Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

The book reminded me of a game of billiards.  The cue hits a ball which nudges several other balls and finally kisses one teetering on the edge, and pushes it into the pocket.  We are not solely responsible for all that happens to us.  It is a game of cause and effect, the actions of others tell on us and often improve or worsen our situation.

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is the story of Alice Bhatti of French Colony daughter of Joseph Bhatti, the prince among chooras. He is the go-to guy when a clogged drain flummoxes all the other cleaners.  Her sainted mother died when she fell down the stairs in the house where she was employed as a maid.  The mourners at her funeral were intrigued by a fellow servant from that same household who kept saying 'murder murder' as he cried.  Some people were of the opinion that he was actually crying 'martyr martyr'.



What chance does Alice have of getting on in life when...

1.  She is an untouchable, a choora

2.  She is a Christian in the land of Muslas

3.  She has just served time in jail

4.  She is a woman

Alice tries to rise above her station in life by studying Nursing.  With some help from Dr. Jamus Pereira she finds work at the Sacred Heart hospital of All Ailments.  The grim looking Sister Hina Alvi comes to her rescue when she is stuck.  The young jailbird Noor, another of Dr. Pereira's proteges, is working at the hospital so his mother, who is cancer ridden, can get medical aid there.  

Alice has just started work at the hospital when Teddy Butt walks into her life.  Captivated by the pretty nurse, Teddy starts wooing her with determination.   Teddy Butt is body builder and also a peripheral police helper.  His boss, Inspector Malangi has caught Abu Zar, a terrorist.  Teddy is given the task of making him talk.

All these characters impact the life and times of  Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.  Alice is a victim of a society where it is a crime to be a woman, let alone being an untouchable and a Christian.

Mohammed Hanif draws a realistic portrait of life in Karachi and at a big busy hospital, Sacred Heart.  In fact the life at Sacred Heart is so self sufficient, that the novelist steps outside it just a few times, when he needs to show how the events happening outside will impact the lives of those who live within the hospital.

This is a skillfully written story.  It is replete with dark humor and compassion.  I won't say the book was unputdownable for me.  There were times when its starkness disturbed me and I had trouble continuing with it.  But the story of Alice and Teddy made me pick it up, and I must say, the end of the book is superb.

Amitav Ghosh - River of Smoke

In our History textbook in school, we had a chapter titled Greater India.  It was about Indians settled in other countries.   How these people came to move away from their motherland and settle in a foreign places is often an interesting story.  How Indians came to mix and match their language and culture with that of their adopted country to create a hybrid culture that was acceptable to them as well as the natives can make a fascinating narrative.

Sea of Poppies was about how a lot of people from various backgrounds find themselves on the Ibis.   River of Smoke starts with a magnificently evocative description of Deeti's shrine.  The Ibis had landed, after a stormy crossing, at Mauritius.  Deeti finds herself in an alien land, with a child, and has to forage for food in the forest there.  On one such sojourn she finds a cave in the cliff overlooking the sea.  This becomes her shrine, where she draws images from her past life.  This is where she starts her family, and establishes a clan.

But we are running ahead.  The story where Sea of Poppies ended continues with Raja Neel.  Raja Neel finds himself along with Ah Fatt, on way to Canton where Ah Fatt hopes to meet his father the great opium merchant Behram Moddie, owner of the grand ship Anahita.  In Canton, we meet an array of new characters.  Behram, his Man Friday Vico, the British and American opium merchants, Charles King, Mr. Lindsay, Dent, Wetmore, Jardine.

Essentially it is about how the East India Company forces the farmer to grow opium in India and then sells it to China to suck the wealth out of these countries.  Unfortunately for the traders, this is the time when the Emperor of China decides to appoint a tough Commissioner to deal with the issue of widespread Opium addiction that was eating into the social fabric of China.  The Commissioner Lin decides to make the traders of Opium pay for their smuggling, both the Chinese and the British.  The Britishers are not used to being dictated to by the countries they trade with and try to strike back.

Caught in this crossfire is Bahram Moddie who has staked all his wealth in this last huge consignment.  It is a trip that will either make him or break him.

Paulette has been taken on by Fitcher, a botanist who is visiting China to look for a rare plant that he has drawing of.  She cannot go to Canton, and has to stay in Hongkong.  She runs into Robin, an old playmate from Calcutta, the bastard son of the celebrated painter Chinnery.  Robin is in Canton looking to broaden his artistic skills and knowledge.  He pledges to help Fitcher and Paulette to look for the elusive plant by tracking the person who made the drawing.  In the process, he writes very illustrative, incisive and entertaining letters to his old friend Paulette.

River of Smoke paints a beautiful picture of the language, food, the clothes, the culture, the way of life of these merchants in Canton.  It is a brilliant sequel to Sea of Poppies which was more like an introduction to the key characters and their backgrounds.

In one of the blurbs the author was compared to Charles Dickens and Tolstoy.  I shook my head after I was done with the book.  This is Amitav Ghosh, he stands in a class of his own.  It is not fair to compare him with anyone else.

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights is right up there on the list of my favorite books.  I have owned several copies of it, lost them in transit from one place to the other in my life, and bought again, lost again, till I lose count.  It popped up somewhere in the lists when I was browsing for books on flipkart.com.  It arrived with another book that I ordered.  I tore the open the wrapping and started reading it three days ago.  I have barely put it down, in any free moment that I have to call my own.  It helped that my net crashed for a couple of days.

First Edition

I met my favorite characters once again, if you can call that rude bunch a favorite.  Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Nellie Dean, Lockwood, Edgar and Isabella, Frances and Hindley, Linton, Hareton and Catherine junior.  I was transported once again to the moors of Yorkshire and roamed over them with Cathy and Heathcliff.  It is not hard to see why such  a rough and cheerless place excites passion in the hearts of those living there.  Heathcliff is bound to Cathy by a common childhood, and a bond they cannot break.  The word love is useless to describe their feelings for each other.  It is just that they share a spirit.

As long as they are children, things are alright with them.  But creeping adulthood brings changes in them.  Heathcliff is a foundling and a ward of Catherine's father, a fact that her older brother Hindley resents.  As soon as he gains control of the house, he tortures Heathcliff and wedges barrier between him and Cathy.  On her own part, Cathy grows up and discovers the charms of being wooed by a rich, good looking and an accomplished neighbour Edgar Linton, whom she marries by and bye.

Heathcliff is devastated at losing Cathy and vows to wreck revenge, first on Hindley for his mistreatment of him and later on Edgar.  He succeeds, but finds the whole exercise futile in the end.  He does not repent, but dies possessed of the spirit of Cathy.

It is not an easy book to love.  It is full of heady passions and hatred.  Yet it is beautiful.  The passages that describe the love between Cathy and Heathcliff are unparallelled anywhere else in literature that I know of.  "I am Heathcliff" Cathy declares. "He is always, always in my mind", she says.  On his part, Heathcliff never desires to possess Cathy's body.  He is happy to be close to her, and be allowed to see her and walk with her.  'I could never hurt Linton', he says, 'because of her.'  If Cathy wants Linton around him, he would not dream of preventing her.  It is SHE that he adores, above his own feelings.  It is when he is prevented from being with Cathy, that he turns into a vengeful beast.

All the rough characters in the book, Heathcliff, Joseph, Hareton are closer to nature, they live more like farmers than gentlemen and are bestowed with rude health and manly beauty.  Edgar Linton, and Linton are pretty boys, full of bookish learnings, but are weak in health.  Emily probably saw a lot of such examples in her life.

Most readers that are fascinated with the strange novel, are also fascinated with Emily Bronte, its writer. What mind produced such a singular novel.  Hence Emily, along with her talented siblings, Charlotte, Anne and Branwell are subject of many books.  Their cloistered lives, enriched only by their readings, are as curious as the novels they wrote.

Anne Carson writes in her beautiful poem, The Glass Essay:

She lives on a moor in the north.

She lives alone.

Spring opens like a blade there.

I travel all day on trains and bring a lot of books—

some for my mother, some for me

including The Collected Works Of Emily Brontë.   

This is my favourite author. 

All of us that feel emotions other than we perceive as 'normal' can agree a lot with Emily. This is a bold novel that she wrote. It is full of forbidden feelings, but also very true. Sometimes it seems to be as if Heathcliff and Cathy are the normal people in the narrative, true to their inner selves. This is the way Emily wanted to be, true to her inner self, which is why she could not write in any other way.   

Her superb imagination awes me and makes the stark world of the moors and Wuthering Heights come alive even today.

Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge

It was delightful to read an old master after a long time.

When I was in school, the fiction section in the library was well stocked with the likes of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy among others.  I can recall going through all his novels except Jude the Obscure and Well Beloved.

Almost 40 years have passed since that time.  I can be forgiven for forgetting the exact contents of the book I read so many years ago.  Yet, to my surprise, the story came back to me in snatches as I read on.

Thomas Hardy's plots are quite like hill roads, full of twists and turns.  I was surprised to find so much happening in the lives of the main characters.  It kept me glued to the book, I was loath to put it down.

The Plot : Micheal Henchard is on the road looking for work as a hay trusser with a young wife and a baby in tow.  He stops for supper in a furmity tent in a fair in a village they are passing through.  He opts for rum to go with his furmity and soon becomes intoxicated.  He auctions his wife off to a Sailor before passing out.  His wife, Susan, disgusted by his action, goes off with the Sailor in a huff.

Next morning, Henchard is overcome with remorse and swears not to drink for next 21 years.  He tries to track Susan and the Sailor down, but does not succeed.   His sobriety and hard work finds him, 18 years later, a prosperous man, and the Mayor of the town of Casterbridge.

It is at this time that Susan and Elizabeth Jane, a grown young woman now, reach Casterbridge.  The Sailor, Newson, is lost at sea, presumed dead. Susan wants to look for Henchard and see if she can find some support for her daughter.  Henchard is repentant of his previous misdeed, and wants to make amends.  Not wanting anyone to know of the circumstances which made them part, Henchard opts to pretend to woo the good widow and marry her.

About the same time, he hires a Scotsman, Donald Farfrae as his manager to look after his dealings in corn.  Farfrae is a very capable man and helps Henchard's business grow.  Henchard looks upon Donald as a close friend and associate and confides in him his past secret.  He tells Donald about Susan and also about another lady in Jersey.  He had happened to get intimate with her and promised marriage.  But with the appearance of Susan, he has to let the other lady go.

Henchard settles into domesticity with Susan and Elizabeth Jane.  But his life is not settled yet. Susan's death reveals a secret that throws him off his equilibrium and he finds himself sinking into a mire he cannot get out of.

The Characters:

Micheal Henchard, our principal character, is given to deep impulses.  He has sworn off drink, hoping it will make him more temperate, but his impetuousness makes him take rash decisions that sink him into a mire.

He hires Donald Farfrae as his manager, recognizing his talent and hard work.  His impulsiveness makes him confess to Donald all about his past.  He regards the younger man as his friend and confidante.  But at the first shade of doubt, he casts Donald out into the cold and turns a true friend into an enemy.

Similarly, he loses Susan because of a rash, alcohol driven impulse.  Yet, in a hurry to redress his wrong, he fails to try and understand the woman he abandoned so easily many years ago, and fails to benefit from her wisdom.  He fails to allow Susan to turn his later years blissful.  He foists his prosperity upon a simple woman looking for some security and a safe haven.

He treats his daughter Elizabeth Jane with the same wavering to the extremes.  He loves her deeply one day and the next he is gruff and distant.  Even though he has a good reason to be distant, he is too impulsive to allow reason to temper his actions.

Because of this, his admirers and friends, Susan, Donald and Elizabeth Jane find themselves perplexed and hurt and thwarted by him.  They are unable to reach out and be his friend and support him when he is in need.  His pride does not allow him to soften to them, and he finds himself a bitter and a lonely man.

He does meet his match in Lucette, the woman with whom he had an intimacy in Jersey.  When Lucette resettles in Casterbridge after Susan's death, his intention is to do the noble deed and offer to marry her to repair his past misdemeanor.  However, Lucette proves to be as fickle as he, and falls for another man.

Donald Farfrae is another Henchard in the making, but with a lot more temperance. He is swayed by the beauty of Lucette and forgets about Elizabeth Jane.  When faced with the prospect of becoming a Mayor, he is swayed by ambition and is in danger of becoming too drunk with power.  Like Henchard, he likes the good life and acquires Henchard's old house and fine furniture.  The people of Casterbridge, who loved the Scotsman ready to burst into a dance and a song, do not like his transformation into a powerful man and are ready with their criticism of him.

On the other hand, he is not as impulsive as Henchard and is able to make level headed decisions.  At the begining when Henchard seeks Farfrae's advice in his personal matters, we find Farfrae comes up with some sensible words.  He loses his head over Lucette, but returns to sanity when he regains the affection of Elizabeth Jane.

Lucette is the most intriguing character of the lot. She happened to nurse Henchard back to health when he fell sick on a visit to Jersey.  She became deeply attached to him and attained notoriety in Jersey because of her liaison with Henchard.  This prompted Henchard to offer to marry her, but just then, Susan and Elizabeth Jane came back into his life.

Impulsive Lucette kept firing piteous epistles to Henchard about her misery without him.  But things take a good turn for her when she comes into an inheritance when a rich aunt of her dies.  She moves to Casterbridge because she is still hurting over Henchard's rejection.  But the fickle girl is soon bewitched by the handsome and successful Donald Farfrae.

She does feel a measure of guilt about having married Donald despite being attached to Henchard.  She brings about her downfall when she tries to bury her secret and unwittingly reveals her previous dalliance.

Elizabeth Jane is the archetypal heroine of the Victorian era.  Beautiful but prim, intelligent but muted, loving but silent, always doing the right thing; she can be chided on only one account, being too strict.  She is the epitome of virtue, and to possess of the affection of Elizabeth Jane is to possess all that is good and correct in this world.  That is a heavy burden for any woman to bear.  But Elizabeth Jane rises to the occasion, as heroines must.

She puts up with the harshness of Henchard, just when she is beginning to accept him as a father, not knowing the reason why he is suddenly harsh.  Donald Farfrae smites her heart when he falls for the coquettish Lucette right under her nose. Yet she keeps her equanimity and is rewarded when Henchard warms to her finally.  Later, she finds Donald Farfrae returning her affection as well and her virtue is rewarded.

Susan appears in the book more as a catalyst, changing the course of the story by her presence or action.  She appears in Casterbridge and sets the story in motion.  She is anxious to provide a good life for her daughter Elizabeth Jane.  For herself, she does not set much store by her husband's riches and position.  Yet the secret behind the birth of Elizabeth Jane weighs heavily on her.  Her letter to Henchard about the truth, sets the story moving in another direction altogether.

These are the major characters whose doings shape the events of the novel, make it a compulsive read.  Thomas Hardy sets the novel in his beloved Wessex and the scent of the country pervades through the novel.; through the mentions of the Hay trussing, the corn sowing, the simple folk dancing and singing over ale.  Hardy's prose lacks the elegance of many of his colleagues.  But it is matter of fact, direct and befitting a folk who live close to the earth.

Graham Greene - The Human Factor

There was a time a month or two ago, when I yearned to read something by Graham Greene.  My pocket being on the slender side, my budget for books is not much.  Hence, such wishes are not followed necessarily by an order on Flipkart.

I can redress that by joining the State Library.  I am also lazy, and forget to just walk into the library and get myself a membership.

I did remember to walk into the sprawling second hand book market that we have in Chandigarh in Sector 15, right next to the Lajpat Rai Bhawan.  This time round I managed to find myself quite a treasure.  Among my second hand loot, was a book by Graham Greene, The Human Factor.

The books starts elegantly, languidly, describing a routine day in the life of Maurice Castle, a secret service employee.  Along with his colleague Arthur Davis, he mans the Africa desk at the embassy.  Their job is not glamorous or of any earth shaking importance.  Their mundane existence is shaken by a sudden scrutiny of their lives by a new security officer.  Being an old hand Castle knows exactly what that means.  There is a breach in the security and he is a suspect, along with Davis.

Castle has had an unblemished service.  He did have a spot of trouble with apartheid when he was posted in South Africa and fell in love with a black woman of the Bantu tribe, Sarah.  He managed to get her out of there and married her, and had a son.  Ever since he has settled in the suburbs, and lives a dull domesticated life.  His conduct is exemplary and he has nothing to fear.

On the other hand, Davis was caught taking official papers out with him.  He drinks too much, gambles and womanizes. The needle of suspicion is likely to point to him, but he is not guilty, Castle knows.

Colonel Daintry, Hargreaves and Doctor Percival are some of the people conducting the inquiry into the leak.  Despite their jolly and bluff manner, Hargreaves and Dr. Percival are not as harmless as they seem.  Despite his blustering ways, Colonel Daintry is not as threatening as he looks.  The secrets, once they start tumbling out the closet do not cease, until we learn the entire sad truth at the very end.

The book starts slow, the pace is unhurried, as I mentioned earlier, languid.  But readers of fiction of this sort know that the calm is merely that on the surface of the hill just before the volcano erupts.  The story picks up pace, and takes us through rapid climaxes to the end.

It is a story about love, and what people do for love.  It is also about politics of our world,  just what we expect a Graham Greene novel to be about.  It is as incisive as Graham Greene novels are, and we wind up feeling sad for the state our world is in, and the way it uses ordinary people as grist to its mill.

To quote a blurb at the back of the book:

"To the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service, Graham Greene brings his brilliance and perception, laying bare a machine that sometimes overlooks the subtle and secret motivations that impel us all."

Anne Tyler - A Slipping-Down Life

I love Anne Tyler's books, and rarely let one go by unread.  Considering that, it is strange that I have written a review of only one book of hers, Breathing Lessons.  I found the book captivating.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1989.  The first Anne Tyler book I read was Searching for Caleb.  I have been hooked to her ever since.

Coming back to A Slipping-Down Life, the novel opens with Evie Decker a fat, unpopular teenager in Pulqua, North Carolina. She has one friend in school, Violet.  At home-between the busy housekeeper Clotelia and her father Sam Decker, who keeps to himself-Evie finds herself lonesome.  She listens to the radio a lot.  That is how she learns about Bertram Drumsticks Casey, who is a rock and roll singer who plays at the local nightclub, Unicorn.

Fat and frumpy Evie has no chance of catching the attention of Casey.  On an impulse, after a performance of his, she cuts his name upon her forehead.  Casey's drummer and manager David thinks her little caper can win the fledgling band some publicity.  Things are looking up for all of them.  Evie is happy to be close to Casey, despite his discomfort at her presence.  David is happy things are working out for his band.  They soon get an offer to play in another fancy club a little way away.  Evie feels she should break with Casey now, as he refused to soften up to her.

Those were the only times they met face to face.  They were the only times Evie lost the feeling that she was tugging at Drum's sleeve while he stood with his back to her, gazing outwards toward something she couldn't see.

 Just when Evie wants to give up on Casey, he fails.  He is kicked out of the new nightclub because he flirted with the owner's daughter.  His father wants nothing to do with him, and his mother is also angry with him.  Evie finds him on her porch, beaten and tired with nowhere else to go.  She finds her heart melting for him once again.

...when he suddenly tightened his arms around her, pulling her close, it came as a surprise.

 "Don't fret, I'm here," he said.

 But such promises are rarely kept.  A slipping-down life takes a look at two teenagers, both losers in their own way, as they try to make a life together.

Another beautiful little novella by Anne Tyler, just 154 pages long, about life in a small town, with its limited choices, that makes its inhabitants behave in an odd fashion at times.  Anne Tyler has a knack of making commonplace look so attractive.  Her books are almost always winners, and so is this one.