Sagarika Ghosh - The Gin Drinkers and my Library Loot

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 journalists 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.

Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu - Adrift A Junket Junkie in Europe

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.

Ruskin Bond - Susannah's Seven Husbands

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.

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?

Alexander McCall Smith - The Sunday Philosophy Club

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.

Jonathan Stroud - The Bartimaeus Trilogy

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 commoners, 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.