl, but he is just on the border of the story, hanging around.

Kavya has been written about extensively, thanks to the passages worked into two books simultaneously by the creative agency that helped both the authors write the books. Okay, that is a categorical statement, but that is what I have deduced as the truth behind the whole scam. Poor Kavya fell between two stools of trying to fulfil her own creativity and trying to live up to the expectations of her publishers. Moral of the story is, write only to fulfil your creativity. How Opal Mehta … has been classified as Chick Lit for young women. The writing is perky, full of interesting incidents that carry the story forward. The plot is simple: Opal is asked what she likes to do for fun during her admission interview for Harvard. All she has to say is that she likes to solve an unproven physics theory for fun. But she is a child of rote education. Her parents have taken over her brain and think for her. Hence she is freaked out by this question she hasn’t prepared for and thinks (a wish that lies latent in her heart?) that she needs to get a life. Get a life means getting drunk, kissing boys, getting into trouble etc. Her parents are determined to make her succeed and lay plans for her get a life. This is how a studious, plain Opal is transformed into a teenager who drops famous brands from the tips of her eyelashes (MAC) to her Jimmy Choos (good thing her parents were loaded). She takes further wrong steps and lands into a mess. Until she realizes that she has to think for herself, and tell her parents, please people, stay out of my life. She does get into Harvard, but only when she lets out accidentally, (she never does understand his question) to her interviewer that she solved the unproven physics theory for fun.

Samit Basu writes a comic SFF. In India we are inundated with fantasy fiction. We have jataka tales, fables, epics, folklore, ghost stories strewn around us. On top of that if you are an avid reader of comic books starring some kind of a superhero, and SFF fiction of all kinds and varieties, you have a merry grist for your mill. But still, you need a rare kind of a talent to spin a yarn. Samit Basu, thankfully for us, has that talent. So far he has unleashed two books upon us, Simoqin Prophecies and The Manticore’s Secret. He brings out this unique story of an alternate world (the center of which is KOL -Calcutta?). It is a story of demons and superheroes, bad and good people, secret agents and assassins, dwarves, magical devices, magic people. He uses all the cliches of the super-world and then turns them on their heads. His James Bond is an ugly dwarf who happens to be a natty dresser. His heroine keeps a Bridget Jones like diary, his hero is a villian, and you aren’t sure whether he intends to destroy or save the world. He manages to weave the story skillfully, keep our interest alive and by golly, we are salivating for the third and conclusive book! (Replace we with I in case you don’t like this genre)

3 books same sensibility

2007-03-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

1. the radiance of ashes by cyrus mistry
2. maximum city by suketu mehta
3. sacred games by vikram chandra

the prime sensibility here is Mumbai. all the books are set in mumbai. i have yet to read the 3rd, am waiting eagerly to do so.

1. whattabook. the least hyped of the three. not the best book ever, but certainly top of the line. a flawed hero copes with life in mumbai. the author tells his story simply, then whammy! there is a gorgeous paragraph or line that leaves you gasping. it was born of an award winning short story that begged to be extended. and cyrus does that with aplomb. fleshing out some good characters. i get the impression that it was written by a shy bespectacled retiring kind of a fellow. someone who would withdraw possessively if you tried to discuss the book with him.

"Twenty five stories below, the city looked different. Almost beautiful."

For years to come, some avid lover of books is going pick this book out of the shelf of a library or bookstore, leaf thru a few pages and pick it up for reading. In doing so the reader will be charmed anew by his lovely prose and a delicate story.

2. Suketu Mehta is the richest author of the three. His book was commissioned and he had good money to write too. Not the detract from the book of course. He is more than capable of the charge. Although the book is a documentary, it reads like a novel. He called himself 'Bi-textual' a cross between a fiction writer and a reporter. His book takes you thru a rollercoaster ride of mumbai's various features, underworld, blasts, politics, topography, food, bargirls, movies, police and even a description of the Jain Diksha. His bitextual facility guides you easily through the book. the real characters with fictionalised names are garnered with spice. the famous names are left bare for all to see.

just when i was admiring the fact he seemed so non-judgemental while he was describing killers, suketu kind of spoiled things for me by being judgemental. but i suppose he couldnt help it, maybe he was overcome by disgust. anyhow, he does not pull punches (if he does, he masks it too well for me to notice) . the book punches you in the celiac plexus (to borrow a phrase i read a lot in the james hadley chase novels) knocks the wind out of you and shakes you up.

3.. wait guys, i have yet to read the book
the book bestows a charmed status on that dirty ungainly crowded traffic infested monstrosity that is mumbai.. the people who love it love it a lot, i know not why.

more on bunker 13 tho i have moved on

2007-03-06T17:42:00.000-08:00

well, bunker 13 went a lil haywire in the end, tho the reading was fun. it was a guy kinda book, all about guns and mayhem. not an easy book (define easy book - a mills and boon - all things spelled out kind of a book )

so dears pick it up at your peril. if you are in defence.. please do

Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal

2006-09-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Reading this book at the moment. It is written in a referral kind of a style. Instead of saying 'I shot the bastard because he was about to shoot me and my comrades', he says 'You shot the bastard because he was about to shoot you and your comrades'.. Get it? Maintaining that tone for the entire book is not easy.

I am about midway through and have skipped some chapters. I suppose he wants to bust the Army myth. That upright - mere vatan ke logon kind of thing to a more selfish, self centred screwed up bunch of bastards out to make money kind of a thing. Well it is a novel concept and you wont look at army guys in the same way.

Will write more on it later.. as i progress with the reading, if i get fed up, i will stop.