The Summing Up

Somerset Maugham's Liza Of Lambeth

2012-01-07T08:18:00.013+05:30

Liza Of Lambeth (1897) is perhaps Maugham's only novel which I don't have the heart to revisit. Not because it is poor, but because it is so chillingly tragic. It isn't as if his other novels are all light and sunshine. Maugham in fact always had a great eye for human tragedy and unfailingly took up themes about the impossibility of love and the doomed nature of marriages. Almost every single novel of his has a grim death in it, but nothing is as brutal as what one witnesses in Liza of Lambeth. The graphic violence and the extreme misfortune of the lead character evoke a deep sense of horror.

The book was written by Maugham when he was all of 23. It was his first attempt at writing a novel, and this he did while practising as a doctor. His work took him to the doorsteps of the poor and needy in the slums of Lambeth, and it is his experience and observations here that gave him the material for the book. To his own surprise, the novel was fairly well-received when it was published, and soon Maugham got more offers to write.

The novel is Maugham’s shortest, and also most unlike his other works. Liza of Lambeth appears distinct because it is so removed from the world the author generally sets his stories in ie upper class London. Here, in a ghetto, where the labour class resides, the mood and tenor are vastly altered. Also, a large part of the book comprises of conversations in the local slang, which makes it that much tougher to read. Yet, the story is engaging, and in the end, fans of the author will recogonise many things in the novel that only Maugham could have written.

Liza Kemp is one of the prettiest girls in Lambeth, a veritable lotus in the muck. Her life is not all rosy though, as she works as a labour girl in a local factory and then comes home to a sick, nagging mother who never has a kind word to say to her. Tom is a young, honest man, madly in love with Liza. She, however, only looks upon him as a friend and is repulsed with the idea of romancing him. Her good friend Sally is excited about going on a boat fair with her boyfriend and urges Liza to accompany them. Tom is willing to pay for her, but Liza doesn’t think it appropriate that she should take favours from someone she has no intention of marrying. Tom reassures her that he’s fine even if Liza is not interested for the moment. That instantly cheers Liza, who joins everyone else hoping to have a great time. Another reason for her happiness is the presence of Jim Blackeston, a handsome man who has recently come to stay in her neighbourhood. Jim is married with an imposing looking woman and three children. Liza feels an instant attraction towards him, and the feeling is reciprocated. Ignoring Tom, Liza tries her best to be around Jim. This angers Tom, while Jim’s wife, probably too preoccupied in other domestic thoughts doesn’t notice much. The attraction grows into a full-fledged affair and slowly tongues start wagging. Jim talks about deserting his wife, whom he says he cannot stand.

The situation starts to get messy as the women-folk refuse to take kindly to the affair. They naturally sympathise with the wife and see Liza as a callous husband stealer. When Jim’s wife senses that her husband might be leaving her for good, she unleashes her anger on Liza, giving her a fatal beating in full public view. The scene is grotesque, but it is just the kind of violence one would expect in such a place.

Jim Blackeston is pained by Liza’s death, and in anger beats up his wife. But there is every indication that he would go back to his same shoddy life and forget about the chapter with time. Liza’s mother is more concerned that she would have no one to look after her henceforth. Liza is a picture of such youthful exuberance and optimism in the novel that the reader feels an intense sadness at her life being snuffed out with such brutality. One of earliest scenes in the book has Liza exultantly walking down the street, like a diva. She stirs up a sensation and the men nearly faint with excitement. To then see her beaten black and blue on the same crowded street with no one coming forward to help in the climax leaves you with a feeling of cold disgust.

For its striking differences with Maugham’s others work, the novel still has all of his favourite themes – the mundane pattern into which marriages invariably slip into, and the all-consuming power of passion that makes individuals blind to its risks and short-comings. And Maugham since the very start seemed to understand that for many, ‘the important thing was to love rather than be loved’ Like in his other novels, here too Liza can very well go for a respectable match by way of Tom. But she simply is not drawn and cannot help it. This is a recurrent theme in almost all of the author’s books – the inability to love what is gettable, and an idealisation of a potentially destructive relationship.

Again, the disillusionment of marriage, a recurrent theme in Maugham’s oeuvre, finds a distinct voice in Liza of Lambeth too.
Jim Blackeston’s marriage has slipped into dull, domestic monotony, which is why it doesn’t take him long to fall for a younger woman.
Contrasting Liza's uncertain, desperate state is her friend Sally, who is smug and happy with her relationship and is all set for conjugal bliss. But as usual, Maugham builds a perfect apple cart only to upset it. Post marriage, Liza discovers that Sally’s husband beats her up regularly, and that all traces of love had evaporated. Sally though is too proud to admit this.

Even though the book is too grim for me, I don’t see it lacking in merits. The story is engaging, the conversations are credible, and the situations unfold with perfect plausibility. Importantly, it reveals that Maugham’s ideas about love and marriage – the two central themes of his novels – remained more or less unchanged till the very end.

R K Narayan's The Dark Room and The World Of Nagaraj

2011-10-04T19:27:00.013+05:30

Very few readers will dispute the talent that R K Narayan was. He was the first Indian writer in English to acquire such a name for himself both among native as well as foreigner readers.
V. S Naipaul has written how his image of India was entirely shaped by reading R K Narayan's books and all that happens in Malgudi, the fictional small-town in South India that the author set his stories in. His tales came with a parochial delight, yet encompassed a world of human emotions and characters. This was enchanting as much as it was universal in appeal.
Still, every now and then one hears of a not-so-flattering comment about Narayan's prose. At times it cannot be completely dismissed as it comes from say a Shashi Tharoor who in his wonderful book on his literary passions, Bookless In Baghdad writers candidly about Narayan's weaknesses calling his style 'flat and monotonous'
Tharoor writes, "Some of my friends felt I was wrong to focus on language – a writerly concern - and lose sight of the stories, which in many ways had an appeal that transcended language. But my point was that such pedestrian writing diminished Narayan's stories, undermined the characters, trivialised their concerns."

It's not completely unfair to say that Narayan's writing had its flaws, but hardly anything so serious to make it any less enjoyable. His English was perfectly good by the standards of the day. In any case, one gets a perfect sense of what Narayan might want to convey.

Narayan's writing for most part remains simple, yet profound, a feat not as easily achievable as he makes it look. His trilogy, Malgudi Days, The Bachelor Of Arts and The English Teacher are largely autobiographical, but also offer some of the most poignant and wonderful narratives. His stories bristle with the nestling beauty of warm domestic scenes. His characters grapple with seemingly trivial concerns, but to them, these are profoundly impacting and life-altering things.

Both The Dark Room (1938) and The World Of Nagaraj (1990) have plots that instantly draw you in.

The Dark Room is about a dominant, excessively critical and self-centered husband, Ramani living with his wife Savitri and three children. The first scene sees him criticising everything that his wife serves him on the table. He curses the cook and freely taunts his wife. At work, he takes more than a little fancy to a junior called Shanta Bai. She is pretty and recently separated from her husband. Ramani is taken in by her charms and goes out of his way to help her out, including vacating a spare room in the office and even making his wife give away some of their furniture to make Shanta comfortable. On the way from his golf club, he regularly starts spending time at her room, and sits entranced listening to her.

When Savitri hears of it, she is unable to bear the humiliation . She confronts her husband who dismisses her objections. Desolate at being taken so entirely for granted, she raises her voice, and then gets determined to leave the house. She wants to take the kids along, but Ramani stops her harshly. “Don't touch them or talk to them. Go yourself, if you want. They are my children," he shouts.

The blatant disregard shown by her callous husband causes such depression in her heart that she wanders alone in the street and even plunges herself in the river. But overcome by fear, she shouts out for help. A blacksmith by day and burglar by night saves her. He brings along his wife, Ponni who tries to befriend Savitri. She offers her shelter and food. But such a madness seizes Savitri that she refuses to eat anything not earned by herself. She is disgusted at being at the mercy of the men in her life – father, brother, husband. She gets so obstinate about not taking any more charity from anyone that she starts working at a temple as a cleaner for a cantankerous priest. But in a day she realises the impracticality of her choice and returns home, though a part of her is dead now. Ramani is relieved to find her back, less for her sake, and more to keep up social pretenses.

There is no doubt that Narayan's sympathies are with Savitri, though he doesn't make a grand feminist statement by making her walk-out forever on her marriage. Narayan, above all, much in the vein of say a Jane Austen, was a realist and understood the limitations of people in their context and worlds. Narayan's characters rebel against a traditional and regressive society. Earlier in Bachelor Of Arts, the young protagonist is sickened at his inability to get the girl he wants and turns a monk for a while. But quickly realising the narrowness of his world, comes back into the mainstream.

In The Dark Room, Narayan quite clearly feels a deep anguish at the wife being treated so shabbily and leaves no opportunity to portray the ugliness and shocking selfishness of the husband's character.

The book is less of a novel and more of a novella. Narayan is effective in his portrayal of Ramani, a vain, sarcastic, self-serving man. Also, the part where Savitri leaves and encounters a different world is poignant, but the book as a whole has a few weaknesses. It is not as lush in its narrative, the story runs rather quickly, and doesn't delve too much into the complexities. Ramani's fling with his junior is awkwardly handled, perhaps because Narayan was writing about an episode he may not have experienced or seen first hand. The 'other' woman's character also remains shadowy.

None of those problems are there in The World Of Nagaraj, which is an unqualified classic. It could be because it was written in Narayan's later years, and the narrative has a fluency and depth that is quite amazing.
Since I read both books back-to-back, I felt an instant difference reading ...Nagaraj. One's reading pace is automatically slowed, as you try to absorb the atmospherics and the dense description of the leading character. The book is about a simple-minded, pleasant man, living with his wife, Sita and mother in a rather grand ancestral house called Kabir Street. He loves day-dreaming and talks a great deal to himself. His life's ambition is to be a thesis on sage Narada. Humble and affable, Nagaraj has no worries until his nephew Krishnaji, referred to as 'Tim' comes to stay with him. Narayan - through a series of flashbacks gives a vivid picture of the family characters. Gopi, the elder brother is aggressive and dominating. Until their father is alive and they all stayed together, Gopi took the best room, where he and his wife would stay locked in. The wife would cook savouries in limited portions and take them directly to their room. When the will is read out, Gopi asks for the farm house and lands in the village. This suits Nagaraj who prefers having the house in Malgudi.

Sharp-tongued and abrasive, Gopi looks at his younger brother as a bit of a fool, and openly insults him for his dull replies. Nagaraj being supremely unassertive, takes many of his brother's put-downs as a joke, trying to maintain a semblance of cheerful normalcy.

The entire book brings out the predicament of a man who cannot stand up for himself and bear to confront situations. There is a scene in the novel, where Tim and his wife have come to permanently stay in Nagaraj's house. This is the time when the latter has finally decided to get serious about his theses on Narada, but Tim's wife is in the habit of playing the harmonium in the mornings and this is a source of intense irritation to Nagaraj. His impulse once prompts him to bang against her door and ask her to shut up. But he weakly smiles and walks away when she actually opens the door.

Narayan's point seems to be that it is human nature to take for a ride, and be insensitive to the needs of those who don't stand up for themselves. A complete lack of ego or pride is viewed as a grave weakness by others, and the obvious response is to take the person for granted. Nagaraj's nervous reactions are both amusing and frustrating to watch, though you can't help cheering for him. You want him to give up his meekness and take on his supercilious brother for once. The ending is poignant, and perhaps even sadder than The Dark Room.

But both novels leave you with a feeling of exultation, as they give a wonderful psychological insight into human characters, and throb with a natural goodness so unique to R K Narayan's works.

Priya - Namita Gokhale

2011-07-17T19:39:00.016+05:30

Author: Namita Gokhale
Pages: 195
Price: 350
Publishers: Penguin

This is the first book I took up to review by Namita Gokhale, better recogonised as the co-director of the highly popular Jaipur lit fest. She's written 10 books already - which I had no idea about.

You see the book’s inane title and cover design and wonder if the rest of the book is going to be as unimaginative. Its tag line below further reads -'In Incredible Indyaa' - an obvious smart-alecky attempt taking a dig at the socialite obsession with numerology. The author tries hard to satarise a certain class of people with their pretentions and superficial airs -the irony though is that the novel itself feels impossibly artificial and snooty.

The characters are not fleshed out and come across as obnoxious caricatures. Also, the author's own personality seems to pervade heavily on the way these people speak. The result is not pleasant. The men don't sound like men. For example, the 45 something protagonist’s teenager son speaks dialogues such as these, “ Honest! That’s what her feminist-sheminist mother said. And her father got really upset, he even tried phoning Pitaji. He didn’t get through - all the PAs and secretaries saw to that. And then I sort of surrendered, and agreed to marry Monalisa. Her parents got uber excited. I think they had dreams of Band Baja Ghodi and Disco Bhangra and all that! Or Some Bengali fancy-dress tamasha”
Phew!

Gokhale's latest is a sequel of sorts to the her earlier novel titled Paro, about a free-spirited, promiscuous woman. Priya has a presence in that book too. She is the more timid, staid one. She grows up as a middle-class girl in Mumbai, marries Suresh Kaushal, who in an unexpected windfall turns into a successful minister at the centre. This change in fortune is quite sudden and Priya’s lifestyle transforms overnight. She suddenly finds herself in the midst of political and Page 3 glitterati and has new 'challenges' to face every day.
She has twin sons, Luv and Kush. Luv is more artistically inclined while Kush is the more pragmatic one with aspirations of following his father’s political footsteps.

But these characters are etched with no subtlety at all. What should have been conveyed in the narration with crafty irony is done blatantly with tasteless dialogues. For example, the author wants to assert Kush’s clinical approach to things. So when he gets a marriage proposal he meets the girl and discusses her on the breakfast table next day with his parents. He announces,“I’ve assessed the Sethia chick...It’s like a merger or an amalgamation. One has to study the fundamentals."
This is plain nasty writing and one would be hard-pressed to find anyone talking like that. The approach may be a reflection of Delhi’s opportunistic and mercenary culture, but the dialogues do the narration in completely.

You have the husband Suresh having extra-marital affairs. Priya herself has an old flame whom she goes gallivanting with. There’s a Page 3 social climber type thrown in who talks about Botox and refers to Priya as Mrs Menopause. There is a ridiculous story about Luv and his love entanglements. Then just like that Kush turns out to be gay as well, and Priya is most sanguine about it. All this is laughably amateurish.

The novel's narration is in Priya's voice, but her character never really emerges in any sense. You never enter her head. Also, there are too many purple patches with needless adjectives thrown in. The author has the annoying habit of inserting all kind of Hindi words like ajeeb and adla badla as well. There's only one time when I thought a Hindi expression is well-used. 'Yaari-type hug' - I thought that captures a scene in an instant.

However, the entire book has a vein of artificiality running through it with shrill coincidences and poor plot-construct and characterisation.

The book has a few lines that are well written here and there - somewhere Suresh talks about India being a serpent with its hood being in the 21st century and tail still being in the dark ages. Also, some of the author's comments on Delhi's opportunistic culture and its obsession for private shorthand is interesting. The book is ambitious to the extent that Gokhale tries to etch out a novel driven entirely by atmospherics. Unfortunately, she's not upto the task.

2011-07-14T22:29:00.003+05:30

Author: Namita Gokhale
Pages: 195
Price: 350
Publishers: Penguin

This was the first time I was reading a book by Namita Gokhale, better known for being the co-director of the very popular Jaipur lit-fest than her authorial endeavors. She's written 10 books, which I had no idea about. But after reading her latest one I think I know why I had never heard of her as an author.

I see the book’s inane title, Priya flashed brightly on the cover and wonder if the rest of the book is going to be as unimaginative. Its tag line below further reads -'In Incredible Indyaa' – an obvious smart-alecky attempt at taking a dig at the obsession with numerology among socialities. The author tries hard to satarise a certain class of people, with their pretentions and superficial airs -the irony being that the author cannot prevent her own writing from being impossibly artificial and stilted.

You deseperately hope for the narration to improve and not give itself so much airs. "Get real", you feel like screaming. The characters are not fleshed out and come across as obnoxious caricatures. Besides the author's own personality seems to pervade heavily on the way these people speak. The result is not pleasant. The men don't sound like men. For example, the 40 something protagonist’s teenager son speaks dialogues such as these, “ Honest! That’s what her feminist-sheminist mother said. And her father got really upset, he even tried phoning Pitaji. He didn’t get through – all the Pas and secretaries saw to that. And then I sort of surrendered, and agreed to marry Monalisa. Her parents got uber excited. I think they had dreams of Band Baja Ghodi and Disco Bhangra and all that! Or Some Bengali fancy-dress tamasha” Phew!

Ghokale's book is a sequel of sorts to her earlier novel, Paro, about a free-spirited, promiscuous woman. Priya has a presence in that book too. She is the more timid, staid one. She grows up as a middle-class girl in Mumbai, marries Suresh
Kaushal, who in a few years turns into a successful politician and is currently one of the ministers. This change in fortunes is quite sudden and Priya’s lifestyle is impacted by it. She suddenly finds herself in the midst of political and Page 3 glitterati and has new challenges to face every day. She has twin sons, Luv and Kush. Luv is more artistically inclined, the author insists, while Kush is the more
pragmatic one, with aspirations of following his father’s political footsteps. But their characters are etched with no subtlety at all. What should be conveyed in the narration with crafty irony is done blatantly with dialogues that sound tasteless. For example, the author wants to assert Kuch’s clinical, mercenary approach to things. So when he gets a marriage proposal, he meets the girl and discusses her on the breakfast table next day with his parents. His announcement is, “I’ve assessed the Sethia chick...It’s like a merger or an amalgamation. One has to study the
fundamentals.” This is plain nasty writing and one would be hard-pressed to find anyone talking like that. The attitude may well be a reflection of Delhi’s opportunistic social culture, but this comes across as laughable amateurish.

You have husbands having extra-marital affairs. Priya herself has an old flame whom she goes gallivanting with . There’s a Page 3 social climber type thrown in, who talks about Botox and refers to Priya as Mrs Menopause. There is a ridiculous story about Luv and his love entanglements. Then just like that Kush turns out to be gay
as well, and Priya –his mother is most sanguine about it. She's turned new-age in a flash you see.

The theme of retribution in Delhi Belly

2011-07-06T11:25:00.001+05:30

The fact that this Akshat Varma penned script, stylishly directed by Abhinay Deo is a tightly-woven, smartly executed one is something all reviews have agreed. Varma – probably on account of having studied script-writing abroad – follows one of the essential rules of filmmaking – not to waste details. Every scene and reference in small or big ways adds to the development of the film – sooner or later. The story by itself is not novel, but it is this adherence to a simple scripting rule that makes this mad-cap, irreverent flick seem instantly fresh and unusual from the run-of-the-mill Hindi-film experience.

But I come to a different point about Delhi Belly. This is not a film that is particularly bothered about appearing intellectual and profound – it is happy to be a dark, wicked comic thriller. And yet, I felt the film is very strong on subliminals. It’s not like the writer is necessarily aiming for it, but I detected a strong theme of retribution in Varma’s work.

Retribution is the idea of justice. You are punished for what you do wrong and rewarded what you do right. The three guys in the film (Imran, Vir, Kunal) stay in a dump, leading the most wretched, lazy, indifferent life. This is not uncommon with bachelors, but the writer recogonises that his protagonists need to wake up and gives them the jolt of their life. The film picks them up and throws them in the deep end of the sea, and challenges them to find a way out now. The fact that Varma has some affection for his protagonists goes without saying. These are well-meaning, decent chaps. But he raises a storm – makes everything go wrong for them – until they take stock of their life – a coming-of-age of sorts. They are rewarded in the end. Imran gets the girl he wants, and the three of them get to keep the pickings.

This is the overarching retribution theme, but it works in every aspect of the film’s development. The writer takes no high moral ground anywhere, but there a subtle sense of poetic justice embedded into his script. Portly Nitin freely ogles at an actress, takes her photos from ‘those’ angles. His next stop is to a brothel where he could be a regular. The boob-press scene shows he enjoys some familiarity around. Today he is on business. His intent? To take pictures of his landlord (for all outward appearances a working-class, respectable man) in compromising positions with a prostitute. Nitin finds a simple blackmail the best immediate option for their rent woes. The writer sets up these things in such a way that you can’t help feel that Nitin is probably getting his just desserts. He suffers a horrible stomach upset that embarrasses him throughout the film. Nitin’s ordeal might be funny to the audience, but it’s never once a laughing matter to anyone in the film itself. His smug expression at the start of the film is soon replaced by a helpless, jolted one.

The writer derives fun out of Nitin’s uncomfortable state, and also from the landlord’s, who gets a caustic tongue-lashing from his police inspector brother. Both get away in the end, because of a certain good act by them. Nitin stands by Tashi in his hour of need, and is clever – so he deserves the money he gets. Comically, the landlord – having no clue that Nitin is behind the blackmailing – like a helpful neighbour takes him to the clinic for his check-up. Naturally, this goodness melts Nitin’s heart, and once his own troubles are over, he wastes no time in sending the landlord an anonymous letter asking him to forget about the photos. “Lead a happy life’ it says. This is one of the most heart-warming scenes in the film, because this is the first kindly emotion the writer allows you to feel in this otherwise chaotic, crazed, messed up world.

The retribution theme takes full force with the character of Vir Das (Arup) who is ditched by his girl friend. Cinematically, he is allowed a grand revenge with Jaa Chudail, even though the story cannot follow the girl in question.
Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala ) pays for her dumbness with humiliation at the hands of the gangster (Raaz). But to Akshat’s credit – and this would have seemed very sexist and unacceptable otherwise – he is not entirely callous with her character. Rightly, she slaps Tashi hard, in full view of others for ditching her. In the last scene Nitin wonders whether he can start dating her if Taashi is not seeing her anymore. “She’s hot!’ he says. So Sonia’s feminine graces are allowed to be kept.

The jeweller loses his money because he was a cheat. The most splendid character of the film Vijay Raaz – who the writer etches with great delight – has to die for not letting off his protagonist after he recovers his diamonds. But he’s not casually disposed off like a cheap villain. There is a cinematic grandness to his death as the shot hits his forehead and the blood drops in slow motion. Here was no ordinary man, the writer seems to say.

Chinese Whiskers

2011-06-21T13:38:00.004+05:30

Friends, this is a piece I did for Biblio, a one of its kind literary magazine in India - published from Delhi. I consider it a fairly important and essential platform for the intellectual exchange of ideas and information. I have attached its link. Readers can log in to the site and read

Author: Pallavi Aiyar
Publishers: Haerper Collins
Pages: 221
Price: 399

In one of her many interviews, author Pallavi Aiyar expresses her exasperation over too much “arm-chair analysis” that happens around the Indo- China relationship. To get a credible perspective on our Asian counterpart, she believes one must see things “ground up” rather than “top down” by observing the quotidian lives of its people. And Aiyar finds herself in a good position to do that, having stayed in Beijing for six years, first as an English teacher and then as a correspondent for The Hindu and The Indian Express. Like many expats in recent times, she has made use of this valuable experience to write two books on China, a society shrouded in ancient mysteries. This harmless cultural impulse apart, what has been worrying though is the Communist regime’s rigid monitoring and gagging of information, coinciding with the country’s dizzying success on the world economic stage. China elicits more interest now than ever before, and the fact that precious little fiction comes out of the country for the mainstream English reader, makes Chinese Whiskers all the more timely and interesting.

http://www.biblio-india.org/showart.asp?inv=21&mp=MJ11

A longish essay on Uncle Tom's Cabin

2011-06-16T22:42:00.011+05:30

Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic 1852 novel is best remembered for its emotional, conscientious appeal for the abolishment of slavery. The author, though White herself, had seen the lives of slaves from close quarters and could give a fairly accurate version of the atrocities that were heaped on them. The book's powerful, hard-hitting narrative had the desired effect and within 5 months of its publication nearly half a million copies were sold. The book became extremely controversial. By this time slavery no longer existed in North America. But it thrived in the South where slaves were an economic necessity, as they were needed in the fields. The Southerners put up a fierce resistance against attempts to change existing laws, leading to the Civil war in 1860s. The North won, and America was finally declared free of slavery.

Beecher's novel came a decade before the civil war took place and continued to have immeasurable influence on the political and social narrative on slavery. The Southerners expectedly slammed Uncle Tom's Cabin terming it exaggerated and even untruthful. However, the horrors that were captured in the novel and the psychology of human violence it brought out so incisively made a deep impression upon its readers. Over the years Beecher's novel grew so famous that it's characters - Uncle Tom, Eva, Simon Legree, Topsy became American by words. The novel was adapted for the stage many times and several film adaptations of it were made in the silent era. This did some disservice to the book "as many of these were garish dramatisations, emphasing the most melodramatic, seemingly improbable incidents in the novel", says Alfred Kazin in his introduction to the classic. For the later generation the novel turned into a caricature. "The characters had become such worn-out symbols that without knowing the book, people who mockingly used these symbols thought the book beneath their notice," he writes.

Yet, it's impossible to deny the novel's historical significance. It remains the single-most enduring novel written on slavery. Over the years the Blacks have come to view the book with with mixed feeling. The novel unquestionably aided in the abolition of slavery but many also saw the portrayal of Blacks as objectionable for a variety of reasons. Author and critic Charles Johnson's introduction for one of the newer editions is especially useful in understanding the Black point of view to the novel. Johnson -though he finds the novel untidy, full of contrivances, improbable situations and mawkish sentimentality, applauds it for its stupendous characters and narrative power. He states that much need not be made about these faults because this was the structure prevalent in the nineteenth century. Also, Uncle Tom's Cabin came at a time when fiction was being published in serialized form in newspapers, which meant there was the natural tendency to stretch a story too long. Beecher's novel came in 45 weekly instalments which explains its immoderate length. "What Uncle Tom's Cabin lacks in concinnity it more than makes up for by being fully imagined and deeply felt," says Johnson.

He sees the novel as a staggering success in terms of story-telling but firmly objects to the way Blacks have been portrayed, calling it 'ineluctably racist' "Stowe's interpretation of the 'nature' of Negros is her novel's most central and self-destructive flaw. It simple replaces one racist stereotype with another that is equally condescending and unacceptable." He goes on to say that this is typically the problem with most white Americans who will understand the racial and cultural "other" only 'in their own terms'

Johnson is especially displeased that the author tags Blacks with adjectives like 'patient, timid and unenterprising' Also, he believes Beecher overdoes her sympathy by showing all Blacks as innocent and good. Even Topsy who is a wild, irreligious child is someone who monkeys around and amuses people. So essentially, the argument becomes that Blacks ought to be freed because they are harmless and pet-like. It totally deflects from the simple ethical question of human freedom and dignity. These points are extremely valid. He even quotes Charles Dickens who was disturbed by Beecher's attempt at portraying Blacks in an over-the-top positive light. "I think this extreme championship is likely to repel some useful sympathy and support."

Similarly, while the Southern's felt that Beecher had fabricated the truth, Johnson on the other hand believes that her book only "touches upon the iceberg of two hundred years of depravity and cruelly inflicted on Africans"

Beyond these points of debate, let's also look at what the books actually aims to do. Without much doubt Beecher's social and moral concerns overpowered her artistic ambitions. The issue of slavery was foremost on the author's mind. And yet, she has a terrific sense of drama, and some of her characterisation is as good as it gets in classic literature. Yet, there are also painfully exaggerated figures she creates in the lead characters of Uncle Tom and Eva - the angelical do-gooders as symbols of Christ. Both epitomise Christian ideals of forbearance and sacrifice, and belong to the Black and White sides respectively. This choice of characterisation was most probably derived from the fact that Beecher was herself brought up on tales of Christian charity and brotherhood. Her faith was strong and her attempt was clearly to evoke the image of Christ amidst the cruelties she saw around her.
Where Beecher is really in top form is in her slow peeling of the evil characters. She demonstrates an immense and awe-inspiring talent in the description of Marie Clare and Simon Legree.

Now for the gist of the novel. The action starts at the Shelbys, a kindly family who treat their slaves well. However, when Mr Shelby's fortunes take a beating he is forced to sell off his loyal slave of many years, the middle-aged and diligent, Uncle Tom. He also plans to give away one of their female slave Eliza's son. When Eliza hears that her child would be taken away from her, a strange motherly power possesses her and she makes a great escape. Tom - the ever tolerant man meekly follows his new master, Mr Haley, leaving his wife and children behind. Tom is industrious and god-loving and doesn't face too many problems. But his stay with Haley is short-lived, as a young man of fortune and family, St Clare absorbs him into his large, picturesque household in New Orleans. St Clare buys Tom at a princely sum, since his little daughter Eva takes a great liking to him. Eva is portrayed as a little angel who cannot see anyone suffering around her and is always compassionate to everyone. She holds no prejudice of colour or class.

Her mother Marie is the polar opposite. She is hypochondriac and a nag. The author says describing her, "Marie had never possessed much capability of affection, or much sensibility, and the little that she had, was merged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness; a selfishness more hopeless, from it quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of any claims but her own. From her infancy she had been surrounded by servants, who lived only to study her caprices; the idea that they had feeling or rights had never dawned upon her even in distant perspective."

Marie intensely resents the fact that her husband is excessively lenient with their servants. She finds it absurd that he never whips them. Things seem to go along nicely for Tom for a while. But then almost suddenly Eva takes ill and dies. St Clare is a broken man but as kind as ever. He is keen to give Tom his freedom, but just days before the formalities can get completed, he too dies. Now at the mercy of their heartless mistress the servants start to get nervous about their altered circumstances. On one occasion Marie even sends one of her slave girls to a flogging house. Clare's middle-aged cousin, Miss Ophelia pleads the girl's case with Marie, but she obtusely holds on to her own position.

Marie sells off some of the slave, including Tom. This proves to be the third and final destination for Tom. His master Simon Legree is a ruthless, sadistic tyrant. Yet, he means to be decent with Tom as he sees potential in him and wants to promote him as an overseer. Legree, however, is uncomfortable seeing the pious side of Tom. His inhuman and immoral acts fill his heart with a dread of the unknown, and he gets determined to break his will. He asks Tom to flog a woman. When he refuses, he unleashes the worst torture on him. Finally, Tom dies at the hands of Legree's men, much like Christ.

The story is deeply moving and its emotional sweep is tremendous. Harriet Beecher Stowe's prose is compassionate and courageous, and it's not difficult to see that such a novel -with its particular nuances and shades - could only be written by a woman. Happy domestic scenes clearly delight the author and to her mind nothing can be more tyrannical than forcibly breaking up a family. This is the refrain throughout the novel. Slaves were allowed to marry but these marriages were not legally recognised and their owners very often would sell one half of the couple to anyone they wished. This inhuman aspect of slavery moved Beecher the most and she recounts countless episodes that show husband-wife and mother-child being cruelly separated. The author was evidently appealing to the sympathetic heart of White American wives and mothers, who would be able to feel the full impact of such an act.

The novel's other important theme is the psychology of violence. When irresponsible and uncontrolled power is placed with someone, human beings are capable of unleashing the most perverse violence on each other. This is what is revealed in the case of both Legree and Marie.
While the author portrays the 'good' in its purest form, reaching almost unrealistic levels, she is more interesting when she tackles evil in people. Ever the evangelist, she likes to believe that people can have a change of heart. Many characters in the book do go through that feeling.
The novel’s other strength is that it wonderfully penetrates into the psyche of women and captures how their minds operate. There is always a fair bit of guile and tact that women employ to negotiate their way around, and this the author astutely brings out.
All of this makes Uncle Tom’s Cabin as much of an artistic success as much as it one of the most significant social novels in all of literature.

Pages:511

First Day First Show:Anupama Chopra

2011-06-09T21:44:00.019+05:30

Author: Anupama Chopra
Pages: 376
Publisher: Penguin
Price: 499

It didn't seem like the wisest thing to do when a 20 something Anupama Chopra set her mind to write on Bollywood. Her intellectually inclined family was taken aback by her decision. Even more bemused was the India Today editor Arun Poorie who took her interview. "So you came back from America with a journalism degree to write about Bollywood?' he asked incredulously, giving her the job anyway. Through the 90s and mid-2000s, she wrote extensively on Hindi cinema, covering various aspects of Bombay’s dream factory. In the course of this time, she also wrote two books, one on the epochal Sholay and the other, her all time favourite film, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. Currently, as the consulting entertainment editor for an English television news channel, she does weekly interviews and reviews. Her latest book First Day First Show is a compilation of her numerous articles -- comprising interviews, quotable quotes and pithy observations, that give a panoromic view of Bollywood in the last two decades. The concentration is essentially on the 90s though.

In her Prologue, Anupama tells us how she started working in a period when the mainstream press rarely took film journalists seriously, and movies were primarily the domain of popular magazines like Stardust, Filmfare and Cineblitz. Some of these were PR driven, while most others contained salacious gossip and spicy interviews. The language had plenty of spunk and chutzpah. However, these were entirely star-driven magazines with no place for serious film appreciation. This was also a time when the industry was anarchic in its working patterns. Stars would be hopping sets like headless chickens, doing 20-25 films at one time. The distributor lobby - which would push for randomly inserting action sequences or a sexy item number - made the movie business cruder than ever. Formulas ruled, and much of the scripts were frame-by-frame copies of Hollywood blockbusters. To compound matters, the industry’s murky links with the underworld were surfacing.

To be conscious of this context and yet write lucidly and responsibly was a challenge by itself, and this is where Anupama succeeds. There is no trace of condescension or cynicism in her writing. Her passion for Hindi cinema brims forth, even as she takes an objective view of the industry with its chaos and contradictions. Her pieces are intelligent, not overly academic or pedantic.
These columns, most of them written for India Today in the last decade and a half run you through the various phases of the industry. And you have to agree with her when she says that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For example, the 90s for a while saw a phase where double-meaning, ribald songs ruled the roost. From cholis to khatiyas, each producer was trying to outdo the other. There was a public outcry finally, a few vulgar films flopped, and the ‘smut bubble’ as the author calls it, finally burst.

She rightly observes that melody moves in circles and that the vulgar wave was perhaps inevitable. It’s like how Amitabh Bachchan came and edged out the soft, romantic songs typified in Rajesh Khanna’s films, she says. “In 1990, the super success of Nadeem-Shravan’s Aashique ushered in the year of ghazal-type romantic music as in Saajan, Dil, Phool Aur Kaante and Deewana. 'There was so much sweetness,' says (lyricist) Sameer, ‘that the audience got diabetes.’ Aakhen put a foot in the double-meaning door and ‘Choli’ opened the floodgates.”
One sees a similar trend in music now, with the likes of Dev D’s Emotional Atyachar and Delhi Belly’s D K Bose flaunting a devil-may-care attitude with their irreverent tone and impudent lyrics. The intent in some ways is again to break away from set pattern, and its target audience – youth – are lapping it up.

Anupama covers the careers and personalities of all the key players of this time - Madhuri Dixit, Shah Rukh Khan, Govinda, Aamir Khan, Kajol, Karisma Kapoor, Amitabh, Aishwarya Rai – and brings a rare acuity to her observations. She says about Madhuri’s astonishing ascent to the top. “So what is the Madhuri phenomenon all about? It’s about dancing, for one. No other actress can match her suggestive, come hither mobility. In the profusion of bare midriffs and wiggling hips, her sexuality stands apart, marked by apparent innocence...She doesn’t ooze sex, she suggests it. With no overt come-on, she is the ultimate Indian male fantasy – a desi, middle-class Madonna,” she writes.

Among the most interesting articles is the one on the Bhatts, who were the most prolific makers through the 90s. The piece on script-writer Honey Irani is hilarious as well. There are also a few articles on Govinda, who seems to be a favourite of the author. She describes a particularly amusing incident of her trying to pin down the Hero No 1 for an interview. She narrates how he and his family were unfailingly polite. Govinda himself kept referring to her as ‘Bhabhiji’ after Anupama’s marriage to filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra, but constantly failed to keep his appointments.

One of the best chapter here is an extract from her book on Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, where she interprets the film is some detail, bringing in several fresh insights. Talking about the character of Raj, she writes, “He is the perfect blend of the modern and the traditional. He is progressive in certain situations and rigidly conservative in others. He plays by the rules but he also tweaks them. When Simran decides to keep karva chaut, Raj supports her. Karva chaut is a largely north Indian ritual in which married Hindu women keep a day-long fast, abstaining from food and water for the prosperity and longevity of their husbands. Feminists have long railed against this gendered practice, but the ritual continues to be immensely popular. Aditya (Chopra) who grew up watching his mother do karva chauth, puts a modern twist to it. Simran, the bride-to-be, decides to fast for her future husband. In her mind, of course, it is Raj and not Kuljeet. Raj doesn’t take the ritual too seriously – when Simran complains of hunger pangs, he tries to sneak her a laddoo. But as a token of love and solidarity, Raj also fasts...”

Anupama rightly points out how the DDLJ world is a largely male-driven one, where women have little power. She also makes a mention of one of the most terrific scenes in the film, involving Simran’s mother Lajjo who speaks about the continued sacrifices expected out of women. “The film most definitely recogonises this inequality between men and women, but affirms the status quo. Like Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Kaun...! it establishes the importance of family over individual.”
The book also carries many of the author’s reviews of past and recent films.
Anupama’s writing is precise, with unmistakable irony and style. Shah Rukh Khan in his Forward of the book also makes a mention of it. "I may or may not agree with her view but I know it is honest. I like the simplicity of her writing. I like that it is never over-elaborate," he says.

The actor in his forward also mentions how Anupama is objective because she is an 'outsider' who became an 'insider' - much like SRK himself. SRK further recounts some interesting aspects of his journey to superstardom, and especially talks about his early days.

Since much of the contents of the book are from contemporary film history, it's not terribly revelatory in any sense. But Anupama's polished yet empathetic approach is what makes her writing stand apart. For that reason, this book is a worthy endeavour.

City Of Djinns

2011-05-27T23:04:00.009+05:30

Author: William Dalrymple
Pages: 339
Published in the year: 1994
Publishers: Penguin
Genre: Non-fiction/ Memoir

For Dalrymple, who has come to acquire the status of a formidable travel writer today, it was City Of Djinns that marked the beginning of his fascination with Mughal history. For the book, part travelogue and memoir, the author spent nearly a year in Delhi unravelling the city's archaeological and historical riches. What looked like a fling with India then turned into a lasting romance, and the Scottish author followed it up with two more books on related themes that became the centrepiece of his literary career - White Mughals and The Last Mughal. While the former is about the early relationship between the English and native Indians, The Last Mughal largely is based on events around the 1857 revolt and the ouster of Delhi’s last king, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Both the above books were of course born out of City of Djinns. Dalrymple had visited Delhi when he was all of seventeen and was instantly under its spell. "It was so totally unlike anything I had seen before. Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horror, it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter...Moreover - I soon discovered - possessed a bottomless seam of stories, tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of myth and legend," he says in his introduction.

The whole city, then, seemed to be an endless and fascinating journey of discovery to the author, who had already by then acquired a reputation as a stunning travel writer with his first book In Xanadu. Still only 25, Dalrymple brought with him a sense of adventure and a charming, wide-eyed curiosity to Delhi that he put together in this elegant, lush memoir. Besides uncovering grand, epic stories around the city, the book is punctuated with delightful daily-life anecdotes that Dalrymple narrates with a mix of bemused exasperation and empathy. Many interesting character dot his domestic world. His land lady Mrs Puri, who likes to govern things with an iron hand, and his cab driver, Balvinder, a loutish, pan-chewing Punjabi fellow - are coloured with vivid, ironic strokes. Charmingly, Dalrymple was also newly married around this time, and provides a very flattering portrayal of his artist-wife Olivia, who has done the illustrations for the book. The maps and monuments she draws are really pretty, though much of the sketches have a distinct exotic, western gaze - man smoking hookah, an old cobbler, qawwali singers, a eunuch and so one.

The author slowly peels the historical onion of Delhi, by tracing the antecedents of the city’s famous monuments. It opens up a long and bloody history of conquerors and blood-shed, of periods of glory and despondency, of exile and re-settlement. Darlymple’s journey touches upon the after effects of the Indo-Pak partition on its inhabitants, the Sikh revolt in the 80s. From contemporary history, he goes back to the Raj, and extensively covers the period which saw a rapid change in the British attitude to the natives. All this happened within a century. The Whites who came either as part of the East India Company or as scholars, were reverential to the Mughals. They imbibed the Orient culture, married Indian women.... But as the power of the East India company grew and the British conclusively established their rule in most of India, the equations drastically altered, and the natives were all shunned. The Anglo-Indians, in fact, suffered the worst blow, as they found no acceptance on either side. Dalrymple speaks to a few Anglo-Indians who survived that period, and their inputs are quite telling. Most of them consider themselves as full—blown British. One such old couple is Marion and Jeo Fowler, who describe with delight one of their brief visits to England. They talk about the great food, the picturesque landscaps and the sense of equality that prevails there. There is a hint of regret at not being able to live in a place they believe to be their right. “It was that Mrs Thatcher. She never liked Anglo-Indians. She made it very hard for us. All her rules and regulations,” they bemoan.

From the British era, the book travels back to the luxuriant Shah Jahan period, where a bloody battle for succession broke out between his two sons Dara Shikoh and Aurangazeb. It was also a period where the Mughals were at the zenith of glory and wealth. Yet, the author observes that this outward refinement in art and etiquette was a cover for some of the most crude and heinous of crimes committed.
Delving deeper into Delhi’s history, the author gives vivid portrayals of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim, Moroccan traveller, who wrote about his journeys and Tughluk Khan, one of the most barbaric rulers of the 14th century.

Clearly, Dalrymple summons up tremendous amounts of patience, as he painstakingly gets to the bottom of the city’s historical treasures. The entire endeavour brims with passion, and equally impressive is the maturity and restraint that Dalrymple brings to his excellent writing.
The author is seldom critical, except when he talks about the neglect by the Indian authorities of important archaeological sites or his harrowing experience at the customs. At other times, he prefers letting his ironic narration do the talking.
It need not be added then that any reader of City Of Djinns will view Delhi is a completely new light.

Tagore's Naukadubi

2011-05-20T19:58:00.014+05:30

Kashmakash(dubbed)
Director: Rituparno Ghosh
Starring: Jishu Sengupta,Raima Sen, Riya Sen, Prosenjit,
Stars: ***

In times when intelligent and original stories are so hard to come by, one naturally looks towards literary adaptations with some interest. Because even if they often disappoint in their final execution, they still come with a semblance of a plot. And if the adaptation is from one of the great littérateurs of the past century, Rabindranath Tagore, one is even more thrilled at the prospect. Tagore's reputation largely rests on his poems and short stories, but he was also a farily successful novelist. His Choker Bali was an artistic tour de force and was earlier made into a film by director Rituparno Ghosh. This time Ghosh chooses Tagore's other famous novel, Naukadubi that was written at the turn of the 20th century. Great changes were happening in Bengal, as in the rest of the country at this time. And much of this got reflected in Tagore's works.

Naukadubi has been dubbed in Hindi as Kashmakash, produced by Subhash Ghai to coincide with Tagore's 150 anniversary. Somehow, even though any endeavour that brings classic literature to the fore needs to be applauded, and Naukadubi has some definite strengths, it is a film that is closely tied to the context of its times. Chastity is an important concern in the film, so is parental influence. These elements are the chief drivers of the plot, and these may not necessarily find a resonance with today's audience, unless they can see it as art belonging to a particular social milieu.

And yet, it does raise some profound and timeless questions. It looks at our deeply engrained sense of tradition and morality and what happens when it is in conflict with the dictates of the heart. Each character goes through this conundrum, and deal with it according to their individual situations in life.

There is of course beauty and lyricism that come from the fact that Tagore was essentially a poet at heart. Novel-writing demands a certain analytical and realistic approach, but being a lyricist, he applied his grand imagination to real settings. Naukadubi is an example of a dramatic, incredible story, that almost seems like it was written with the intent of shaking up a complacent and custom-driven Bengali society. Though a popular fictional story, its critical reception has not been the most flattering over the years. Yet, it's not hard to see it as quite bold and progressive for its times.

Ramesh (Jishu Sengupta), is a scholarly young man in Kolkata in love with the beautiful and intellectually-driven Hemalini (Raima Sen). They intend to get married, but Ramesh is suddenly instructed to come back to his village by his father. When he arrives, he learns that his father has fixed his marriage with a poor widow's daughter. Ramesh's first reaction is to flatly refuse, but on seeing the widow, his heart softens and he agrees to marry. On the wedding day, their boat gets wrecked. On the shores, he sees a bride, Kamala (Riya Sen) lying unconscious. He naturally supposes her to be his wife, and they start to live together. He fights hard to forget his paramour and is gentle and affectionate towards Kamala. But he slowly learns that she is not his wife at all and there has been a misunderstanding. On Hemalini's part, she tries to get over Ramesh and starts to imagine a life with a country doctor (Prosenjit) whom she meets. Kamala too finds herself on the crossroads.

The theme is clearly about nature versus custom. Each of the characters is forced to momentarily bent to accepted tradition, but ultimately a satisfactory resolution is found. The boat-wreck in some ways could be a metaphor for nature asserting itself and ending what it deems as unnatural.

Hemalini and Kamala are two women who belong to opposite ends of the social spectrum. Hemalini has the previlege of wealth, education and an indulgent father - a desi Emma or sorts - while Kamala considers herself unfortunate and is subservient. Both experience the same kind of emotions, but their social background ultimately determines how they react to their situation.

The period details, decor and costume make for sumptuous viewing. And the music is simply marvelous. Here's a link to Manwa from the film, one of the most gorgeous songs in recent times (http://www.video.mobitowns.com/manwa-kashmakash-2011.html)

On the downside, Tagore's story uses too many coincidences at every point. The situation under which Ramesh agrees to marry also lacks conviction. Prosenjit's character is the most underdeveloped of the four. However, director Rituparno Ghosh seems to have done exceptionally well with the content at hand. There is tremendous grace to this film, and Raima Sen has never looked more ethereal. Though the emotional complexities don't emerge very well (and this could be a weakness in the original story), there is something deeply humane and dignified about its characters.

Gained in translation

2011-05-14T11:58:00.009+05:30

In a pleasant new development in the last few years, the Marathi section at Pune's book stores has been teeming with translations of international bestsellers and Indian-English fiction and non-fiction works.

As you browse through the well-stacked book shelves in the Marathi section, your eye immediately catches the translation of Margaret Mitchell’s epic hit Gone With The Wind. You are amused at the thought of Rhett Butler saying his famous last words to Scarlet O Hara in Marathi, but you hold that thought and continue to scan through the dozens of new translated titles around. There’s Greg Mortenson's Three Cups Of Tea, Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Khaled Hosseni’s The Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns, Rhonda Byrne's Secret, Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss among many others. The absolute favourites in the pack are Chetan Bhagat, the Chicken Soup for the soul series, Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer and Sydney Sheldon.

Non-fiction and self-help books - being factual and universal -- are especially hot picks in their translated versions. Barack Obama’s autobiographies, Kiran Bedi’s I Dare, Narayan Murthy’s A Better India, A Better World, A R Rahman’s biography, Tushar Gandhi’s Let’s Kill Gandhi, Harsha Bhogale's Out Of The Box, Shobhaa De’s Spouse – are all popular. As you glance some more, you see an entire shelf dedicated to self-help/inspirational books. Several copies of Rujuta Diwekar’s new book, Women & the Weight Loss Tamasha in Marathi have freshly arrived. The other top sellers are Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Rashmi Bansal’s Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

There's been a 100 per cent jump in sales of translated works in Marathi at Crossword ICC Towers. "Where earlier we used to have 10-15 books, now we have almost 150 of them," says its manager Girdhar Agarwal. He attributes this somewhat to the highly literate class of Maharashtrian and Puneites in particular.

48-year-old Sneha Latkar is one such reader, who says she has a working knowledge of English, but prefers the Marathi translation as she doesn't have to struggle with the meanings and can get a complete sense of the book. "I read one entire volume of Sidney Sheldon in a matter of days. It was so gripping," she says. "I find the standard of translation very good. I’m engaged by the story, which is what matters," she adds.

We did a check ourselves and while the translation is satisfactory, and a perfectly acceptable alternative to the original, cultural contexts do colour the text somewhat. For example, Rhett Butler’s last words –‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’ expectedly sounds awkward and lame in Marathi. The dialogues in the novel suffer, but the description as a whole captures the essence quite well. From the little I saw, there was a minor gaffe in the Obama autobiography as well. But these are niggles.

Readers seem to be happy and the sales indicate that clearly. City-based Mehta Publishers, who have been at the forefront of these translations state that there has been a huge jump in the last 3 years. Its CEO Sunil Mehta tells us that he has to acquire rights from the original writer, before translating it. "For example, Dan Brown sells very well, but I have to pay him considerably for it – say 700-800 dollars," he says. As for translation techniques, he explains that the effort is always to remain as faithful as possible to the original. "We try to retain everything, even if there is erotic content. We tone it down, but we keep it," he says. As for the future, he believes, it is tough to predict trends in the book world. "But I think the next ten years will only see this market growing," he says.

Best-sellers in Marathi

1) Sidney Sheldon

2) Jeffrey Archer

3) Chetan Bhagat

4) Dan Brown

5) Rujuta Diwekar

The Big Book Shelf - Sunil Sethi

2011-05-12T13:20:00.001+05:30

Author: Sunil Sethi
Pages: 240
Publishers: Penguin
Price: 350

With the opening up of the publishing industry in the country, and the rapid flowering of desi writing in English, the interest around books and authors has but naturally, intensified. The Jaipur literature fest, that has ballooned into a hugely successful event in its last six years, further underlines this feeling of enthusiasm and intellectual leaning among the modern, literate Indian.

In such a context, journalist-presenter Sunil Sethi's effort to compile a book of some of his best interviews with present-day, renowned authors is timely and useful. Sethi is a familiar face on television, with his show Just Books on NDTV. In his eloquently written introduction, he reveals how he had ample doubts about the viability of the show when the idea was first suggested. He wondered whether a half hour show on books would be sustainable, given how much of a visual medium television is. Also, writers as a breed can be shy and elusive. But Sethi's fears proved unfounded, and the show caught on. Over the last few years, many illustrious authors have appeared on it. And it is some of these rare interviews that find a place in Sethi's elegantly penned book. The purpose, he says, was to document these conversations, and for that reasons, and many others, this is a completely valid exercise.

Sethi chooses 30 of his best interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, where facets of their craft and motivations are revealed. More than anything, they open up a window into the world of these thinking, imaginative people. To say they are the ultimate representatives of the larger corpus of literature being produced currently in India or other countries may not be accurate, but their lives and work are clearly a source of education and inspiration to readers and aspiring writers alike.

What is revealing through these interviews is of course a well-established fact. That opportunities of education and travel are central to the evolution of a writer. Most of the authors covered are second generation Indians, who belonged to fairly affluent families and studied and travelled around the world. So from Vikram Seth to Salman Rushdie to Amitav Ghosh to Suketu Mehta to Anita and Kiran Desai - all spent a considerable time away from their countries, which enabled them to have richer experiences and exposure.

The same holds true for Pakistani novelists - Mohsin Hamid, Daniyal Mueenuddin and Nadeem Aslam. It goes without saying that most of them were academically brilliant and were blessed with an imaginative, fertile mind. But it's also true that being part of different worlds provided them with larger perspectives and a greater facility with the English language. Importantly, this problem of being caught between two worlds (moving from their third world motherland to the first world) - fed their creative impulse - and they were naturally drawn to themes such as exile, identity and belonging in their writings. Today with such massive changes coming about in India in the last one decade - where it is economically more empowered and global travel/education has become a trend - the complexion of Indian writing in English has understandably changed, and a variety of literature is coming to the fore.

Yet, what is revealed through the world's of non-fiction writers like William Dalrymple, Patrick French, Ramachandra Guha and Paul Theroux is their intense passion for history, research, academics and travel. Dalrymple was a student-backpacker who took off to Northern China for his book In Xanadu. He briefly passed through India and those memories lingered. And thus began his invigorating journey into Delhi, along with his artist-wife Olivia, out of which City of Djinns was both. More journeys followed, and then came the grand centre-piece of his work - While Mughals and The Last Mughal. What comes through in Dalrymple is his infectious energy and peseverance, as he goes through delving into his subjects with a genial mix of curiosity and affection.

Ramachandra Guha's intitiation into being a writer is equally interesting. His studies in anthropology prompted a research on political activist Verrier Elwin. He proved to be such a potent influence on Guha that the latter decided to write a full-fledged biography of Elwin. "I discovered the joys of working amongst forgotten, buried and dusty documents," he says. That stoked such a strong interest in academic non-fiction that Guha since then has produced some extremely valuable books on politics, leaders and sports. The author of books such as The Picador Book Of Cricket (2001) and India After Gandhi (2007) also gives a complete perspective on non-fiction writing. He sees tremendous scope for non-fiction in the coming years. So far, he says, the writing of Indian history has been inward-looking and self-referential, and paid no attention to literary elegance to reach out to a wider audience.. Patrick French calls Indian biographies 'self congratulatory and flattering portraits' "There's no point in researching and writing in stilted sociological prose. And there's no point in just writing fun stories without deep research," says Guha.
The author/columnist also stresses that non-fiction involves artisty too. "The hisorian is a researcher who digs deep in the archives and gets good material, but he is also an artist and a writer who constucts his story in an appealing, intersting, evocative and accessible way," he says.

- Ramchandra Guha

Again, each of these writers was greatly drawn to the world of letters, and were heavily into reading since childhood. For authors like Bapsi Sidhwa and Ved Mehta, it was their physical handicap that provided the creative impulse for writing. Sidhwa was struck with polio at the age of two, and could not be sent to school for long. She says it was her feeling of intense loneliness that made her seek refuge in books. An unhappy marriage followed and there was separation from her children. It was only after her second marriage, that the Pakistani author could actually start writing. She poured out her emotions into her stories and found a sense of inner liberation. She says she wouldn't have turned writer at all, if her life would have been a normal one. "Had I lived in a milieu where I could have had boyfriends, gone to dances and had fun, I don't think I would have written. because at certain times in my life, I was going through period of great despair, anguish in a way, it eased me into writing, Writing took me out of a very severe debilitating twitch I used to have," says the writer of books like Ice Candy Man (made into the Aamir Khan starrer Earth 1947) and Water - both by Deepa Mehta, among others. Ved Mehta used his blindness to feed his imagination and write books.

Almost unanimously, each of the writers have had a deep engagement with the socio-political world around them. South African novelist and nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer was an early champion of the anti-apartheid crusade. Many of her novels were banned for long periods, as they dealt with intense political and sexual relations between black and white people. The same holds true for Mahasweta Devi, who broke from domestic confines and got fascinated with the life of Rani Jhansi. She produced a book. That in turn took her to the hinterlands, and her various journeys made her conscious of the suffering of marginalised communities. In her fiction, non-fiction and poetry, Mahasweta Devi has relentlessly taken up their issues. Similarly, Guha, Amartya Sen, Khushwant Singh, Mark Tully, Gunter Grass, Patrick Fench - all in various measures been the wellspring of modern intellectual thought.

Another aspect that aspiring writers might take heart from is that writing is not always a spontaneous art. It is arduous and requires a great deal of discipline and dedication. Khushwant Singh talks about how he has never missed a deadline for an article ever. "I get up at 4 am...It's regulated by a stop-watch. I have also learnt how to be ill-mannered. People don't drop in. I don't see them without an appointment,a nd when i invite them it's strictly between 7 and 8. I can be very rude to anyone who stays even a minute after 8," says the journalist/columnist/writer.
Upamanyu Chatterjee (English August, Weight Loss) who balances a high-profile civil service job and his calling as a writer, sets himself a certain number of words a day, or how to resolve an idea or problem in a plot, as his target everyday. Kiran Desai 'retreated into a world of almost monastic discipline' for seven years to produce her Booker winner, The Inheritance of Loss.

(Upamanyu Chatterjee)

Others writers included in the book are each unique for what they represent. There's Jaaved Akhtar, Chetan Bhagat, Jeffrey Archer, Imberto Eco, Alexander Mc Call Smith, Ken Follett.

The interviews focus on certain specific books that the authors were writing or had written when the interview was taken, so there's some detailed and illuminating talk on that. Vikram Seth speaks at some length about Two Lives, Suketu Mehta on Maximum City, Dalrymple on Nine Lives and Paul Theroux and Patrick French about their controvercial biographies on V S Naipaul.

Not so long ago, it was only established NRI names who got published in India. But today, with the floodgates opening up, anyone with some writing talent could give a shot at bringing out a book. Naturally, Sethi's book provides valuable cues to aspirants. "Reading, my dear, is the only training for a writer from a young age," says Nadine Gordimer. Theroux's tip is, "Go away. Yes. Leave home, leave your parents and all the comfortable things that hold you back..."

- Nadine Gordimer

Sethi himself is an erudite interviewer, with striking introductions for each author. His forward for Dalrymple indicate his own excellent narrative abilties as a writer. By an unexpected chance, Seth was acquainted with the British author when he first came to Delhi. Dalrymple didn't have a place to stay, and Sethi lent him the barsati in his family house. Recollecting those days, Sethi writes about the author who has gone on to make India his second home. "Even then, he was an electrifying presence. Thumping the table over an impromptu dinner, he would pose questions like, 'Do you realise the deposits of history that lie unrecorded, here, in Delhi? or 'Why have stories of this great magical beast called India that has lain on the globe for millennia not been told as they should be? Questions had to answer after a long day's work. What I remember most of those evenings is our 3 year old daughter becoming hysterical with delight at this large, pink person 'banging on'. She would dissolve into paroxyms of giggles and refuse to go to bed." Now when as I simultaneously read City Of Djinns, that same exuberance and indomitable drive gleam through the pages.
When books are written on books, it's a healthy sign which indicates that there is a growing interest in the subject. One hopes Sunil Sethi's book is a harbinger of that movement.

The Vague Woman's Handbook by Devapriya Roy

2011-05-02T22:10:00.027+05:30

Author: Devapriya Roy
Pages: 343 pages
Price: 199
Publishers: Harper Collins
Year of Publishing: 2011

Devapriya Roy's effervescent debut novel, that has so much going for it, is far less about vague women and odd balls than the title might suggest. The protagonists who the meant to be vague but charming, are in fact your everyday urbane, working woman -- clueless about directions, messing up their credit bills, obsessing about losing weight and resolutely planning to turn into a new leaf every day.

If anything, this is really about two literary buffs and the quirks that come with that territory. The fact that they have careers centered around books is not an incidental detail by any means, because many of their oddities, characteristics, motivations, responses are all acutely driven by their literary bent of mind. Practically every other page has a reference to a book or an author or a quotation. The setting itself is an imagined place called Academy of Literatures in Delhi where talk revolves around authors, lit events and conferences between cups of tea and chocolate cakes. So there's a 'meta' element here, a book-world within a book, which should delight some of the more avid, serious readers of English literature.

The other interesting aspect here is the older women-younger women friendship that is quite a common occurance actually between females who share a certain emotional /or intellectual wavelength, though it's generally taken to be an anomaly. It hardly gets spoken about, and much less has been covered in popular fiction, which is why, Devapriya's narrative feels relatable and fresh.

Without much doubt, this is an immensely enjoyable novel, with its sumptuous descriptions and iridescent wit spread over 343 pages. There's a certain heartiness in the writing, a bounce and zing, that keeps the narrative tip toeing with nimble ease. The chick-lit elements are all there of course, but it manages to acquire an edge that should make it perfectly readable for everyone.

The novel is then about two women, each at a different stage in life, finding a kindred spirit in their literary pursuits and complimentary natures. Sharmila aka Mil, a 22 year old has just married her college sweetheart, Abhimanyu Mishra, a handsome, scholarly young man, with a penchant for somewhat obscure academic interests. Mil is a literature student, with all kinds of delicious hopes that ride with such a career path. Maybe a course in Cambridge, conferences abroad...

The other protagonist is Indira, 50ish, a senior government officer at the Academy of Literatures and a single mom to a teenage son and daughter. Indira is unassertive and tends to take an ostrich-like approach to many of her problems. She mismanages her finances and frequently finds herself in a maze of bank debts. On the other hand, Mil - while blissfully married - is frustrated with their meagre and irregular earnings and more particularly, her estrangement with her parents back in Calcutta over her marriage. She’s also ambitious and doesn't want her career to slip amidst all the heart-burn. Nothing really dramatic happens in the novel, and yet their daily struggle with its little ups and downs -that seems monumental and irresolvable on a given day- keeps you hooked.

Like most first novels, this one too seems heavily autobiographical and Devapriya essentially enumerates her sensations and emotions to different things around her. It works because Devapriya has great flair and style and she gets into the workings of a woman's mind quite wonderfully.
The below paragraph occurs when Abhimanyu and Mil have an feisty argument over finances and the attitude of their respective parents.

"The fact that Abhi was pointedly left out of the phone calls bothered Mil immensely. But when he brought it up, it made her furious. The mind is a complex zone - one loves and hates and defends the same people interchangeably all the time. You feel X about Y. But to Z you cannot reveal that you feel X; on the contrary, in front of Z, you highlight the feelings of X1 for B."

Of course, there's nothing terribly deep or profound in the novel, and this is clearly a feel-good book above everything else, which gets into fairy-tale mode every now and then. The author realises she's created a near perfect couple in Mil and Abhimanyu and tries stacking the odds against them by adding a spot of grey. But it's mostly full of cutsie scenes and can't escape the clichés of young romances.
Yet, the narrative stays gripping, because the plot points are all interesting. The Mil-Abhimanyu quarrel over his finances, ending with the couple making up, is extremely tender. The chapter where Mil meets her fashionable mother-in-law is another high-point in the book.

Indira is a well-etched character as well, though her marital history is left somewhat vague and inconclusive. Mil at 22 seems a bit too young to be inhabiting the character the author creates for her.

But these are niggles really, and this is a jaunty ride that stays perfectly on course, teeming with piquant details. Devapriya, herself an MA and Mphil from JNU is a huge literary buff and that passion comes gleaming through the book.

Interview

All of 26 years, Devapriya Roy speaks about her debut book and her next ambitious venture with her writer-husband called The Heat And Dust Project, a book on travels across India

1) This is a question which perhaps all writers hate to answer. But it's hard to imagine any first book that is not autobiographical. The Vague Women's Handbook distinctly seems to mirror experiences close to you. Isn't it? What kind of challenges did you encounter in this process, where you had to fictionalise many autobiographical details. What approach did you take, where you possibly had some real-life person in mind, but were obliged to protect the source? Also, do you believe all fiction is mostly autobiographical, one way or the other?

Milan Kundera once said that characters are not born, like people, of a woman, but of a “possibility”. I find this a very helpful insight. When I became best-friends with the fabulous Gitanjali Chatterjee who happened to be a fair number of years – 28 to be precise – older than me, it was out of that possibility that the Vague Woman’s Handbook happened. Mil is not me and Indira is not Gitanjali, but the essence of their friendship is a lot like what we share. And this is not uncommon either. My mother had gone back to graduate school when I was about 17, and did her M Tech with young people who were a little older than I was. She had become very close to one of the girls she studied with. My publisher Karthika said that at one point when she was in university, she had this friend she spoke about a lot at home –so her mother invited the friend over. Subsequently, her mum said in great surprise, “But your friend’s my age!”
There are several elements that I “borrow” from my life and the lives of several who have had the misfortune to come in borrowing distance of me! I got married to Saurav absurdly early, like Mil did. But what’s funny is that this is a kind of family tradition – my parents did too, and my grandparents. So the economic realities of a young marriage is something that I had always thought was worth writing about – especially in an age as consumerist as ours is, when one is bombarded with images of glossy homes, designer honeymoons and event-managed weddings all the time. But the drama of estrangement was a borrowed one; however, in India, one still doesn’t have to look too far to find stories of parental disapproval. As for the credit card related escapades, let us say, I have had slight experience in the department but am a very respectable law-abiding citizen now, who is courted by a number of banks!

It’s true that most first novels are autobiographical; but the challenge I think is in converting autobiographical or personal impulses into the story of the characters, when it becomes something else. I’ve had emails from several readers who have loved the book, and asked me how on earth have I written about them! Because, said one girl from Bombay, she is Mil and her fiancé is very Abhi-ish. There is an Indira Sen in Calcutta whose friends have written to me saying that they are in shock that there can be more of her! It’s like a giant circle of intertextuality, inter-experientiality, sisterhood and meaning-making.

2) Tell us something about your narrative strategy. Did you give the first person v/s third person choice any thought, or this was always how you wanted it to be?

Oh, you’re absolutely right – I did think of the first person narrative in the beginning. In fact, that seems to be the favourite choice for a lot of chick lit. But then, finally, I didn’t find it working too well for the story I was attempting to tell. This book explores the relationship between Indira and Mil more, but as often through suggestions and gestures – how gradually the nuances in their language change as the friendship deepens – than words. Thus I settled for a third person narrative that would do greater justice to this aspect, but an over-the-shoulder one, which, thus, is empathetic to Mil and Indira and records much of their musing, from their point of view. I thought that the third person narrative offered a unique coupling of the coming-close and moving-away strategy; I did not want the narrative to completely become an I-centric thing which can tend to get rather shallow and self-absorbed though arguably funnier.

3) I know the plot needed Mil and Abhimanyu to be very young - because that is afterall the central reason for their estrangement with the parents - but i got the feeling that Mil at 22 sounded like a 26-27 year old, especially scenes where she admonishes Indira etc. Were there any doubts in your mind about Mil's age and whether she could be expected to pull off some of the things in the story without it seeming like a stretch?

I know exactly what you mean – but that is precisely my point. Mil does these things consciously because she is painfully young-but-trying-to-appear grown up. When we see Mil as she is, we find her hysteria and meltdowns and vagueness in general believable because she is too young to handle what life has thrown up. But when we see her with Indira, and she is being all pert and theoretically superior and full of lectures, she is being a grown-up the way children sometimes do, donning the clothes and shoes of elders . That is the beauty of Mil and Indira’s relationship – Indira allows Mil to do her grown-up act with the affection of the sensitive towards the young, of not disrupting their little drama. And that is why Mil is able to flower in Indira’s presence. This is the chief thing that the parents have a problem with – Mil and Abhi’s extreme youth; so sub-consciously Mil is reacting to that. Again, the self-assuredness of Mil (her confidence that the credit card things will sort themselves out, the seminar paper will get selected, and so on) is what 22 year olds still have, though by the time they grow older, true maturity ought to distill it out of them.

4) Tell us something about your next book - The Heat and Dust project that you are doing with your husband, Saurav Jha. What writing approach are you taking with that, and how has the experience been so far?

It is a travelogue – a funny hysterical sort of a travelogue about journeying through India on a very very tight budget (500 a day for bed and board), but it would also engage with various books on India that have been authored by mostly foreign writers in English – from Naipaul to Patrick French and Dalrymple – which attempt to make sense of India. But in addition to being by Indians, it is also meant for Indians – especially, young Indians, if they would care to read it.
Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries might be called one of the big inspirations (Lol!). Without the motorcycle, that is.
Cliched though it sounds, we were excruciatingly tired of the rhythms of the desk-jobs and the expectations that middle class “respectable” life throws on people. There was a lot of unresolved angst about modern-day life and its imperatives for our generation that impelled us to take this journey. We hoped that meaning and clarity might emerge through this mammoth undertaking as it sometimes does. The traffic, the desk jobs, the housework, the long queues, the grocery shopping, the cleaning (and the non-cleaning) of quarters. But it was hardly easy to actually bring everything together and take the jump from fantasizing about this idea to actually doing it. Putting all our meager savings into this journey – and what it represented – meant an extraordinary amount of pressure too! Because this is our life, and giving up jobs and what they represent, is hardly as romantic as it might seem initially.
At another level, we were also tired of hearing studio experts debating the changing nature of our country, given that many of these studio experts belong to the highest echelons of society and, if you forgive our frankness, are often divorced from ground level truths. We wanted to see the land for ourselves, meet those of our brother and sister Indians we might ordinarily not have met, chat with them, swap stories.
We combined these two things into this insane but hopeful “project”. That's how it came about.
This book is a lot about our generation as also inheritances from our predecessors.
So, we wanted to turn around the concept of meaning-making too! Usually, a book is written in solitude and only engages with the reader once it has been published. However, given the technologies available today it seemed possible that this act of writing, apparently one given to grave solitariness, could be turned on its head into a much more meaningful collaborative process wherein the readers are involved right from the beginning. That is how the idea of the dynamic book as it were was born. We created the facebook page on our travels titled – ‘the heat and dust project: a book in motion’ – where we give out funny stories, pictures and confessions while the journey is on. It received a warm welcome from the facebooking community which also chipped in with suggestions of its own and the group has grown to almost two thousand members in a very short span.

5) If you can list down some of the authors and books that have influenced your writing....

I read just about anything I can lay my hands on so this is a tough one.
But one writer who has been an indirect influence on The Vague Woman’s Handbook is Alexander McCall Smith who writes with such humour, gentleness and wisdom, and whose female protagonists – and the men in their lives – I am in love with. While the voice of Vague Woman is very much in contrast to McCall Smith’s – because it is hysterical and reflects an Indian idiom – I do think he was a kind of an influence in shaping the book.

The Diary of Bridget Jones by Helen Fielding and Confessions of a Shopaholic are two other books that I enjoyed greatly – modern women’s fiction, as they are, with a self-reflexive voice that questions even as it surrenders to misadventures.
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf would probably be the one book that I’d risk my life to save from a burning library!

6) What has been the general response to The Vague Woman's Handbook? Were you tentative to begin with as a writer? And post its publishing, what are your feelings about being an author and how do you intend going forward with this? Are you also pursuing anything else besides writing?

Luckily, I’ve had emails from readers, from all over the country, saying they loved Mil and Indira. I’m all inspired to pen the further misadventures of the vague women – there is definitely going to be a sequel.
There has also been a lot of support for my vague theory! The book is, after all, not only a celebration of vagueness – but also in defence of it. Most modern women are over-worked and carry to-do lists in their heads that span things they have to do for work, home, children, families – and in India, even for second cousins twice removed. The amount of pressure on them often forces them to be in-control. Being a vague woman is thus also a sort of protest against this system that requires lives to be so planned and organized; and it is only when one allows the mind – and the contours of life – to wander, to be vague, that creativity finds its expression.
Incidentally, just recently I found out about this minor movement within Western philosophy: a movement to reinstate the vague, which had been pioneered by the philosopher William Archer. He had meant it to be in the realm of scientific thinking but I think it might be good to reinstate the vague in many aspects of the smug lives the middle and upper classes live.

I consider myself ‘an obsessive reader with a slight writing problem’ – and hardly a writer, with just one book. When I was working on The Handbook – and Saurav will tell you there are at least 50 versions and drafts – I did not take myself too seriously. I wrote as and when, now and then and on the move.
Nowadays there are a lot of writers who spend far less time writing and far more time (and money) promoting their books and marketing themselves. In fact, they’ve made it difficult for old-fashioned authors – who wrote in quiet corners and let the book do the talking – to even exist! Ultimately, I guess, to each his own. I have a very very long way to go – and so I must concentrate on the sheer art of writing, hone it and sharpen my voice continuously.
Saurav and I are very excited about The Heat and Dust Project – and at the moment we’re working on it.
And as for other things, I’m a freelance book editor and am also doing a PhD from JNU in Theatre and Performance Studies.

The Music Room

2011-04-12T14:56:00.006+05:30

Bindu Subramaniam, the talented young daughter of violinist L Subramaniam and singer Kavita Krishnamurthy speaks to Sandhya Iyer about her debut music album, her rapport with her mom, and why she prefers singing and composing in English

Bindu Subramaniam belongs to a family that appears to encompass the entire ocean of musical traditions within itself. She's the talented daughter of Indian violinist L Subramaniam and singer Kavita Krishnamurthy. Her brother Ambi is a violinist and has been performing regularly at concerts with his father, while her second brother Dr Narayan is into ghazals. Bindu's heart leans towards western music, though her roots are very much entrenched in Indian carnatic traditions. She was all of seven when she wrote and composed her first song and by the time she hit her teens, she was a bonafide performer on stage. "As a kid, I remember I would create something Western and my brother Ambi would immediately try to covert it to Indian classical and I would be very annoyed. But over the time, I think we have all found our peaceful ground at home and can appreciate what the other does," says the singer, who also has her Bangalore-based music band.

Today, as a bright, vivacious youngster in her twenties, Bindu is just out with her maiden music album, Surrender, brought out by Times Music, where she has not just sung and composed but also written the lyrics. The album is in English, and blends her love for soft rock, jazz and Indian classical music to create a set of fresh, original music tracks. Why English, we ask? "Well, for starters, that's the language I think in and express myself best in. When I came up with this, a lot of people suggested that I should do the album in Hindi which would make it more mainstream. But it's not about syllables for me. I need to feel my music. Not everyone can be like mom (Kavita Krishnamurthy) who has sung in dozens of languages. People come to her and start talking in Nepali or Kannada, believing her to know these languages. It's one thing to say the lines as they are, and another thing to convince the listener. I don't have that special talent, and let's say, I need to know and feel what I sing," she smiles.

She also believes that English is a fairly viable option. "For a lot of people, English has become their first language. There is a huge English-speaking population out there who listen to all kinds of music," she says. But desis singing in English vis a vis international artisits doing the same could be perceived very differently, isn't it?. "That's like saying, what business does Salman Rushdie have writing in English? I don't mean to compare myself to him, but I don't think people will make that sort of distinction," is her crisp repartee.

Music albums that once thrived have completely gone out of circulation in the last decade or so in India, and the only real platform that remains is Bollywood. Bindu nods in agreement. "That's true. And If I say I don't care about who listens to my music, I wouldn't be honest. I do want people to hear what I compose and sing. The thing is I have been on the stage for a long time, and I really wanted to do this - bring out my own product. As for movies, I think they are lovely too."
Bindu is already onto her second album, so does that mean popular cinema is out of question for now? "Oh, I wouldn't shut any doors, which haven't even opened yet," she laughs. "It's just that the album was my honest, truest expression and I wanted to do it."

She warmly refers to step-mom Kavita Krishnamurthy as the one who opened up a whole new world for her. "We kids grew up in US with hardly any exposure to Bollywood. It was she who introduced us to it, and we realised that it's a lot of hard work. One might think, how much work is a three minute song going to take, but to start from scratch and realise it in a certain way is tremendous," she says. Incidentally, her debut album has been produced by both her parents. "My father may be into Carnatic music, but he has always been open about Western music and has for long been collaborating with foreign artists, so it is nothing really new," she tells us.

For the articulate and well-spoken Bindu, music has been a huge passion, but there was another calling that held her interest for a while. "Music was something that I grew up on 24/7. We didn't know a different world. It's only later when we grew a little older that we saw that people were into different professions and mostly had a 9-5 job. But to begin with, I didn't want to be just into music. I was interested to be a lawyer and even pursued my law studies. But there came a stage where I had to decide and make a choice. I couldn't be studying and performing. That is when I went with my first love, which is music. And I decided to keep law as a hobby," she says.
Without much doubt then, Bindu holds the promise of being the new-age musical talent to look out for.

How the job got Dhon - thoughts on Indian's big World Cup win

2011-04-04T19:52:00.005+05:30

The winning of cricket world cup has expectedly thrown our nation of billion plus people into a surreal wave of emotional frenzy. High on potential, but frequently low on execution, discipline and mental toughness, Indians have been far too used to crumbling on the world stage in competitive team sports. Which is why, most of us thought the game was up and went into a familiar loop of depression when Virender Sehwag and Sachin got out in quick succession in the finals. We’ve seen enough of Indian cricket – and mind you, sports always mirrors a society’s character – that persistence and self-belief are not traits that come easily to us. For long, our reputation as a country of ‘gestures’ than ‘doers’ has made us far too skeptical about our chances on the big occasions. Which is why Saturday’s victory proved to be such an epochal moment for every cricket-loving Indian. In that one event, there was a strange relief and redemption. It exorcised our past ghosts. While Gautam Gambhir held his nerves and solidly anchored the innings, it was M S Dhoni who played like a man possessed. The captain’s fiery eyes gave way to a heart-melting smile as he lofted his bat for a mighty, match-winning six, and in that one stroke, gave the nation and its people the courage to dream and importantly achieve it. It’s no exaggeration to say that younger generations who have witnessed the event will be hugely influenced and inspired by this momentous victory and this no doubt will play a role in the country’s cricketing future. In fact, events such as these tend to have a subliminal impact on every aspect of our life, so here’s hoping it makes way for more dynamic leaders and go-getters.

We preened, we celebrated, we partied hard. All fair. But there was another serious aspect that casted some serious doubts on our maturity as a nation. Did India, like Shahid Afridi says, not show enough grace and large-heartedness towards the Pakistani team? The media could go hoarse calling him a sore loser. Fact is, most of the channels behaved in the most belligerent, propogandist manner ahead of the Indo-Pak contest. Images of bloodshed and battle on the field were unnecessarily evoked through headlines. Afridi’s statements about Sachin were twisted and presented. The average man on the street too could be heard stating he didn’t mind India losing the finals if only the team could win against Pakistan.

This whole idea of political revenge through sports is wholly tasteless and crude. The channels went on and on, and it was embarassing to imagine that the Pak team had already arrived in Mohali and could well be stunned to see so much hatred around them. Why then criticise Afridi for speaking his mind? The Pak captain showed great dignity post the Mohali match, generously complimenting the Indian team. His words were like chilled water on those who were letting off noxious steam over the clash. Our victory is no doubt special and denotes we are a nation that could well have acquired some much needed spunk and chutzpah. But we’re also a nation which needs to grow up sometimes.
Sandhya Iyer

Susanna's Seven Husbands

2011-03-24T12:52:00.010+05:30

Susanna's Seven Husbands(Contains the Screenplay of the film, 7 Khoon Maaf, the short story and novella by Ruskin Bond)
Pages: 206
Price: 250
Publishers: Penguin

For a while now, filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and Ruskin Bond have shared a warm and fruitful professional relationship. The director adapted the author's The Blue Umbrella, which turned out to be a gem of a film. Little wonder then that the author made an exception for the man he calls 'Hitchcock of Indian cinema' and 'master of the macabre' and actually expanded a 5 page short story called Suzanna's Seven Husbands into a full-fledged novella meant to be made as a film.
The novella was worked upon again by Bhardwaj and his co-writer Matthew Robbins, with the clear intention of making 7 Khoon Maaf more palatable for the audience. So essentially, three versions of the same story came about, and have been fully reproduced in Penguin's new book. Ruskin Bond would naturally have expected his drastically re-worked story to find its way to print. And such an effort is also useful in closely recogonising the challenges involved in literary adaptations.

Obviously not all literature lends itself easily to film screenplays, and Suzaana's Seven Husbands is perhaps one of them. Because the story is really just an idea and works on 'subliminals', rather than on a real plane. The thought of a woman killing her seven husbands came to the septuagenarian writer while observing female behaviour among animals and insects in his verdant Mussoorie surroundings. Describing a She-spider, Bond tells us how she's often the dominant one who brings home the food, while her male partner lives off her earnings. But in a moment of exasperation, she puts an abrupt and cruel end to the weakling's aimless existence. This is the animalistic female instinct that Ruskin Bond captures through the character of Suzanna. Not surprisingly, the animal motif is very strong in the story.

The plot itself is outlandish, but the written word always allows your imagination to fill in the gaps with more vivid colours and Ruskin Bond's lush text gives enough psychological cues for the reader to arrive at their own conclusion. For a film to achieve this effect would need nothing short of genius and sadly Bhardwaj does a straight-forward adaptation, eschewing much of the point and edge of the original story. I was talking to a successful film writer friend who correctly explained, "Hindi cinema is a very blunt medium. Many of the subtlties, nuances in a book cannot be reproduced in a film, which is why the experience is rarely satisfying."

Ruskin Bond's Susanna is a beautiful, romantic and almost mythic figure. She does not kill her seven husbands because they do her any serious harm, unlike what is portrayed in the film. The book doesn't provide any great justification for Susanna's actions - and works as a dark comedy in the true sense of the word. Our femme fatale is not a cruel person, and in fact wants to truly find love and settle with a man who can keep her happy. But each of the husbands she marries proves to be vastly inferior to her and once the initial charm wears off, Susanna's finds it impossible to endure their annoying habits. She is easily exasperated and bored. Not to add, she's frustrated about not finding an ideal husband. Being a gorgeous and rich woman with money and man power at hand, her only aim is to find love, but each time she fails and hence kills them all. So why did she marry at all one may ask? The book is set in a period and suggests that a woman could not live with men without marriage. The author is clearly fond of his bohemian heroine, and looks upon her murders with sagely amusement.

The novella - though it clearly suggests the transience of romance and eventual boredom in domestic life - makes no profound statements on relationships. Neither does it delve deep into Susanna's mental make-up. But all the same, it's easy to view her as a 'type' and identify with the story. Which is what makes it the success that the film is not.

There's a superb episode in the book, which wasn't part of the film. It involves a husband of Susanna's who is a film distributor. In general, he is an affable soul, likeable, except for his addiction to his cell phone. Suzanna is tolerant of his annoying habit for a while, but once it starts interfearing even in their love making sessions, she starts hiding his numerous phones at different places. It makes for one of the most entertaining and cinematic stories. But clearly, the writers of the film might have thought it too trivial a reason for someone to kill a husband. This is essentialy the problem with the film. It simply lacks the edge that the book contains. And without that edge, the story doesn't quite hold.

Indian Cinema: the faces behind the mask

2011-03-09T19:31:00.006+05:30

Author: Anil Saari
Published by: Oxford
Year of publishing: 2011
Price: 495

The radical opening up of the publishing industry in India has revitalised almost every genre, and it's not surprising that books related to cinema are releasing with amazing regularity these days. Author and blogger Jai Arjun Singh paid a personal tribute of sorts to his favourite 80s cult film, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro through a neatly compiled book that released earlier this year. National-award winning critic Bharadwaj Rangan is all set to put together his book on films as well. Besides there, there have been several other credible initiates that need to be welcomed in an otherwise dismal film criticism scenario.
The field of film journalism no doubt has been muddied for too long, but there have also been a few names who have enriched one's understanding of the medium. The one name that stands tall is the late film journalist Anil Saari, whose last book, Hindi Cinema- An Insider's View (2009) provided some of the most erudite and illuminating essays on films. Saari focussed on many aspects such as 'why Hindi films require songs' 'violence in films'. He also had some candid, well-thought out views about the art film movement in India and its failure to attract masses. All in all, the book is an exceptional one in terms of the originality and insights.

Obviously, it was with some expectation that I took up his new book Indian cinema -the faces behind the masks, which is a random compilation of many of the interviews he did with leading actors and directors in the period between 1970 to 1990. The book, edited by journalist Saibal Chatterjee offers a somewhat misleading introduction though. Chatterjee speaks about the importance of stars and how they have shaped the contours of popular cinema, as much as directors and producers. But the introduction specifically focusses on the role that stardom plays in influencing films and the industry as a whole. Now this is of course a much-debated topic - ie do stars matter more or does the script..., but Saari is really not that concerned about making a case for popular cinema and superstars in the book. That is not the point of this compilation at all. It is merely a random selection of interviews, done with a fair touch of class.

Yet, the overall effort seems a bit drab because there is a sense of deja vu to many of the thoughts and anecdotes covered. In a film-obsessed country like India one already knows so much about stars in gereral- their background, quirks - that it's hard to bring much novelty to such an endeavour. And that's what this book suffers from. None of the interviews are terribly revealing or exciting. That could be because Saari concentrates mostly on the craft of acting and filmmaking, but even in this regard, the interviews are too short and too regular.

The ones which do reveal something are his interviews with Raj Kapoor, who as his son Rishi Kapoor says put his work above all other considerations of family and children. Saari- though knowledgable and well-exposed - walked the middle-ground where he appreciated art house and meaningful cinema but was equally taken in by the magic of commercial cinema. This comes out clearly in his writings. And true enough, many of directors he interviewed - whether Yash Chopra or Raj Kapoor had the same views about cinema -that it should primarily engage an audience. Kapoor was willing to take risks and allowed his writers their leftist ideals, but not at the cost of commercial prospects. So in Bobby, Dimple's social status was made higher so that she could be shown in a club in a swimming costume. On being asked what made him a showman, Kapoor said, " I myself don't know...it is the vista, the vision that you have as a filmmaker to display in a scene, to shoot a scene in the enormity of an impressive backdrop. You must know how to use the panaroma of the set. Everything including the set and characters must be integrated into the fibre of the story and the scene."

The other two wonderful interviews are from Dilip Kumar and 80s charmer, Dipti Naval - the latter was a far cry from the regular film heroine of her times, and her views make this evident.
There's a long interview with Rekha, done at the time when she was slowly slipping from the top and making way for Sridevi, but the actress appears as optimistic and charged up about the future as ever. There's plenty of space devoted of course to Amitabh Bachchan and the admirably disciplined and principled life he has always lived. There's sadly no interview.

The one refrain we hear today is about how there are only a handful of stars and how there is a terrible lack of good scripts. While we extol the past, it seems even actors of that time suffered from the same problem, and rued that there was not enough substance in their films. All of them wisely recogonise that it is the filmmaker and script that drives a film, quite contrary then to what Saibal Chatterjee's introduction suggests. There are brief interviews with Gulzar, Shabana Azmi and filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, but nothing very significant gets covered. Shah Rukh Khan's name is invoked prominenly in the book's jacket cover (perhaps to make the book seem relevant and saleable) and Chatterjee's introduction where he says 'Shah Rukh is the pivot around which the Mumbai movie industry rotates' but there's no interview with the superstar and even Saari's short note on him written during SRK's success after Baazigar and Darr, is written in the vein of trade talk.

The book has some decent interviews, but nothing significant or substantial enough to merit much attention.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro - Jai Arjun Singh

2011-02-09T15:14:00.003+05:30

Pages: 270
Price: 250
Published in: 2010
Publishers: Harper Collins- India

One often rues the lack of academic film writing in India, and the less-than-credible set of reviewers we suffer week after week. One could argue that since Hindi cinema rarely produces anything of spectacular worth and quality, it perhaps does even necessitate any deep thought and analysis. Yet, there are always surprises, some rare gems that get made in this dream factory. More importantly, an atmosphere of quality film criticism is vital towards the healthy development of an evolving cinema culture.

In such a context, Jai Arjun Singh's debut non-fiction book on the 1983s cult classic, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is an earnest and thoroughly engaging read. For a while now, the 32 year old has been running an extremely popular blog, Jabberwock, where he pens down his lucid, well-thought out views on books and films. That apart, the author has been freelancing with various leading publications. Among other things, the writer's most admirable quality is his ability to elegantly guide his reader through the journey, gently but firmly interjecting and alerting through anecdotes, observations and counter points, without ever turning this into a self-indulgent, showy exercise.

It's obvious the author has deep reverence for the film, which is what prompted him to take up the endeavour. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro of course has a lot of 'firsts' to make it interesting as a subject. It was perhaps the first time a film was making a serous social commentary, through a comedy. Its credit roll remains one of the most extraordinary, with a striking list comprising of stalwarts who were all making a beginning of sorts with this unconventional film. Besides Naseeruddin Shah, who was the only well-off star among the cast and crew, there was a whole list of assistants and actors (doing bit roles), who went on to become famous with their subsequent works. There was Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra (both prominent directors today) who worked as assistants on Jaane Bhi... The actors included Satish Shah, Bhakti Barve, Pankaj Kapoor, Satish Kaushik, Anupam Kher (he played the role of an ineffective, funny goon called Disco Killer, but his part had to be edited out), Neena Gupta, Om Puri, Ravi Baswani - all of whom became part of this mad-cap film for different reasons.
The book, expectedly, is full of interesting anecdotes. It was fashionable then to criticise NFDC, the government body that provided funds for out-of-the-box, socially relevant films. But in the case of Jaane Bhi Do, NFDC played a hugely constructive role, not only ensuring that the film got made in the bold manner in which it was conceived but also hammering it on DD so that everyone ended up seeing it. It's also interesting to know that Naseeruddin Shah was not quite happy with the way the film was shaping up, and would frequently refuse to have his lunch when his objections were turned down by director Kundan Shah. The one refrain on the sets was the scarce and boring food, because of the low budget. The crew would have to frequently make do with vada pao and Sudhir Mishra still complains that it was 'that' film which gave him his acidity. But the passion and dedication from everyone was total, and each one completely submitted to the director's vision. In all this, the contribution of personalities like writer Ranjit Kapoor and editor Renu Saluja comes to the fore.

Jai Arjun is of course articulate, with not a word out of place, but he also knows how to keep the reader engaged through the 270 odd pages, though it's a small-sized book. And in all this, he does a thorough analysis of the film, makes objective, insightful observations, and gives us great conversational pieces with Kundan Shah (who even after all these years seems positively bemused and even somewhat irritated with all the overt fuss and intellectualism over Jaane Bhi Do...).
Certainly, more such endeavors on similar lines from other talented writers is more than welcome.

The Jaipur Jamboree

2011-01-27T11:57:00.016+05:30

Jaipur Literature Festival that has steadily grown in popularity in the last six years and has come to become the definitive literary event in South-Asia, encountered an unexpected problem this year. What one thought to be an intimate, snug coming together of book lovers and illustrious authors at the quaint and beautiful Diggi Palace has ballooned into an uncontainable carnival with hordes of crowds pouring in from all over the city, country and beyond.

The 'free entry' to the event attracted the locals in fair measure too, with schools etc perhaps encouraging their students to benefit from the lit-fest. So the first impression was of the overflowing crowds that barely fitted into a venue meant for a few thousand – the gentility prescribed at these sort of events ensured that people didn't push each other, though there were of course times when you saw ladies – in impeccable designer arty ware - elbowing their way to reach the kullar chais (tea in earthen pots) served at the venue. There was of course public that had come 'just-like that' and did not share the requisite decorum, what with some cell phones ringing during sessions. But it would be fair to say that there was genuine curiosity and interest among the majority and it's heartening that the event has assuredly grown in stature (financially too, considering the number of major sponsors the event has attracted this year). But organisers William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale would have to put on their thinking caps and try and find a way to balance the fest's inherent appeal and intellectual elitism without losing out on its democratic spirit. Solution? More festivals in other parts of the country, as Dalrymple has been suggesting? Possibly.

And not surprisingly, finding a chair became the biggest mission in the event, and most of us just ended up sitting on the aisles listening to the speakers. The place was divided into four nearby venues within the Diggi Palace – all beautifully done up in different styles. Lines of colourful ribbon cloth spread across the ceilings, with the charming sight of a Victorian style fountain amidst roses. There were prettily decked up stalls – selling artifacts, finely binded classics. Then of course, there were the food stalls, selling muffins and pastries in the lawns, which we could relish only on the last day when the crowds had finally thinned out.

Coming to the centre piece of this event – the numerous sessions with wonderful writers spread across the five days – was invigorating, though the one hour time proved to be slightly inadequate at times, especially in sessions where more than a couple of writers took part. So what you got were snippets of ideas, rather than any elaborate exposition of the themes.
There was also the session with Gulzar, Akthar and Prasoon Joshi on 'Hindi songs' that saw a near stampede, and seeing the audience interest, the session was repeated at lunch time the same day.

The other sessions involving authors like Patrick French (in conversation with Amitava Kumar), Chimananda Adichi, Kiran Desai, Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, Orphan Pamuk and Mohsin Hamid were the other highlights of the event.
A great festival for India for sure, with a lot of international interest in it. As one expects from an event such as this, the fashion quotient was unusually high, which mildly distracted from what is really supposed to be an intellectual and creative meeting-point for people. A word about the Rajasthani food served. Absolutely lip-smacking and delicious. That made sure we wouldn't leave with a bad taste in the mouth even if the dust and noisy crowd was a serious turn off.

Javed Akhtar and Urdu zubaan

Javed Akhtar was one of the show stealers at the event, as he spoke on 'Urdu Zabaan' , its evolution and its current state. “It's a paradox that people who talk and write in Urdu have reduced, and yet, those curious and fascinated about this language have increased.”
On how Urdu came into being, the celebrated screenwriter and lyricist says, “Basically, Urdu borrowed from other languages, especially Persian. But it was molded in the local flavour” Explaining this, he says, “You see, 'hawa' is a Persian word but 'hawayein' is Urdu. Again, 'amir' is taken from Arabic, but 'amiron ne' or 'amiri' is Urdu's own invention."
He also spoke about how Urdu has been unfairly viewed as an Islamic language. “While most of the poetry that originated in other languages started as religious poetry that transcended to other themes, Urdu poetry was secular and anti-fundamentalist from day one. The fight between Aurangazeb and Shivaji was never about religion. Neither was the one between Akbar and Maharana Pratab about Hindu-Muslim. These were territorial battles, not on religious lines. In any case, how can a religion have a language? Zabaan illakon ki hoti hai,” he says eloquently. “People sadly accepted that Urdu belonged to Pakistan and the baby was thrown with the bath water,” he adds.
He also talked about how the common perception about Urdu is that it circulates between lowest-common denominator words like 'sharaab' and 'mehboob' “But the language actually encompasses everything from Indian politics to weather to traditional festivals to myths and folk.”
Stressing more on the liberal and non-religious appeal of Urdu, and how it was a victim of political agenda, he says, “During the progressive writers' movement (pro-poor with leftist leanings), every major Urdu writer was at the forefront of it. But after Indian independence in 1947, Urdu became the step-child of the establishment. How do you destroy a language? You do it by simply destroying its economic utility. That's what they did.”
Since much of our knowledge of Urdu comes from watching Mughal dramas such as Jodhaa Akbar etc, Akhtar had some interesting observations to make on this. “Akbar never spoke Urdu at all. He wore a lungi and spoke what was a mix of Punjabi, and other Hindi dialects such as Avadhi and Kathyavadi,” Akhtar said, imitating how Akbar might have sounded. “Only when the Mughals started to disintegrate, did Urdu begin to emerge. It is with the coming of the British that the language got more recogonition,” he says.
Even if one were to think that Urdu is almost dead in India, Akhtar believes the language lives through Bollywood songs. “It is alive in our songs and dialogues even if it is called Hindi cinema.”

Junot Diaz – Story-teller in chief

Another extremely provocative session was that with Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz with his bold, unconventional views on writing and reading. He points out how as a society we need less applause and more conversation to create something new and of value. “Society wants you to to seek its approval, and in such an atmosphere there isn't much scope to develop an artistic temperament,” he notes. “Do the monkey dance so we can clap for you' “As an artiste, you need to go into bizarre areas knowing people may not like it. You have to fight approval of others.”
One of the aspects readers find in his novels is that all of it is not easily intelligible, but Junot says he deliberately puts in words in his text knowing people may not understand. “Reading is not a test. You read because it duplicates the experience of being out in the world. You don't have to understand everything. Unintelligibility is just a natural part of a novel. It is an invitation for you to form a community, by asking around for those words.” he said, adding, “As a child you take help to understand a text. But as you grow older you eschew that ability.'
About his own writing, he says he's a slow writer and doesn't produce much. And he notes how much of what seems to be natural writing, an organic rhythm is actually a deeply artificial one. “It never comes at the first go. What you write instantly is actually more stilted and staged that what you produce after many re-writings. To sound real involves a laboured, long and artificial craft.” he says.

'Aisi Hindi Kaisi Hindi'

The session which included Mrinal Pande, Prasoon Joshi and Sudeesh Pachori spoke about the threat to Hindi from English and how the language needs to update itself somewhat to keep up with the times. Mrinal Pandey speaking about her distaste for abuses in the Hindi language said, “An increase in abuses demonstrates an impoverishment of the language and limitation of vocabulary. I think the effect of a gaali can be created using civil language,” she smiled, giving a few piquant examples. “Lastly, a lot of these words are plain objectionable to women.”
However, she also noted how there are no words related to sex in Hindi, and many women, especially struggle to explain their problems. “This is true about some of the other regional tongues also. This could be one of the reasons for more gaalis in the absence of proper words for certain body parts. We need to make new dictionaries, so that gaalis can be erased from our discourse,” she said.

Kiran Desai and the inheritance of books

Anita Desai was nominated for the Man Booker Prize three times, but it was her daughter Kiran Desai who bagged it for her book, The Inheritance of Loss. Having left for America as a child, Kiran in her conversation with Jai Arjun Singh spoke about her lack of rootedness and the difficulties that arose in her writing as a result of that. “I was fighting for an in-between place, cause I didn't belong to neither India nor America. When I left India I knew my life had changed and I would never be able to think about India in the same way again.”
Talking about the influence of her mother, she says, “My mother is deeply an author. - the way she talks, her silences, the way she sits...she is every bit an author. As a child I used to see a young Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie coming to meet her at home. For the longest time, my mother kept her writing a secret. She used to pack us off to school and then bring out her pad to write so we never actually knew her as a writer. We would directly see her finished books.”
Kiran enrolled in a creative writing workshop to hone her own skills, an endeavour which didn't entirely work for her. “Everyone at that time used to laugh at these writing workshops. Gradually some writers came who were writing workshop products and suddenly you couldn't laugh at them anymore. They taught me discipline. Also, if you're lucky you will meet a good teacher who can guide you well. But these workshops can also destroy your confidence because what you write will not appeal to everyone. You are looking at group approval, a pack mentality, where so and so is offended by something you write, so and so doesn't get this joke, and by the end of it, there is no novel left.”
One of the biggest challenges Kiran says she faces is because she does not have an authority on the settings in her novels. “When an author writes for a constricting narrative, he is able to get in a great amount of depth and intimacy. I see a lot more imagination in their characters. I am jealous of that. I, on the other hand, am conscious of not knowing anything completely about any place – just fragmented worlds. I have to jigsaw a lot of things.”
“Running out of stories is never my concern, but how to tell them is always my concern. Otherwise the world is always over-flowing with stories. I never have a particular audience in mind. I am moving so much,” she says.

Muniza and Kamila Shamsie – Two nations, Two narratives

The mother-daughter writer team of Muniza and Kamila Shamzie discussed the themes that have run generationally in Pakistani writing, and what aspects influence their works. Attia Hosein's 1961 novel, Sunlight On A Broken Column was also invoked during the talk. Muniza spoke about how the partition was very much part of her life. “ I had all kinds of cultural conflicts. I was very aware of partition. My earliest memory goes back to when I was 3. I remember the sight of Karachi and my father waiting to receive us. And I grew up with this discourse of partition – people kept discussing it – why did it happen etc. so I was conscious about my family with a past. The Indian side of my family couldn't see eye to eye with us and they raved and ranted at my father.”

Interestingly, in all their novels, the personal and the political have merged. “Novels look at the greys, there's the realm of the imagination. The national narratives do not contain that. Novels show you new dimensions, present things anew.”
Kamila expressed that the Indo-Pak partition is very interesting to her dramatically. “But I belong to the Zia generation, so writers like me tend to look more at Aghanistan, Jehad mentality and so on. These are the themes that are more prevalent in the novels of the younger Pakistani writers,” she says.
The one challenge before younger Pakistani novelists with elite education is to somehow find a way to include the Urdu idiom into English. “Ahmed Ali consciously tried to get the Persian Urdu idiom and got criticised for it, because the language many felt was stilted. Much like how it was with Mulk Raj Anand in India.” Kamila says, adding that she is most comfortable in English and Urdu is her second language. “There is no issue about it. I think in English, I dream in English. You write in the language you are most comfortable in and if by the force of your education you can do better in English, then one must write in that language.”
The fact that everyone these days is bilingual has greatly helped writers. “ Earlier you didn't have an audience if you wanted to write in a bilingual language. Today most of the young gen of writers are doing it. The market is English today. Certain phrases come out better in the regional languages and a way has to be found out. For me finding that way around is part of the pleasure,” she says.

Imaginary homelands

This session looked at diaspora writers and the constant debate on whether their fiction is pure enough to represent their countries. Junot Diaz and Kamila Shamsie among others were part of this debate that was anchored by writer Chandrahas Choudhury. “Nations are obsessed with purity, when really none of us are all pure,” said Junot. “We live in a world that is churning. People who travel are not just the global elite. Everyone is moving around. Writers read a lot so they are part of many imaginary worlds,” said Shamsie, adding. “ You cannot have all your stories based on your own experiences, then there would be no fiction.”

Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid's morning session on the last day of the festival with Chandrahas Choudhury was an immensely enjoyable one, where the author threw light on his celebrated novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and his craft. The Pakistani writer who has been living in America for the past many years wrote an earlier novel called Moth Smoke, which also gained a fair amount of acclaim. But it was The Reluctant Fundamentalist set in the backdrop of 9/11 that made Mohsin famous.
Unlike popular assumption, the novel's first draft was not written after 9/11, but much before that. " I wrote it in 2000, and at that point the publisher wasn't too interested. A story about a Muslim man having an uneasy relationship with America was not something that captured anyone's imagination. But after 2001, it was like, 'That book you are working on...' he narrates to an amused audience on the demand and relevance the subject suddenly acquired.

Mohsin had to make certain changes to his original draft after 9/11. " Earlier I had modelled it like a thriller, something like John Grisham's The Firm. But after 9/11, I had to subvert many things," he tells us.

Ask him about his excessive use of commas in his text, and the young writer says, "I've never really understood punctuations. For me punctuations are like spellings - you don't know why a word is spelt the way it is. My purpose for using commas and semi colons is only one - to give cadence to words. Colon is a connecting pause, a comma is just a rhythmic break. It's more a musical notation than a grammatical notation. The basic point for me is cadence, because we speak and think with cadences. There is a magical feeling to that rhythm. I try to achieve that, where I get the reader to slip into a certain rhythm, where you are already moving. An emotional state is thereby achieved."

Like many other writers, Mohsin too believes that fiction is not a spontaneous art at all. "All writers are readers. I read my stuff hundreds of times. it's a continuous act of evolution and refinement," he says.

Jimmy the terrorist - Omair Ahmad's interview

2011-01-13T17:32:00.011+05:30

Author: Omair Ahmad
Pages: 180

It's easy to read author Omair Ahmad's new book, Jimmy The Terrorist, as a partisan novel about mariginalistion of the Muslim community in India, their victimisation and all the issues that come with it. But Ahmad is staunchly against such narrow readings. The book is set in the fictional town of Maozamabad in Muslim-dominated colony in UP, and follows closely the life of a few of its denizens, against the changing socio-political atmosphere in the country. In establishing the history of the people of the town, the author briefly touches upon the antecedents, following which the drama begins from the 60s where you enter the life of an ordinary Muslim youth, Rafiq who aspires to be a well-educated elite. The old Shabbir Manzil, which houses affluent Muslim families and is the intellectual hub for poets, is where Rafiq aspires to be. He finally becomes privy to this much envied circle by way of his marriage to Shiasta -- the well-educated cousin of the affluent Ahmad Sayeed. However, other complications come along. The Rafiq-Shiasta union produces a son, Jamal aka Jimmy, and it is in his young life that you see the undercurrents of religious intolerance taking its ugliest turn.
The novel undoubtedly points at the vulnerable, fragile situation of Muslims in India, even though Omair is enough of a writer to add touches of irony (the Muslim characters show a tendency to feel victimised for everything, often ignoring their personal failings.)

Taking Omair Ahmad's point that his book is primarily a personal, human story and must not be seen as religion-specific, it could be pointed out that there are some jumps in the narration that aren't altogether convincing. The Rafiq-Shiasta relationship is a complex one, but never really clear. Nor is Rafiq's slow hardening of his Muslim identity. Whether these things are allegorical or so not is besides the point - purely as a story, there seem to be a few gaps.

Ahmad's book started as a short story of 4000 words, which ultimately got transformed into a novel. "I was in the US at that time, and was trying to explain to colleagues in think tanks (this is the time of Godhra, the Parliament attack, just after September 11, after Afghanistan and just around the time of Iraq) the costs of violence, and the breakdown of law and order on young people, especially in the context of religious politics. In a sense although this is set in a Muslim locality, I believe that it should generally work in the context of any minority facing majoritarian politics -- think of Kashmiri Pandits, of Ahmadiya in Pakistan & Bangladesh...," says the author whose earlier novella, The Storyteller's Tale came in for much praise.

"The novel was because of a nudge by Ravi Singh (at Penguin), and also maybe as I got older I have become less interested in the violence, and more interested in the larger society, about ideas of social mobility, the problems of small town societies... So the novel is frankly about very different things than the short story."

Though the novel concerns itself with a particular Muslim locality and simultaneously traces the country and community's trajectory through prickly religious events, Ahmad clearly states that he is not trying to 'represent' the Indian Muslim community. "I don't think that is the choice, or job, of a writer. The essential question are: "why would somebody do this thing? what are the circumstances necessary? does it make sense?" The only job a writer has to try to search for some kind of truth and make it a little clearer -- to share his or her understanding... The partial drive in the book is to understand how complicated people really are, how a story has not just two, or three, or even
four perspectives, but more than any one person can adequately capture. We just get a bare outline of all of that.," says the author, who has worked as a political journalist with Outlook.

The book decidedly appears mostly allegorical, where each character mirrors some facet of society. But Omair's answer suggests there was no strict pattern to the narrative, and many characters in the novel simply behave the way they do because of the kind of people they are. "I hope that not everything is simply representational. Shabbir Manzil, and Ahmad Saeed, are obviously characteristic of a declining aristocratic, educated elite, but the fact that Ahmad Saeed likes the poetry he does, or how he deals with the failure in the UPSC exams is something of his own character, that of an imagined person,not simply a code word for something else. Similarly Shaista passion, her bitterness, is who she is." he says, adding wryly, "If I may say so, I am not Dan Brown (for one, my books don't sell
millions of copies!) and I am not writing puzzles for people to solve,
but trying to understand why people might act the way they do."

Omair's idea for the novel began with one thought - what would be a Muslim youth's mind-set amidst events of religious intolerance and unrest? But this situation is hardly unique to India alone, and several Muslims will admit that their sense of marginalisation is far greater in other countries. The story based in a small town in UP can easily translate into being a microcosm for Indian religious conflicts and further a microcosm for Muslim victimisation. It's a subtext hard to escape, but Omair insists on seeing the story as a purely human one. "The only uniqueness for me about the Indian experience is that it is mine. When I write about eastern UP, about the failure of our agriculture policies, about the crumbling of our infrastructure, our hope in a vision of 'modernity' that we may not be able to fully
achieve, I write about people and places I know." he says.

Rediscovering Austen

2011-01-07T09:55:00.011+05:30

Jane Austen (Tony Tanner) case study

They say, 'one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other'. That rightly applies to Jane Austen, who probably has as many die-hard admirers as skeptics. Her enduring popularity continues to bewilder a section of authors and literary critics who find her novels and concerns too remote and limited to be taken seriously. Her growing fame mystified her contemporaries like Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain who repeatedly wondered aloud what all the fuss around her was. Many derisively said that if you had read one Austen novel, it was as good as reading all of them.

Austen's popularity in the critical sphere has gone through periods of ups and lows, but her appeal among regular readers has never shown the slightest signs of a decline. Austen's constricted, over-decorous society of the 18th century might seem a bit ludicrous to modern readers. But the prim liveliness in her stories, the sparking wit and characters edged with delicious irony have enthralled generations of readers, and the charm and appeal of her works remain undiminished.
More importantly, even though she based all her stories in a certain class of English gentry and dealt primarily with themes of domesticity and marriagablity, it was still a legitimate microcosm of the larger society and for an acute reader, these are stories that offer much insight about the times Austen lived in. Of course, her enduring popularity remains a fascinating subject for research, and many of her critic-admirers have done penetrating studies on Austen's world, trying to reassert her genius.

One of the case study books on Jane Austen I perused recently was by critic Tony Tanner, who provides a provocative though stimulating study of her novels. Some of Tanner's focus is on disproving through analysis of her novels that Austen was not the sequestered spinster with scant knowledge of the outside world, as she was believed to be. All his seven essays - each dedicated to one novel are illuminating and unfurl a world of meanings, pointing to the larger themes and subtexts present in Austen’s narrative choices.

The period Austen wrote was one where great changes were taking place. Politically, England was engaging in a war with Napoleon Bonaparte. The Romantic movement was challenging the Age of Reason, where many of the old ways was being considered too priggish and stifling. Jane Austen grew up on eighteenth century rationalism and was loyal to its principles that honoured limits and boundaries. She was respectful of social systems and old values, and laid a lot of emphasis on sense and prudence. In fact, she was also particular about manners, class, and propriety in her earlier novels. But this last aspect changes once we come to her last novel, Persuasion, as Tony Tanner’s critique brings out.

Tanner’s book points at a certain recurrent theme in Austen’s novels that most of her readers might have detected already – the struggle between ‘stillness’ and ‘energy’ – sense v/s sensibility, prudence v/s impulse and sobriety v/s indulgence. The only heroine in whom we see a congruence of reason and energy is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Her spirit, wit and liveliness are seen to be a source of great delight in an otherwise dull and inferior society. Tanner rightly thinks that this happy coming together of pragmatism with a fairy tale touch of romance in Pride and Prejudice is what offers the novel its unfading relevance. However, this vibrancy is not found in Austen’s other works and the analysis points at how she grew skeptical about too much effervescence and energy. Austen’s fear of ‘unfettered movement’ and ‘openness’ was evident in Sense and Sensibility, where she creates a romantic figure in the form of Marianne, who she treats with ‘an ambiguous mix of sympathy and satire’

The larger issue Austen deals with is that of individual impulse and social order. The elder sister, Elinor is a preserver of ‘screens’ in that it she ‘who is constantly trying to smooth and harmonise potentially abrasive and discordant occasions, giving the raw social realities a vaneer of art’. Marianne is the opposite and ‘demands that outward forms exactly portray or project inward forms’. She will have none of the hypocrisy and will speak her mind at all times. But Austen sees the impossibility of this situation, where if everyone were to behave according to their own whims and impulses – then there would be no society at all, and only anarchy.

Sense And Sensibility was Austen’s first novel and Tanner speaks of how it is largely considered the author’s weakest novels due to the ‘crude antithesis’ in the schematic separation of qualities of both sisters. This is done for greater clarity, but critics found it primitive and much similar to the moralistic fiction of the past age. Yet, Tanner believes and I wholeheartedly agree that things are never black and white in the novel, and Austen’s sympathies lie with both Elinor and Marriane. Tanner expresses his disappointment with the novel’s brusque ending, where Marriane is ‘tamed’ after her sickness and marries a man she had never fancied earlier. What can be said here is that Austen – though sympathetic about romance and individual choices – is a far greater advocate of reason. Since society was the ‘unalterable given’ to her, she believed her characters had to negotiate within those spaces and find happiness.

While Austen’s tenor was more light –hearted in Pride and Prejudice, it grew positively severe in her third novel, Mansfield Park. It was a time when new cities were coming up, and London was emerging as a fashion centre. Austen knew the quiet life of the country-side, which she loved, would sooner than later feel the ripples of this change. “Jane Austen, then, was living in a diminishing enclave of traditional rural stability just prior to a period of convulsive, uncontrollable change,” writers Tanner. So while the theme of energy versus stillness continues in Mansfield Park, the novel is also about ‘rest and restlessness, stability and change and movable and immovable’.

It is also probably Austen’s most metaphorical works, and she creates at the centre a heroine – Fanny Price – whom most readers have had a dislike for. Unlike her other heroines, Fanny is staid, still and faultless. ‘It is regarded as the story of a girl who triumphs by doing nothing’. Against Fanny’s stoicism and moral rectitude, she juxtaposes a shifting world, and inhabits it with ebullient, exciting characters. The two ‘outsider’ brother-sister team, Mary and Henry Crawford are products of the stylish London society. Outwardly, they are charming, witty and jolly people. Austen places at the centre of the novel a theatrical performance that is staged by the denizens of the Mansfield Park mansion. It is done when the patriarch guardian of the house, Sir Thomas is away. Such a practice is not encouraged here where everything is orderly and as per convention. Putting up a play per se, is not a crime – Tanner points out. It is the underlining meaning of the act that Austen uses. The masks, the stage, the darkness, the role-playing foster an atmosphere of illicit affairs and dubious activity- turning a ‘temple of order’ into a ‘school for scandal’ so to say. It is this corruption of character and corrosive impact on society that Austen brings out. And to drive home her point, she shows the manipulative, mercenary and utterly superficial nature of the Crawfords.

For all of Austen’s conservatism, one of the other aspects that emerges in her novels is her slow disenchantment with society itself. Even while she treats her society as a given, almost immovable (Mansfied Park) against external forces, it was hardly as if she couldn’t detect the evil elements and developing cracks from within. It’s not surprising then that Elizabeth Bennet once she finds an equal companion in Darcy retires to the wonderful estate of Pemberley – away from a certain kind of society that both of them dislike. In Mansfield Park also Austen distinctly points out the corrupting influences and the rot within. However, her belief in her society appears total at this point, and she restores its place of pride, by making someone like Fanny Price the mistress of Mansfield Park.

Austen, however, could also see the limitations of this world and unfairness to women. Emma’s dangerous fetish for match-making is precisely born out of her lack of proper employment. “In Emma’s society, there is no room for manoeuvre, no room for rearrangement, no room for any kind of escape. In short, there is no room…it explains a lot about Emma’s spirited imagination, which is constantly unfixing and refixing things in a most irresponsible way,” writes Tanner. (Here too, Austen’s partiality to ‘sense’ over ‘sensibility’ is evident. Emma’s flightiness and frivolity is juxtaposed against the quiet confidence and wisdom of a Jane Fairfax and Knightley.)

But Tanner believes it is Austen’s last fully published novel, Persuasion which shows so clearly her disillusionment with her society. The theme of prudence v/s impulse continues here too, and Austen does not change her side. She still emphasizes the virtues of stillness over rash movement. This of course alludes to Louisa who in her impulsiveness has a dangerous ‘fall’ – but the author also distinctly becomes softer about matters of the heart. Anne – the quiet, useful heroine of the novel – is ‘persuaded’ by her governess Mrs Russell in good faith to give up her lover Wentworth since he isn’t well-settled enough. Seven years have passed and Anne is still single, and greatly regrets turning down the one man she so desperately loved. Wentworth is now a Captain in the Navy, and doing very well for himself. Many themes unfurl themselves in this setting. Firstly Tanner believes, and this is a clearly emerging picture, that many of the old authorities are now defunct. The society itself is growing increasingly moribund and stagnant. This is evident in the way Austen portrays Anne’s father, as a man given to excess and someone perfectly useless. Similarly Mrs Russell’s advice about Wentworth turns out to be dead wrong, demonstrating clearly that many of the old criterias for judging have become invalid. But the most damning indictment of her society comes from the fact that Austen now sees an alternative set of values and way of life in the Navy. Austen could see that the land-owning elite in England did nothing during the war and it was the Navy which saved the country. She is very appreciative of them in the book, admiring their openness and their sense of gender equality. I didn’t notice it till Tanner points out in the book that perhaps for the first time Austen has written very lyrically about the sea in Persuasion. The end sees Anne moving away from her own society -there isn’t any left ! – and joins Wentworth on the sea. This is a big departure in an Austen novel.

Besides the larger themes that emerge from Tanner’s critique, intermittently, there are also some exquisite readings he makes of certain scenes. Like the one in Pride And Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet joins her uncle and aunt to visit Pemberley. It is the most memorable and significant scenes in the novel. Elizabeth’s heart has already softened towards Darcy after his letters, and this entry into his grand mansion is also a metaphorical opening into what she will now see as the real Darcy. Tanner points out how the truest portrait of Darcy in the most private part of the house upstairs; downstairs he is only visible in ‘miniature’ - this implies that the further a man moves away from his house, the most chances there are that he can be misrepresented. “Standing before the large and true image of the real Darcy, Elizabeth has in effect completed her journey.”

Some of Tanner’s observations are speculative, but still there’s a great deal of originality and insight in his readings. And indeed this prompts the reader to think anew about Austen. Certainly her 'small world' had more things going on that one would imagine. And Tanner brings that aspect forth.

Why Mythology lives on

2010-12-23T11:22:00.003+05:30

Mythology has always been a fascinating treasure for our filmmakers to delve into. What’s the lasting appeal of our epics, will mythology be relevant to our cinema in the future, too?

With Raajneeti and Raavan this year — films that are adapted from our great epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana respectively — one would think there’s a certain revival of interest in mythological themes. However, fact is that Indian cinema has always drawn from the deep well of these influential epics. Every character and story within these epics have been so entrenched in our psyche and collective consciousness, that they have invariably come to determine our ideas of culture and morality. And the fact that our epics are such a compelling artistic and creative tour de force have made them timeless in their appeal and relevance. Not to add, they remain the ultimate source material for our arts, especially cinema.

Straight from epics

Naturally then, when Indian cinema took its first baby steps, it was mythological subjects that became the obvious choices for filmmakers. Dadasaheb Phalke’s most well-known films included Mohini Bhasmasur (1913), Satyavan Savitri (1914), Lanka Dahan (1917), Shri Krishna Janma (1918) and Kaliya Mardan (1919) — all derived from our great epics. And this was the trend across the country, with almost every film made down South, through the ’30s being a mythological one — Sakkubai, Sita Vanavasam, Krishna Tulabharam in Tamil cinema, to name just a few. These were all straight-forward representations of the epic tales and the fact that the audience were well-versed with the stories allowed them to make an immediate connection with the films. Hence, the transition to cinema proved to be an easy and pleasant one, where the content was familiar, even if the medium was a new one.
“Indians have a deep connect with their mythological texts. It’s an umbilical cord,” says writer and director Vinay Shukla. “There are so many strands in the Mahabharata that a filmmaker can base every story on the epic if he wanted, and yet never run out of material.”

The myth continues

With time, as cinema started evolving, filmmakers began experimenting with their stories, making it more contemporary. However, they seldom moved away from the templates and archetypes created by mythology. So the hero was mostly a representation of the ideal man Ram or the manipulative Krishna. The inspiration for the heroine came directly from the image of Ram’s dutiful wife, Sita — an embodiment of purity, compassion and sacrifice.
Even in the ’70s, when the anti-establishment wave took over, and youths were disenchanted with the old ‘ideals’, people got a new anti-hero after their own heart. Amitabh Bachchan’s characters in Trishul and Deewar, the illegitimate son and the underdog respectively, can easily be compared to that of Karna in Mahabharata, the illegitimate son of Kunti, who rebels and succeeds against all odds. Not only was such a character completely resonant with the mood of the nation, it also fired the imagination like none other. “Everyone has fantasies of being this abandoned child. It’s a universal fantasy, which is why Karna’s situation strikes such a deep chord,” says Anjum Rajabali, writer of films like Raajneeti, The Legend Of Bhagat Singh and Ghulam. “The don and his loyal henchman seen in countless films invariably draw their energy from the Ram and Hanuman relationship. Similarly, all our old villains have the same motivation that drove Raavan. It was revenge and lust. So he abducts the heroine to teach the hero a lesson and eventually falls in love/lust with her.”

A timeless treasure trove

“I have no doubt that our mythology is timeless in essence. Our epics are an external and dramatic representation of an inner life. Since human nature does not change, our epics will remain as compelling and influential as ever,” says Rajabali.
Almost everyone agrees that mythology has a treasure trove of stories and if they are are well-woven into contemporary settings, they will always find a resonance. “I would recommend every student and filmmaker to read the epics to simply understand how to tell stories and what these stories actually reveal. It helps one to see the entire range of depths and the layering of characters. They are simple, but never simplistic. For example, take the episode of Hanuman entering Lanka to retrieve Sita. Here is a man who is completely devoted to Ram and yet when he enters Raavan’s palace, he is struck by his glory and exclaims, ‘this man is fit to rule this world!’ This is the conflict which even Valmiki mentions in the original Ramayan. So our epics keep throwing cues at us, telling us not to look at things in a very simple way,” views Rajabali.
In spite of other narrative influences coming in, filmmakers believe that mythology can still be a great source of stories for films. “Mani Ratnam’s Roja is actually a simple tale of Savitri wanting her husband’s life back from Yama. And Mani does it very cleverly, so that the reference is never overt. I think South Indians perhaps have an advantage because mythology is very deeply ingrained in them. They can easily take the emotions from the epic stories and present them in the modern context,” says Shukla.
Rajabali too agrees that a lot more of mythology can flow into our films. “Unfortunately, the literary aspect of our films has not been explored enough. You need a literary tradition. Our earlier writers were all authors. Today, we don’t see that,” he says.

Mythology, a gimmick?

Author of several mythological books, Devdutt Patanaik believes our films, which directly try to adapt the epics or borrow recognisable elements from them, present very primitive versions. “They are cosmetically fantastic and alluring, but their soul is missing. They present to you a cosmetic archetype. So any person who is manipulative is Krishna, but then what about Shakuni? Earlier scholars who researched the Mahabharata and Ramayan tried to explore and impart the wisdom in it. That is not the intention of the films that one sees. Most of them only play with popular perception. They will glamourise the villain (Raavan) because the dark side is always interesting. But I doubt it is done with any understanding of the story. So I will say, they are great cosmetically, but on the soul level, there is a complete disconnect. A good katha should shake you up from your complacency and uplift you. Do you see that happening with any of these films?,” he asks.
Rajabali has a contrary view and argues, “I don’t see anything uplifting about Ramayana and Mahabharata. In fact, these epics make me ponderous and reflective. Both these texts end in tragedy. In Ramayana, you see Ram being the best king and having the ideal kingdom and yet, his life ends in pain. It is a way of telling us how life is very difficult and is ultimately very painful.”

The future of mythology

Since epics are living texts, the understanding is that they can be re-interpreted in a million ways, and they will still find a resonance among the future generations. Ultimately, whether one sees our epics as cautionary tales or inspirational parables, it is evident that their greatness lies in their narrative craftsmanship, emotional depth, and profound understanding of the human nature, something which every artiste can take inspiration from.
William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives sums it up best in a chapter about the Pabuji epic in Rajasthan and oral traditions, when he says. “Myths pick up the pieces when philosophy throws up its hands. Great myths help to think through the unthinkable and make sense by analogy.”

Women Unbound, Leading Ladies - Writing on women by women and interview with Sudha Menon

2010-12-21T23:31:00.028+05:30

It's not hard to see that women are increasingly dotting the professional arena, and even dominating the scene in specific industries. Every subsequent day is seeing their number rise at the work place, and in a few years, women are tipped to take over plum positions in all fields, including those that have been traditionally viewed to be male bastions. This changing gender dynamics on the work-front will unquestionably alter and challenge the working space in the years to come. Which is why, the timing of two recent books, Women Unbound (Penguin) by Gita Aravamudan and Leading Ladies (42 Bookz Galazy) by Sudha Menon couldn't have been better. Both expectedly 'celebrate women' and acknowledge the rapid strides they are making in their professions, and how this is impacting family and social life. Admirably, both books focus intently on the professional journey and achievements of women, not allowing their personalities to be overly defined by their private lives.

While Aravamudan focusses on the whole class of working women, trying to gather an aggregate of how things stand today, Sudha Menon’s book, Leading Ladies profiles the country’s long-standing women achievers, seeing what makes them tick.

Both books have been penned by ex journalists. While Sudha I recogonise as a sassy and charming journalist on the Pune reporting scene, Aravamudan has also worked as a journo in Bangalore. Both women take a mature and balanced approach towards the topic, trying to understand the role of women today and the realms of the possible. However, like it happens often with print journalists who turn to non-fiction, the writing assumes an impersonal, third-person staidness, which both these books suffer from unfortunately. From time to time, both of these give you the feeling of reading a newspaper cover story or magazine, with the ‘he says’ ‘she says’ approach. Their authorial voice is a timid one, having for years seen things from a generalized, neutral stand point. This is a disadvantage, because non-fiction frequently relies on effervescent writing to offset the seriousness brought about by the theme at hand.
Anyway, coming to the two books, both I felt run out of steam after making a few points and then it becomes terribly repetitive.

Gita Aravamudan’s Women Unbound has interviews with women across the board - media personalities, IT professionals, BPO employees and one even with item girl Rakhi Sawant. There is novelty in the first few chapters, as the author gives an introduction about the history of the ‘working women’ and tracing how and when things started changing. Some of the women she interviews are interesting. Like there’s one with NDTV journo Radhika Bordia and her reporting on hard news. Radhika rules out being differentiated on account of gender and says those days are long over. Yet, women are not singularly judged on their capabilities still. She notes how women on television have an advantage if they look good. This was something Radhika had to reluctantly come to terms with. “The visual media has become like the film industry. The male anchors are getting older, and the women are getting younger. But it’s not just the TV industry. It’s everywhere. All career women feel the pressure to look good.
There are some observations that stay with you. Like the author finds how even though women are found in plenty at the entry level of an organization, their number drastically reduces in the middle management level – this is because most women tend to take a break after marriage or pregnancy and find it difficult to get back into the groove. Working around the family and yet the same time having a full fledged career remains the single most important challenge before women. What the book brings out, however, is that many women are fiercely dedicated towards their work and given the right support system, can really do wonders.
But the idea of a woman being defined by her professional life and career will only happen with time. In the book, Gita narrates how many bosses at the time of recession were tilted towards their male employees, and when left with little option laid off the women, citing that men needed their jobs for their families. Obviously, having a job may still not be viewed as a necessary part of a woman’s identity. But it’s very clear that the winds of change are blowing fast.
The book tries to cover just about every working women it can find, so it feels like a great amount is crammed in. It gets repetitive after a time and the only way one will perhaps not mind it is if one doesn’t read it at stretch.

That’s the same condition that you need to apply for Sudha Menon’s book, Leading Ladies because the pattern in each story starts to get familiar and tedious. The book looks closely at the lives of well-known personalities like Anu Agha, Naina Kidwai, Lila Poonawala, Mallika Sarabhai. There are other leading business women and CEOs like Shikha Sharma, Kiran Muzumdar, Priya Paul and Amrita Patel that the book covers. Many of them have been extensively written about and quoted in the press, so straight away, the subject loses some of its freshness. In any case, an effort such as this can only be as good as the women profiled and their stories.
Anu Agha is terrific and inspirational as ever, as she reflects on her life where she suffered the worst knocks possible, including the death of her young son in an accident soon after the death of her husband. The tragedies made her philosophical, but not bitter, and she picked herself up in the larger interest of her company, Thermax. Today, Anu is putting her weight behind some of the most constructive social activities in the city. And her advice for professionals is especially valuable I thought. “The balance between ordinary and extraordinary self is a key aspect. When you are full of your achievements and have a bloated ego, it is vital to remember that you are pretty ordinary. And when you are taking it easy and not pushing yourself, it is essential to remind yourself that you are extraordinary."

The one element common to all the success stories is that most of these women were ambitious from the very beginning, having an excellent academic track record, and a focussed, single-minded approach to their careers. Most of them had extremely supportive parents, who had big dreams for them. Importantly, the one aspect that comes across is the strong value system ingrained in them, where they were able to look at the collective good of people. Not surprisingly, each one has been a terrific team player, continuing to encourage and inspire others.

They all entered their fields in the 70s when most companies did not even hire women as a policy. But these achievers attest to the fact that there was no great gender bias once they got reasonably settled into their field of work. Invariably, each one of them had the backing of a male mentor, who proved decisive in their career growth.

It's also vital to consider that these high achievers suffered some form of personal loss or the other, and it brought in its wake a great deal of pain and anguish. But importantly, they showed the courage to rise above it and recogonise the larger roles they could play in their professional sphere. Kalpana Morparia, CEO J P Morgan says she found it difficult to recoincile with her childless state and until very long considered herself to be failure. That's when she resolved to flip that loss on its head and use it to her advantage instead, wherein she single-mindedly applied herself to her career.
There are many such inspirations to be drawn from.

However, one troubling aspect about the book is that most of the women it covers have been heirs to big business empires, or had influential parents who guided them correctly and funded their education abroad. Not that their achievements are less commendable, but the stories may not resonate as well as one would have liked. Just to make sure all fields get a representation, there's PT Usha and Shubha Mudgal added to the mix. One gets the feeling that the author could have been far more eclectic in her choices of women. As it stands, the narrative gets into a familiar loop with familiar themes and words floating around. Each story should have been more distinctive in order to engage the reader fully.

The book nevertheless is sincere in intend, and its approach of citing specific examples where these women applied their talent and innovation, will go some way in showing how much women can be productive in the professional and public arena.

'Women bring an emotional quotient to their dealings'

Journalist Sudha Menon's book Leading Ladies profiles 15 successful Indian women who've made a real difference in the professional world, and through them tries to understand the realms of the possible

The idea for Leading Ladies, a non-fictional book featuring some of the country's most successful women in varied fields, lingered with Sudha long before she actually got down to writing it. As a business journalist, she had followed the corporate world from close quarters and it inspired her to see so many 'can-do' career women with stunning success stories. “I was keen to find out what made them tick,” says Sudha about the book-idea that had been “rattling in her head” for a while.

It wasn't easy to give up a secure full time journalism job that she had been pursuing for the last 20 years. “But there was a restlessness in me. I had grown up in a house where there were books everywhere. I had finished reading all the Russian classics by the time I was eight or nine. I loved words. In that sense, though I enjoyed my work as a business journalist too, it was all facts and figures which does tend to get repetitive after a while. And since this topic inspired me for a book, I resolved that I would have to take the plunge,” she says. It of course meant altering her approach and style and fully donning the writer's cap. “As a journalist you are objective and cut and dry. This was a different project altogether, where I wanted these highly talented women to open up their hearts to me. I wanted to tap into their real selves, and know more about them than what one has read in countless magazines,” she says.

Sudha listed down 100 super-successful women but soon realised she would not be able to do them justice in one book. Finally, she settled on 15 names, and some care was taken to include women from the arts fields as well. But primarily, the book concerns itself with women business executives and entrepreneurs. This makes her list far less eclectic, but Sudha says she was hesitant to include women from fields she didn't have an assured knowledge of. Leading Ladies has many of the names one would expect. It has Thermax ex chairperson and social worker Anu Agha, social activist, her daughter and current head, Meher Pudumjee, classical danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, Naina Kidwai, and Lila Poonawala. There are other leading business women and CEOs like Kalpana Morparia, Shikha Sharma, Shireen Mistry (Teach For India campaign), Vinita Bali, Kiran Muzumdar, Mallika Srinivasan. Priya Paul, and Amrita Patel that the book covers. From the sports world, it has P T Usha and from the music world, classical singer, Subha Mudgal. Their obvious professional success apart, most of these women have leveraged their positions to make a real difference in their respective fields. Almost all of them have either begun or nurtured organisations that contribute to the larger good of their community.

Most of the women Sudha featured were only known to her through their work, but her process of finding out more through her book, proved to be a personal journey of self-discovery as well. “I had a lot of self-confidence issues. I feared I wouldn't be able to capture all the aspects about these women. But each time I met them, their confidence and energy started to rub off on me. They were generous with their time, and I noticed they bring a certain emotional quotient to their dealings, a heart into an other hard-nosed world that makes them sensitive and effective leaders,” she says.

Since much has already been covered in the mainstream media about these women, Sudha deliberately chose not to create biographies and instead pitch it as an inspirational book. “When you feel low, you can just leaf through it and it has enough to give you hope and uplift your spirits.”
Sudha's already planning for a Vol 2 which will feature women from a variety of fields. Besides that, she is also going to release her fiction work soon. “Yes, the writing bug has bitten me now,” she smiles.

- Sandhya Iyer

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

2010-12-19T16:12:00.008+05:30

Author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shaghvi
Pages: 348
Published in: 2010

Somewhere towards the middle of Siddharth Shanghvi's overwritten second novel, one of his characters bitches about a fictitious Indian author saying so and so's book is self-conscious, lurid and seems "like a creative writing workshop on an overdrive."
Surprising that such a sentence would land up in Shanghvi’s own book, lyrically titled, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, because nothing can more aptly describe his own florid language.
Even someone who might usually appreciate the high-flown language found in classics, will find the writing here overly decorative and cumbersome. The first few pages are especially hard to get by, as the showiness and smug nonchalance of the writing starts to revolt you.

It's not like Shanghvi cannot write. He has a falicity with words, and has perhaps used up half the dictionary, but this excessiveness serves an early blow to the narrative because you're so turned off.

Firstly, the creative writer in Shanghvi is painfully self-indulgent...
He writers: “On Tuesday morning a big fat sun careened through thick layers of cloud, revealing a sky the colour of joy. The same evening, on the bust to Samar’s house, Karan saw the prairie-blue sly darken , opalescent grey turning to leaden silver”

Even banal sentences are stilted.

“In front of the portal, under a big rain tree, liveried chauffeurs traded flashes of filthy gossip about their bosses, and the tipsy memsahibs, smelling of their husbands abandonment, waited for valets to pull up their fancy cars.”

The metaphors are frequently tasteless and meant to shock: “Priya had a crusty librarian’s voice, one that could only be relieved with a dildo”
The sexed up language by itself is not a problem, but the phrases seem to appear out of nowhere

All this should be enough to dump the book, right? Well, that’s what I thought, but the novel does gather some steam and good-will by the end of the second chapter. The narrative gathers pace and you start to invest in some of the characters. The language starts to compliment rather than stick out like a sore thumb, and this is where you can appreciate the author’s ability to enter the inner most recesses of his character’s hearts and articulate their emotions so well. Many passages are moving and insightful, as much as they are lyrical and apt.
The title suggests the book would be about Bombay – all that is stands for, what it has lost and so on. But no among of evoking places and people of the city brings about a resonance.

However, as a story about three people, Samar, Karan and Rhea – on different journeys, all of whom violently fall in love for different reasons and are torn apart by their own confused states and stations in life, the novel holds quite well. The Rhea-Karan relationship rings true, and some of the scenes involving this tortured, tumultuous married women- single man affair is genuinely captivating.
Shanghvi successfully brings out the many shades of love, its changeability and conflicts to the fore. And he anchors this around the Jessica Lal murder case, where the central characters are directly and indirectly involved in it.
Shanghvi’s strength lies in characterization and he etches out a human drama looking at all sides of story and the compulsions that drive its numerous players.
The resolution is not as powerful and the characters start getting hazier by the end, so your interest in them steadily starts to wane.
The book then is a mixed bag – many lows, many highs.

Brief chat with Siddharth Shanghvi

The author was in the city last week at Crossword to release the paperback edition of the novel and I did take the opportunity to ask him about some adverse reactions his book generated when it released earlier this year. "Not some, there were many negative reviews," he corrects, as he picks up another book to sign. Did it bother him? The author merely gesticulates that he didn't care. His life and education in England could have also influenced to the way he wrote, he admits.

At the event were also present Childrens' author Sonja Chanradhud and Anjali Joseph, author of the recent Saraswati Park. The Lost Flemingoes of Bombay uses several real-life incidences and people as fictionalised parallels. The Jessica Lal murder case is at its core. Joseph's question was related to 'transmuting' real life into art. She observed how fiction has always been considered a 'precious zone' and our real lives are not supposed to be the stuff of art. Shanghvi answered that he chose the subject because it was the only reality he could understand. "I needed to understand this climate that allows a politician's son to get away with killing someone for a banal reason like turning down someone's demand for a drink. The upside is that with enough amount of noise and media working with you, you can make a difference," says the author, who contributed to the case by the way of newspaper columns he wrote around that time.
The other aspect about the novel is its undercurrent of sexuality. "I was offered a scholarship abroad to study Sex. My parents objected, and I didn't end up going. But it gets sublimated in my novels. I believe sexuality has a profound impact on how you negotiate your roles in the world," he explains.
Shanghvi has written two novels, the earlier one being The Last Song of Dusk, but the author is ready to give up writing. "Something organic and magical seems to get lost for me in the process of exhibiting. I will continue with what I do, but the instrument will change. But it would really depend on the story and my mood," he says with an air of nonchalance.

2010-12-18T18:38:00.001+05:30

Author: RamchandraGuha
Pages: 537
Price: 799
Year of Publishing: 2010

Historian, author and columnist Ramchandra Guha’s recently published book, Makers of Modern India is a sincere effort at profiling some of India’s most prolific thinkers and doers, whose ideas have had a defining influence in the shaping of our republic. The book – through speeches, articles and essays by these great personalities – tracks Indian’s political, social and cultural history over the last two centuries, giving the reader a comprehensive idea of how the country has come to evolve.
In a detailed introduction, Guha talks about how political activism has mostly gone hand in hand with theoretical reflection in our country, and most of its greatest thinkers have all been in the thick of political action. This is of course not unique to India. But one of the reasons that makes the compilation of such a book a worthwhile exercise is because many of those ideas remain relevant to present day India, says Guha.
Among the 19 individuals chosen by the author, there are the obvious names of course. But on first glance, there are several others who seem to be missing from the list. In the introduction, the author explains his choices clearly. Two iconic leaders of Indian national struggle, Vallabhhai Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose are not included, and Guha says this was owning to the paucity of original ideas contained in their published works and because both were ‘out and out doers’. The others missing are either because their ‘influenced has passed’ with age or because their ideas didn’t extend far beyond a certain class. The Indian Marxist finds no representation and Guha explains why -- their work has been derivative and no novel contributions have been made to the ideas of Mao and Lenin.
So the men and women who Guha handpicks are not all of the same stature, and some of them are little known, but altogether, the book covers a great deal and thoroughly represents India through its many stages and movements. While the book comprehensively looks into and dedicates several pages to its two greatest national leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, it also brings to focus thinkers like Hamid Dalwai, Tarabai Shinde and some others who got unjustly forgotten.
Guha introduces every personality at the beginning of a chapter, before reproducing excerpts of their speeches and essays. Many of the themes do find a resonance to the times we live in. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s explosive speeches talk about why it is imperative for Indian Muslims to have a separate Pakistan. “Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature….they have different epics, different heroes and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.”
Some of the most insightful thoughts come from C Rajagopalachari, first attorney general of India and CM of Tamil Nadu. His essays talk about the acute need for a strong Opposition to make parliamentary democracy effective. This was the time when Congress party was enjoying an unrivalled reign in the 50s and 60s. He also debates with much acuity on why English, and not Hindi, must be the national language.
All these themes are bound to touch a chord among today’s readers. At 537 pages, the book is a valuable addition to the repertoire of non-fiction writing in India.

Leela - A Patchwork Life

2010-12-13T12:00:00.019+05:30

Pages: 180
Price: Rs 450
Publishers: Penguin Vikings

The faintest memory one has of Leela Naidu is that of Anuradha, the haunting, virginal beauty in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1960s film with Balraj Sahni. There were a few more fleeting appearances from her on the screen, but by and large, she remained a figure known only to a close circle of friends in Mumbai, where she stayed till her death earlier this year.

Leela - A Patchwork Life is an autobiographical book, that captures some of highlights of her life - and there were many. She died before the book was published a few months back. She was 69. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural Leela was one of the most well-traveled, well-read people of her times, and French launguage in particular was ingrained into her system.

Born to an physicist Indian father and a French-journalist mother, Leela was thrown in the company of illustrious men and women very early on. Hindi films were incidental to her life. She acted in a few films, got married into a rich industrial family (Oberois), delivered twins, got divorced, married poet/writer Dom Moraes and stayed together for 25 years, until they separated. However, none of the personal tragedies in her life find a place in the book. In her prologue, she enumerates the incidences in just one sentence, but it unmistakably carries the weight of memory. 'I do not see what use it would be to recount my 'trials and tribulations', except to add to yet another narrative of feminine pain to the ones that are already extant."

If that was all there was to Leela's life - which she anyway didn't wish to talk about -- the exercise would seem pointless. If the book is still so readable it's because the memoir teems with wonderful anecdotes from a bygone era, where she came in close contact with some great luminaries of her time. Her parents were fairly influential in their fields, and Leela was privi to many of these personalities visiting her home from time to time. She remembers filmmaker Roberto Rossellini loving her mom's cooking and when Leela goes to Paris for a certain medical reason, she has his wife and legendary actress Ingrid Bergman for company. In one of the most interesting chapters of her life, she forms a close association with new wave director Jean Renoir, who teaches her some vital aspects of acting. In one of the episodes, she describes how Renoir got her to read a particular scene and led her through a series of exercises in what he described as the 'ifness' of the play. What if the character was such and such? The text was merely to be the framework and each interpretation could bring something new to that framework...

Obviously, her exposure to world cinema and her interactions with the masters had a bearing when she acted in films later on. In what is perhaps the most interesting segment of the book, Leela describes her working relationship with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory who made The Householder with her and Sashi Kapoor. Someone senior sees the clippings of the film and praises Leela for her good use of her toes in a scene where she is angry and on a hunger-strike. Leela had not noticed it at all. "I believe that if you know what one part of your body is doing, or you're planning what your eyebrows are going to do, you're not acting, you're modelling," she views.

Once Leela approaches her teens, her luminous beauty is noticed by all. Raj Kapoor who she is told has the 'regretable tendency of falling in love with his leading ladies', is struck by her good looks and offers her a four year contract. Leela says she was never very keen on films. Yet, she accepts Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anuradha and describes the experience as pleasant. She seems to have shared a bitter-sweet equation with co-star Balraj Sahni. She says he lend his gravitas to many films that didn't deserve it, and then goes on to tell us that for all his gentlemanliness, Sahni was not above 'trying his luck with her' The other high point was when Vogue mazagine listed as one of the five most beautiful woman in the world.

Leela's inherent delicacy of speech and elegance prevents her from ever turning vitriolic towards any known figure, but she nevertheless gets across her point, either saying it plainly or then employing clever sarcasm. The latter she uses for her husband Dom Moraes (not being able to resist calling him 'morose'), who was also her childhood friend. Leela talks about how she was his unpaid secretary for years, taking down notes for him and interpreting his 'mumbling questions' as he interviewed high-profile personalities all around the globe. One of them happened to be Indira Gandhi, who kept giving them monosyllabic answers.

The first half of the book is made interesting only because of some the famous interactions she had, otherwise Leela's language often tends to get stilted and there is the appearance of some dainty posturing as well. One theme that is repeated episode after episode is Leela's good Samaritan acts. So either she is fighting for the rights of the 'extras' on the film sets, or taking up some racism issue. Leela's concerns may well be genuine, and that is plausible given how she went on to make documentaries on a variety of socially relevant subjects later on, but her self-projection as a do-gooder gets tedious to read after a point. Leela presents herself in no better than in the best light possible always, which makes the memoir seem quite imbalanced.

But the book grows on you and Leela has many valuable insights to share along the way. Her observations of Indian film units - make-up men keeping their shoes in the same trunk which contains the cosmetics - or Leela finding her expensive clothes being returned in shabby condition after use - point at their callous disregard for others. "The film industry and I never understood each other," she writes finally.

The writing has its moments, and at 180 pages, it's a book that never overstay its welcome. The book was narrated orally to writer Jerry Pinto, who wrote it down for Leela. People who know Pinto believe that there is a definite shadow of his in the writing. And going by his Foreword where he needlessly goes after a journalist for her 'lack of research' on Naidu and given his own proclivity for humour writing, it seems very likely he anchored the material. But what you get in the end is an engaging book that takes you back in time and entrances you with the scents and smells of an antiquated time.

Somerset Maugham A Writer's Notebook

2010-12-08T15:45:00.007+05:30

Most of us who grow up with the vague idea of becoming writers sometime in the future or at least putting what one reads to good use professionally will admit to have maintained a note book. I, for one, have. And since I rarely revisit a book for a second time, and since my own retention powers are so woefully limited, I rely either on making markings -underlining the text or then often diligently jotting it down in pretty notebooks. If employed with discretion and intelligence, as Maugham would say, the habit is not without profit.

Somerset Maugham's The Writer's Notebook is a collection of his thoughts, observations, ideas that he gathered along his prolific writing career that lasted over 50 years. The author kept a notebook and would scribble away anything that caught his fancy as he travelled far and wide and met a great deal of characters (one calls them 'characters' and not 'people' because Maugham always saw them as such and was otherwise quite a loner in real life.) It's a practise he started when he was all of 19, and kept updating it till he was well over 70 years. Maugham explains that it was not vanity that prompted him to publish his private notebook, instead it was born out of the thought that he himself would have been thrilled if a well-known writer had came out with such an edition while he was embarking on a writing career.

But when Maugham actually made the notes, it was with the idea of putting the material to future use. So what you find are several brief descriptions of characters and places, and reflections on life, art and human character. I must confess I didn't read everything in the book and though I glanced every single page, I rested my eyes and got immersed only on topics that I was inclined to read about. It's rightly a book that is usually found as a supplementary part of Maugham's stunning autobiography, The Summing Up, because there is an expected resonance in both works.

The parts which caught my eye were about Russian literature, which Maugham doesn't have very complimentary things to say about. Because the collective body of Russian literature is so small, Russians know it with a great thoroughness, he piquently observes. Maugham is a bit bewildered at its over-estimation all over Europe, and believes Russian literature to suffer severely in the area of characterisation. He notes that even someone like Dostoevsky -who has other strengths - has all his characters as 'all of one piece' and as personifications. He says, "It is humour which discerns the infinite diversity of human beings, and if Russian novels offer only a restricted variety of types it is perhaps because they are singularly lacking in humour. In Russian literature you will look in vain for wit and repartee, badinage, the rapier thrust of sarcasm, the intellectual refreshment of the epigram, or the lighthearted jest. Its irony is coarse and obvious."

The other insight is on 'irrationality' in characterisation. Maugham says that though man is fundamentally not a rational animal, he/she feels dissatisfied when the persons of a story do not act from motives that we accept as sufficient. He references Othello in this regard, terming how all of Shakespere's characters in this play were highly irrational. Critics have of course tried to justify their motives, but Maugham sees it as a futile exercise. "The critics would have done better to accept the play as a grand example of the fundamental irrationality of man."

There are other observations of the 'value' of art, the purpose of life and many such philosophical musings. The book in many ways points at the evolving of a writer, through his insatiable need to travel, meet new people, be exposed to new sensations and finally give expression to it in his books. Insightful, stimulating and bristling with original ideas, The Writer's Notebook is a terrific treasure trove that takes you into the rich and ever-curious mind of Maugham who considered every thing he saw as material for his writings. His invention, imagination and sense of narrative drama did the rest!

Chetan's next book in Diwali 2011

2010-11-20T21:29:00.009+05:30

Chetan Bhagat who lent his support for the recently held literary fest in Mumbai-Pune announces his next book, besides talking about the mass market and the
3 Idiots controversy

As India's bestselling writer walks towards the venue for Literary Live! on the final day of the event at Lavasa, a township on the outskirts of Pune, we see a slim and trim Chetan. The author had mentioned last year that being a youth icon he couldn't afford to be unfit, and he seems to have duly worked on that. "Have I really lose weight," he asks the journos present, as we walk towards the greenroom before he can begin his eagerly awaited session.

This IIT-IIM graduate, featured by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the field of books, has been significantly responsible for the rise of the mass fiction market in India. Chetan understands his contribution in getting young India to read, and thereby facilitating such literary events to get a receptive audience. "Otherwise literary festivals so far were only about writers discussing their works among themselves. That's not a convention. You need readers to participate," he says.

The success of his bestsellers, Five Point Someone, One Night @ A Call Centre, among others, were mainly responsible for opening the floodgates for the mass fiction market. However, this has also led to cheap imitations where a lot of trashy writing gets published. While one ought to be happy about the genre of Indian Writing In English finally expanding across segments and being more inclusive than ever, but without adequate filtration, isn't there a fear that it could bring down the overall standard of IWE? Chetan agrees that the market is getting flooded with all kinds of books, but he's not too worried. "Finally only the quality books will get sold, the others will dissapear," he says.

Earlier this year, Chetan took on the makers of 3 Idiots over credit issues, and got the better share of public sympathy and support. He's happy that the incident proved to be a watershed one, with Bollywood getting more conscious about giving due credit to its writers. "So many people within the industry called me and said they supported me. You can't cheat people in today's times. Whether it's a politician or anyone, if you are in the wrong, you will get caught and have to go!" he says.
Yet, Chetan wants to put the incident behind him and concentrate on other things. "Yes, my 5th book will come out next Diwali," he says, not willing to give away anything more on it.
Here's wishing him all the luck!

The Kite Runner on stage

2010-11-17T14:02:00.003+05:30

The stage adaptation of The Kite Runner that was presented by a New York-based theatre group proved too loud and mocking to capture the essence of Khaled Hosseni's celebrated story about friendship and betrayal

The idea of using popular literature as material for stage seems like a win-win situation. For a majority of those who aren't into reading, a theatrical adaptation of a book gives them easy access into a story that is worth knowing about. Similary, for theatre groups, the exercise is a worthwhile one, when you consider that there is a ready audience eager to see on stage a story they're already familiar with.

That has been the idea for New York-based theatre group, Literature To Live, and its 89 year old founder Wynn Handman, who started the institution 48 years ago. In the last 15 years or so, the group has been focussing on literature-based theatre in their 'Voices worth hearing' programme and have adapted about 15 books for the stage. The intention, says Chris Snock - teacher and organiser at the institute, is to get those who aren't big readers interested in literature. "A lot of our stage activities are for New York city school kids," he says. And Khaled Hosseni's bestselling novel, The Kite Runner was an obvious choice in this regard. This novel about life in Aghanistan and a tragic tale of love and betrayal, brutality and redemption has been a massive hit all around the world, and to US especially, after 9/11 and Taliban, it opened up a window to this part of the world. Says Chris, "Americans realised that Afghanistan has had a rich culture that dates back to 550 BC, which has been way longer than the five years of Taliban rule they know about."

At the start of the presentation, Chris was especially heartened that many in the audiences had read Hosseni's novel.
The performance was introduced as a particularly challenging one, where one single actor would be bringing to life the novel, enacting 10 different characters. The adaptation limited itself to the first half of the novel, about the childhood friendship between Amir and Hasaan, their ironic fates and the one act of betrayal that changes their lives. This is really the pivot in a novel, that otherwise gets progressively melodramatic and contrived. But NYC-based actor Sohrab Wadia hits a rather discordant note as he attempts to bring the novel alive. For starters, Sohrab's exaggerated body language, tonal quality and overall presence just don't belong by a long stretch to the Afghan world. There's so much of the accented, yuppie New Yorker in him as an actor, that he never truly inhabits Hosseni's world. Also, for some inexplicable reason, the writers and Sohrab together treat all the characters with half-mocking jollity that proves criminally reductive to the haunting tragedy of The Kite Runner. The script is relentlessly verbose, but Sohrab has great felicity with the language and has no trouble mouthing all the lines at one go. While he's not really able to enact Amir or Hassan satisfactorily, he's more convincing as Amir's father and in some of the other older parts.

The audience of course seemed satisfied with the performance, but when we asked Snock about the selection of actor, he admitted there were limitations. "We do the best we can in finding actors who can carry the spirit of the book. I do agree that Sohrab's own personality pervades heavily on the stage, but we've not had a problem with that whenever we've preformed in America. Perhaps, since the novel belongs to to the Asian world, the audience here will have a sharper eye about these nuances," he noted.

Sohrab, while talking to the audiences noted how he their intention was to be minimalistic and hence no props or lights were used. "Our founder Wynn Handman would not even let me use my hands too much and wanted me to keep it in my pockets, so as that audiences could be completely focused on the emotions," he said.

Undoubtedly, the stage can be a great vehicle to bring great literature to audience, to even enhance and illuminate the experience of the written word. Contrarily, it can also prove ineffectual or even injurious to the original work. Let's hope the good overrules the bad in this wonderful bridging of mediums.

Literature Live! - the new lit fest in Mumbai

2010-11-16T16:59:00.012+05:30

Following on the footsteps of the Jaipur lit fest, journalist-columnist Anil Dharker organised a four day event, called Literature Live in Mumbai that saw a decent turn out. The event didn't see the big players, but the fest is a great beginning towards wooing young Indian readers and infusing energy into the literary world as a whole

Bachi Karkaria, Anuvab Pal and Anil Dharker

For a long time, literary events have been indentified as elusive clubs, with only writers and a known circle of wine clinking literati participating in it. The reading public for Indian Writing in English and the Queen's language in general has always been a fairly niche one, making the prospect of literary conventions not entirely viable. However, things appear to be changing in the last decade or so, with the rise of the Indian mass market, and consequently the opening up of the desi publishing industry.
The Jaipur literary fest, held in the winter of January every year, started out tentatively, but has come into its own and is now attracting heavy-weight writers from all around the globe. It is within this context that Anil Dharker conceived and conceptualised Literary Live!, a four day lit event that was held in NCPA -Mumbai and Lavasa, Pune. "I always felt the city (Mumbai) needed a literary fest. We have a film festival (MAMI), we have various theatre festivals. What we lacked was a literary fest. We have a Marathi lit fest, but Mumbai is too cosmopolitan a city for it not to have a festival in English writing. The idea was to bring in national and international players and have them interact with our people and expose them to our readership," he says.
Prominent members of the local literati who took part in the event included poet Keki Daruwala, journalist and novelist Manu Joseph, poet and novelist Eunice D’Souza, writer Amish Tripathi and blogger Anupam Mukerji, popularly known as Fake IPL Player. There was also best-selling writer Chetan Bhagat, columnist Bachi Karkaria and screen-writer Anuvab Pal, who were part of the Pune sessions. A New York based theatre group presented a stage adaptation of Khaled Hoseni's The Kite Runner, performed by actor Sohrab Wadia. UK-based Matthew Sharp's unique story-telling on the cello also riveted audiences. The topics for discussion ranged from 'E-literature – here today, gone tomorrow' as well as thoughts on evolving cities and the future ahead for Mumbai. Here in Pune, Bachi Karkarai and Anuvab Pal spoke on aspects of Humour and kept the audiences in splits throughout. Bachi observed how many have asked her that her allusions and puns are difficult to follow and why she doesn't make it simple so everyone can understand. “I have thought about. But the joy it gives me when someone comes up to me and says they understood a particular reference or allusion, is tremendous. I want to keep the qualitative edge in my writing, even if the band of people reading my articles may be small,” she observed.

Anuvab Pal with Chetan Bhagat

The idea of the festival seemed not to keep it limited strictly to books and authors but to broadbase and bead together pieces of theatre and music into this literary necklace. A fair bit of social commentary was also part of the mix. This perhaps works well to initiate youngsters and first-timers into such a programme.
The big names in the literary world couldn't make it, but Dharker is happy that the first steps have been taken. Finding finances to put together a literature fest, a field that is largely viewed as too academic and elitist, was expectedly not very easy. "I would have loved to have V S Naipaul and Amitav Ghosh, but for all that money is required. The Jaipur festival too had a slow start, but in six years, it's grown. I began by forming a team. But when the finances weren't coming, I almost gave up on the project 2-3 times. But there is an obstinate streak in me which I didn't know existed until now, 'he smiles, adding, "Then some of the organisations we had approached for sponsorship agreed, and slowly things started to roll. Now, I don't see an issue with budgets in the coming years. Many cities and institutions have approached us to hold literary fests of these kind. So the foundation has been laid."

But Dharker doesn't want this to be a one off event, rather a movement that carries on year long. It would be interesting to see how literary conscious India gets in the time to come and that will ultimate determine the future of these fests.

Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father

2010-11-11T12:25:00.011+05:30

First Published in 1995
Pages: 442
Genre: Memoir

Past Perfect

It was when Barack Obama became the first Black President of the Harvard New Review, a legal periodical in the 90s - his first decisive step towards a possible grand career in politics, - that a publisher offered him an advance to pen down a book on his life. There was a burst of publicity around the event, mostly to do with "America's hunger for any optimistic sign from the racial front - a morsel of proof that, after all, some progress has been made" - Obama notes in his introduction to the book he wrote when it got re-published during his Presidential run for the General elections.
Obama was merely 33 years old when he wrote the book, which is essentially a heart-felt memoir about a bright, young boy and his difficult initiation into a world that is terribly fractured. Born as a black American, with a white mother, the young Barack is uncomfortable about confronting questions about his mixed identity. This, because, to his sense of justice and fairness, the whole system of segregating people on the basis of skin colour is inexplicable and confusing. He is in denial about it for a long time, and cannot believe his identity as a Black American should prove to be an impediment in any which way. When he sees instances of racism, both implicit and explicit, Obama grows pale and uneasy. All around him, he sees the other blacks resigned to their fate, assured that nothing really will change for them and that they are all doomed to fail.

Though more privileged than the average Blacks, he still struggles with his identity - not knowing where he really belongs. It is at this point that Obama takes up work as a community man in poor black colonies. His decision is as much an evidence of his idealism, as much as a certain faith that change will always come to those willing to work towards it. Along with this dynamism, Obama also starts seing within this task the complex fabric of a racist society and its disconcerting truths. Obama admits about being disturbed and in denial about his black roots, seeing all that it implied. But he ultimately makes that difficult journey to Kenya -his father's home - to reconnect and uncover for himself the other half of his identity. The exercise is humbling and emotional for Obama, but he does get the closure he seeks.

The book is divided into three parts - one, about his 'Origins', then 'Chicago' which is about the work he carried out as a community man and 'Kenya' - where he visits his black relatives after his father's death.
The parts where Obama talks about his parents, his mother's second marriage to an Indonesian student, Loco and their relocation to Indonesia are all extremely engaging and the author displays a refreshing candour in these parts. Obama's descriptions reveal his warm affection for his mother, grandparents and step-father Loco, even if he doesn't shy away to mention their quirks and difficult traits. Family tensions, awkward growing up years...all find a place in this memoir. As he steps into adulthood, the questions of race, identity and his future preoccupy his mind. For most part, he comes across as a loner, quite self-contained, not given to exagerrated emotions even if there is an easy affability about him. Which is why when Barack cries over his father's grave finally, or when he talks emotionally about his mother, you know that the feeling is a deeply felt one. Where other characters in the book are concerned (mostly friends, colleagues and relatives), one detects a mild condescension in his tone sometimes, though Obama always avoids pointed criticism.

The book comes alive when Obama talks about his family. However, the middle portions where he describes his grassroot work -while important and worthy in its own right - are quite flat with many long-winding episodes and forgetable characters. Even with the benefit of hindsight -where we know what Obama came to become - these parts are tortuously slow and I admit I skipped many pages.
The other important theme in the book is racism and rather than specifically blaming the whites, Obama chooses to view the situation as a human tragedy, where a community - after years of subjugation and abuse - had lost belief in its ability to make any real difference. Obama is at his most eloquent and effective as he describes their tortured minds, their desperation to escape from the quagmire of poverty, and their mixed feelings regarding those among them, like Obama, rising in the ranks after all.

The book is a well-intentioned one, but if this weren't written by Barack Obama, it might not have amounted to as much. Primarily because, there's nothing terribly new in the book and even as a coming-of-age story, there are only sporadic episodes that truly capture your attention. Obama of course has skills has a writer. He is painfully arid at times, but he has gift of narration and his sense for drama is revealed in the manner in which he crafts the story about his father, keeping the mystery around him till the end, leading to a powerful climax.
And of course, the book demonstrates most of the qualities one has come to associate with the President - graceful, eloquent with a generosity of perception but also somewhat emotionally detached and circumspect.
-Sandhya Iyer

Somerset Maugham's Theatre and Being Julia

2010-10-29T11:47:00.012+05:30

Somerset Maugham before he turned into a full fledged novelist was an illustrious playwright. And even though he never got too involved in the workings of the theatre world of his time, he remained a close observer. And it is much of this he saw staying in the wings that made its way into the novel he wrote later in 1937.
Theatre or/and its 2004 literary adaptation, Being Julia (directed by director István Szabó), is the story of an exquisitely talented and alluring stage actress Julia Lambert and her trysts with various men.

So consumed is Julia with her aura as an actress, and such is her versatility at playing different parts, that she never stops being a performer even when she is not on stage. As she embarks on a spectacular career, Julia gets enamoured by her good-looking and industrious co-actor, Michael. They are a happily married couple for a while, but soon Michael's vanity and business-minded approach to everything starts to bore Julia. She is a mega successful actress on the London stage, and by 40, she has all that an actress can possibly aspire for - plenty of money, a fleet of admirers, a husband who looks after her career interests, and a teenage son whom she is content to see on and off.

Yet, Julia is a restless soul, always looking for short-term romantic adventures that will uplift her soul and send her heart into raptures. She's also acutely self-centered with a constant need for assurance about her desirability. Vain to an extreme degree, Julia has a compulsive need to feel loved, adored and highly valued by all. She returns all this attention with a charming superficiality, but with no great sentiment towards anyone. In fact, in Julia's mind, the lines between the stage and real have long blurred and she no longer can recogonise who she really is. Like her son Roger tells her once, "You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting, It's second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to Father, you act to me. To me, you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother, You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played...."

It is this struggle with conflicting identities and a fickle, restless but sparkling mind that prompts her to be on the look-out for instant gratification. Between flirting and keeping her wealthy, erudite lover, Charles guessing about her affections for him, she also meanwhile falls headlong in love with an American boy, Tom several years her junior. His smooth, handsome face and body evokes a great passion in her. Tom, on his part, is kicked about being seen with a celebrity and joins her to all her high profile parties. But soon, he gets attracted to a younger, upcoming actress, Avice Crichton and cold shoulders Julia. Infuriated and upset, Julia goes through a slump, only to recoup and assert her glorious celebrityhood.

In Julia, Maugham creates a memorable and life and blood female character, who is as despicable as she is delightful, as artificial as she is alluring and as capricious as she is charming. It's easy to read her as scheming and manipulative, but that would be a surface reading of this extremely complex woman. Her airy superficiality and self-absorption make her difficult to like, and yet, Maugham does not condemn her. He writes her part with stunning constancy and depth, and even though he depicts what is truly pathetic about her state, one guesses Maugham is quite taken in by her spirit and allure to let her slip into being anything dismal. He allows her a grand comeback,from the brink of despair.

When a novel is an exploration into the psyche of a singular character, with no real hook, it can become difficult to adapt on screen. But Being Julia turns out to be a beguiling film, all thanks to a glorious performance from Annette Bening, who keeps you riveted to her from start to finish. She is beyond beautiful, and in spite of the narrative being condensed to suit the film format, Bening captures Julia perfectly, and one dare says, makes her perhaps more scintillating than she was in the novel even. But not everything else in the film is perfect. The Tom-Julia affair lacks the adequate chemistry in the film. Shaun Evans, as the American cad is only half convincing, and many of the scenes between him and Bening seem awkward. Ditto with Jeremy Irons, who plays Julia's practical-minded husband, Michael. The book recogonises him as vain and boring, but Maugham infuses in him a masculine charm that is entirely missing in the film. But apart from that, the film takes all the best scenes and dialogues and does a neat job of it. The novel reads the character of Avice Crichton - the struggling new actress on the block - rather differently from how the film uses her. The character is far from comical in the novel, and is quite an undistinguished character, except for the fact that Tom likes her and thinks of her as a perfectly honorable choice for him, which Julia is not! The problem is the film treats Crichton as a buffoonish wannabe, and hence Tom's affection and so called 'respect' for her does not ring true. Yet, the climax in the film, and the scenes leading upto it, are all entertaining and Bening makes it every bit worthwhile.

Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed

2010-10-13T19:42:00.006+05:30

This book spoke to me like very few have in recent times. Excellent perspective on marriage, its history and reality.

A sequel to her previous best-seller Eat Pray & Love - though one doesn't need to have read that one to enjoy this - Gilbert ponders over the idea of marriage for the second time round with her Brazalian boyfriend Filipe. There is love, she says. But her previous relationship has made her wary and she genuinely wonders whether she needs anything called marriage now. She has no desire for kids, she is financially secured and has a companion. Why marry, she thinks, albeit still confused.

Committed is a really useful guide because the author is sincerely battling with doubts on the institution and trying to make sense of what it means for both partners in the long run. That is really the pivot of the book, where she confronts the institution head -on and sees it clearly and objectively for what it is.

The cultural and historical references she brings in to show what marriage has come to mean over the centuries are all extremely interesting.

She points out how marriage has always been beneficial to a man, and has almost always been disadvantageous to a woman. But then, women in most cultures rarely questioned the institution. They accepted their fate and role. But with industrialization and the breaking up of the joint family system, the 'individual' suddenly came into focus and his/her private desires took precedence. Now, couples didn't necessarily marry because the spouse was 'beneficial' to the family as a whole or a convenient arrangement to all, but because they fell in love. Gilbert rightly points out that when a marriage is based on love and not on a collective arrangement, it has more chances to fail - precisely because love, she says, is a very fragile emotion. What if you fall out of love? Which is why modern couples are divorcing more than ever before, and she says the institution itself is under tremendous pressure and could well be on the verge of extinction sometime in the future.

Yet, Gilbert says she wouldn't trade her life as a modern, educated, self-aware American woman of today with any woman in a previous time and culture who had a conditioned idea of marriage. Nor does she believe that people must not marry for love. But she points out that one must be equipped with sufficient tools to deal with practical and emotional problems before they get into it.

An intelligent woman, she says, will always be skeptical about the institution and worry about what it has for her. And the more choices women get in the future, and the more financially independent they become, marriage could well seem more and more irrelevant.

And yet, couples will continue to mate and love each other. There is a particularly interesting chapter where Gilbert talks about the very natural bonding between men and women. Contrary to what one believes, self-appointed guardians of religion started out by intensely frowning upon all forms of contact between man and woman. It was considered unholy etc. When they saw that there was no way it could be done away with, they imposed the strictest codes on sexual intercourse between married couples. So there were rules prescribed even on something as private as sex and how it's only a means for procreation and no pleasure ought to be gained from it. Of course, once couples shut the door of their intimate world, there was no way any code could be applied. The custodians knew it was a losing battle and did the next best thing - they started pretending they had invented marriage itself and believed it to be one of the healthiest practices to bind a community. Anything else was considered deviant and overall unsuitable for society.

There's plenty to chew on in the book, and the fact that Gilbert is so readable and funny at times, makes this really a valuable guide. In the end, Gilbert is optimistic on marriage, wherein she says that the institution is perhaps the biggest risk an individual can take, but it also holds potential to offer the biggest happiness in life.

Thoughts on Of Human Bondage

2010-09-16T17:00:00.015+05:30

Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1915) - his most intimate and autobiographical novel - was written by the author over the course of a few years and by his own admission, was a cathartic, purging exercise for him. Many tend to believe the novel revolves primarily around a masochistic relationship the protagonist has with a woman. However, Of Human Bondage is much more than that, and it's not until very later in the novel that the above episode actually takes place.

The novel is one of Maugham's longest (almost 700 pages) and captures his life - from an uneasy childhood to his utter despondency at finding the right calling and then falling into an abusive relationship that almost leads to his ruin. While not all the episodes are autobiographical, as Maugham mentions in the preface, the emotions were all his, which makes Of Human Bondage one of the most searingly honest and powerful novels of the last century.

Maugham had a difficult childhood, after having lost his mother when he was a little boy and being sent to his childless uncle and aunt. Here too, in the novel, the protagonist, Philip Carey finds himself desolate while staying with his uncle, a vicar who is fanatically religious and extremely cautious with money. The aunt, who has never known a life beyond dedicatedly serving her callous husband, is well-meaning and affectionate towards Philip. Given his circumstances, Philip is prepared to be a good Christian and follow the path prescribed by the Lord.
However, his first exposure to the outside world - when he becomes a boarding student - is an especially painful one, as he grows embarrassed about his club foot and limp. The children studying with him cruelly tease him and Philip starts to grow insecure and painfully conscious. To him, his club foot is a reminder of his inadequacy and he blushes every time someone makes a reference to it. There's a heart-wrenching scene where Philip - with his absolute belief in God - fervently prays one night that he should be rid off his club foot and be made normal the next day. As it turns out, nothing happens, and therein are sowed the first seeds of Philip's disenchantment with religion.

The next big hurdle for him is to find his calling. His uncle and aunt want him to either enter the Church or take up something conventional. Philip tries accounts for a few months, but he finds it torturous. He has a talent for sketches, and when a few people praise him, he is spurred on and decides to go to Paris and become a painter. His uncle is outraged and strongly protests, but after a few acrimonious exchanges, Philip has his way finally.

All through this, Maugham is compassionate yet ironic in his narration - not only in the description of other characters, but also Philip, who is his alter-ego. As it happens often in the bloom of youth - Philip - with full of hope for the future - tends to look upon his middle-aged uncle and aunt with a smug condescension and believes that theirs was a wasted life. At this point, Philip has grand plans for himself and intends to attain greatness. When he reaches Paris, he is initially thrilled to live among artists, listening to various theories all day. It makes him a more open person, and many of his moral shackles loosen up. But he is still unable to settle down as a painter. His works are considered intelligent, but nothing extraordinary. As a senior painter tells him, 'It is cruel to discover ones mediocrity too late in life'.

Philip's funds start running out and he is nowhere in sight of earning through his art. Here, the life of his acquaintance, Fanny Price holds an uncomfortable mirror to what his own life could degenerate to. Fanny is a zealous artist, but with zero talent. Ultimately, she dies of poverty. This works as a catalyst in hastening Philip's decision to give up art and try something else. He is again lost and tortured.

Quotes Maugham,"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded."

Philip decides to take up medicine, and it is while studying that he encounters a waitress, Mildred. Her contemptuous look haunts him, and he desires to possess her. She agrees to go out with him, and soon Philip finds himself madly in love. She is vulgar, commonplace and not at all good-looking, yet Philip cannot get rid off his obsession. He spends freely on her, even though he has very little money. She does not love him and at various points goes off with other men, who in turn leave her in the lurch. Philip still craves for her, and does everything she might want - including providing for her child (another man's) when she is in dire straits. Ultimately, this relationship brings Philip to the point of utter despair.

He is left penniless and has to take up work as a common worker in a shop. At this point, another revelation comes upon Phillip. Following the death of both his uncle and aunt, he realises that life is ultimately meaningless and we make our own little designs to keep ourselves happy for as long as we live. Every little episode is merely a curve in the design of life. This idea unburdens him and he feels elated again.

This learning curve ultimately comes to its logical conclusion when Philip settles to marry Sally, the daughter of a poor worker, whose family was exceptionally kind to him when he had no one to go to.

Of Human Bondage tackles several themes and is an extremely rich and layered exploration into the human psyche (though it is unduly long and some episodes are extremely stretched out). Its greatness lies in the fact that even if the story is close to Maugham's life, the emotions are all tragically universal and gently touch upon deep-seated complexes we all suffer from. Many believe Philip's club foot could be a reference to the author's stammering. But a great many others think it is actually an allusion to his homosexuality, which he could not reveal, given the time and age when such a thing was looked upon with derision. In fact, his masochistic relationship with Mildred itself - many believe - alludes to a certain homosexual partner. There could be some credence to this, given that Mildred is described almost like a man - with no attractive feminine features. She is bare-chested even. Yet, this is merely in the realm of speculation, and I wouldn't be too bothered about it, except that the incident comes quite abrubtly in the book. What makes me suspect that it could be a slice from Maugham's own life is the surrealness of the affair. Reality is very often much stranger than fiction. The latter can be far more predictable when compared to the complexities of the real world.

It's never easy to understand why Philip would fall for a woman without a single redeemable quality. Also, upto this point, Philip never comes across as someone who is wholly deprived of female attention - in fact, he rejects a few women. His attraction for Mildred is sudden and unexplained. And yet, broadly, it suggests how human complexity can manifest itself in strange ways, and Philip is certainly a complexed man. His relationship with Mildred underlines Philip's inner need to be humiliated and abused. His feeling of inadequacy - apart from his club foot - compounded by his non-success as a painter and general sense of despair - perhaps make him crave for a relationship where he can suffer. In fact, on various occasions, Philip brings this suffering upon himself. He knows Mildred's character and yet he introduces her to a handsome friend of his, and soon enough, they end up in an affair. Philip even pays for them to go on a vacation. His addition to the affair continues, and only acute poverty forces him to get over this destructive relationship. In the middle, he even rejects a perfectly healthy relationship with another woman Norah and goes back to Mildred. As a reader, the Philip-Mildred relationship might seem puzzling, but if you've ever obsessed for someone who didn't return the favour - or blew hot and cold - it won't be tough to identify closely with Philip's servile state.

"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."

One of the main themes of the novel is about the damning nature of love. In many ways, it advances Maugham's ideas on love - namely how one partner loves and the other lets themselves to be loved. "And the important thing was to love rather than be loved" In a twisted way, every character in the novel is consumed with a feeling to love, and are callous to those who love them.

Maugham opting to go for a conventional ending for his protagonist might appear contrived, but it also signifies the emotional maturity of Philip who this time round does not refuse Sally (like he did with Norah), even though he does not love her. He realises by now the temporariness of life and how it wouldn't be so bad to make a design of being married with children. Once the limitations of life itself become clear to Philip, he takes a more charitable view of himself and what he aims from his future.

As lucid as ever, with its controlled irony and sardonic observations on life, Of Human Bondage rightfully deserves its place among the best in literature, though I would hesitate to rate it as Maugham's absolute best. Sure, there is immense emotional power in the writing and great philosophical insight, but that is true of his The Painted Veil as well - which honestly made a deeper connection with me. But nevertheless, this is a creative tour de force.

-Sandhya Iyer

Review: The Crimson Throne

2010-09-07T21:38:00.005+05:30

Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publishers: Penguin
Published in: 2010

Sudhir Kakar's semi-fictional period novel, The Crimson Throne takes a fascinating event in Mughal history, and intimately looks at it from the perspective of two foreign narrators - the italian Niccolao Manucci and Frenchman Francois Bernier - both of whom were real-life figures who were in fact part of this mid-17 century Moghal setting. The event in question is the war of succession between Shah Jahan's two sons - the liberal minded, Sufi-inspired Dara Shukoh and the fanatical Aurangzeb. Dara was the clear favourite of his father and everyone expects him to be the heir apparent. However, various elements conspire against him, and as one knows it was Aurangzeb who ultimately became Emperor.

The entire novel is divided between the observations made by the two foreigners, and as a reader, you share their sense of wonderment, amusement and outrage at different points. This is a time when India was divided into different kingdoms, and the Mughals were absolutely at the pinnacle of their reign. The threat of British invasion was a far-fetched thought and most foreigners viewed India as a distant, exotic land where there was plenty to see and experience. Among the two, Manucci is intrigued by the tales he hears of India and makes the journey from Venice to Goa. He hears that European healers are privileged over the local hakims in Moghal courts and is eager to learn the secrets to some rare potions. By sheer luck and good graces - as he admits himself - Manucci is able to entrench himself in the Dara Shukoh camp. He narrates with passion and poignancy his visits to the harems, where beautiful women (the concubines of the Moghal nobels) are a frustrated bunch with little or no sex (because there are so many in number!). Eunachs are used to guard the harems and very harsh punishments are heaped on women involved in any sexual misconduct. Manucci - being a healer- is one of the rarest of rare men allowed entry into the harem. He describes how he would often feel a soft kiss planted on his palms, as he went to check the pulse of an unwell woman from behind a veil.

Bernier is a scholar, and perhaps more rigid. He is distant and slightly contemptuous in his descriptions of Indians. But he gets close to Shah Jahan's foreign minister Danishmand Khan, the man who proves decisive in the end.
For most part of the book, it is impossible to see the two narrators as separate voices. Their distinct personalities don't emerge until much, much later, but thankfully, the central story does not suffer because ultimately the subject is focussed on the Moghals. From the ostentatious lifestyle led by the Moghal nobels (some rubbed the precious rose water on their horses everyday, the footwear of the nobels were studded with gems and precious stones, the most obscenely lavish parties were thrown and there was no limit to the number of women that the Omrah's kept adding to their harem) to the Hindu-Islam divide, there is much that is observed and astutely noted down by the two narrators. The Hindus were called idolators, and they were considered inferior in status to the Muslims. A Muslim of the lowest rank would not fathom getting his daughters married even to a high-class Hindu. On the other hand, there were several instances of Rajput kings giving away their daughters to Moghal kings - one is instantly reminded of the Jodha- Akbar situation.

It is only when Shah Jahan's health starts deteriorating and murmurs for a new heir begin that the narrative voices start to take on divergent paths. Manucci brings out the various qualities of Dara Shukoh, and the fact that he came closest to his grandfather Akbar in his religious tolerance and aesthetic liberality. On the other hand, Bernier takes a slightly opposing position and points out how Dara was an extremely irascible and tactless person, and was unpopular among those who thought Islamism would come under threat if he took over the reigns. Also, Bernier describes how Dara was an extremely superstitious person, and would not move a finger without his astrologers guiding him. Similarly, you get a twin perspective of Aurangazeb. Manucci sees Aurangazeb as a cruel dictator and religious fanatic, who uprooted every hurdle in his path without the least compunction.

Bernier, on the other hand, prefers to look at Aurangzeb's stead-fastness and ability not to get ruffled easily. Also, his ambition as we see it, is less for self-aggrandisement and more because he’s a staunch upholder of Islam.
The writing style is lucid, and the ornate sentences go well with the mood and setting of the novel. Essentially, Sudhir Kakar's novel proves useful in seeing from close quarters a significant time in Moghal history and how its course radically changed. The Crimson Throne is studded with period details, and for that reason and more, it is an engaging read.

Agatha Christie's Absent In the Spring

2010-08-10T18:19:00.007+05:30

Agatha Christie we all know as the queen of mystery novels. However, the more unknown fact about her is that she wrote six novels on love and relationships under the pseudonym - Mary Westmacott. By that time, her reputation as a crime fiction writer was growing and both, the publishers and perhaps even Agatha didn't want to tamper with her set 'persona'. And hence, she took on a different name under which she published these books.

Absent In The Spring tells the story of a smug surburban housewife, Joan Scudamore, who is returning to London after visiting her married daughter in Baghdad. The setting appears Edwardian. A missed train, followed by torrential rains, delays her journey by a few days, forcing her to spend the time at a rest house in the middle of a desert. With no company at hand and having exhausted her stock of books, all she can do is let her mind wander. Decorous and straight-laced, Joan has come to pride herself on being a great wife and mother. She is convinced that she made a success of her life. Her smug attitude also makes her narrow-minded and discompassionate about many things. She tends to look down upon anyone who does not fit into her idea of how one ought to be leading their life. She pities them, and uses their 'failed' and 'sad' existence to feed her own self-esteem.

'I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as this woman.' .....
She had prayed that night at the railway rest house wrapped in that spurious mantle of superiority.

However, as she spends more time by herself, the rose-tinted glasses slowly start to wear thin and she wonders whether she has stiffled the dreams of her near and dear ones, in her persuit to keep up the right appearances. Many doubts start to cloud her mind. Did she pressurise her husband to join their family law firm, when his heart was really into farming? Were her daughters happy with her, or did they hate her interfearing ways? Why is it that everyone warmed up to her husband, but not so much her? Did her husband, who she always thought to be devoted to her, actually fall in love with one of their family friends?

Joan, having led an cushy life, and a fairly active social life, cannot handle the sudden feeling of being left alone. She gets restless and all kinds of thoughts enter her head. By the end of her stay at the rest house, she is convinced that she has been extremely unfair to her husband and fervently hopes to make amends. The anti-climax reveals how nature cannot be build or broken in a day.

It's a slim book and a very quick read. The story is engaging, but not particularly layered or original. Joan - decorous and dull - comes close to the character of the strait-jacketed May in Edith Wharton's Age Of Innocence. Similarly, the relationship shared between Joan's husband, Rodney and their common friend Leslie Sherston vaguely reminded me of the Melenie-Rhett relationship in Gone With The Wind.
Also, the author wastes no time in conveying to the reader what exactly she thinks of her protagonist. It's all laid out bare too soon so there isn't much left to discover about Joan. Also, one feels a certain lack of subtlty in the narrative, with the overuse of irony.

But it's still a story that connects and rings true.

The Counsel Of Strangers

2010-07-19T11:28:00.014+05:30

Author: Gouri Dange
Pages:169
Price: 250
Publishers: OMO

Pune, which cannot yet boast of any English-language writer of repute, might just be on the threshold of getting one. Gouri Dange, who many in the city know as a witty columnist and counsellor, makes an assured second splash into the pool of Indian fiction with the launch of her new book, The Counsel Of Strangers. I will admit I was overall underwhelmed with her debut effort, 3 Zakia Mansion - a dark portrait of a Muslim woman and a long-drawn struggle with her nasty in-laws. I found it morose and melodramatic, even though I was blown by the emotional power in the third act of the book. Nevertheless, it clearly established the author's proficiency with her craft and language. And with The Counsel Of Strangers, she opts for a less tricky subject than 3 Zakia Mansion. The Counsel Of Strangers is really a book of short stories (more on that later). But the result is far more promising and overall, this makes for a thoroughly riveting read.

The book is about six distressed strangers, who dawdle away from a wedding that is taking place at a resort, to spend some private moments with themselves.
Each one is going through a transitional phase and looking for solutions. The darkness and the comfort of strangers allows them to talk about their lives. The first story is about a 60 plus retired man, who is spending time with his daughter and son-in-law in California. He's not unhappy, but there is a sense of loneliness creeping in. "You'll know when you get there... that uncomfortable feeling of being treated dutifully, but with little interest," he says. He meets a smart, 50 year old woman with whom he establishes a friendly, warm relationship. She is separated from her husband, he is widowed. When they speak to their respective children about this 'special person' , they are appalled and disgusted. This story, along with almost all the other ones, point towards the 'pigeon-holing' of people into specific roles and expectations.

The second story is about a young boy, Karthik, whose life gets greatly altered after his parents go through a bad experience on account of his elder brother, Vishwas. Karthik is tired of living a censored life, with his paranoid family watching out minutely for any tell-tale signs of 'weirdness' in his behaviour. A bit long-drawn story, but engaging nevertheless.

My absolutely favourite story is Anandi-Mohini. Personal and revelatory, it intimately tracks the journey of a strong-minded woman, as she comes to terms with the breakdown of her 14 year old marriage. That follows another unwittingly funny episode involving a prospective husband. There is plenty of pathos in the story, and it's clear that much of it is very close to the author's heart. But the story also sparkles with charm and ironic wit, because after the initial shock and sadness, the character is able to see her situation with bemused detachment and the ludicrousness of it all.

There's an especially telling part where she describes the aftermath of her divorce. Her friends – well-meaning and otherwise - come up with various reasons on why the marriage failed. For a while, her self-esteem suffers, until she sees the absurdity. “And these are just some of the many theories of friends and passing strangers as they drove gaping, slowly, past the accident site of our marriage. It takes a while for you to gain the wisdom to discount all of this as their projections of their reality, and not your truth at all.”

The other really wonderful story is of a Christian nurse, who wants to give up her profession after serving patients and looking after sick bodies for years. Now a plump, middle-aged woman, she wants to go back to her home-town in Kerala and live with her family. But here too, she is expected to take on the role of the nurturer.

The last story is about a professor mother who finds it embarrassing that her only son should get into Bollywood script-writing after studying at Haward. Her intellectual snobbery, as others call it, prevents her from accepting her son's choice of career.

The stories are all very readable, and even when some of the situations give a sense of deja vu, the author's quirky narration, keeps you engaged. I personally enjoyed the story of the nurse and Anandi-Mohini the most, but Gouri brings her sensitivity and sharp understanding of human nature to every situation and character. The book - through its characters - suggests how life is in a constant state of flux and in spite of its corrosive nature, holds the seeds of regeneration and hope.

There's something to be said about the style and tone of the narrative. The word 'contemporary' is generally bandied around too much. But The Counsel of Strangers is genuinely 'today's book' and talks to 'today's people' - and by that I don't mean the new generation only. The book covers stories of people from various age groups (thank god!), and the scenarios and concerns are all relevant and relatable. The words she uses (free use of all Indian languages, short forms, blog terminologies... ), the clever phrases, the references to films and books - all bring a chuckle and a nod of familiarity. In that sense, the book gains tremendously from having such a receptive writer.

Criticisms? I couldn't buy for a minute people confiding such personal stories before strangers. The author inserts a few sentences about a beer being passed or food being ordered in between each story, so as to keep reminding the reader that there is a common setting, but it appears too forced. Also, earlier there was Chitra Divakaruni's One Amazing Thing, where the characters get stuck in a building after a terrible earthquake and reveal stories about their lives to temporarily forget about their impending fates. I found that setting eked together with as much awkwardness. This template obviously comes from Canterbury Tales, but the vital difference is that in Chaucer's 14th century book of verses, the characters are traveling companions who are asked to tell a story - any story. It could be about their lives, but there's no way to know. Now, that is more plausible situation I would think.
In The Counsel Of Strangers, there characters could well be contemplating about their lives at the airport lounge and it wouldn't have mattered.

The other niggling problem I found is that the authorial voice is quite strong here, in the sense that the author's penchant for irreverence and sharp wit shadows every character and situation, expect maybe that of the Nurse. And this feeling is heightened because every character narrates in first person. While this ensures that the whole book is kept interesting, it hurts the characterisation. Gouri Dange beautifully inhabits the minds of a few characters, but the result is slightly awkward in the case of the old man, where it appears like the author is speaking on his behalf.

Yet, The Counsel Of Strangers works wonderfully enough for what it is. It sparkles with insight and intelligence and makes for a very entertaining read. The book abounds in such original and piquant metaphors, and the writing in general is so adept, it should comfortably establish Gouri Dange among the A-list Indian authors in the country.

-Sandhya Iyer

PS: The full form for 'OMO books' under which Gouri has published The Counsel Of Strangers, is 'On My Own' The author chose to self-publish after being distressed with the 'step-motherly' treatment accorded to lesser-known authors by major punblishing houses. Hence the wry and clever name - OMO!

Balancing Act by Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy

2010-07-06T15:13:00.029+05:30

Author: Meera Goldbole Krishnamurthy
Pages: 236
Publishers: Zubaan, Penguin
Price: 250

Motherhood is easily one of the most beautiful and transformational experiences for a woman. Everything else takes a backseat as she lets herself be consumed by its infinite pains and pleasures. Her career, which perhaps defined her identity and image until then, suddenly seems like a lame reason to step out and leave one's gurgling, stumbling bundle of joy. Every idea of feminism and self-identity is submerged under the deep sea of love that flows from her heart, as the life-giving, nurturer in her takes over completely.

Balancing Act captures this deep bond that a young mother forms with her two tiny tots. She's a harried but happy mother, who glows around the sacred and smug circle of her domestic life. Changing diapers, tucking in the kids in their beds with comforters, making star-shaped pastas and filling up juices in their fancy water-bottles , painting glittering nail polish on their tiny feet, playing with toy cars - it's a never-ending cycle of duties, which she performs with sacrosanct diligence and delight.

She feels privileged to be a mother. To an outsider, Tara Mistri touching 40 has a comfortable life, where she's a stay-at-home mom, with a supportive husband, Roshan who earns well, and travels often. Yet, she's disturbed when she sees herself being referred to as a 'housewife' at socials dos. People are baffled to learn that she does not work inspite of her high educational qualifications and professional achievements. She rues the fact that motherhood is no more a justifiable reason to stay at home, not just in America -where she lives - but even among her friends and relatives in India. Having been out of touch with the professional world for long, she feels constantly on the edge. Unsure and confused, Tara feels she may have been more suited to her grandma's times where it was natural for women to do nothing besides raising up children and minding the home. In today's changed times, when motherhood is just one of the different wonder caps that a woman dons, suddenly she seems like a mis-fit and traditionalist.

Tara had studied architecture and is deeply influence by the thoughts of Louis Kahn, who built the Salk Institute for Biological Research in California. She stays at a stone's throw from the place, and sub-consciously wants to replicate the same perfection of the structure in her own life. Tara's pet peeve is a spirit Yakshi – her alter ego – who keeps prodding her to get back to work. Tara sends her resume to a few firms and even attends a couple of interviews. This is more to assure herself that she still has what it takes to make the cut, rather than any serious ambitions to prove her worth. To add to her trouble, her attractive bachlorette friend Sophie comes to stay with them. Tara's hubby is drawn to her and finds in her happy demeanor a welcome contrast to his own wife.

All these mental conflicts that the protagonist suffers touch a realistic chord. However, the parts involving Tara and her husband seem superficially tackled. It feels the relationship has been treated with the same 'lemon scented, 98 per cent more bacteria killing-disinfectant' that Tara uses to clean her kitchen counters.
The episode related to her hubby getting drawn to Sophie does say something about the plight of neglected husbands, as mothers get preoccupied with kids. But this too isn't treated with any particular depth and the scene where Tara confronts her friend at the dining table, 'What are you doing with my husband@" seems overly dramatic and awkward given the otherwise subtle and fairly nuanced tone of the book.

Tara - as protagonist is not a very likable personality – as is the case with most women who turn motherhood into an obsession. In the end, there are no definite solutions because the issues are vague and complex. The only thing that the novel perhaps suggests is that a perfect balance can never really be achieved and it need not become a cause for so much heartburn. Each phase can be enjoyed for what it is.

Meera's writing is lyrical, artistic and quirky. The world she creates is so vivid, you can almost smell the baby powders, lotions and milk. The use of architectural terms in the novel - with many quotes and theories – adds much novelty to the narrative as well.

All round a good debut that succeeds without trying too hard.

-Sandhya Iyer

Interview:

1) Were you always interested in writing, or did you take it up because you wanted to express your thoughts on something that was close to your heart?

Architecture, painting, sculpture, making quilts, writing -- all these creative arts which I have explored have a common language with many overlaps. I have always loved books and the places they can take you. Over the years, I found myself interested more in the theory and critique of architecture than the practice of it. That being said, I don’t think you can become a writer (or anything, for that matter) overnight, to paraphrase one of Louis Kahn's architectural teachings. Before embarking on this journey, I participated in several writing programs and workshops at UC San Diego, Stanford, and the University of Iowa. Each medium has it's own specific art and craft, but I hope that some of my artistic sensibilities have crept into my writing, which was the vehicle for this particular story.

2) I'm sure most people have asked you this. How autobiographical is the book, and what parts of it do you relate to most?

Tara and I have many similarities, it's true. We’re both architects, have two children, and are married to husbands with demanding careers – but so are many women out there. The details may differ, but in spirit, our stories would be the same. I think one always starts with what one knows, but the beauty of fiction is that it can transcend the personal to become universal. Fiction is most convincing when it could be real, even though it is not. There is always a danger though, in assuming that a first work is more autobiographical than it really is! I relate to all my characters and all their dilemmas, because to write fiction, you need to inhabit it in such a way that it becomes real to you and consequently, to the reader as well.

3) Given that you are a mother, how difficult was it to take time off and put together the book. How long did it take you?

I started writing this book as a series of vignettes nearly ten years ago when my own children were very young and I had short, staccato time spans in which to write. Over the years, there were innumerable drafts and many formats that I discarded, adapted, and re-worked. The book took this form only when the idea of using the Salk Institute and the life and work of Louis Kahn as the structure for the novel came to me after a critique at the La Jolla Writer's Conference in 2004. And when the Yakshi showed up from the netherworld to question Tara’s every move, I knew we were in for a good ride!
When the children were older, for two years in San Diego, I set myself a strict writing schedule, Monday to Friday 9 am to 2:45 pm when I would stop to go pick them up from school. That was when I completed the first draft of the manuscript. And then there were always the late nights, when I work best...fortunately, I'm not much of a sleeper! The much harder part was finding the psychic space in which Tara and her world would exist. That's the toughest part about writing fiction - to be able to remove yourself from this world to bring to life another - without constant interruptions.

4) Her act of making bricks and writing words on it and leaving at differen doorsteps and random places is perhaps her own way of igniting a silent revolution for in the interest of women like her. Was this a literal act by Tara where she drops off the bricks or was it in her mind? And what kind of bricks are these? i'm sorry if I missed out some reference...

Louis Kahn asked the seminal question, “What do you want be, brick?” He was suggesting that in order to respect the true nature of a material, you must use it so that it retains its individuality but expresses its essence. For example, you would not use bricks in the same way as you would use concrete. Similarly, Tara is trying to define her true nature, separate from what society or feminism or her friends tell her, and I thought it would be interesting to take that literally, but also to an extreme level by giving her a darker side and having her engage in a social experiment where she challenges the politically acceptable and speaks for the unspoken through her known medium, the vocabulary of architecture.
And bricks are such potent symbols anyway: they build, they can destroy, and bricks, if they are Legos, almost define childhood, don’t they? So the metaphor of the brick was the perfect vehicle for building, designing, and addressing the question of Tara "rebuilding" herself. Just as architecture needs to be in the public realm, motherhood too is a part of the social fabric. So Tara had to make her statements, to practice her personal architecture, so to speak, in the public realm.

5) Most women find it tough to pursue careers for a few years after child--birth. But sooner than later, they want to get back to work. Things are seldom easy for them when they want to make a comeback. They seem to come with a 'baggage' which the professional world does not view kindly. Not many women have the luxury of family support or servants. How do you think this uneasy equation can be better dealt with, if at all?

You are absolutely right about this perception of the "baggage" of motherhood in the professional world. I believe that motherhood is and always has been a joyful act, a creative and large journey, which is not to say that it is without frustrations, of course, but we seem afraid these days to speak of the joys. May be because motherhood – and by extension, the “housewife” – has acquired such negative connotations, been devalued and degraded as the lesser choice. We feminist-mothers, what I call the “femimoms,” need to reclaim the unabashed and unapologetic nature of motherhood. I think if we embrace motherhood as another equally vital part of being a woman, it may help to balance the equation with a career a little more easily. That being said, I am not really sure a true balance is possible, because in every choice, something is gained, but always, something is lost. You really cannot have it all, that's how life is. So the title Balancing Act then, can be parsed many ways. The balance could just be an act.

6) You have pointed at how women tend to neglect husbands once the children come into the picture... but the other truth is also that husbands do not take on too many responsibilites towards raising children - which is one of the reasons women feel burdened tremendously. So while women perform all their traditional duties of child rairing etc, they are also expected to be 'wonder women' where they must ideally juggle a job efficiently etc.

Tara feels guilty to step out even for a little while, she feels grateful to be accepted back in the 'sacred circle' . While you correctly point out the feeling of guilt a mother faces, as an author - I got the feeling- that you were stacking up the odds against your protagonist and not giving her much respite. This, along with her husband getting attracted to her friend.....doesn't this reinforce stereotypes, and the inhuman levels of perfection expected from mothers?

Many things that happen in Tara's life are of that particular moment in time, born of that phase of her life. There is that first year just after a child is born where husbands do tend to get a bit neglected, because caring for an infant is so "here and now". But things change again after the child is weaned and again when they go to school and so on. All human relationships are constantly evolving, dynamic. You are right that in the story, though Roshan is well intentioned, he does not really take on the burdens of parenting and in that sense that is very much the core of the modern dilemma -- there's no "villain, as such. While men today are so much more sensitive and attuned to the family than their fathers or grandfathers were, it is still the women who bear the primary responsibility of caring for the home and family (be it children or the elderly). It seems to me that this is reality and it's not about stereotypes, it's just representing what's reality for most families out there, whether in the US or India or almost anywhere. Perhaps this expectation that mothers be superhuman has always been there, but it certainly seems more angst inducing in a generation where women have the choice to choose which way to direct their lives. I sometimes wonder what Tara is going to do a few years from where we leave her in the book!

7) What's coming up next for you? Was this book easiler because it appears to be semi-autobiographical? Do you see yourself writing on other themes as well, since you are obviously a gifted writer?

Thank you for the kind words. As a writer, it is gratifying to know that you have connected with a reader. This book took me either nine years or four years to write, depending on which way you count it. And either way, that's a long time! In fact, this was a very difficult one to write I think, partly because it was the first and also because it took a long time to do adequate research on the life and words of Louis Kahn and make the fact and fiction all fit together in the structure of the story. But the learning curve on writing and publishing a novel is a steep one and I expect (hope!) that the next one will not take as long. There are so many more stories to be told. I am working on my next novel now, which is quite different in terms of story and theme, but will still be rooted in architecture, which I find is a deep and rich territory for understanding much else in life.

My Name Is Gauhar Jaan: the life and times of a musician

2010-06-16T20:50:00.011+05:30

Author: Vikram Sampath
Pages: 232
Price: 595
Publishers: Rupa

To begin with, you're not sure what to expect from a book about a songstress of a bygone era one has never even heard of. Also, the backdrop about North Indian classical music and the birth of the gramophone make it appear that it could perhaps be of more interest to music aficionados. To a layman, it could seem quite technical and dull. How wrong I was, because Vikram Sampath's new book is not just a fabulously engaging story about a singer who became the first gramophone superstar of the country, it also gives an exhaustive and thoroughly fascinating account of the times in which she lived.

Gauhar's antecedents were not the most usual. She was born (1873) to an Armenian father and an Indian mother. A misunderstanding leads to their divorce, after which her mother marries a Muslim man and assumes the name of Badi Malka Jaan and becomes a singer and poetess of repute herself. Gauhar's grandmother had married a British man. Since the book travels through these different time periods, one gets an account of early British life in India and their equation with the natives. I was fascinated to know about the 'biwi khana' . This was a time when not many English women made the long and torturous journey to India. This obviously was a problem for the British settlers because it affected their domestic lives severly. So they married native Indian women or took them in as mistresses and their union existed as long as the officers stayed back in India. The woman lived in the lady-house (biwi-khana) that was in the same compound, separate from the main bungalow. This worked out well for both the native women and the officers. However, once the steam ships became more frequent, European women started coming to India in larger numbers in search of eligible husbands. These ships were called 'Fishing fleet'. Those girls who couldn't find a match would go back to England and ships carrying them were termed as 'Returning empties'

The book is full of such interesting period details. All the while, the historical and cultural context of the time is closely allied to Gauhar's story. Since Gauhar's mother - Malka- is a talented singer, her husband encourages her to sing publically. In those days, women could take up singing at mehfils etc only by turning courtesans, which incidentally was an accepted practice. It was still not the most respectable of vocations, but it was not really frowned upon either. Women in the mainstream were not allowed to sing and dance. By contrast, courtesans (not to be confused with common prostitutes) were a highly literate lot, artistically trained and culturally groomed. Gauhar's gorgeously plaint voice instantly found admirers, when she sang as a young girl along with her mother. She was an undisputed favourite with various Nawabs and maharajas who besieged her to sing at their courts and showered her with gifts and money.

Using the factual and anecdotal information at hand, Sampath weaves together a captivating story about Gauhar's luminous ascent as the queen of thumri and khayal and her unexpected tragic end. The narrative is dotted with interesting episodes that give a vivid sense of Gauhar's personality. She was outrageously extravagant in her spending habits (she's known to have thrown parties worth 20000 in those days to arrange a marriage between her cats! She would go for joyrides on the roads of Calcutta in a six-horse carriage...). She was also rather impulsive and prone to temper tantrums, leading to a tumultous personal life. She never married, but had short-term relationships with a few men, which mostly ended in pain and frustration.

Gauhar's life would perhaps have not been very different from say, Umrao Jaan's (another famous tawaif), had it not been for her definitive contribution to the success of the gramophone in India. Hers was among the first Indian voices to be recorded and heard on the gramophone when the instrument came to the country via first recording expert to India, William Gaisberg in 1901-02. Gauhar took to singing on this ‘horn-like’ machine like she was born for it. Gaisberg writes in glowing terms about her immaculate dress sense, beauty and poise in his book.

The popularity of the gramophone was really a god-send for Gauhar in many ways. Though courtesans were a sought-after group of alluring and cultured women, the profession was slowing starting to gain disrepute after the anti-nautch campaign. Later of course, the whole musical legacy of courtesans was attempted to be systematically white-washed and cleaned by self-appointed custodians of classical music. While the tawaifs suffered in the North, the devdasis met with the same fate in the South.

In the book, Gauhar comes across as a very feisty and original character, who never shied away from trying anything new. The male singers were jealous of their female counterparts (courtesans) who were more in demand for gramophone recordings. They spread vile rumours that the gramophone was ‘evil’ and ruins one's voice. But Gauhar dismissed these ideas and in fact moulded her singing (she compressed khayal into 3 minutes, which was the original time limit of the disc) as per requirements.
This was an important development, because the gramophone in many ways 'democratised' music. Suddenly, music that was hitherto only accessible to the rich zamindars and royal courts became available to the common man.

The book closely follows the life of Gauhar, but it also manages to give the reader a comprehensive idea about the developments that took place in field of Hindustani classical music. There are some pages dedicated to the evolution of thumri, khayal etc, which I can confidently state will not put off any reader, even if it might appear technical. They in fact tickle ones interest to know more about the various genres of classical music.
Gauhar's life takes a turn for the worse once she gets entangled in a few long-drawn legal battles. One might perhaps find her downfall from the heights of glory to be a bit too sudden. But it certainly seems plausible, given Gauhar's high-strung nature and unplanned life-style. She was reduced to penury in the last days of her life, and died a sad, lonely woman.

Gauhar was the brightest star of her times, and the fact that she traveled a great deal – from Benaras to Lucknow and from Calcutta to Mumbai to Mysore – enabled her to learn from various gharanas, making her one of the impressive and illustrious singers of pre-Independence India. Sadly, she remains a pale shadow in the alleys of Hindustani classical music. Which is why author Vikram Sampath’s endevour is a very welcome and a noble one. The fact that Gauhar’s life and her personality are interesting by themselves enable Sampath to etch out a rich and colourful narrative out of it.

Sampath keeps the language simple and lucid, but elegant enough. It’s some triumph for the writer that in spite of the pages packing in so many details, you never feel lost in the course of reading. The author - through his meticulous research and delightful anecdotes – manages to effortlessly transport you to those glorious times.
Seeing how successfully the author brings Gauhar Jaan’s life to the fore, makes you wonder about the enormous potential for non-fiction writing and how there are so many real-life stories waiting to be told.

PS: Most chapters begin with an Urdu couplet at the top. Some of them have been taken from Gauhar Jaan's mother -Malka's book of poems. Many of these couplets are splendid, but the English translation is not upto the mark at all

PPS: The book also contains a CD with some of Gauhar's earliest recordings where she flirtatiously announces 'My name is Gauhar Jaan' at the end of each of her songs.

-Sandhya Iyer

Interview: Vikram Sampath

Vikram Sampath's new book, My Name Is Gauhar Jaan, is a rivetting read about a courtesan, who was also India's first gramophone superstar. Sandhya Iyer caught up with the author at a recent reading session of the book in Pune

It was while researching for his first book, Royal Splendours of Mysore, in the musty but meticulously maintained library of the Mysore Palace, that the name Gauhar Jaan first came to the attention of author Vikram Sampath. The young writer was intrigued looking at the numerous correspondences Gauhar had made in the last years of her life while staying as a guest of the Wodeyar rulers in Mysore. "The uncanniness to Umrao Jaan struck me. Gauhar was an ageing diva in Mysore, and earlier was the first gramophone celebrity of India. She was extremely wealthy in her hey days but her last letters showed her complaining about her meagre salary of 500 a month, where she was asking the palace for tax exemptions. So I was curious to know what prompted her to leave everything in Calcutta and come to Mysore," narrates Sampath.

Sampath says there were some difficulties in the course of the research. The word of artists in those days was rarely documented, as art was always considered superior to the performer. "Most of the information I got was anecdotal and the word-of-mouth variety. The problem with such oral tradition is that a lot of mumbo-jumbo gets into it, and one is left with very little real information. So I would be told superfluous stuff like how Gauhar was as fair as milk and when she chewed paan, one could see the colour in her throat etc," he says imitating in Hindi.

Besides meeting several people who directly and indirectly could provide him details of Gauhar's life, he mostly relied on the official correspondences (legal and other personal letters) to piece together her life. He had a tough time finding her recorded discs, but ultimately found them in a chor bazaar for which he paid a princely amount, he tells us. Sampath himself is trained in carnatic classical music, and didn't have much knowledge about Hindustani classical, for which he needed to educate himself.
While the research lasted for three years, it took him just 15 days to write the 232 page book. "Once I had the material in place, I started writing in one great flow. It was like an energy that I had stored which I had to get out of me," he says.

In the end, the book is all facts, says Sampath. This naturally points towards the enormous potential of non-fiction. "Oh yes, there are stories in every pocket of the country that are waiting to be told," he says.

Though both of his books have been very well-received, Sampath still continues his full-time job as a finance guy in Bangalore, where he is based. "Ideally, I would just like to write," he says. Given what a fine book he has come up with, we sincerely hope so too.

Kaifi & I - Review

2010-06-08T18:11:00.014+05:30

Author: Shaukat Azmi (translated by Nasreen Rehman)
Pages: 158
Publishers: Zubaan
Price: Rs 295

Kaifi & I is a memoir by Shaukat Azmi that brings alive the momentous times and life of illustrious poet and lyricist, Kaifi Azmi, the man with whom she spent over half a century.

While her own personal journey makes for a compelling read, the book's greater achievement is that it nimbly blends together the personal with the political. So even though it is a love story at the core, it is also a wonderful documentation of many other things; like the communist movement which Kaifi was an active part of; the glorious legacy of the still thriving Prithvi theatre; the Progressive Writers Association, which believed that artistes could bring about change in society with the power of their art.

Shaukat's description of her early childhood life is delightful. These parts offer a rich and colourful portrait of Hyderabadi affluence in pre-Independence times, where the elites and upper middle class families revelled in their lavish lifestyles. The girls - always careful to be decorous and immaculately turned out - pampered themselves with beauty treatments all day. Again, the cuisine was elaborate, with the choicest of lip-smacking delicacies laid out. Shaukat pens down these portions with great nostalgic gusto. Nasreen Rehman, who translated the book into English, has retained many of the original Urdu words in the text, so that one gets a perfect sense of the elegance and exquisiteness that permeated this world.

"Surrounded by the fragrance of kevra, khas and agar, and radiant in their colourful khara dupattas, Hyderabadi girls were like creatures from a fairytale world - and I delighted in being one of them."

While one part of Hyderabad were wealthy and comfortable, the majority was poor and oppressed. Shaukat notes that this could be the first seeds sown towards the Telangana movement.

Vivacious and graceful, it is love at first sight for young Shukat when she meets Kaifi Azmi, an emerging poet and member of the communist movement, at a mushaira (poetry session). The fact that Kaifi is bold enough to recite a poem about monarchy and injustice in the Nizam land impresses Shaukat no end. She's also utterly charmed by his handsome looks. Kaifi too reciprocates to Shaukat's alluring good-looks, and soon they are headlong in love. The family objects, and is not keep to allow her to marry a struggling artist. But seeing her despondent state, Shaukat's father takes her to Kaifi's home in Bombay to judge for herself whether she wants a life of hardship without regular income. Shaukat takes the plunge and what follows is a bitter-sweet journey of little joys, hopes and disappointments.

The couple is always short of money, as per Shaukat, and it is not until Kaifi's last few years before he died in 2002 that they lived in relative style in his native village in UP. Earlier, to suppliment the family income, Shaukat joined the Prithvi theatre, run by the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor, referred as 'Papaji', who she describes as a great man, wonderfully accommodating and generous.
She also recounts with vididness and warmth the years she spend at the Commune (where Kaifi and all the comrades stayed) in Bombay, a humble but picturesque residence.

It's rather amusing how Shaukat introduces her elder celebrity daughter in the book. "At a quarter to three, on the morning of 18 September, Madam Shabana arrived" She describes Shabana as a bright girl, very hyper-sensitive. It seems Shabana was convinced her mother loved her younger brother Baba more and tried to poison herself as a kid!
The final chapters where Shaukat and Kaifi go back to the latter's native village, Mijwan is another high-point in the book.

There's a certain provincial naivete to all of Shaukat's descriptions. All through the book Kaifi comes across as a soft-spoken and compassionate person, and Shaukat treats her artist-husband with tender affection referring to him as 'the poor darling' etc Yet, as a reader, you don't get a definite sense of the relationship they shared nor does Shaukat go into too many details of their marital life. Apart from their financial troubles, she stresses that they had a very satisfying conjugal union.
One sore point is that all of Kaifi's poems recounted in the book have been translated in English. It would have been nice to see some of the original Urdu verses, along with the meanings in English.

Yet, for its various anecdotes and rich period details, Kaifi & I is a highly readable book. Moreover, it is evocative of a time of artistic excellence, and conscientious commitment to society.

- Sandhya Iyer

William Dalrymple's Nine Lives

2010-05-25T11:15:00.014+05:30

Author: William Dalrymple
Pages: 260
Genre: Travelogue

Nine Lives: in search of the sacred in modern India

One knows William Dalrymple as a highly accomplished writer of travelogues and historical non-fiction. Over the past two decades, the author in his passionate quest to understand and explore Indian society, culture and history has given us some very fine works like The White Mughals, The City Of Djinns and The Last Mughal. Even his other books, In Xanadu and From the Holy Mountain that plunge into the discovery of other continents and people, have been equally acclaimed. What comes through is Dalrymple's immense love for travel and culture, and all this he puts together with utmost care, evident in his impeccable writing style, elegant covers and pretty illustrations which he does in collaboration with his talented wife Olivia.

With Nine Lives that was published last year (2009), Dalrymple travels through the length and breadth of the country to find the last remnants of mystic India. Given that westerners have always imagined ours to be a land of sadhus and snake charmers, it would be easy to conclude that Nine Lives is perhaps primarily an attempt at selling exotica.
Then again, religion today is seen as such a dangerous entity and divisive force that Dalrymple's preoccupation with the 'religious' in modern India can itself seem as something of an indulgence.

I took up the book with all these doubts whirling around my heard. But having read it, one has to say that Nine Lives proves to be a thoroughly immersive journey. And this isn't a book about India just for the curious western reader but for many of us living in the cities as well, with little knowledge of the world outside of it. In fact, each story here could make for an excellent documentary film.

The book looks into the lives of nine people, living at the farthest corners of religious ecstasy. It explores various cults and sects, their rituals and practices. Importantly, it tries to understand the essence of each of these faiths and how they continue to persist amidst the country's fast changing landscape. You are acquainted with the rigourous lives led by Jain monks, with their belief in complete renunciation through the first story, The Nun's Tale. The Red Fairy is both an enchanting and telling exploration into the world of Sufis
(of Sindh) and the wonderfully syncretic nature of their faith, surviving under the threat of Talibanised Islam. The Singer of Epics brings forth the world of Pabuji worshipers and the bhopas who have been singing the epic of Pabuji (replete with tales of heroism, honour and struggle) for centuries now. The chapter also extends its concerns to the disappearing form of oral tradition throughout the world.
The Dancer of Kannur tracks the unusual lives of 'Theyyam' performers in Kannur (Kerala), where they become God-incarnate -- possessed by the deity -- while performing at temples. But it is only for the duration of the theyyam season when they are respected and worshipped. Once it's done, these men go back to their low paying manual jobs for the rest of the year. Dalrymple punctuates this chapter with rich episodes from history, folk and mythology. And as is the case with all the stories in the book where the social context plays an important role in the formation of a faith, the 'theyyam' form was a reaction against Kerala's oppressive, and rigid cast system. Many of the theyyam stories mock the Brahmins and Nayyars and criticise them for the way they treat their fellow human beings. According the theyyam performers, their practice has brought about a great change in the way lower castes are perceived and now the atrocities, they say, have greatly reduced.

Among the other stories that equally captivate you include the 'Bauls from Bengal' - the mad men who dismiss societal conventions; the 'devdasis' - once a royal tradition, now fallen from grace; the idol makers of Chola tradition - who try not to get sexually aroused by the alluring goddesses which they create.

Dalrymple is a compassionate narrator who puts the stories of the respective individuals at the forefront, while he himself remains at the background as a keen observer. This not only inverts the travelogue form (where the focus is always on the narrator), it also adds an element of fictional interest in each of the stories. The author seldom asserts himself strongly or questions anyone's faith. But the irony is sharp and
self-evident in each of the episodes.

Most of the faiths followed by these men and women are a reaction to the unrelenting and rigid nature of our mainstream society, which pushes to the fringes those who don't fall in line with its conventions. Which is why most of these faiths speak the language of acceptance, humanity and love.

The book also points at the winds of modernity that are threatening to wipe out many of these faiths. Most of these practices are hereditary and the new generation is not interested in following their parent's vocation.
Nine Lives is about mystical India - about transcendental religion and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. If the book moves you deeply, it is because these traditions are in all likelihood the last living symbols of a bygone era that offered a more humane and profound understanding of religion – certainly a far more liberating one from the fundamental overtones it has assumed in the present day. Also, the idea of renunciation and the search of the eternal truth is perhaps felt strongest in today's times of mindless material pursuits in the backdrop of terror attacks and other calamities.

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and screen adaptation

2010-05-20T20:18:00.003+05:30

Having a Wilde time!

Set amidst the artistocratic excesses of the late Victorian era, The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of Ocsar Wilde's most popular and enduring plays. The play is about two characters who take on fictitious names to escape needless obligations in their society. Algernon (Algie) and Earnest Worthing are friends, with a penchant for the good life. Earnest is in love with Algie's cousin, Gwendolen, who in turn is controlled by her imposing mother, Lady Bracknell.

Meanwhile, Algie discovers that Earnest has a young ward called Cecily Cardew living in the country side. When cornered, Earnest reveals that his actual name is John Worthing and he has created a fictitious brother called Earnest - who he comes to meet in the town - so that he can enjoy his life in London, without compromosing his respectable image back home. Algie tells Earnest that he too has a fictitious friend called Bunbury, an invalid who Algie goes to visit in the country whenever he wishes to escape his aunt Lady Bracknell's boring parties.

Gwendolen loves Earnest more for his name than anything else, she insists. She wants to marry him but her mother puts her foot down when she learns that Earnest has no living parents and in fact, was found as a baby in a leather bag at a railway station. So unless Earnest produces at least one parent Lady Brackwell will hear nothing about the proposal.

Meanwhile, Algie lands up in the country as John's brother - Earnest-- and instantly falls for Cecily. But there are confusions galore, as both Gwendolen and Cecily are now in love with two different men called 'Earnest'
The plot can appear complicated, but it is a finely constructed comedy of manners, bristling with some of Wilde's most humorous quotes.

The play was adapted into a film in 1952 and later in 2002 by Oliver Parker, who also brought to screen Oscar Wilde's other play, An Ideal Husband. The Importance of Earnest has a wonderful cast comprising Rupert Everette, Colin Firth, Frances O'cConnor, Reese Witherspoon and Judi Dench. Parker makes very minor changes to the original, retaining all the famous lines - though the use of too many wise-cracks in quick succession appears a tad forced and stilted when you hear it in a film. Parker embellishes the film with a few extra scenes - like the strip club scenes - which is needless and makes the drama too literal. On the other hand, the scene where lady Bracknell grills Earnest at her mansion is very effective.

Among the performances, Reese Witherspoon shines as Cecily. But it's Judy Dench - as the domineering Lady Bracknell who chews up the screen each time she appears. It's a delight to watch her mouth some of Wilde's best written lines, tinged with delicious irony. When Earnest refuses permission for Cecily to marry Algy, until she turns 35, Lady Bracknell asserts her view with dead-pan smugness. "London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."
The play is ultimately a light satire of Victorian ways and upper class foibles, and a comic masterpiece that is sure to delight generations to come. The film won't disappoint you either.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's One Amazing Thing

2010-04-29T11:13:00.011+05:30

Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Pages: 224
Price: 450
Publishers: Hamish Hamilton (Peguin Imprint)

Expatriate writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who is best known for her award-winning short story collection, Arranged Marriage and novels, Sister Of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices (adapted into a film, the Aishwarya Rai starrer) released her new book, One Amazing Thing recently. This was my first introduction to her work and while I mostly enjoyed the novel and found it a breezy read, I couldn't help feeling that the sum of the story wasn't at all greater than the parts.

One Amazing Thing is about a group of six-seven people of different nationalities who get trapped at the Indian consulate office in US after a major earthquake strikes. As food runs out and the building starts collapsing, the characters find the boundaries between them starting to crumble down, literally and otherwise. To keep sane and avoid panicking, one of the characters suggests to the others that each one of them should reveal one amazing thing that has happened to them. Among those trapped are an elderly white couple going through a difficult time in their marriage; an Indian-Muslim man, Tariq who is disillusioned and angry with the new US; a Chinese-Indian, Jiang, who loved and lost a man in her youth; her talented grand-daughter, Lily; a middle-aged army officer haunted by his guilt; Two visa officers – Malathi and her boss, Mangalam on the verge of an extra-marital affair; an India-American student, who is confused by her parents' decision to return to Kolkata after living in US for over 20 years.

As uncertainty builds over whether they will make it alive or not, the characters pour their hearts out in stories that seek to unburden them from a certain baggage of their past, and offer hope for the future. Divakurani sets the stage well and you are acquainted with atleast three of the characters before the earthquake strikes, so that later, their's are the stories you are most interested to know about. Among the rest, Jiang's story is easily the most affecting and haunting one. Her story dates back to the time when she was a smart, young Chinese girl living with her father and brother in Kolkata. In spite of her age, she handles her father's shoe business efficiently and it is at this juncture that love strikes. Jiang falls in love with a Hindu boy and there is stiff opposition when they plan to marry. They stay determined, but not for long. The Indo-China war of 1962 endangers the life of Chinese settlers in India and Jiang is hurriedly made to board a ship to the US, along with a family friend who offers to marry her. Jiang - the strong and steadfast woman that she is - continues to live her life, but not without the wistful regret of what she lost. Divakurani narrates the story with great feeling and vividness. Also, the story gives you a sense of history about the Chinese community in India, all of which adds to its appeal.

The other very entertaining story involves Malathi and her stint as a beautician in a top beauty salon. Malathi's tale is the most light-hearted one, intended to show her adventurous, brave side. She describes a rich socialite who visits their salon often, accompanied by her servant-girl. Things are perfect in the lady's life, until she suspects that her liberal-minded son has falled for the servant. All hell breaks lose then.

The other stories are a mixed bag. The visa officer's character intrigues you the most at the start, but his story --- about his impoverished background and later getting trapped in a loveless marriage with a rich heiress... all seems straight out of a Bollywood family drama. Tariq's story is again an all too familiar one --- an Indian-American, who has lived all his life in US, feels unfairly discriminated back against for being a Muslim post 9/11 and wonders if he must goto India. The other stories are readable, but nothing stays with you.

If one wouldn't have known that Divakurani has worked with refugees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and has seen from close quarters rita Hurricain hitting Housten (the place she resides in), causing a massive evacuation, one would have been surprised aboout her bringing in an earthquake situation out of all things.
And the Indian Consulate setting seems like a forced one to bring characters of diverse backgrounds together. Very early on, Divakaruni evokes The Cantebury tales, Chauser's celebrated epic about a group of pilgrims who narrate one story each. It's one thing for characters to narrate stories on a journey, but would they do so when they are waiting to be rescued from an earthquake affected area? The whole situation is a bit contrived.

The author's intend is to show the healing power of stories, how they empower us, how they redeem us. The stories by themselves are mostly engaging, but one is never wholly convinced about the situation they are caught into. The sense of urgency doesn't come across strongly and neither is there any plausible trigger point for the characters to narrate stories.

Individually though the stories are well-told. Divakurani is a perceptive author, who succeeds in keeping the narrative simple yet elegant. The language is graceful. Her similies and metaphors are original and interesting. "Moving to live where no one knew you, shucking off your wornout life like old snakeskin"

One Amazing Thing is certainly worth a read, though it might not leave you fully satisfied.

Monkey-man and interview with Usha K R

2010-04-27T11:50:00.019+05:30

Author: Usha K. R
Pages: 259
Price: 299
Publishers: Penguin
Published in the year: 2010

After her stunning last book, A Girl And A River that won Usha K R the Vodafone Crossword Award, 2007, the author has just come out with her second book. Much like A Girl..., her new book, Monkey man is a pleasure to read ---rich as it in characterisation and situational drama. Usha demonstrates her love for her favourite author, Jane Austen in the manner in which she slowly goes about unraveling her numerous characters, presenting them with unmistakable irony and subtle humour. But where Usha perhaps resembles Austen less and George Eliot more is in her grim understanding of the human condition. A Girl... was both historically and socio-culturally rooted. In Monkey-man, the author attempts to portray the changing Indian urban scape at the turn of the century through the lives of different characters.

Usha bases her story in her own city, Bangalore - one whose complexion has drastically altered in the last two decades. From being a breezy city of gardens, a Pensioner's Paradise, Bangalore has gone on to become one of the country's leading IT hubs. Today, it's a highly commercialised city, one of the prime metros of the country with soaring real estate prices and crazy traffic, among other things.

Usha's choice of location for both A Girl.. and Monkey Man - Southern India - is welcome. For a change, it's not Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. Quite instantly, the world Usha creates feels fresh. Besides, Usha is acutely conscious of the socio-political landscape that her characters inhabit.

The novel is about four characters residing in Bangalore - they could of course be from anywhere in India. There is Shrinivas Moorthy, a senior professor, forever falling back on the virtues of Gandhian passivity, even as the world around him has changed in ways he cannot recogonise anymore. He stubbornly sticks to the tried and tested ways, looking with suspicion and unease at any new plan that his dynamic friend-turned-superior Jairam suggests.

Shrinivas's story covers a journey from 1960s to 2000. The fact that he is caught in a time wrap is accentuated through the contrasts brought out by the other characters. Jairam and his wife Geeta for example. All three of them start out as college friends, hanging around together, being part of intense political debates. Shrinivas is thrifty and somewhat timid, using his intellectualism in safe and secure ways – like the film club he runs. Jairam, the more volatile and charismatic one, goes through a brief period of intense political fevour during the Emergency days that threatens to derail his life. But luck favours him in the long run.

Many of the college scenes and fiery exchanges that Usha presents in this story are excellent. Even some of the minor characters she etches out are done with delicious irony...

“Preeti Vaidya, the English lecturer was a different kind altogether. Her husband was the head of a multinational company, whose photographs and pithy comment appeared almost every other day in the business section of the newspapers, and Preeti made it quite clear that she didn't need the job; her house did not run on her salary. She was there only for her love of English literature. Which didn't make her any less attentive to her entitlements of dearness allowance, and scale and seniority, but it edged her dealings with her colleagues with a mild condescension”

Shrinivas' character has its moments, but he seems too much of a metaphor in the end. He teaches history - literally to symbolize how he's turning ancient now. Somehow, this character didn't work entirely for me, but the scenes around him are well-crafted and the supporting characters in his story are all excellent.

The one real triumph with respect to character-creation is that of Neela Mary Gopalrao, the spiteful, but romance-yearning secretary to an influential man in a Government organisation. She treats her colleagues shabbily, creating new impediments for them everyday, withholding payments. Like Shrinivas, she is also a representative of the “old economy”, where a Government job implies complete security. Having struggled to reach where she does, Neela indulges in petty games, unable as she is to be productive in any true sense.

Neela is a highly original character and though, she isn't really a 'representative' of any section in any obvious sense, all the parts involving her are highly readable.

These are really the two characters that really stand out. The other two, Bali Brums – the hot-shot RJ and Pushpa Rani, who leaves a temporary Government job to work in a call centre – are both meant to be representatives of the emerging new generation, with new ideas about career and life. Bali Brams' arguments with his parents over not completing his engineering and taking up an unsteady job etc – are all a bit familiar. Pushpa Rani is an important character, in the sense she comes from a disadvantaged economic class, eager to prove her worth and improve her station in life. But even some of her portions involving her family appear a bit long-drawn.

So the big question? Why is the book called Monkey-man? This is an episode that happened in the year 2000, where people from all over the country reported seeing a strange monkey-like creature. Most of the above characters happen to see this 'monkey' and hence are called on Bali Brum's show.

Yet, the novel is not really about the Monkey-man incident. Even in real life when people were terrified about the creature, there was a cloud of suspicion on whether it is was for real or a figment of someone's imagination. Usha K R evokes the creature's shadowy, hazy and mythic image as a metaphor for the dramatic, overwhelming and grotesque transformation of the city.
This is an excellent fictional device, which sounds great on paper. But in the book, the connection seems somewhat forced, not born very organically from the stories. The sudden attack of the monkey taps into the inner-most fears and insecurities of the characters. But that feeling doesn't come across as effectively as it could have.
There is an uneasy stretch in the narrative for sure.

Again, Bangalore has grown exponentially since 2000, but that is obviously not covered in this book. This might disappoint those who expected the novel to be about present-day Bangalore. But otherwise, this is once again a solid effort from Usha. In fact, while her previous, A Girl... was grim and even heavy at places, albeit a wonderfully challenging read, Monkey-man is easier and more character-driven.
Usha's language is rich and fluent, without ever getting turgid or pretentious.
Go for it!

PS: It's a quick read. I myself read it twice in the span of one week.

Bangalore Bytes

Award-winning writer Usha K R uses the famous 'monkey-man' episode to symbolise the dark, grotesque and uncertain ways in which Bangalore has exploded as a metro in the last few decades

Bangalore-based author, Usha K R has been an accomplished writer of fiction for the last two decades, but her moment of reckoning came with her last novel, The Girl And A River which won her the prestigious Vodafone Crossword Award in 2007. Her latest book, Monkey-Man, about the denizens of Bangalore, has also opened to rave reviews.

The action in Usha's book dates back to 2001, where the 'monkey-man' episode was hot news. The rumour was that a dark, monkey-like creature had invaded the country. No one could tell exactly whether it was an animal or a human being, but everyone was struck with terror, as people reported to have been attacked by it. Usha uses the 'monkey-man' episode as a metaphor for our fear of the unknown - the dark, disorienting feeling it brought. From a breezy city of gardens, Bangalore has rapidly metamorphosed into a huge IT hub, with glitzy malls, happening pubs and crazy traffic. Usha takes different characters who have to deal with the city's dramatic transformation in small and big ways. Some of them see the changes as an opportunity to break free, while others struggle to keep up with it. In each case, the 'monkey-man' is a forewarning of the dark, shadowy and fearful space they seem to be entering into.

On what prompted her to use the 'monkey-man' metaphor?

Usha K R: One of the marvels of fiction is that it seems to suggest very plausible connections between things that are logically very remote - the connections can be slight or tentative and they grow in ways not imagined or foreseen by the writer. As I was thinking about the lives of my characters in this ‘exponentially growing’ world, and how little control they seemed to have over the changes that were creeping up on them, I wondered over the possibility of a completely random element that takes over our lives and destinies and forces them to a logical end, and whether this logic is dictated by our nature or the pattern of our lives. Next in line was whether cities have their own destinies, whether sudden and uncontrolled growth can spin off a miasma, a spectral presence, and in which case what would it be. Would it be emanation of wish-fulfillment, of desire or disappointment or death or of change for the better or none of these things? Through the lives of my characters I wanted to explore these connections.

On her characters

Usha K R: The novel is set against the background of the changes that have swept through the country in the last few decades - affecting different parts and different cities to a lesser or greater degree. And since Bangalore is the pin-up city for new India, I have used Bangalore as a template for these changes. You have Shrinivas Moorty, growing up with Marxist ideals, but who is completely out-of-sync with the new dispensation; Neela, who senses the changes but without the appropriate skills to deal with them, she can only fall back on guile - these two are what I call my ‘old economy’ characters. Then you have Bali Brums and Pushpa Rani, unburdened by the past, by caste and community, who grasp at the opportunities that the new age has provided and want to live life on their own terms. These people could be there in any city or town in India.

On her last book, A Girl And A River

Usha K R: A Girl and A River was a historical novel; Monkey-Man deals with contemporary events --- and the pace is much faster. If A Girl… was a marathon, this was a 100 metre dash, or rather - a T20 as against a test match, and each form has its own rhythm, its beauty and its compulsions. Actually, I started thinking about both these novels and making notes for them almost simultaneously. But A Girl … got written first. Much also depends on how the novel suggests itself to the writer in the first place.

On Indian Writing In English

Usha K R: If IWE has to acquire a wider readership, it has to spread its wings and go beyond literary fiction as it is doing now, and that is a good thing. Moreover, readers also want to read different kinds of writing - you want to read a thriller, and fluffy romance and a more serious ‘literary’ work, perhaps simultaneously. So, there is room for different kinds or writing and writers.

- Sandhya Iyer

The Age Of Innocence (classic on celluloid)

2010-02-25T11:31:00.025+05:30

Of all that which could have been!

When director Martin Scorsese took up the task of adapting Edith Wharton's tender, romantic classic The Age of Innocence in 1993, many thought it a rather odd choice for the maker of such male-oriented films such as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mean Streets among others. But according to the filmmaker this was his 'most violent film' referring to the emotional verses physical state of being.

Wharton wrote her novel in 1920, a good 40-50 years from the period in which The Age Of Innocence is set in. The author brings to life her own close-knit, upper-class New York society, with its conservatism, artificiality and stagnancy. It's a world where America's select elites wined and dined and outwardly lived a very charmed life. Here reputations had to be fiercely guarded and a single whisper could lead to slander and misfortune. And yet, it was an age Edith was nostalgic about and she brings out this sentiment through one of her characters --- "there was good in the old ways"
In fact, the very reason she chose to write the novel was because her sense of calm and security had been destroyed after the first world war. She needed the comfort of nostalgia. Many critics found it an irrelevant subject, but The Age Of Innocence was probably one last chance for Edith to live through the momories of her youth and bring alive a time that seemed lost forever.

Edith Wharton's story is then about a passionate, illicit affair that is born in such a circumstance. But the hold of this society on the individual is so strong, its roots so entrenched, its customs and codes so impenetrable, that passion is ultimately sacrificed at the altar of convention. When the story begins Archer Newland is soon to be engaged to May Welland - popularly understood to be a perfect young woman with unreproachable repute. This picture perfect world is challenged with the coming of May's European cousin, Ellen Olenska, an aesthetic and free-spirited woman who becomes the talk of the town. Her presence is a source of mingled contempt and envy for the denizens around. Her broken marriage to a Count and her 'fallen' status makes for spicy dinner table gossip. Archer gets attracted to Ellen as he finds something very real about her.
In complete contrast is his financee May - who becomes almost a metaphor for all the shallowness and silliness that he starts to hate about his society. But his affair with Ellen does not last and both decide to bow down to conventional wisdom. They silently continue to love each other, even while leading their individual lives. When an opportunity to meet each other arises after many years, both give it up because as Archer says "it is like a pilgrimage that had been attained"
Meeting each other seems immaterial now.

If Wharton's novel is a feast of words, Scorsese's adaptation is a feast of sumptuous visuals. The film - through its marvelous art design - captures the period to perfection. The succulent food spreads in the affluent homes, the elaborate décor, luxuriant drawing rooms, the exquisite glass wares.. all lend an unbelievable sense of grandness and authenticity to this period piece.

The film is also one of the most faithful adaptations of the novel. In fact, the director uses an elderly woman as the narrator of the story and this is implied to be Edith Wharton herself. One of the chief attractions of the novel is that its language perfectly matches the ornamental world it describes. The sentences are all delicately crafted, with many succinct observations.
"Clever liars give details, but the cleverest do not"
"In the rotation of crops, there was a recogonised season to sow wild oats, but they were not to be sown more than once"
I'm not sure if these were included in the film, but Scorsese makes sure to take some of the best dialogues from the book, and use it to maximum effect.

The theme of the novel largely points at absurdity of human life, being compelled into action that the mind does not agree with. The one issue I had with the film was the pairing of Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. Though good actors, they have very little chemistry between them.
Winona Ryder, as the passive-aggressive May is good though.
The film never scales the emotional peaks of the book, but it remains a lush, beautiful and admirable effort nevertheless.

- Sandhya Iyer

The enduring charm of Pride And Prejudice

2010-01-30T17:27:00.018+05:30

Why is it that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice enjoys such a place of pride in the history of literary annals? The book has been re-imagined for the screen at least thrice, once as mini-series on BBC, which is still considered the most definitive adaptation of Austen’s classic. Yet, the fascination for it prevails and this eighteenth century novel remains as one of the most widely read texts in the world.

So what is it that attracts filmmakers to keep revisiting Pride And Prejudice, as director Joe Wright last did with his Keira-Knightley film in 2005? Is it because Austen's heroine in the novel - with her pluck and wit - appeals as much to modern-day men and women as she did in her period?

Now much has been made about Austen being a feminist and so on. Beyond the fact that the author liked and rewarded her heroines for being less superficial than the rest, it must be fairly stated that there was no real attempt on Austen's part to drastically break away from the prevaling conventions of her time. She was very much part of the patriarchal set-up and didn't really bother herself with the gender politics, though she was keen and discerning enough to understand that it existed. Her stories faintly hinted at injustice towards wome, wherein they could not own property or pursue a real career, but she adapted to the time she lived in. If anything, she laid some stress on her female characters negotiating their space and freedom in their given circumstances.

One of the reasons that keeps this classic so fresh is that to this day a great premium is laid on matrimony and a woman finding the perfect match for herself. Also, the Darcy- Elizabeth love-hate relationship remains one of the most romantic happenings in literature. There is something curiously exciting and even gratifying about a man of pride, position and previlege humbling himself before love and being so vulnerable to the emotion. This is precisely what readers across ages and generations have found so endearing about the debonair personality of Mr Darcy.

The other reason for the novel to remain relavant is the character of Elizabeth (Lizzy), who in her own way, refuses to entirely comply with the conventions of her time. The pragmatism and cynicism of the age she lived in does not prevent her from being a romantic idealist. It is this quality that Darcy finds incredibly attractive. But as we know, Lizzy, for all her bright wit and exuberance, is charmingly naive. She makes an error of judgement with respect to Darcy, hating him with a passion, only to find herself in the wrong and then getting violently drawn to him.

Considering that the BBC mini-adaptation absolutely nailed the book, capturing every word and emotion to perfection, there was nothing really left for the next screen adaptation to do but approach it slightly differently. What Joe Wright and the makers do in the 2005 version of the film is to concentrate more on recreating the ambience, mood and visuals, rather than going too deeply into the characters or the story. The makers have gone with the assumption that most people already know about the story. Right from the first scene, where Keira Knightley, presented as the free-spirited Lizzy walks towards her home with a book in hand, the camera gorgeously moves capturing the pretty countryside in all its glory. The attempt is to bring alive the mood and magic as depicted in the Austen novel. The evening balls have been splendidly recreated and every setting is pitch perfect with a warm, lived-in feel to it.

Also, in spite of the film covering an entire novel in just a little over two hours, it manages to look not too hurried. If anything, it is a bit languorous and sometimes even audibly problematic. The characters seem to say some key sentences in an off hand way.

Yet, all the key scenes have been retained with some changes being made to make the experience more cinematic or impactful. Like for example, there is that scene where Lizzy and Mr And Mrs Collins are dining with Lady Catherine. The latter asks Lizzy some pointed questions in her patronizing way, to which Lizzy's answers are both witty and unflinching, much to the shock of Lady Catherine. In the book, Mr Darcy is not part of this scene. But in the film, he is. This is a good choice because it helps you understand in quick time why Darcy could have been enamoured with Lizzy. Also, this is a very well-done scene , with Judy Dench as the domineering Lady Catherine in full form.

Again, the famous proposal scene between the leads happens outdoors in the rain to heighten its impact. In fact, many scenes are shot outdoors to give the film a visually sumptuous feel. The other change that has been made is that when Lizzy visits Pemberley, she sees Darcy with his sister in an exaggerated joyful state. The original has Lizzy taken by surprise to see Darcy there, and both experience a rare moment of ecstasy. Like the novel says, “Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush.” This should have been ideally retained in the film.

Also, the character of Collins - the infamous cousin of the Bennet sisters - has been lampooned only by way of his shortness in the film. If not for his midget-like appearance, his face and manners carry the impression of him being a perfectly respectable and decent young man. Never does he really come across like the pompous and irritating man Austen intended him to be. Of course, he mouths all those funny lines in the proposal scene, but he comes across as more pitiable than ludicrous here.

The casting for Lizzy’s character was the most important one, but somehow Keira Knightley just doesn’t fit the bill. The makers probably wanted a today’s version of Elizabeth but what you get is a rather flighty, giggly female, with not an iota of the grace that is so essential to Lizzy’s character. The others are adequate. Matthew Macfadyen, as Darcy, looks odd at places keeping a stiff upper lip, but he also exudes a certain vulnerability which is charming.

Overall though, this is a fine adaptation. And must not be missed for its luminous visuals and stunning recreation of a bygone era.

Collected Short Stories Vol 1 Somerset Maugham

2010-01-20T16:13:00.011+05:30

Pages:536
First Published in: 1951

There are some writers who once you sample their works, you cannot give up until you have covered a fair share of it. With Somerset Maugham, the challenge is both thrilling as well daunting. Thrilling because here is an author I am so happy I discovered and with whom I almost feel a kindred spirit - in terms of the themes he takes up and his so called cynicism - which is really not cynicism, but a certain astounding ability to discern human weaknesses. He's realistic about people, knowing well that human beings are inconsistent and complex. Also, he realizes that seemingly incongruous traits can exist in the same person. This prevents Maugham from either eulogizing a person too much or berating their depravity. According to Maugham, he could never judge anyone too harshly or be too shocked by sin, precisely because he was guilt-ridden about many things himself and understood only too well that perfection is a myth and that we all live extremely flawed lives. He said, “I take the goodness of the good for granted, and I am amused when I discover their defects or their vices. I am touched when I see the goodness of the wicked, and I am willing enough to shrug a tolerant shoulder at their wickedness.”

The above, in many ways, is the overarching theme of all his stories. The author gives voice to his own thoughts when one of his characters in The Fall of Edward Barnad says, "Perhaps we make too much of a difference between one man and another. Perhaps even the best of us are sinners and worst of us are saints"
His friend in the story is not willing to buy this argument and counters by saying, " You will never persuade me that white is black and black is white"
But almost every short story in this collection - and this quality applies to all the author's works in general - the writer points at the utter futility of catagorising people as good or bad, evil or virtuous. And to establish this truth, he puts his characters through all kinds of situations, delving deep into the recesses of their heart, acutely discerning their motives and the complex emotions that drive them.

There are about 30 stories in all, and each story is a wonder in character creation. And Maugham unfolds them with great relish, layer by layer – like the peeling of an onion. Many of them were written when he travelled far and wide – some of them were British colonies. Quite a few of the stories are based in London and are anecdotal . The Luncheon, Louise, The Promise, The Voice of the Turtle...all are delightful, and bristle with charm and ironic humour. There are some others which raise fundamental questions about religion, love and freedom.

As Maugham says in his book, The Summing Up, - themes came to him very easily. He could be talking to someone for an hour and he could envision a story revolving him. Such was the fecundity of his mind! Maugham’s characters are not entirely unusual, but they almost always have a quirk, which the author used to the fullest. He has a very fine sense of drama, so that you are always curious to know what happens next.
Mackintosh, for example, is a story that rests on his ability to sketch out the characters of the chief, Walter and his assistant, Mackintosh. The latter feels a strange mix of envy, hatred and derision for his boss. Walter is a loudmouth, a sadist, uncouth, but not without a roguish charm and a skill for repartee. He rules over the natives with an iron hand, but he also looks out for them like a tiger does for his cubs. Maugham is simply marvelous in his creation of these two persons.

Then there are other stories, where Maugham's skill with characters comes to the fore. The Mother is a poignant tale of a woman, who turns resentful and sullen after spending years in jail. Her only bundle of joy is her handsome son, whom she loves with a rare ferocity. But things go wrong again, and come to a tragic end.
The matriarch in Home is another gem of a creation. Equally enigmatic is the character of the laconic judge in The Happy Couple.

Maugham has written how he enjoyed the format of a short story, because he didn’t have to live with a story for too long. And yet, he believed that these stories no matter how small should be complete in themselves. He didn’t want any of them to trail off. This is partly a characteristic of Maugham’s writing – which is not only lucid, it never fails to make a point ever. This enables his stories to be engaging and dramatic. The flip side to this is that some of the endings to the stories appear too sudden and somewhat unconvincing . For example, in Rain – an otherwise powerful story about religion and its tyrannical propagators - it is never quite clear why the missionary Rev Davidson commits suicide. What are his motivations? The situation in the story and what you know of his character never lead you to believe what he does finally. Quite a few stories have an instance of a death or suicide at the end, but unfortunately, that decision at most times seems born out of the need for an ironic suggestion. You never quite understand why Mackintosh ends his life suddenly. Yes, human being are complex and contradict themselves often in action and words, yet, that can’t explain death/suicide so easily.

A few critics have also pointed towards racial undertones in a few of Maugham’s stories – one of them being The Pool. The story is about an English man, Lawson, an officer in the British colony of Apia. He falls in love with a beautiful native called Ethel and even marries her, much to the disapproval of the White community living there. But things don’t work as per his plans. He slowly loses his sway over the natives, has to bear the humiliation of working for a native owner. Seeing what a groveling lover he is, Ethel starts to despise him. The story ends with Lawson giving up his life, drowning himself in the Pool – the very place where he was first entranced by the native girl. If one has followed Maugham’s work keenly, one would be less inclined to read the story as a racial one. The theme is tied to the author’s belief in the idea that most women become heartless towards men who are unusually devoted to them and are willing to make any sacrifice. Maugham’s idea is that women will accept a man’s cruelty, but she can’t bear him being subservient. Of course, The Pool can be interpreted as a White man’s fascination for the exotic colonies he ruled over. The author could be suggesting that while it’s nice for the White man to admire the native land and its people, he must not allow their worlds to collide.

As expected, Maugham’s displays what a fine craftsman he is. The words are elegant and precise, with a wonderful sense for cadences - so that every now and then one feels like saying out a sentence aloud and relishing its ring. The delightful turn of phrases, the ironic wit, the keen insights – all ensure you don’t have a single dull moment with Maugham.

-Sandhya Iyer

The Moon And Sixpence

2009-12-14T23:08:00.021+05:30

Author: Somerset Maugham
Pages: 215
Publishers: Vintage Classics
First published in the year: 1919

A Moon and Sixpence is a story that Maugham wrote inspired from post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin's tumultuous life. There was a sense of notoriety around Gauguin because he left his regular job and deserted his wife and children just like that! He rejected European civilization calling it 'artificial and conventional' and moved to the island of Tahiti where he created paintings that went on to become masterpieces after his death.

He was drawn to primitivism as an art form and his paintings -- characterised by bold experimentation of colours and geometric designs -- changed the course of modern paintings and after his death, Gauguin became one of the most influential artists of his times. (his painting below)

Having only recently read Maugham's Ten Novels and Their Authors and The Painted Veil, I for many reasons felt he was combining the themes of both these books in A Moon And Sixpence. In Ten Novels.... Maugham describes with great fascination the life of famous authors and what went into the making of their classic novels. It is with the same sense of curiosity and ear for scandal that he approaches the life of Gauguin. The other important theme in the book - much like The Painted Veil – is marriage and entrapment. Maugham is decidedly cynical about the institution and every couple he describes in A Moon And Sixpence has a secret sorrow and is caught in a trap of undefined misery. This is a constant theme with most of Maugham's works where a marital union never really reaches fruition because one of the partners feels dissatisfied.

The first few pages of the novel are a bit difficult to get by,
as they are somewhat turgid. But once the story begins and takes a sharp turn with the disappearance of Charles Strickland (modelled on Gauguin), you are gripped by the narrative. His desertion of his comely wife and adorable kids is shocking to everyone who know him. The story is described by Maugham himself, who much like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby is the sincere, wise but detached narrator-character in the book. He is not an active participant in the tumultuous lives of the people around him but he is a trusted confidante and each character reveals their innermost feelings to him.

The story takes you through Strickland's unconventional life – he is brusque, loutish, cruel and eccentric to a maniacal level. Having foregone his cushy life, he lives in the most wretched conditions, striving to paint and give vent to the artist in him. He borrows money constantly as if it wer his right. In spite of his brutal ways he still finds enough people to care for his undiscovered genius. One of them is the goofy Dirk Stroeve, an inferior painter, who can recogonise superior art. He provides home and shelter to Strickland when the latter takes violently ill. But his compassion means nothing to Strickland who makes no effort to resist Dirk's wife, Blanche when she falls for his roguish charm. What others think of him means nothing to Strickland and he doesn't bat an eyelid when Blanche dies.

His happiest and saddest days are in the gorgeous island of Tahiti – where he is somewhat at peace with himself. While everywhere else his behaviour is considered deviant, in Tahiti, odd balls are accepted for what they are since there are many around. Tahiti also brings a painful end to his life when he is struck by leprosy. The book says that Strickland created dazzlingly beautiful paintings on the walls of the house he lived in. But when he was about to die, he asked his wife, Ata (who he married there) to burn it all down.

It's hard to say how much of the novel is entirely based on Gauguin's life, and Maugham has said, he took the basic framework of the painter's life and worked around it. Maugham's book materialised when the author went to Tahiti and spoke to people about Gauguin.
As it stands, Strickland is so abominable, cruel and so wholly negative that it's a bit difficult to accept him as a real character. Also, his life prior to being a painter is never clear. Maugham could have at least given some indication of his artistic bent of mind but he's portrayed exactly as the opposite. His sudden transformation as an artiste is not convincing. Even Gauguin in his life as a stockbroker, is understood to have painted on and off, so it's surprising why Maughan could not incorporate that aspect into the story. This is a jarring point in the novel, one that threatens to ruin the experience of the book.

Yet, the novel offers an incisive, penetrating view into what possibly goes into the making of an artist, his unique temperament and his unrelenting search for inspiration. Still, Strickland cannot be a representative for all artists since Maugham's portrayal of him is deliberately sketchy and overly negative. It's like knowing only one part of a story.
Amidst the outrageous and tragic events that unfold, what keeps the narrative rooted and real is Maugham's sane, controlled presence. His vivid description of characters, his acuity in identifying their nature and compulsions, his ability to spell out universal human truths, makes the novel a compelling read.

The book, like most of Maugham's other works teems with quotable quotes. This is what he says of women and the perverse thrill they derive from suffering. "A women can forgive a man for teh harm he does her, but can never forgive him for the sacrifises he makes on her account"

On his inability to be angry with Strickland for too long, Maugham says, "It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogethr dislike anyone who make me laugh."

Apart from this, there are countless reflections on art and life - which are all profounding inspiring.

Shashi Tharoor's Bookless In Baghdad

2009-12-06T18:22:00.012+05:30

Author: Shashi Tharoor
Year Of Publishing: 2005
Price: 325
Publishers: Penguin

Shashi Tharoor in his present role as Minister may have come under sharp attack for a variety of reasons. When he recently put himself up at a five star suite for months on end because the government bungalow was not ready, many thought it was unbecoming of a public representative. I felt the same. The intellectual elitism and the accompanying lifestyle that perfectly complimented him all these years while he worked for the United Nations started to stick out like a sore thumb in his role as a serving servant.

But let's keep that aspect separate from his credentials as an author.
One thing that clearly emerges from reading Bookless In Baghdad is Tharoor's acute literary bent of mind. One is aware that he has constantly stolen time from his busy schedules to write all his books – most of which have won rave reviews. And Bookless... which is a rare and exceptional collection of his literary columns over the years, doubly confirms his deep passion for books. He himself mentions it more than a dozen times saying his literary pursuits are as important to him as his (erstwhile) role at the UN. He couldn't possibly give up or live without either. In any case a true literary enthusiast can be sniffed out only by another – that unique breed that can't pass a bookstore without entering it. The kind who are thrilled by a clever turn of phrase, or a refreshing epigram. That is certainly true of Tharoor.

Spread over 40 essays, Bookless In Baghdad offers Tharoor's excellent commentary on all matters literary. He talks about the authors he loves and dislikes, offering delightful anecdotes. He expounds on topics like literary criticism and reviewing patterns. Also, for those who have read his earlier books like Riot, Show Business and The Great Indian Novel, there's a great deal about them here, where Tharoor explains the themes he tried to tackle and even puts up a spirited defense for one of his books that was not well-reviewed in India.

One of the things to admire about Tharoor's writing, besides his immaculate language, is his ability to make a definite point at the end of every essay in the most lucid manner. And even if the book focusses on writing and books, it is underlined by Tharoor's serious concerns about society, culture and politics.

The author acquaints his readers with the utter joy he derived from reading books all through his childhood. He started very early. At 3 years he was reading Noddy and soon moved on to other stories by Enid Blyton. He says he preferred British books to American ones in his growing up days. “We had access to Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boys, but there seemed to be something brash and spurious about them. British books, we were brought up to believe, set the real standard,”

The other great British passion for Tharoor is P G Wodehouse for whom his admiration and warmth brims over. He analyses Wodehouse's popularity in India when elsewhere in the English speaking world, he is no longer much read. Is it because of a lingering nostalgia for the Raj? Tharoor doesn't believe so. He says it is precisely the lack of politics in Wodehouse's writing, one based in an idyllic world...a never-never land with stock figures, almost theatrical archetypes that charms and attracts Indians to his books.

The other very interesting essay is his observations on R K Narayan. Tharoor does not hold back from expressing his utter disappointment with Narayan's prose, calling it 'flat and monotonous' among many other things.
“Some of my friends felt I was wrong to focus on language – a writerly concern - and lose sight of the stories, which in many ways had an appeal that transcended language. But my point was that such pedestrian writing diminished Narayan's stories, undermined the characters, trivialised their concerns.” he writes.

That is no malice in Tharoor's observations, merely candour and straight-talk.

There is an essay on Winston Churchill, where Tharoor calls him an 'overweening imperialist” whose fame primarily rests on his bombastic speeches – revisionists since then have called it 'sublime nonsense'
Then there is a sharp criticism of the late Nirad Chaudhari for his nauseating allegiance to the British, while looking down upon his own people.

Tharoor pays rich tribute to authors like Pablo Naruda, the Russian author Pushkin and V S Naipaul. But his most passionate and heart-felt essays are those about Salman Rushdie, who he respectfully addresses as “the head of my profession”
He expresses his deep anguish about the fatwa on the writer who he says revitalised and stretched the boundaries of the possible in Enligh literature. “Mention Rushdie, and some see a stirring symbol of the cause of freedom of expression in the face of intolerant dogma, others, particularly the Islamic word, find a blasphemous crusader for secularist social subversions. Neither image may be inaccurate, but reducing him to this emblematic figure has only served to obscure his true literary contribution”
He also regrets him being reduced to “a haunted symbol of Western literary freedom under assault from Oriental despotism”

From the 'illiterate' reader of America, to the French who know how to honour their literary geniuses, Tharoor offers a complete world-view of the literary scene.

But the most touching chapter is the title one, where he describes his visit to Baghdad and a book bazaar where a cornucopia of books were laid out for sale. Crippled with US sanctions and with their greatly diminished currency, many Iraqi families were selling off their precious books. Many things come to light in this chapter. For one, the Iraqis are a highly literate population and lovers of books. There is something very poignant about this essay, where Tharoor had gone as representative of the UN, but the book lover in him was clearly moved by what he saw.

The author's sharp wit comes in full force when he defends his second book, Show Business, which many believed was a comedown for him since it wasn't as ambitious as his first, The Great Indian Novel. Tharoor uses the opportunity to talk about reviews and critical assessment, all of which makes for great reading.

This is a must read for those who love books, authors and all things literary. There is a tremendous wealth of knowledge, insight and ideas here.

- Sandhya Iyer

Hanif Kureishi's Intimacy

2009-12-05T21:48:00.011+05:30

Author: Hanif Kureishi
Year of Publishing: 1998
Pages: 155

Hanif Kureishi is known for his controversial, soul-baring and highly sexed up prose. The way Kureishi sees it, life is the proverbial Wasteland, everything is ‘fu*ked up and there is no way out.

Kureishi started out by writing pornography. He went on to write novels. His relatives and people close to him constantly complained how personal details of their life cropped up in his stark novels. His book, Intimacy was especially embroiled in controversy, because it was intensely personal and the events that happen in the book are supposedly what Kureishi went through himself.

Intimacy is about a man on the verge of leaving his wife of ten years and two adorable sons. His idea is to slink away quietly in the darkness of the night and never come back. In the very first page, the protagonist (Jay) makes his intentions clear. The whole book is in fact a long emotional outpouring of male angst and the unbearable loneliness and emptiness that has crept into his marriage and life. Jay's emotional response is to bid goodbye to this meaningless existence where he feels claustrophobic, unloved. His wife Susan, by Jay's own assessment is a dexterous woman, who can cope well with things. Her range of feeling is narrow and hence she can keep things simple. Like most busy mothers, robust practicality overrides other concerns for Susan and her toughened stance on daily matters stands in contrast with the protagonist’s lax, carefree, desultory mind that wants to escape the grind of domesticity and its accompanying rigours.

There are deeply affecting thoughts and incisive enquiry into the human heart with passages such as these, "Susan often accuses me of lack of application. It was what my teachers said, that I didn't concentrate. But I was concentrating. I believe the mind is always conentrating - on something that interests it. Skirts and jokes and cricket and pop, in my case. Despite ourselves, we know what we like, and our errors and distracted excursions are illuminations. Perhaps only the unsought is worthwhile..."

In most of the book, the protagonist is making a case for why he should leave his marriage. His cynical mind argues the futility of a social bond in which no love exists any more. The thought of his sons holds him back, but he convinces himself that they will be fine.
He compares his life with two of his friends, Alex – a committed married man, who has learnt to live with the occasional unhappiness in his domestic life. He’s proud that he’s sticking by one woman and advices Jay to do the same.
At the other end of the spectrum is his friend Victor, who has left his wife and is currently enjoying his promiscuous life as a bachelor.
Jay's mind is also occupied with thoughts of Nina, an attractive, young girl who he has been dating. But now he doesn't know where he stands with her either.

The author Hanif Kureishi has been a student of philosophy in London and expectedly he takes the opportunity to dwell on the institution of marriage and how ultimately it becomes an entrapment, extracting a heavy price through the denial of personal hope and dreams.

Kureishi is most assuredly cynical about his marriage and the institution in general, but he's also conscious of the larger human condition where loneliness is inevitable. Even if he were to leave his wife, would the love he finds outside last at all? "Suppose it is like an illness that you give to everyone you meet," he asks.

The book teems with quotes on marriage, desire and life in general. Talking about his parents' relationship, the protagonist says, "Both he and mother were frustrated, neither being able to find a way to get what they wanted, whatever that was. Nevertheless they were loyal and faithful to one another. Disloyal and unfaithful to themselves."

His protagonist's act is clearly irresponsible, but there is a touch of poignancy in his need to be accepted and loved. He says he will not leave, if only his wife were to touch him in bed tonight and make him feel wanted.

Writers always express best that which is close to their heart. Intimacy could only have been written by a man who felt all those emotions and who lived through a period of moral, social and personal dilemma.
At less than 150 pages, the book is an intimate and personal exploration into a man's mind, torn between conflicting feelings. The book was possibly written at one go in a stream -of-consciousness narrative, wherein thoughts travel back and forth in time.
The book puts forth questions but attempts to provide no real answers. It's one person's point of view from a singular prism, which means it eschews the larger issues in marriage. This book confirms your worst fears about marital bonds but there is no larger exploration of the institution in today's context.

Men might relate to the book more, most women will despise it. Intimacy is like reading only one half of a more complicated story. But for what it is, the novella gives you a penetrating, insightful view into the male psyche and to that extent, it is a worthy read.

PS: The book was adapted into a film by Patrice Chereau, titled, Intimacy

Two States - The story of my marriage

2009-11-15T18:38:00.013+05:30

Knotty affairs

Author: Chetan Bhagat
Price: Rs 99
Year of Publishing: 2009
Publishers: Rupa
Pages: 269

Like all his last three works, Five Point Someone, One Night @ A Call Centre and 3 Mistakes of My Life, his latest, 2 States - The Story Of My Marriage, also leaves you with mixed feelings.

Chetan Bhagat's simple theme, rooted in middle class sensibilities and the ordinariness of life will once again appeal to his fans --- a sizeable class of emerging mid-brow readers. But let's be clear that it is the author's funny bone that saves the day for him again. His nonchalant wit gives a point to his observations and lends a perky liveliness to an otherwise not-so-great book.

Even if one were to lower the literary bar considerably, it's hard to ignore the numerous banal and trite elements here. Chetan's construction of dialogues at many places (especially involving women) is cringe-worthy, as are many of the situational turns that he introduces in the book. His sense of drama comes straight out of trashy Bollywood potboilers. Some scenes are so hackneyed and over-the-top, it could make Ekta Kapoor seem restrained! Chetan actually has a dowry scene where a bride's father keeps his pagdi at the in-laws' feet. In any case, the story has a Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge flavour to it. But since this is partly an autobiographical story, we'll give that to him. It's derived from Chetan's own experiences when he married his wife, Anusha (pic below).

2 States begins where Five Point Someone ends. After his (mis) adventures at the IIT – where he loves and loses the professor’s daughter – Krish goes to IIMA to pursue his management studies. He falls in love with Ananya, a bright Tamilian Brahmin girl, who seems on a rampage to break every shackle imposed by her conservative upbringing.
She drinks once in a while, has no qualms with pre marital sex or even living in with Krish. But once marriage plans come into the equation, both realise they have an arduous task before them.
Krish’s Punjabi mother won’t let "some Madrasis" trap her son, (the Tamilians are referred as ‘those black people’ by various North Indian characters a douzen times! There’s no malise in Chetan’s description, but it does start to jar after a point), while Ananya’s parents are stuck up on their Tam Bram 'we are so educated and cultured' credentials. How both sides eventually come around and accept the match is what 2 States is all about.

The story is clearly dated, because, the events are inspired from Chetan’s own love story and this was a decade ago! Much like in Five Point Someone, the tackling of the campus romance between Krish and Ananya is pedestrian here too. The exchanges are drab and the female character, in particular, behaves with a strange aggressiveness that is altogether unappealing. There are a few snatches of humour here and there, but not enough for you to be reassured about the rest of the pages ahead.

But in a pleasant surprise, the book comes into its own when Krish applies and gets a job in Chennai. Suddenly, he’s thrown into a new place and has to use his time and charm to get to know Ananya’s parents and make them like him. Chetan’s humour gets unleashed in full force, as he talks about various aspects about Tamilians he finds puzzling. He finds it curious how everyone here wants to be up at the break of dawn. He notices their sparse, functional homes – contrasting with the obscenely lavish and ostentatious homes of the Punjabis. He refers to the Tamil snacks as ‘spirals’, observes the funeral-like silence when they have their lunch or dinner. In the description of his boss - Bala, Chetan sharply brings out the propensity for sycophancy found among people of the community. But he also sensibly subverts this aspect with the character of Ananya’s father, who grudges the fact that his work doesn’t get him the appreciation he deserves, because he does not speak up. Chetan alludes here to the excessive sense of decorum and protocol ingrained in many South Indians.
The author’s penchant for humour makes these portions immensely readable and to his credit, even though he points at several of the community's idiosyncrasies, it’s done out of a genuine feeling of bemusement rather than to poke fun.
In fact, the author is far more brutal with his description of the Punjabis – with their love for showing off, their lack of subtly, their pretentious living.

When it comes to observations of these two communities, Chetan displays his natural flair as a writer. However, his characterization and plot development are less than impressive. The parts where Krish tries to win over Ananya’s parents are interesting, but it spirals downwards when the girl comes visiting Delhi and stays in his house. This is the weakest section of the book. Then the whole chapter where both sets of parents meet at Goa is downright bizarre. Also, some of the exchanges between the parents are so rude and direct, it’s a little hard to believe that people would converse this way in real life.

The book bounces back in the final section, where Krish goes though a depression and in an unexpected turn of events, things falls in place. The part where Krish's boisterous extended family come to attend his wedding in Chennai and are shocked that they have to be ready by six in the morning for the rituals is genuinely funny. "Is this a marriage or torture?" someone asks.

The biggest plus for the book is the choice of narrator – which happens to be Chetan himself as Krish. He comes across as level-headed, sharp-witted and genuinely nice so that even when the action starts to slacken, you remain interested in the twists and turns of his life.

Finally, as I mentioned, it’s 50-50 deal. Lots of laughs and light moments, but enough that is puerile and commonplace as well.
So where does one place this one among his earlier works? This too has many of the weaknesses of the other books, but it's probably more palatable than his last two works in terms of plot, because this is a straight-forward, episodic book.
It’s quick to read, which should mean something at a time when people run out of patience and time so quickly. And yes, full marks for the humour.
- Sandhya Iyer

Megastar - Chiranjeevi and Telugu Cinema after N T Rama Rao

2009-11-11T11:12:00.011+05:30

Author: S V Srinivas
Pages: 240

Price: 695

Publishers: Oxford

Film studies, as an area of interest to many of us, is not really a well-explored field in India. In spite of the fact that the country produces the largest number of films in the world, the various critical aspects vis a vis, its changing forms, trends, socio-cultural impact have rarely been written about at any great length academically.
Which is why, one ought to welcome any book that attempts to understand cinema in its larger context. S. V Srinivas chooses an extremely interesting, relevant and hitherto unexplored aspect of southern cinema - the mass film, the fan culture and its intimacy to politics.

It's intriguing how every big politician in the South - from N T Rama Rao to M G R from Jayalalitha to Rajkumar in Karnataka to now Chiranjeevi have played a definite role in mass mobilisation achieved through their screen images. This is the overarching theme of Srinivas' book and he goes about explaining this complex phenomenon by understanding the role of fan clubs, the mass film movement and the various elements facilitating the genre to achieve this.
What is unfortunate though is that even though the book delves into an interesting area of study, it does so in a drab, academic fashion.
It requires the reader to summon up a great level of concentration and patience to actually get by this. It's jargon-heavy, technical and approached with a tone of high seriousness, that sucks out a lot of the fun in reading it.
Also, the book tends to give you important pointers about various aspects of the subject, but there's also a certain lack of focus, which means there is too much repetition and you don't get an adequate sense of what the author intends to say finally.
Yet, for a book that solely focuses on Telugu cinema and its socio-political impact, it's obvious there will be a good deal of observations and insights about the industry in it. The author does not explain why such mass adulation is mostly a South phenomenon. My own understanding is that regional cinema is developed in the Southern states more than any other part of the country. The influence of Bollywood is limited here, unlike in other states.
Screen idols, I would imagine, are always born out of a certain sense of identification that the audience feels with the actor - the son of the soil factor. Thereby this sense of intimacy and bonding with a star is achievable only in the regional context mostly. The rare exception to this rule in Hindi is Amitabh Bachchan, but otherwise, the appeal of celebrities has been restricted to adding glamour to political campaigns.
This aspect is not really explored in the book, but Srinivas does point at a peculiar aspect of how a fan looks at his idol - his affinity to the star could be based on class/caste (though most fan clubs deny this!) which is where the question of identification comes in. So the star is viewed as “one among them - but also someone who is superior to them”, as he's blessed with special abilities. Another aspect about fans is their sense of “entailment” wherein they have definite expectations from the star and his films. This often led to what the author calls as a 'blockage” for the star-actor who could not explore new forms of narratives. For one, he could not die on screen at all!

The books speaks a great deal about the prevailing “mass film” and how it is structured entirely around the superstar to evoke a response from its target audience. The author says the “foundationally populist” nature of this cinema ensures that the narrative moves ahead according to the audiences' expectations. Using various films of Chiranjeevi, the author delves into different factors that go into making a mass film. Most of the actors earlier films, he says, established him as a subaltern, threating the prevailing feudal order. This phase also saw the rise of the 'rowdy' in the mass film, where “the ordinariness (of character) and distinction (of star) are intertwined.” Using the example of films like Gharana Mogudu (Mannan in Tamil and Laadla in Hindi), the author analyses the inherent politics of these films and the conflicts they seek to resolve. The subaltern taming the haughty, upper class heroine and so on.
(Interestingly, I noticed Hindi cinema's definite influence on Southern films and vice versa. I got to understand that Chiranjeevi is called 'Vijay' in some of his films in the 80s– Bachchan's screen name in maximum films. Similarly, the whole feudal culture/ authoritative patriarch figure seen in Hindi is mostly derived from the South films).

The author also talks at length about one of Chiranjeevi's most controversial film, Alluda Majaka, that came under a lot of flak for having several obscene sequences. Srinivas first delves into what constitutes obscenity and concludes how it “exists because it recogonises our worst fears” --- in the sense that someone else is enjoying what is so obviously offensive and embarrassing to a particular class of people. He also adds that a lot of the masses who enjoyed the obscenity did so because they saw nothing in it to hurt their sensibilities. The film was also important for the mass mobilisation it brought about. When several organisations asked for the film to be banned, the actor's fan associations organised themselves for the first time to aggressively stand up for him.

Alluda Majaka, and the events around it set the stage for Chiranjeevi's future moves in politics. The actor's career plummeted in the mid-90s, and when he came back with his film Hitler, he had also changed his image. What you had now was the tragic, authoritative figure of the patriarch, who resolved not just familial issues but also those concerning the state. Many of the actor's films around this time, says the author, addressed a mass of people within the film itself.

The book touches upon a great many points and these are divided into many more sub heads. The authorial voice does not guide you well enough through the complex tapestry of themes that are brought forth. The language is excellent though academic and goes about its business in a matter-of-fact manner. For a book on cinema and mass films, one could have done with more anecdotes and preferably a racy style of writing.
-Sandhya Iyer

'He's Just Not THAT Into You'

2009-10-29T19:44:00.008+05:30

Boy! This is so much fun

I happened to read this while casually browsing at a book store. And trust me, it's uproariously funny.

It's typically about women's love problems (there are always so many of them, aren't they?) answered in the most atypical, and succinct manner by two people called Greg Behrendt (he's the real deal here!) and Liz Tuccillo. You have women coming up with all kinds of questions relating to men whom they are interested in and Greg answers it with characteristic sauciness and wit. So a woman asks, “I've been overweight lately, so my BF tends to ignore, ill-treat me... What should I do?” So Greg says, “Girl, the only weight you need to get rid of is that 150 pounds of lump staying with you” or something to that effect.

Yet, too much of brutal honestly may not work for you, especially if you are pinning hopes on a guy to reciprocate, because this book dissuades all such women. Greg's take is that any man who wants a woman badly will never let her down. He won't do the disappearing act, he won't miss her calls, he won't ignore her, he will introduce her to his friend....all that and more. So a guy who defaults in any of this is simply not THAT into you.

Remember, Greg is merciless with some of the questions and rips apart any illusions you may have of your man...sometimes taking it a bit too far. This could be a problem, because obviously there aren't any perfect guys out there. But the book believes they exist!

It's a wicked, fun read, even if it makes the women look quite desperate and silly. One of the females even asks Greg with some irritation why he didn't consider writing a similar book titled, 'She's just not that into you' that would make the men seem equally foolish.
But Greg rules out any suggestion of chauvinism by saying such a book for men wouldn't sell even 8 copies. Not because men don't fall as violently in love or don't go through heartbreaks. But simply because men have other ways of dealing with love failures. They'd simply hit the bar, he says.

Rohinton Mistry's Tales From Firozsha Baag

2009-10-25T00:47:00.005+05:30

Author: Rohinton Mistry
Published in : 1987
Pages: 303

Neighbourhood nuggets

This was my first introduction to an author who made it to the elite club of NRI writers in the 80s--- all of whom made a definite impression in the world of literature and gave Indian Writing in English the prestige it enjoys today.
Rohinton Mistry is primarily known for two of his works, Such a Long Journey and Family Matters. Yet, I'm glad I was introduced to his writing with Tales From Firozsha Baag - a book of short stories where Mistry recounts life in a middle class Parsi colony in Bombay in the 80s. Reading it makes you believe many of these experiences are the author's own childhood memories, as many of the stories relate to young boys and their growing up days. The author describes inhabitants of Firozsha Baag in splendid details, letting us into their various quirks and living patterns.

There are eleven stories in the book, each one highlights one character or a family in the colony, but essentially all the stories are intertwined. So most of them make a passing appearance in every story. This is precisely what lends a lot of charm and uniqueness to the book. There is such a lived-in feeling about the setting that you almost get the wafting smell the fish fry that is cooked in these homes.

The author does not spend too much time with any character or any one particular story, so as a reader you are not really invested in any one person. In that sense, the book is episodic, offering a slice of life. In this Bombay apartment, there are several colourful characters – and many of the anecdotes and incidents that the author narrates would be familiar to anyone who has lived in a co-operative society.

So in the first chapter, Auspicious Occasion, you are acquainted with the cranky, supercilious Rustamji, who won’t relent to contribute for the painting of the building. The chairman Nariman Hansotia decides to teach him a lesson by getting the workers to paint the rest of the building, leaving out the exterior of Rustamji’s flat alone.

One Sunday introduces you to other occupants of the colony. One of them is Najamai, who is the sole owner of a refrigerator in the colony. Another fine story is The Collectors, that describes the reclusive, shy Jahangir who would rather sit alone with his books on the steps than join the colony’s rowdy boys gang headed by the notorious Pesi. Mistry describes Pesi’s character with great flair and irony.

Another very interesting story is Squatter that talks about a boy from the colony, who goes to Canada and dreams of becoming a foreign citizen in every sense. Except that there is one small problem. He finds it impossible to perform his ablutions in the western manner in a commode. He has to squat on it, treating it like an Indian toilet, which frustrates him no end. It’s funny yet a poignant story of a man who cannot leave behind the baggage of who he really is. The author does not hesitate from sharing extremely intimate details or habits of his characters. And he has a definite penchant for scatological humour, as can be observed from many of the stories.

Exercises is about Jahangir and how he gets caught between the love for a girl in his college and his parent’s objection to the match (for no apparent reason as such).

Rohinton Mistry not only excels in giving the reader a perfect sense of the place and its characters, he describes them pithily with language that is accessible yet immensely rich. Take for example, these lines in Exercises, where he describes Jahangir’s situation at home over the girl he is dating.
“Dinner passed without any real unpleasantry. But not for many nights after that. The dinner-table talk grew sharper as the days passed. At first words were chosen carefully in an effort to preserve a semblance of democratic discussion. Soon, however, the tensions outgrew all such efforts, and a nightly routine of debilitating sarcasm established itself.”

Most of the stories give an acute sense of the increasing gap between the old and the emerging new world. That is essentially the theme of the book. As the younger generation grows older, seeks greener pastures, you see the established order being eroded slowly, thereby causing confusion and conflict. Jahangir’s parents are upset when he chooses his own partner. This is less to do with the girl and more to do with the older generation’s puzzlement over their children charting their own paths. Bombay itself becomes a character in the book, because the city has always struggled to keep its identity and old world charm alive amidst pursuit for progress. Not to forget, Bombay is home to the largest number of Parsis in the world!

All of the author’s stories are about the nostalgia associated with the past and the celebration of the future. Many of the piquant observations of on quotidian life and characters make Tales From Firozsha Baag a highly enjoyable read.

-Sandhya Iyer