Sakoon Singh - In the Land of the Lovers - A Punjab Qissa

Publisher: Rupa Publications
Author: Sakoon Singh
Title: In the Land of the Lovers - A Punjab Qissa

Nanki was orphaned at a young age when her parents died in a car crash. Her maternal grandparents took her in and raised her. They live in a cosy little house in an upper sector of Chandigarh. For those who live in Chandigarh, or know about it, will know that the upper sectors contain the old landed gentry, people of good means. The smaller the number of your sector, the better your location.

Coming back to Nanaki, she is now lecturing at Govt. College of Arts. When Nanaki's college decides to showcase the artwork of a couple of artists, she is appalled to learn that one of these has been promoted out of favoritism. She wants to promote the embroidery work of an acquaintance who deserves to be showcased.  She finds herself rubbing up her superiors the wrong way and is being discriminated against. In the meantime she runs into  Himmat Singh an architect who needs her help in choosing artwork to display in a club he has just finished constructing. She finds herself drawn to him.

Interspersed in the story are the tales of Nanaki's grandmother who had to flee their village in Pakistan during Partition. Her grandmother was then a young newlywed girl and pregnant. She had witnessed her father being killed by his neighbours. Her mother in tow, she had trudged for miles till she reached India to her husband and safety.  Nanaki grew up listening to these harrowing tales of her grandmother and developed an empathy for those in trouble.

I loved Sakoon Singh's descriptions. She takes time to describe everything, the run down college building, a tea shack, a garden, a house. Her magic touch makes us conjure up the picture she paints with words.

The house lay hidden behind dense foliage set off by a row of tall areca palms, their fronds and panicles making for dark silhouettes at twilight. On a day like this, the trees would sway noisily in the breeze, creating a loud rustle against the turbulent sky.

Indian Fiction is, alas,  often a victim of  inconsistent editing which brings down the quality of the book. Here and there, the book was peppered with avoidable mistakes.

Nanaki is a heroine of a kind we need to see more of. She is alive to everything world offers, good, beautiful, bad or ugly. She is a sensitive person who sympathises with people from all walks of life. To be honest, people in Chandigarh are famous for being very affected, conscious of their possessions and status. Rich people like to flaunt brands and go about living brashly, secure in the knowledge that their connections will shield them from harm, even if they commit murder. In such a culture, a heroine like Nanaki is like a breath of fresh air. Her empathy makes her a beautiful person, in and out.

I thought Himmat Singh's story was inadequate. He gets a chapter to himself. I would have liked to see his story run parallel to Nanaki's. If not that, it could have been reduced to a couple of paragraphs. It was neither here nor there to have his story told in some detail but not enough. Similarly Neena, their plump and garrulous neighbour needed more exposure. Neena is so delightfully human and Punjabi. She is devious yet affectionate, intrusive yet caring. I would have liked some more of her story.

Sakoon Singh brings out the favoritism and politics prevalent everywhere, from a college campus to drug rehabilitation center.  She describes the pangs of first love so well. Nanaki has not forgotten her first kiss and still moons over the boy who kissed her, while he has (typically) moved on. We get a wonderful glimpse into the awakened sexuality of Nanaki. Her first intimate encounter was very tastefully described.

Every Chandigarhian worth his salt has made a quick dash to Kasauli (a hill station about 60 kms away). This book, so steeped in Chandigarh culture, has a couple of such trips. I often wondered why there weren't more books based in Chandigarh. I am partially mollified by this book and hope there will be many more that depict this unique City Beautiful.

Sakoon Singh has given us this very evocative novel, set in our times, steeped in Punjabiyat (Punjabi way of life). I will be watching eagerly for her next offering.

Vani - The Recession Groom

The Recession Groom by Vani
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Parshuraman Joshi is a Punjabi Brahmin with roots in Chandigarh. He studies and works in the USA. He is rather under the thumb of his bossy aunt, Parvati, who has nurtured him. He is 27, earning well and ripe for marriage.

His sister Ragini and aunt Parvati try to outdo each other in looking for a perfect girl for Parshuraman. Poor Parshuraman starts feeling more like a commodity than a person as eager Mamas with young daughters pursue him.

However, the book is not all about funny situations. Parshuraman faces real tragedy when he faces problem at work. He has to find out where his heart really is before he can make crucial decisions about work and love.

The characters in the story, especially, Aunt Parvati, her daughters Tia and Ana, Ragini, Parshuraman, Bill, Jennifer, Tara, Uncle Ravi are all believable people with quirks and foibles that make them very human. However, the character I fell absolutely in love with, was Parshuraman's Grandmother, his Nani. She is an irascible woman with a loving heart. She is more modern than any of her granddaughters.

Vani keeps the language of the book simple and clear. There are no linguistic shenanigans here to annoy you. Yes, there was a bit or two where the dialogue felt a bit labored and stiff, but it did not rankle.

The story keeps moving on effortlessly. There is no situation in the book that seems contrived. It is as if you really are witnessing a part of someone's life.

This is Vani's debut novel. Hard to believe that, she writes like a Pro.

Welcome to the world of writing, Vani. May your lovely novel meet all the success it deserves.





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Mohyna Srinivasan - The House on Mall Road

Published by : Penguin
Borrowed @ Central State Library, Chandigarh.

I picked this book up at the library. It had a complimentary blurb by none other than Pico Iyer, "What a rich and wonderfully accomplished debut! I'm envious".

The debut is good, very good.  Not enough to warrant envy on the part of Pico Iyer who has books like "Falling off the map" and "The Lady and the Monk" under his belt.

Yet.

I was charmed immediately by the book.  It starts on a poetic, languorous note, as the narrator of the story describes the house she lived in as child. The house was in Ambala Cantt where her father was stationed at the time. A great tragedy befell Parvati Rana there. During an air raid in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, her house was bombed.  Her mother and her grandmother perished in the bombing.  Parvati, a child of 7 then, survived because she was sheltering in a trench at the time with her nurse and an old servant. Her father went missing in action the same day in Kargil region.

Parvati has swept the emotions of the time aside for twenty years.  An encounter with an old friend of her father's brings the old memories alive.  She decides to revisit her house in Ambala once more.  The visit triggers a chain of events that turns Parvati's life topsy turvy.  The young Captain who is assigned to help her, Pratap becomes special for her.  But is she ready to let love into her life?

For a while the story seems to meander aimlessly, especially during the middle part.  But it picks up dramatically towards the end and contrary to its poetic, languorous start, trots smartly and rather melodramatically to a finale.  I did like the last chapter of the book a lot.  The protagonist grows up, and shows a lot of maturity.  There are no convenient endings. I liked that too.  The language is spare and fairly elegant. At the start, the protagonist is reeling from emotional turmoil but there is no attempt at embellishing her pain. Even at the end when a lot is happening, the emotions are kept quite in check.

The love angle is not allowed to flourish much.  Even though we are given to understand that the heroine likes the Captain, their romance does not get center-stage.  Fair enough, as the story lies elsewhere.  Even though his vanishing from the story for long stretches towards the end was not a good move.

Parvati keeps going into flashback throughout the novel, this helps the story to unravel gradually.  There were some episodes that I could not quite understand.  What were Parvati's feelings towards Badri Nath.  Was she attracted to him?

At places the pace of the story flags.  At places it seems a bit too melodramatic.

Yet, in all, it is an unusual and a very interesting book.  One of those rare instances when I was turning pages and unable to put it down.

Betty Smith - Joy in the Morning

Joy in the Morning by Betty  Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published by Buccaneer Books
Borrowed @ Central State Library, Chandigarh.

The book is set in the early 1900s.  The heroine, Annie has just turned 18.  She has packed her bag and left home to travel to where her boyfriend, Carl lives.  Carl is a law student in the university town of --.  They go straight to get married.  They have barely any money.  All they have is love for each other and a hankering to be together for ever.

Times are hard.  Carl works part time and studies.  Annie also finds work and they manage to scrape by, counting pennies and living cheap.

It is a heartwarming tale of young love.  Not the starry eyed kinds you find in romance books, but the kind that gives you the reality behind love stories.  Annie and Carl fight, and kiss and make up.

This is a story of their early life together.  The story is based on the author's own experience.

I read an excerpt of this book in an old issue of Reader's Digest.  I loved it instantly.  Almost by serendipity, I found the book in my local Central State Library.  The book was every bit as good as the excerpt.  This happened nearly fifteen years ago.

On a recent trip to the same library, I chanced upon the same book once more.  I just had to pick it up again to read it once more.  I was charmed anew by this lovely story.  But this time, I managed to write about it.


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Tarun Tejpal - The Alchemy of Desire

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?

Vikram Seth - The Golden Gate

Published by Vintage
Bought @ English Book Store, Sector 17, Chandigarh

If I were talented enough, I would write this in verse. Alas, I am not. 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.

Aniruddha Bahal - Bunker 13 - Review Part II

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Borrowed @ Browser, Sector 9, Chandigarh


Well, Bunker 13 went a little haywire in the end, though the reading was fun. It was a guy kind of book, all about guns and mayhem.  Most times I felt as it was written for the glorification of the main protagonist, Minty Mehta, a Defence Correspondant.  Wink Wink, if you get my meaning.

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

Aniruddha Bahal - Bunker 13

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Borrowed @ Browser, Sector 9, Chandigarh
I am reading Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal 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 an image to a more selfish, self centered, screwed up bunch of bastards out to make money kind of an image. It is a novel concept and you won't look at army guys in the same way again.

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