Moisture Trapped in a Stone, Book Review

MOISTURE TRAPPED IN A STONE: An Anthology of Modern Telugu Short Stories

Translated from the Telugu by K.N.Rao      Thornbird/Niyogi Books         Rs..595/- 

This is a richly varied collection of 29 stories translated from Telugu. Social issues predominate in many of these stories. There are some twist-in the-tale stories, tales of expatriates chasing the American dream, and a couple of love stories, too. It's like a box of assorted chocolates. Each story has a different tone and flavour, and you don't know what will come next. All the stories will not appeal to every reader, but there's something in this collection for everyone.

The Citadel in Disrepair by Kethu Viswanatha Reddy struck me with its effective treatment of the themes of grief, loss of a son, and the senseless destruction resulting from the Naxalite movement. Jasmine on a Lattice by Kolipaka Ramamani is a beautiful story with heart-rending emotions skilfully portrayed through an exchange of letters.

Some of the stories are on contemporary themes in the urban Indian context, bringing out the intricacies of human relationships. D Kameswari's Bumblebee is a strong and nuanced story about the contemporary reality of adultery. Vasundhara's Yet Another Love Story is an interesting take on the relationship of an elderly couple who seem to endlessly bicker and complain on the surface. Yet when their son decides to take his mother along with him to the big city to give her some peace and rest, the mother begins to miss her husband. The husband too longs for her companionship and comes to the city to take her home. J Ramalakshmi's Outsourcing is a witty take on today's commercial reality. Mohammed Khadeer Babu's The Cover effectively portrays the communal tensions flowing as an undercurrent beneath the apparently placid social fabric of city life.

The impact of foreign culture on home-grown visitors from the hinterland is the theme of several stories. Madhurantakam Rajaram's Galiveedu to New York depicts an elderly landlord used to a culture of feuds, rivalries and murderous attacks on opponents. On a visit to his son in America, he sees how "these boys had no use for terrorism and stories of vengeance… Bomb bursts, murders in broad daylight, rivers of blood, setting fire to homes and such other acts do not seem to drive them to action. Then what do they want to know from him?"

Madhurantakam Rajaram's The Homing Pigeon is a beautiful and nuanced story. Young Ravi comes from America to search for grandparents he has never met, who live in an obscure village too insignificant to merit even a bus stop. The hinterland, with its beauty as well as festering social injustices, is portrayed effectively in many of these stories.

Madhurantakam Rajaram's Moisture Trapped in a Stone is a deliciously complex story with lovely stylistic flourishes. "Time wrought other changes too, bringing to the town a character of diversity. Men, dark-skinned, looking like the trunk of a babul tree which grown unmindful of the hot sun, the inconvenience of dust storms and the sewage waters that lash them and having lashed, flow past them as if they made a mistake initially; men who do not have memories of days gone by…"

B Geetika's Misappropriated Moonlight is about a government official whose work involves the welfare of backward tribes. She arrives from the big city wondering: "These men in the forest, how do we wake them up? They seem totally ignorant of the world… How can we let them grow wise to issues like nutritious food, family planning etc.?" As she befriends Girija, a young tribal girl, the official gets emotionally involved and her attitude changes. She experiences firsthand the tragic plight of innocent forest people. "Girija is my friend, I'll use every resource at my command to save her. But what about the tribe as a whole? These fellows who pass for civilised men, are they any better than those animals in the forest?"

The variances in style and treatment differ from story to story. Several stories deal with social issues with a heavy hand. Her Very Own Rubicon by Vasundhara has the point/moral of the story spelled out a little too bluntly at the end.

"Now to questions that stare at me: here is a lady who lives a cocooned life, straitjacketed by the age old caste system. But she is also tender hearted, kind and considerate… She is a slave of the tradition into which she is born… but kind, loving, generous… One needs to understand such personalities properly."

Vasireddy Seetadevi's Darkness to Light ­ ­- A Journey to Nowhere is mainly a tedious and lengthy Q&A session on spiritual questions. The patient reader is rewarded at the end of this tedium with a heart-rending ending. Rentala Nageswara Rao's A Gift of Gingelly Seeds also has a lengthy Q&A section from page 29 to page 40. The topic is socialist revolution, the Naxalite movement etc.

The Case by Olga is yet another example of a story relying heavily on Q&A sessions on the theme of women's rights.

Overall, this collection is an interesting read which brings out the many facets of contemporary Telugu short stories.

This was published in Sunday Herald

Harilal & Sons Books Review

Harilal & Sons  by Sujit Saraf     Speaking Tiger Books 

This skilfully crafted novel revolves around Harilal Tibrewal, a Marwari boy who leaves the deserts of his native Rajasthan to seek his fortune in ‘Kalkatta’, the city of dreams in 19th-century colonial India. While India’s freedom movement, the Partition of Bengal and World War II unfold in the backdrop, Harilal and his descendants spread, start businesses, suffer losses and gains, marry, produce children, and die. Based upon the author’s own family history, Harilal’s story imaginatively fills in the gaps in the dry accounts of history. We learn why and how clusters of people from Rajasthan settled in every part of the country, retained their unique culture and customs while capably managing shops and businesses all over India for generations. A strong and fascinating story with convincing characters, set against an expansive historical and geographic backdrop, this is the perfect read.

The book throws light upon the indomitable Marwari spirit of enterprise. “Everything made by Raamji can be bought and sold if a bania knows how to price it,” says the street-smart teenager and Harilal’s saala, Janardhan. “Like rain, urine was made by Raamji, so it can be sold.” A quintessential Marwari, Janardhan adapts as he works at various ways to make money, transforming into English-spouting Johnny when he strikes deals for sahib Andrew Yule. The Marwari is adept at making the best use of money. Even religious sanction can be bought for a price. “A rupee would do the trick — the Shastras had a way of bending to one’s will at the glimpse of silver.”

Bargaining is a vital skill, and thrift is valued. “Even a paisa saved in this manner was a paisa that could be better spent elsewhere.” When teenaged Hari receives news from home of the birth of his first son, prudence overcomes his sense of love and excitement. “They should not have wasted a full rupee on a telegram.” 

“Words meant different things to different people, while numbers were truthful. One bowed to context, the other only to the truth.” Hari values this lesson taught by his master in early childhood. “The name does not matter, the commissions do.”

Ultimately, a Marwari man with many sons must find shops to settle them with. It is this urge to set up a business of one’s own, to be one’s own master that makes young Marwari boys like Harilal to leave the parched deserts of their native Rajasthan to seek their fortunes in the fertile, prosperous distant lands of ‘Disavar.’ Harilal, and later his son Tribhuban, leave home alone at the tender ages of 12 and 11 respectively, to seek their fortunes in distant lands. This amazing spirit seems even more impressive when compared with today’s Indian children, who usually study and grow up under the care of their parents until well into their 20s.

The characters are well delineated and convincing. Hari’s father, his successive wives, and his many children sport unique traits and mindsets. Harilal himself is multifaceted. Stoic discipline rules Harilal as he copes with emotional upheavals. As his wife Parameshwari’s funeral takes place, he wonders about her soul, which nothing can destroy. In his sorrow at her untimely death, he wonders: “What use did a bania have for a soul at all? Buy cheap and sell dear, Master Bholaram had said. What else was there to existence, aside from stock that could be touched and felt and smelt and bought and sold, and what remained when it had been taken away?” With ingrained stoicism, Harilal knows that a man does not grieve like a child. Life must go on. As he watches his 21-year-old wife’s funeral pyre, he gets the idea of setting up a jute press. 

Yet, Harilal is capable of tender and intimate moments with his first wife Parameshwari, and his affection for each of his children adapts to their individual personalities. He can stand by a friend and love him, just as he can be strict in self-control. In difficult times, he gifts a sack of rice to a needy stranger, the Nawab of Bogra’s driver, while taking care to hide the tears in his eyes. His love for Parameshwari transcends her death. When his father manages to place Hari into a second marriage against his wishes, Hari accepts his father’s will with stoicism. He does his duty while retaining Parameshwari’s memory in his heart. In ripe old age, Harilal orders scenes from his happiest moments with Parameshwari to be painted on his bedroom walls in his new haveli. 

Life is precarious, with famines and riots in the wake of Partition. Yet the story is livened by occasional touches of gentle humour. Harilal’s perspective on World War II will make you smile. “If it was a dispute over rates, surely the sahibs were sufficiently good banias to resolve it themselves. What turn of events had caused Raamji to trap a poor bania underground so he could be burnt to cinders in a quarrel between sahibs?”

The narrative flows smoothly, and awkward passages are rare. The older and wiser Hemraj’s conversations with Hari seem stilted, as they board overcrowded trains from Rajasthan to ‘Kalkatta’. The artificial dialogues here obviously serve to inform readers of the facts and the backdrop of the story. Overall, this is a thoroughly satisfying read on multiple levels.

This review is published in Sunday herald

Eka Kurniawan: Man Tiger.

This striking novel set in the lush hinterlands of Indonesia was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016. Kurniawan draws readers into a richly complex tale with the very first sentence. “On the evening Margio killed Anwar Sadat...” The killer and the victim are identified beyond doubt, yet a riveting mystery is deftly built up.


 Why would a good-natured and popular young man kill his harmless middle-aged neighbour, that too in an unimaginably gruesome manner, by biting through his neck?

Yet there are eye-witnesses, and the victim’s mauled body stands testimony to the brutal attack. When the story begins, Margio has already admitted to the killing and surrendered.

The killer, Margio, is a popular 20-year-old who drank, smoked weed and made out in shacks in the cocoa planation along with other village boys. Like a helpful son to his neighbour Anwar Sadat, Margio was much in demand for his prowess during wild boar hunts. “While some of his friends got into fights, he wouldn’t lay a finger on anyone.”

Just before killing Anwar Sadat, Margio gave clear, ominous signals of his intentions. “Right now, I’m afraid I’m really going to kill someone,” he told a friend over drinks, shortly before attacking his victim. “But of course nobody who hadn’t been there would believe these words came from Margio. He was the sweetest and most polite of his peers.” When Margio went to Anwar Sadat’s house on that fateful day, he didn’t even carry a knife or a cleaver or a rope with which to commit the murder.

“Who could predict he might end a man’s life with a bite?” Colourful and bustling rural Indonesia is brought to vivid life by the author. Cacao plantations are criss-crossed by paddy fields, ponds, and peanut gardens. Clouds of mosquitoes take charge over the swamps and ponds, and Major Sadra’s ancient motorcycle loudly traverses the mud roads of the villages. An old Panasonic radio is the greatest asset in Agus Sofyan’s tea shack, where the villagers enjoy listening to soccer commentary or dangdut or other types of pop music. This half-dead machine with its insides hanging out in a messy tangle from an open top “could make enough noise to be heard booming at half the soccer field’s distance.”

Soon, darker and mysterious facets of this cheerfully chaotic world emerge. Margio’s abused mother Nuraeni expresses her stifled sorrows and desires through her lush garden, which soon overwhelms the house itself with brilliant flowers of every hue.

Margio’s Grandpa “would take the boy to a rivulet he called the Kingdom of Genies” and talk of spirits, and of tigresses, whom many men in the hamlet called their own.

“Some married one, while others inherited a tigress, passed down through the generations.” Little Margio wonders when their family tigress, which has belonged to them from the times of distant ancestors, will choose to belong to him.

Deftly sketched minor characters with their own quirks further enliven the setting. Occasionally they lighten the mood as the mystery builds up. They also add to the mounting tension by casually dropping significant clues. The worst these easy-going and peaceful villagers do is gamble on pigeon races and cock fights, or hunt down wild boar. Margio’s harsh private world is a stark contrast. As the story inexorably flows in a flashback towards Anwar Sadat’s killing, we learn that Margio did, after all, have this latent murderous streak. He ran away from home because, as he confessed to his sister Mameh, he was afraid that he might really kill his father someday. The news of his father’s death brought him back home at last. Everyone noticed how happy Margio was, but they thought it natural, for his father was well known to have been very harsh with Margio and his gentle mother, Nuraeni.

From their conversations we learn early on that Margio took Anwar Sadat’s daughter Maharani to a film show the night before he killed her father. Maharani cut short her vacation and suddenly left next morning for her college in the city without giving any reason, refusing to talk to her father.

The mystery revolves around the strange and terrible, yet protective tigress ruling Margio’s inner world. “It was bigger than a clouded leopard, bigger than the ones people saw at the zoo or circus or in schoolbooks. If a man couldn’t control his beast, it could turn so violent that nothing could restrain it once enraged... The tigress was there, a part of him, the two of them inseparable until death.”

A heady and memorable blend of magic realism, murder mystery and a deeply sensitive and sympathetic exploration of what drives a gentle soul to kill, this is a beautifully crafted and memorable read.
This review is published in Deccan Herald

Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer  
Viet Thanh Nguyen  
Hachette
2016, pp 371, Rs. 499

 

When tinged with humour, the gravest of subjects like war acquires an interesting and profound colour, writes Monideepa Sahu about ‘The Sympathizer’

This engrossing tragi-comic novel set in the final days of the Vietnam War richly deserves the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2016. The story and its style and rendering are striking, to say the least. The novel startles with the vastness of its scope; the clash of civilisations, cultures and ideologies; war where no party is right, and its futile aftermath; art as insight or propaganda; the many faces of racism in America and in Vietnam; the flaws in the dazzling American Dream, and in the egalitarian Communist dream. The narrative negotiates complex ideas with a flawless touch, showing how everything has multiple contradictory facets.

 Momentous concepts do not weigh down the narrative, but are turned inside out to expose their inherent absurdities. Even torture need not necessarily be gloomy, but can ironically be laughable. Even American military muscle flexing can be incongruously self-contradictory. “After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.” All this is deftly woven into an exciting, action-packed plot, with espionage, bombings, executions, military evacuations, movie shootings and musical extravaganzas, and romantic interludes.

The novel opens with the nameless narrator writing his confession in a prison interrogation cell. He is addressed as ‘Captain’ by his commanding officer, while others never think of referring to him by any name at all. After all, he is “a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, (he is) also a man of two minds.” This spy hides “where everyone can see him and where he can see everything. “We cannot help but admire his intelligence and talent for seeing every issue from both sides, unveiling the comic and ironic aspects of the dangerous situations he negotiates. He is a rare man capable of laughing at himself.

As he writes and rewrites lengthy confessions as a prisoner of the same communists for whom he had been spying, the narrator reveals many conflicting identities. He is a socially ostracised racial-hybrid illegitimate son of a French priest and a Vietnamese girl; too tall and fair to blend in with the native Vietnamese, and too oriental in appearance and upbringing to be accepted as a Westerner. As a Captain in the vanquished army of South Vietnam, he is a mole passing information to the Communist ‘enemy’ northerners. He is a communist sympathiser who studied in a US university to understand Americans through their perception of the Vietnamese. This education and exposure to a decadent culture makes the narrator see too clearly how a war “that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world” could mean “nothing to most people in the rest of the world.” It also makes him a reactionary sullied by American ideas to the hard-core communists into whose fold he wishes to return.

His political choices and his secret police service eventually force the narrator to cultivate his violent side. But his saving grace is his sense of humour and irony. He is “not just any mole” or spy, as his friend Man tells him. He is “the mole that is the beauty spot on the nose of power itself.” He is “more lover than fighter.” With quirky insights, he can turn traditional morality upside down, sometimes with hilarious effects. “Torture is obscene. Three million dead is obscene. Masturbation, even with an admittedly non-consensual squid? Not so much.”

We feel for the narrator’s inner struggles when he is commanded to plot the killing of the probably innocent Crapulent Major. He even shares with the Crapulent Major’s widow his compensation money for a grievous accident or murder attempt (depending on your perspective) he suffered on the sets of a Hollywood movie. Memories of his execution victim Sonny the journalist, the Crapulent Major, and the tortured Communist woman agent, whom he failed to protect, haunt him throughout the narrative. This reluctant killer is capable of deep lifelong loyalties and love, towards his mother, and his childhood friends Man and Bon. We grow to love him for his intelligence and insightfulness, his sense of self-criticism and his ability to see the absurdity of it all. We feel his pain as he undergoes torture to become what he cannot; transformation from an American into not just an anti-American, but one hundred percent Vietnamese.

We share his inner struggle as he powerlessly watched and did nothing, while a beautiful young female communist agent was tortured and gang raped. She defiantly says to her tormentors that her surname is Viet and given name, Nam. Her torture symbolises the ravaging of Vietnam itself, not just by foreigners but also by her own people. If only “we forgot our resentment, if we forgot revenge, if we acknowledged that we are all puppets in someone else’s play...” The narrator’s ironic insightfulness turns upon revolution itself as revolutionaries metamorphose into reactionary imperialists. “How our revolution had gone from being the vanguard of political change to the rearguard hoarding power... Hadn’t the French and Americans done exactly the same?” He urges us to question along with him, “Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?”
Packed with exciting action and undercurrents of deep ideas, this is a brilliantly executed and deliciously memorable read. 

 

This review is published in Deccan Herald

Chitra Banerjee Divakurni: Before We Visit the Goddess

Before We Visit the Goddess
Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni
Simon & Schuster
2016, pp 208, Rs 499

This is a sensitive and delicately rendered tale of love and longing, of pain, misunderstandings, exile, self-inflicted isolation and of reaching out for affection.


The novel spans 3 generations of women protagonists. Grandmother Sabitri flounders in search of love, blaming her daughter Bela for driving a wedge between her and her husband. Finally, she finds her true calling as the creator of delicious sweets, just like her own mother before her. Bela, the truant daughter, elopes to the US with a man who ultimately fails her. Bela’s daughter Tara turns out to be another rebel without a cause.

Flawed, rebellious and often inconsistent, they make mistakes and suffer, and irreparably wound the ones who love them most. They “appear so ordinary”. Yet their lives are “filled with violence and mystery”. Proud and stubborn, these women are so like each other. If they had had anyone else to turn to, they would never have called their mothers for help. Yet they are also eminently capable of giving and receiving love.

The characters are memorable, and finely etched. “Why, you could be acquainted with a person for years, thinking you knew them. Then suddenly they’d do something that showed you there were layers to them you hadn’t ever suspected.” Minor characters like Mrs Mehta, whom Tara helps to transform from a frumpy, lonely old woman to a lively person, who happily fits herself into the American way of life, add interesting touches to the story. However, Bela’s gay friend Kenneth crops up as more of a detour from the main path of the story.

Sabitri grows up in poverty in a village in Bengal, helping her mother Durga make delectable sweets in order to eke out a living. Her dream of going to college appears to be coming true. A wealthy client is impressed with the sweets and the girl who delivers them. She offers to support Sabitri if she does well in her exams and gets admission in a college in Kolkata. Sabitri succeeds. But once in Kolkata, she becomes infatuated with the wrong man, and cannot wholeheartedly reciprocate the right man’s love. From being the good daughter and fortunate lamp brightening her family’s name, Sabitri strays into becoming the firebrand, who blackens the family’s fame.

The novel opens with the ageing Sabitri receiving a desperate phone call from her wayward and estranged daughter Bela, from the distant US. Bela pleads with Sabitri to persuade her granddaughter Tara against dropping out of college and ruining her life. “What can she write in her rusty English to change Tara’s mind? She cannot even imagine her granddaughter’s life, the whirlwind foreign world she lives in.” The only link Sabitri has to a granddaughter she has never seen, is a handful of photos. They remind her of the pang she felt when she received them, “because she had so wanted to be present at Tara’s birth. But she hadn’t been invited.” The author deftly uses clear, simple yet powerful images to bring home the character’s deepest and most aching emotions. Everyday things like photographs and photo albums capture life’s turning points, and show new facets to those we think we knew and understood.

Elsewhere, the author uses beautiful, poetic descriptions to evoke deep feelings. When little Bela goes to Assam with her parents, she misses her friend Leena, and realises early on how physical distance can pull the dearest friends apart. “Bela tried to write back, but she was struck by a strange paralysis. How to describe the riot around her: the night-blooming flowers with their intoxicating odor, the safeda tree with its hairy brown fruit, the oleanders with their poisonous red hearts? She wanted Leena to be here, to run hand in hand with her across a lawn so large it was like a green ocean. But what was the point of wanting the impossible? She never answered the letters... But inside loss, there can be gain too. Like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep in the centre of a rose.”

The plot is aesthetically structured around Tara’s life-changing visit to the temple of an accepting Hindu goddess. “The goddess doesn’t care how many minutes you spend in front of her... Only how much you want to be here... The goddess does not care about what we are wearing, only what is in our hearts.” Throughout the novel, small and apparently ordinary incidents change lives. “How she got back at her one-time hosts but learned that revenge extracts its price. How the problems between (Sabitri) and (Bela) began, with words of deadly innocence spoken in a car, and a slap that echoed through the years.”

The persistent and frequent shifts to and fro in time can distract and confuse the reader, however.Overall, this is a thoroughly enjoyable, memorable read rife with insights.

This review is published in Deccan Herald

Shashi Deshpande's Strangers to Ourselves; Book Review

Shashi Deshpande weaves a memorable story about human relationships, the ties that bind people, sometimes stifling or tearing them apart, and occasionally uniting kindred souls. The novel revolves around the ongoing jugalbandi between Aparna and Shree Hari Pandit; two people, quite different, yet having more in common than they could have ever imagined. Through their relationship they explore themselves and the eternal enigma; what really is love?
That Shree Hari Pandit “is a singer, is the main thing about him. That’s his life. He was born with music in his genes, he grew up with music in his ears.” Aparna is captivated by his music, and by him, after witnessing a performance. That mutual instant attraction grows into a deeper relationship, as Shree Hari pursues Aparna with boyish spontaneity. Aparna soon learns that he idolises his grandparents. His grandfather was his first guru, he learnt Tukaram’s bhajans and the Geet Ramayan from him.

She is charmed by his old-fashioned ways, of addressing her with the quaintly courteous tumhi. “I could listen to him all day,” Aparna confides to her cousin Madhu. “Both the language and the voice are so wonderful. And he speaks English with a Marathi accent.” She realises that she’s smitten, because far from judging him from the standpoint of her superior education and command of English, she admits she loves even the way he speaks.

US-trained cancer surgeon Dr Aparna Dandekar comes from a world far from Shree Hari Pandit’s. The only child of a once-renowned Marathi playwright, she has carved a place for herself in a demanding profession. Yet she finds herself seeking common ground with Shree Hari. “Hari’s singing reminds her of a surgeon at work, a precise meticulous search for the place he has to get to, finally getting there with marvellous skill and finesse.” Aparna is also haunted by the tragedy of her late parents, of “their togetherness which had so abruptly ceased. Ended without dignity...”
How can she believe in love, when even her own marriage to a colleague ended because she had mistaken the counterfeit for the true thing? Yet Aparna feels an emptiness in her life, living as she does “in homes that belong to others, among the possessions of strangers.” It’s “so easy to say yes... so easy to submit, to stop thinking,” and go along with the man she loves. Yet she can’t wholeheartedly. Perhaps “it is not marriage, but love itself that Aparna distrusts.” Aparna’s inner struggles are portrayed with delicate nuances, endearing her to the reader and lending dramatic tension to the story. Will she? Won’t she? And will he continue to wait for her?

Shree Hari has also suffered, coming up the hard way, and refusing help from his father. Yet his passionate love for Aparna is almost boundless. “I was singing Tuka’s words, I was addressing Vithala, but I could only think of you. Bhakti, Ajoba said, is another face of love... I’ve sung these songs all my life, but I understand what they mean only now... You are my light, my world, my music.” He would be in his late 30s or older, yet he follows Aparna like a lost puppy, and won’t take her rebuffs for an answer until that last straw cools his ardour. He cooks for her, and is solicitous about dropping her home. He seems to have all the time in the world for her, and he’s exquisitely delicate and hesitant about getting into a physical relationship with her.

Adorable as Shree Hari is, one wonders. More than a flesh-and-blood man, he seems a projection of what a woman like Aparna would want her man to be. This is, after all, a woman-centric story. Shree Hari’s role is clearly secondary to Aparna’s. Other men do make brief appearances. Aparna’s father and her first husband, or rather her memories and impressions of them, surface occasionally. But the women dominate, and their relationships with Aparna throw light on the many aspects of affection and emotional connections.
Jyoti plays a major role in the story. Her relationship with Aparna evolves from patient and doctor, to friendly neighbours, into soul sisters. Ahalya appears as a mystery woman from the past, whose memoirs are found among Aparna’s father’s manuscripts. Jyoti begins translating it to distract herself from her own terminal illness. Soon, Jyoti is drawn into Ahalya’s account of her unusual life, struggles and loves. Jyoti comes across as a positive woman who supports Aparna with her fading strength. Ahalya’s story throws fascinating light on the trials women faced in days gone by, and how they too dared to love, despite all social constraints. She also unveils fresh truths before Aparna. “Jyoti, in getting back Ahalya, has reclaimed the Baba of my childhood... I no longer see him as the suffering, bitter man he became in his last years.” Ahalya’s memoirs in the archaic style of her times, slows down the narrative though. And the revelation that she is a common ancestor to both Aparna and Jyoti seems like a convenient plot device.

Overall, this is beautifully crafted story, a slow and melodious symphony with memorable characters, who stay with you long after the last page is turned.

Strangers to Ourselves
Shashi Deshpande
Fourth Estate
2016, pp 322, Rs 450
This review is puiblished in Sunday Herald

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto         Author: Mitch Albom     Sphere      Rs.499/-          Pp 489

This is a turbulent yet soulful love story of a talented musician and the love of his life, who nurtures his inspiration to create life-changing music.  Frankie Presto’s unique talent in singing as well as guitar playing takes him through the universe of Western music. Frankie earns dazzling mastery over classical music as well as contemporary jazz and rock and roll. Music leads him from friendless penury to a place among stars like Duke Ellington to Hank Williams, Carole King and even KISS.  As a member of Elvis Presley’s troupe, Frankie becomes the first successful Elvis impersonator.  Frankie is blessed with dashing looks and a magnetic stage presence, as well as a sonorous voice and mastery of the guitar. He becomes a pop star himself, with runaway hits and adoring fans.  He gives a brilliant performance at Woodstock, but incognito. He meets and impresses The Beatles, Rolling Stones and more. Contemporary western music buffs will love these threads woven into the story. Readers unfamiliar with western music will also enjoy being carried along by the Frankie Presto wave. Number one New York Times bestselling author Mitch Albom has deftly woven music into a fast-paced plot, enriching an exciting story that tugs at the reader’s heartstrings.

Orphaned at birth, Frankie spends his early childhood in revolution-churned Spain. His mother dies immediately after his birth, in a church attacked by revolutionaries. A nun promises the dying mother to look after the orphaned newborn.  Cruelly abandoned by this first guardian, the infant Frankie is rescued by Baffa, the middle aged bachelor owner of a sardine factory.  Baffa and his hairless pet dog give Frankie affection and a stable home. Baffa takes him for music lessons to El Maestro, a talented but moody and alcoholic blind musician.

This peaceful life of home, school and music lessons is short-lived. Nine-year-old Frankie meets, and instantly falls in love with, Aurora York, a British girl, who is drawn to his guitar playing. Their innocent first meeting is violently interrupted. They watch horror-struck as Spanish soldiers execute civilian prisoners and bury them in a mass grave.  Aurora urges Frankie to play “something that says we won’t forget them.”  That defining moment “was the first time Frankie Presto attempted to give his music to someone else.”  This enduring passion for music defines Frankie’s character and endears him to readers.

On that same fateful day, Frankie learns that Baffa has been arrested by the soldiers, and that he himself is being hunted down. With Baffa’s instructions and the help of El Maestro, Frankie is sent to America hidden in the bottom of a boat, with the hope that he will find shelter in the home of Baffa’s sister in Detroit. Betrayed and robbed by those in whose care he was entrusted, all Frankie has left are his guitar, and six strings gifted by El Maestro.  He soon realises that these precious strings have magical powers. Frankie’s music can change people’s lives.  It doesn’t happen because Frankie wills it that way. And when a life is altered, one of the magical strings turns bright blue.

In America at last, little Frankie accompanies musician Django, and learns the gypsy guitar technique. From the wings of the stage in Cleveland Music Hall, he experiences the first blasts from an orchestra. “The elegant twirling of clarinets and saxophones... even the look of the band... handsomely dressed in dark tuxedos... And the crowd! Nearly two thousand people!”  Frankie realises that he wants this applause for himself. His struggles slowly bear fruit, and Frankie progresses from the sidelines to centre-stage.

Stardom, name and fame come, yet Frankie remains unfulfilled. He seeks Aurora, for she alone can give him soul-satisfying inspiration.  An inner restlessness grips this “most purely musical guitarist”, who rebels against the commerce driven music business.  At the height of fame and popularity, Frankie vanishes far from the intrusive eyes of the world. Encouraged by Aurora, he plays freely again: “better, richer, because his music now was passionate, more thoughtful... the way a great painter chooses not just a color but the perfect shade.”  He reappears decades later to give one last life-changing performance.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable read with never a dull moment. The passionate rapport between Frankie and Aurora is convincing. But the strings of coincidences holding the story together seem far-fetched. True, an explanation is given at the end, but it fails to satisfy. The device of using the muse Music to narrate Frankie’s story and linking tributes from musical celebrities, enriches the story with insights. However, the shifting timelines can be confusing at times, as the narrators speak of different times and stages in Frankie’s life.  Overall, this is a first-class entertainer, which could make a great movie someday.

This review was published in Deccan Herald. 

Flood of Fire :book review

Flood of Fire 
Amitav Ghosh
Penguin
2015, pp 624, Rs 799

This novel brings to life an exciting chapter in history, as it traces the events culminating in the Opium Wars of the 19^th Century, the British acquisition of Hong Kong, and the rise of British imperialism.  This painstakingly researched finale to the monumental Ibis Trilogy extends far beyond dry scholarship.  Rich descriptions, memorable characters and exciting action; this novel has it all. Rife with minute linguistic, cultural and military details, this is a fascinating read.

 History’s mysterious twists and turns, the ironies, fallacies, tragedies and triumphs, are dramatized through the perspectives of interesting characters. They range from fugitives on the fringes of society, to the super rich movers and shakers of world affairs. Diverse as they are, they are tied by the bond of the Ibis, the slave and opium transporting ship, in which they or their dear ones sailed at some time, and where they shared secrets. Through their stories, we see the interconnectedness of things: of how British enforced cultivation of opium yielding poppy in the plains of Bihar can have profound effects in distant China.

Zachary Reid is a young American sailor from Baltimore. The son on a white man and his African slave, Zachary is assumed to be a white man wherever he travels. Compelled to work as a ‘mystery’ or artisan in order to pay off his debts, he has a torrid liaison with his employer, Mrs Burnham. Their affair flourishes under cover of amusing euphemisms and subterfuges. Mrs Burnham gets after Zachary with crusading zeal to cure him of an ‘ailment’ which is considered a normal sexual activity today.  Such touches lends comic relief, and prevent the narrative from being weighed down by the gravity of unfolding historical events.

Zachary’s ambitions are fuelled by proximity to the Burnhams’ riches and influence. Following Mr Burnham into the lucrative opium trade seems to be the best way for a talented but poor young man like himself to make a mark in life. His initiation into drug dealing happens in the lanes of Calcutta. “Through the odour of dust and dung he recalled the perfumed scents of Mrs Burnham’s boudoir. So this was the mud in which such luxuries were rooted? The idea was strangely arousing.” By the end of the novel, Zachary evolves from “an ingenuous, good-natured boy,” into a man of the times, who does not know the meaning of ‘enough’…Anyone who thwarts my desires is the enemy of my liberty and must expect to be treated as such.”

Shireen Modi is the sheltered widow of a prominent Bombay based merchant and opium trader. Braving social ostracism, she dons western clothing and journeys alone to China to clear her beloved husband’s lost reputation, and claim compensations due to him. She witnesses the war for supremacy in the opium trade in China, and the birth of Hong Kong. On the personal plane, this model Parsi wife learns to overcome her shock upon learning of her husband’s parallel life. She reaches out to her husband’s son by a Chinese woman, and opens herself to a new life and love.

Havildar Kesri, the son of a farmer from Bihar, runs away from home to join the British army, the rising power in India. As he travels to China to fight for his British employers, he realises that “in a lifetime of soldiering he had never known what it was to fight” in the way Chinese soldiers did. “For something that was your own; something that tied you to your fathers and mothers and those who had gone before them, back into the dimness of time. An unnameable grief came upon him then…”

Bankrupted and disgraced by the British whom he once so admired, Raja Neel Rattan Halder resurfaces in China as a fugitive from British injustice. He becomes Ah Neel, the linguist and translator who compiles and assimilates information for the Chinese rulers. His diaries and commentaries add depth and perspective upon the advances of the East India Company into China, and the onset of war. His little son Raju travels all the way from Calcutta to China in search of his father, who is reported to have drowned. Raju’s experiences first as a ‘kid mutt’ or servant to Zachary, and then as a fifer in the British army, lends further depth to the story. 

Ghosh sketches the larger sweep of history, showing the sinister nature of imperialism, and on how commerce and the profit motive can be at the root of shaping international policies and war. Battles shape the course of history.

“I suppose this is much how things were in Bengal and Hindustan at the time of the European conquests and even before”, Neel notes in his journals. “The great scholars and functionaries took little interest in the world beyond until suddenly one day it rose up and devoured them.” Baboo Nob Kissin Pander’s observation of the innocent Zachary’s rapid transformation into “a perfect embodiment of the Kali-yuga” is thought-provoking, but lightened by the Baboo’s comic speech and persona. Such passages of reflection and commentary are never too long. They are alternated with battle scenes and action in bedrooms and ballrooms, in military barracks and ships. The rich use of various languages and dialects enlivens the story and prevents it from sinking under the weight of scholarship and political commentary.

This review is published in Sunday Herald

Africa 39: book review

Africa 39; new writing from Africa south of the Sahara    Edited by Ellah Watakama Allfrey

Bloomsbury        Rs 450/-                Pp 360

During the last century, the winds of change loosened the shackles of colonial rule over Africa. Soon enough, as the editor of this eminently readable anthology observes, the thrust towards freedom changed direction and character. A few leaders genuinely believed in adopting foreign ideologies for improving and revitalizing their homelands. For them, writers and intellectuals were allies to usher in positive social change. Other postcolonial African leaders saw such social doctrines as weapons for quashing dissent and pressuring citizens into intellectual submission.  

This collection of fresh and established contemporary African voices celebrates the freedom of thought and imagination. These stories explore the myriad facets of African life, daring to probe “the hidden, censored and denied histories of ourselves.”

In Alu, Recaredo Silebo Boturu portrays how western missionaries “who believed themselves to be greater and more intelligent than others… with neither permission nor compassion… plundered the lands of foreign peoples… plucked out their personalities… indoctrinated them so that they abandoned their traditions and their culture.” In a town where people were ashamed to have African names, little Alu’s rare African name stood out perhaps as an act of courage, or as a matter of principle.

Mama’s Future by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is a fable about the fate of African nations. Mama is on her deathbed since nearly a century. A cavalcade of experts have since theorized what exactly was killing her. “Some said poverty. Others, corruption. Another strand blamed her penchant for foreign lovers… She bled what money was left, after her lovers had stolen what they hadn’t been able to dupe her out of.”

Centuries of foreign subjugation followed often by autocratic African rulers, has resulted in ongoing internal strife. The upheavals and uncertainties have taken their toll. Clifton Gachagua’s No Kissing the Dolls explores through intriguing images and metaphors the near-death condition of today’s young African artists, poets and intellectuals, and by extension, of Africa itself. “She is dying and her body is in this experiment of reverse engineering and she is tearing into ribbons of primary colours – wait, wait, are these wings?” After cycles of popular uprisings, wars and social upheavals, “their fathers’ favourite musicians had failed them… Their poetry came down to that important question: would the dead lover ever return?”

Some stories explore the common people’s apathy and lack of understanding about their society and country. In the imaginary world of Shadreck Chikoti’s Azotus, the Kingdom, citizens “had taken their freedom for granted for so long that they no longer felt the need to exercise it or the need to explore why freedom should be exercised… Freedom had become commonplace, and therefore meaningless.”

Linda Musita’s Cinema Demons portrays the fate of young college educated Africans. Derrick is arbitrarily assigned by the Joint Admissions Board to study for a degree in Recreation and Leisure Management, and weighed down by an education loan which he must repay. He becomes the butt of mockery from prospective employers. “What the fuck is that, boy?... What sort of qualifications are these? Such a waste?”… Failing to secure even menial work, Derrick attends a dubious religious meet promising salvation to the faithful. The writer offers a hilarious account of the opium offered to ignorant masses. “Derrick watched the ushers battle the demons all the way to the ‘altar’ and wondered why they were doing it with their eyes open… There were close to fifty evil spirits on the stage. Demons making faces, hugging each other… called on Lucifer to save them. They wrestled the ushers and threw punches at them.” Rejecting such spurious gimmicks, Derrick chooses to take the road and walk ahead.

Africa is a melting pot of diverse cultures.  Africans also migrate to distant lands, resulting in unique experiences of isolation or revealing underlying similarities. Shafinaaz Hassim’s The Pink Oysters is about an innocent young Afghan refugee’s initiation into smuggling blood diamonds and weapons. Despite centuries of strife, remote cultures also offer intellectual gems. Edwige-Renee Dro’s The Professor shows how gems of 19^th century French literature can continue to move sensitive souls in modern Ivory Coast. In Stanley Onjezani Kenani’s The Old Man and the Pub, the narrator strives to build a business in distant Geneva. He sees the futility of trying to cash in on his unique ethnicity. “Nobody I met on the streets of the city seemed to be aware of Malawi as a country”. Yet he is surprised by a windfall legacy from an unlikely foreign client.

While the individual pieces are well crafted, their numbers and variety can confuse. Fables rub shoulders with realistic stories. Stories with a clear ideological thrust are juxtaposed with ironic, humorous or hauntingly poetic ones. Chika Unigwe’s novel Soham’s Mulatto, is about a mixed race girl born in 19^th Century England. The brief excerpt fails to do justice to the complexity of the subject. These stories offer tantalizing glimpses of the complex and sometimes conflicting realities of Africa and her peoples. It’s a must-read for its insights, and its rich bouquet of literary voices.

This review is published in Sunday Herald

The Last Illusion: book review

The Last Illusion    
Porochista Khakpour
Bloomsbury
2014, pp 319, Rs 450

This is a rich amalgam of myths, legends, and human emotions of love, alienation and courage. These elements are interwoven with premonitions of New York, 9/11 into a fascinating fable of modern times.

Author Porochista Khakpour creates a unique and memorable protagonist. Zal is an Iranian boy who has spent his childhood among captive birds. Shocked by the unusual pale skin and white hair of her newborn son, Zal’s demented mother hides her ‘White Demon’ in inhuman conditions as a detested oddity among her beloved pet birds. Bereft of human affection and society, Zal identifies with the birds around him; cheeping, shrieking, flapping his arms like wings. A decade after his birth, his sister ‘rescues’ him and draws the attention of the media to his plight. He is named Zal after the hero of Iran’s national epic, the Shahnameh, the white skinned prince who was abandoned by his family and raised by a giant bird.

Fascinated by Zal’s story, Hendricks, a behavioural scientist, takes him to America and adopts him as his son. Hendricks showers Zal with love and understanding, and hope for a normal life and future awaits Zal in New York. Zal continues to surprise scientists by his adaptability. Beating all odds, he learns to walk, talk and behave, for the most part, like other people. Yet he cannot completely overcome his bird identity. As Zal grows up, he continues to dream in bird, and secretly enjoys snacking on candied insects. Zal is drawn to the magician Silber, who creates the illusion of humans flying like birds.

Defying scientists’ predictions, Zal begins to assert his independent adult human identity, and even gets romantically involved with Asiya, a disturbed and clairvoyant artist. Yet Zal is forever treated very, very carefully by others, and finds himself in “special consideration relationships, where his story would eclipse him… and once again leave Zal the loneliest man on earth.”

The strongest and most enduring aspect of this novel is Zal’s evolution as a human being. Overcoming his miserable bird past, Zal learns to appreciate the feelings of others and reciprocate love. He wants Asiya to “know that he supported what she did – after all she had taken his story without a qualm, a judgement, without horror, disbelief. She had taken him in just as he was – he owed her the same.” Zal’s intimacy with fellow outcast Asiya, motivates him to overcome his fear of dead birds, reach out to fellow human beings, and become whole and ‘normal’. In the course of the story, Zal also learns to value and love his father Hendricks. “I’ve come to you over and over in pieces and you’ve put me back together, I owe you my life.” Towards the end of the novel, Zal realizes that he has “grown up a lot since you’ve last seen me. It’s not my story that defines me any more.” This freak oddity, this human-bird, sometimes manages to see the truth better than the ‘normal’ people around him. And this quality endears Zal all the more to the reader.

The supporting characters are interesting and convincing, multifaceted as they are with their strengths, flaws and unique experiences. Silber the gimmickry loving, glib talking magician; the generous and affectionate Hendricks; Asiya who grapples with her own troubled psyche to reach out to Zal; Willa who tries to bury childhood trauma by eating her way into magnificent obesity; these characters are unique.

The grotesque, dark and deeply sorrowful elements of this story are deftly counterbalanced with dashes of humour. Zal’s efforts to get a job are hilarious, as he breaks free from the past and feels he has nothing but a future. He looks up resumes on line, and cuts and pastes what he thinks might impress prospective employers into hiring someone who had absolutely nothing in the way of life experience. He successfully presents himself as a pilot with a culinary background who went to Yale. This killer resume gets Zal a job as a pet shop attender, where he regresses to fall in love with a canary.

Meanwhile, as the world struggles to regain balance after doomsday forecasts of Y2K, Asiya’s premonitions and Silber’s plans for his last illusion remind us that 9/11 is imminent. The re-invention of those terrible events is a rather contrived climactic point. Silber’s much publicized illusion to make the Twin Towers disappear and reappear with the help of mirrors, goes impossibly off. “The illusion had not gone right, but it had not gone wrong either. It had gone real.” As everyone runs for their lives, Zal is “mesmerized by their faces, the brief moment of joy in all that world-ending clamour.” It is then that he masters that human trick, “a beautiful small and yet essential trick of the spirit, a simple contortion of the will.” This life-changing finale, this symbolism, seems a bit too clever and laboured.  The symbolism at this point overshadows Zal. The profusion of odd, dysfunctional and damaged characters, their freakiness and strange experiences, can also weigh down the narrative.

Overall, this is a beautifully written and engrossing read.

This review is published in Sunday Herald

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: book review

This well-crafted tale examines the essence of what it means to be a family. The author explores the exquisite beauty and human flaws of parental love. Where does sibling rivalry make way for deep loyalties?

How different are we from other creatures, who also have their own distinctive personalities and thought processes? What are the deeper significances of being human? Incisive yet tempered with gentle humour, this Booker-shortlisted novel probes the connections among all sentient beings.

Rosemary, an American college student, seems yet another intelligent but socially awkward youngster. Her brushes with the law and getting into scrapes with wayward companions, her references to her trying-hard-to-appear-normal family do not initially unsettle us. Indeed the author succeeds in making us smile, and even laugh. But they create the preamble for some startling revelations.

“My parents persisted in pretending we were a close-knit family, a family who enjoyed a good heart-to-heart, a family who turned to each other in times of trial. In light of my two missing siblings, this was an astonishing triumph of wishful thinking; I could almost admire it. At the same time, I am very clear in my own mind. We were never that family.”

As is true of many families, antagonism in Rosemary’s family “comes wrapped in layers of code, sideways feints, full deniability.” Their efforts to maintain peace make us smile in recognition. “No more politics, Grandma Donna had said as a permanent new rule, since we wouldn’t agree to disagree and all of us had access to cutlery.”

Rosemary’s psychologist father turns out to be a propagator of “science’s excesses, like cloning or whisking up a bunch of genes to make your own animal.” “Was my father kind to animals? I thought so as a child, but I knew less about the lives of lab rats then.”

Rosemary’s father makes his family part of an already dubious and discredited experiment. He raises Rosemary along with an adopted sister named Fern, ostensibly to compare and contrast their developing abilities. Rosemary’s childhood world is ripped apart with the sudden disappearance of Fern. Only in page 99 is the truth finally revealed.

Fern is a chimpanzee. While her mother regresses into mourning, her older brother Lowell no longer believes that their parents’ love was unconditional. “He’d been told to care for Fern as a sister. He’d done so, only to see her cast from the family.”

Lowell nurses deep resentment and finally leaves home for good to seek his sister Fern, and champion the cause of mistreated animals. Rosemary realises that she “had been valuable only in the context of my sister.” One day, she was the subject of study.
“The next, I was just a little girl, strange in her way, but of no scientific interest to anyone.”

Rosemary finally leaves behind the ignominy of her ‘chimpanzee girl’ past when she enters a far-off university. Her roommate Scully echoes her sentiments when she confides, “You know how everything seems so normal when you’re growing up, and then comes the moment when you realise that your whole family is nuts.”

Are humans truly superior to other animals? “Dad’s experiments suggested that contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes... Human children overimitate, reproducing each step (in a puzzle) regardless of its necessity.

There is some reason why, now that it’s our behaviour, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is.” There’s a hilarious reference to humans’ capability to govern themselves. “The only way to make sense of the United States Congress, my father told me once, is to view it as a two-hundred-year-long primate study. He didn’t live to see the ongoing revolution in our thinking regarding nonhuman animal cognition. But he wasn’t wrong about Congress.”

Rosemary observes that every time we humans announce that “here is the thing that makes us unique — our featherless bipedality, our tool-using, our language — some other species comes along to snatch it away.”

This novel is memorable for raising far-reaching questions, for daring us to push the boundaries, and reconsider our sense of being ‘superior’ human beings. All the characters, including chimpanzee Fern, are portrayed with compassion. The author’s sense of humour makes this a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Some passages discussing the failings of humans, references to scientific laboratories, farms and slaughterhouses, the indignation at those who profit from the misery of animals do weigh heavy and can come across as propaganda. “In 2004, Jacques Derrida said that a change was under way. Torture damages the inflicter as well as the inflicted.

It’s no coincidence that one of the Abu Ghraib torturers came to the military directly from a job as a chicken processor.” While this enhances the overall impact of the message the author intends to convey, it also makes us conscious that there is indeed a message which sometimes overshadows the narrative.

This review is published in Sunday Herald