shantanu's - Reviews

The Shah's Iran .... and the Ayatollah's

2009-05-05T19:36:00.004+05:30

I wonder why Jumping over Fire is not as well known as The Kite Runner. Nahid Rachin in this book set partly in Iran and partly in the USA captures Iranian society in transition. The picture painted will be found to be extremely familiar to any reader who has read The Kite Runner. The Iranian part of the book is set in the last days of the Shah’s rule and the story unfolds through the eyes of Norah Ellahi, the daughter of an Iranian father and an American mother. They are part of the elitist section of Iranian society with Norah’s father working as a doctor in the hospital operated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, considered one of the principal tools of the Shah’s stooge imperialism. The book certainly describes an extravagant lifestyle of the Ellahi family to which Nora and her brother Jahan belong.

The problem of identity is one that this book wrestles with and it does so at several levels. There is the question of finding your identity when half of you are Iranian and half American and society is rapidly turning rapidly anti American. There is the story of the identity of an adopted child which Norah’s brother Jahan is and the horror and the bewilderment of that discovery. there is the problem of being liberal in a society that is traditional at best and orthodox at worst and rapidly becoming more so. Mid way through the book , the family secretly emigrate to the USA, where they seek political asylum and another journey of identity begins for Norah and Jahan – to be identified as American when the typical American student sees Iranians as “the enemy”, especially after a group of Iranians take American embassy officials as hostages. For Jahan, the identity issue would never be resolved, and in looks more Asian and obviously Iranian than his sister, he gives up along the way and begins a reverse journey back into Iran – identifying more closely with every thing that his parents and sister had consciously abandoned and in eventually choosing to trace out and live with his birth mother

The book is also great in capturing a society in change and transition. it begins with the children living what can only be described privileged lives in the refinery town of Masjid –e –Suleiman with the barest of restrictions and deference to local culture; a contrast that the children only experience when they visit their father’s country retreat at Meigoon where the large joint family follows tradition and typical Islamic practice like the chador. But the cities largely and certainly the anglicized enclaves where the elite live are Westernized and liberated and these trips to the country side are few and far between.

All this changes of course and once the Shah and his West leaning regime falls and the and the Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power, what was till now an aberration becomes the norm. Islamic values are more strictly enforced and other traditions even if deeply Persian and anciently rooted – like Nauroz, the traditional Spring New Year and the customs and celebration associated with them are increasingly outlawed and go underground. This is some thing that Norah is happy to run away from and Jahan is only willing to embrace even though Islamic values would run counter to a long running incestuous relationship with his sister – a theme that Nahid Rachin introduces to what purpose is a mystery.

Jumping over Fire is a story with a sweeping backdrop of history that is recent and immediate, with implications for events now unfolding in the Middle East. Kite Runner portrayed for us the changes in Afghanistan; this one talks about the changes in Iran; except that the Islamic society in Iran would seem relatively humane and welcomed compared to the loathing that the Taliban seemed to generally arouse.

Book Review: India - A Million Mutinies Now : A Review from 2009

2009-03-28T08:49:00.002+05:30

Trinidadian born Indian journalist-novelist V.S Naipaul wrote the book India – A Million Mutinies Now in the 1990s and over and over again, he recollects here , his reminiscences from his first trip of 1962 and his next one 1n 1975. He emphasises in this book that much has changed since his last two trips to India, which yielded his darkly pessimistic books, An Area of Darkness and “ India: a Wounded Civilization. In this multi layered travelogue, he describes "a country of a million little mutinies," reeling with "rage and revolt," with movements like the Shiv Sena, Dalit Panthers, the agitation of the Naxalites and the Sikh separatist movements, which were active in the 90s profiled in detail. Reading the book in 2009 is revealing ; for it shows how indeed time and tide indeed wait for no man.

The Dalit panthers have faded, the Shiv Sena exists but arguably fading and the original Naxalites of Bengal described in the book are gone as are the Sikh khalistanis. The new kids on the block are names like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, terrorists of the SIMI or LeT variety and the Naxalites of Chattisgarh and the militants of Kashmir, none of whom were around in 1990. If Naipaul were to write a third travelogue in the next ten years, may be the landscape would have changed immeasurably.

A Million Mutinies Now," which is made up of several intersecting outline, leaves the reader with a powerful impression of people's ardour, diligence and zeal. Seemingly selected at chance, these persons may not be entirely typical of the country, but they come from a multiplicity of religious, social and economic backgrounds. What they have in common is a willingness to brave gigantic difficulties to achieve their ideals or their thoughts. Some lead lives light-years separated from those of their ancestors ; others resolutely attempt to preserve tradition and ritual in their lives.

Among his profiles are Papu, a successful Jain trader and Anwar, a Muslim from Mohammed Ali Road in Bombay; Rajan, a displaced Brahmin in Calcutta; Kala, a Tamil woman who has thrown off the chains of tradition; Dipanjan, a West Bengali science professor; Rashid, a Shia Muslim in Lucknow; and Gurtej Singh, a Sikh in Chandigarh. He ends the journey in Srinagar, at the hotel on the lake from which he wrote An Area of Darkness.

in this highly readable, albeit now some what dated book, V.S.Naipaul celebrates the many expressions of every day life, of lives victorious in the midst of all the chaos, untidiness and poverty of the larger society. A Hindu by birth, though not observant, he finds India a place of great hope. It is, he says, the country where belief and unbelief coexist most peaceably.

Naipaul ends the book thus:

“Change is present everywhere, "India was now a country of million mutinies. A million mutinies, supported by twenty kinds of group excess, sectarian excess, religious excess, regional excess: the beginnings of self-awareness, it would seem the beginnings of an intellectual life, already negated by old anarchy and disorder. But there was in India now what didn't exist 200 years before: a central will, a central intellect, a national idea. .... What the mutinies were also helping to define was the strength of the general intellectual life, and the wholeness and humanism of the values to which all Indians now felt that they could appeal. They were a part of the beginning of a new way for many millions, part of India's growth, part of its restoration."

As a reader reading the book, close to two decades after it was written and having the benefit of hindsight, I am thankful for the rich and detailed analysis, and perhaps for the sense of hope Mr. Naipaul leaves me with in his concluding pages. This is a conclusion that at first seems at odds with much of his book's own evidence, and with what many of the interviewees see in the future.

Book Review : Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen

2009-03-12T09:47:00.004+05:30

Amartya Sen’s book, “Identity and Violence’ examines the unfortunate connection between violence and our tendency to identify with one key trait — our ethnicity, or religion, for example — to the exclusion of all others. Sen argues that we can combat this tendency by rejecting this narrowly defined, limited sense of identity, and embracing a broader, richer and more complex understanding of ourselves.

Speaking of his own identities, he says:

" I can be, at the same time, an Asian, a British citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin...This is just a small sample of diverse categories to each of which I may simultaneously belong. "

He bemoans our predisposition to separate human kind into many different boxes – he cites Samuel Huntington and his Clash of Civilizations stereo types. Huntington of course contrasts Western civilization with "Islamic civilization," "Hindu civilization," "Buddhist civilization," and so on. The supposed conflicts of religious differences are incorporated into a sharply fractured vision of hard-boiled divisiveness. In fact, of course, the people of the world can be pigeonholed according to many other subsets, each of which has some—often far-reaching— importance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious groupings have received much expression in recent years, they cannot be supposed to eliminate other characteristics. Amartya Sen contends that our society is driven as much by confusion as by hatred. Challenging the division of people by race, religion, and class, he presents an alternate understanding of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiralled in recent years toward brutality and war.

Sen also notes the inclination to create a random -often historically inaccurate- identity of the self in order to distinguish it from the other. Here he criticizes the idea of the Western mind whereby certain ideas (e.g., democracy) are claimed to be the sole property of the Occident. Citing examples of Buddhist councils during the reign of Emperor Ashoka (3rd Century BC) and tracts on religious freedom during that of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (16th Century AD), Sen attempts to demonstrate how such an identity can be quickly disputed.

A lot of the book is preoccupied with the Muslim identity because much of the attention is directed towards the perception and understanding of this identity in the world. Moreover, much that is valuable in the Western civilisation is a legacy of Muslim as well of other, such as the ancient Hindu, civilisations. In other words, watertight compartments between civilisations are historically unsustainable. And, of course, people themselves are blends of several civilisations so that it is not correct to assume that there is such a thing as a uniform, homogenous, monolithic Muslim civilisation.

But is it really possible to fix the responsibility for all the violence that we witness today on the failure of people to recognize the various identities of others? Would that not be as naive an attitude to take towards the occurrence of violence as the perpetrators of aggression take towards identity? How are identities really shaped and very importantly how are they correlated to more concrete, real-life processes that go on in the world? Again, while it is true that everyone has multiple identities what compels one person to prioritize one of these many identities over all others? That is for us, the readers to figure.

Book Review: The Next Christendom by Philip Jenkins

2009-03-09T19:20:00.003+05:30

What does the future hold for Christianity? Many books have been written which make a case that secular forces will instigate Christianity to grow to be more open-minded and less literal. Such statements may be confrontational and engaging, but they don't appear very convincing in light of the concrete demographic and geographic facts

These are some of the issues that are the subject of Philip Jenkins’ book on the possible future of Christianity. If Jenkins is correct, by the year 2050, six countries (Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, Congo and the United States) will each have at least 100 million Christians and Europe will have long been displaced by Sub-Saharan Africa as the most important hub of Christianity, while Brazil itself will have at least 150 million Catholics and 40 million Protestants. More than one billion Pentecostals, among the poorest in their diverse populations, will be spreading their own beliefs to the rest of the world. And as Christianity moves steadily south, it is also taking on a new character: Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa, and Manila are on their way to replacing Rome, Athens, Paris, London, and New York as the new focal points of the Christian Church.

While many Western analysts have stated that Christianity is in decay and that it must refashion its thinking or hazard being deserted by its followers ¾ or, even worse, becoming largely irrelevant, Professor Jenkins argues that just the contrary is true: Christianity is on the rise again and leading to a very different religion that barely resembles the Western reading of it. It is a variant of Christianity that most Westerners are not habituated to seeing

The book also parleys about how in spreading South, Christianity is in many ways returning to its native soil. Founded in the ancient near east, its earliest contact was greater toward the south and east than northwest into Europe. Of course, Jenkins’s designation of Christianity is broad, encompassing notional believers (i.e., “Christians” spanning actual believers to those whose declaration to Christian associations is merely traditional or cultural) in the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopian traditions, and even Indian churches tracing their roots to the apostle Thomas, and branches like the Nestorians.

The books describes how Christianity is beginning to look as it journeys south: Southern Christianity tends to be visibly more traditional theologically than northern. They are far more likely to be Pentecostal. They wait for God to work in signs, wonders, and visions–and they see it happening. Latin America is becoming more Pentecostal than Catholic. They are sending missionaries north and west. The largest church in London today is led by a Nigerian pastor. They are competing hand to hand for numbers and members with Muslims, and often, as in Darfur and previously in Rwanda, experiencing unbelievable maltreatment. They are the face of Christianity

Most books on Christianity today have had a tendency to concentrate on the experiences of the Christians in the United States and Europe - hardly a surprise, since the predisposition is that is where most of the readership for books tends to be situated. However, this preconceived notion offers a patchy and erroneous portrait of the factual nature of global Christianity. Deciding by the books now presented, it is nearly as if Christianity doesn't exist in the South. Jenkins’ scholarly book shows that the truth is entirely unlike from what we might tend to assume.

Suite Francaise : A story of Occupied France

2009-02-21T23:06:00.001+05:30

Suite Française is an interesting book for several reasons. The book is written by a Russian Jew and consists of two novellas bundled into one. They portray life in France from June 4, 1940, as German forces prepare to invade Paris, through July 1, 1941, when some of Hitler's occupying troops leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union.

The second novella ends abruptly, because the author was not able to finish the manuscript. This was because she was arrested and sent to the concentration camps and eventually to the gas chamber. Irène Némirovsky was a Russian Jew who had lived in France since 1919 and had established herself in her adopted country's literary community, publishing nine novels and a biography of Chekhov. The edition of the book that I read ends with lots of correspondence between Irene’s husband and many of her associates in the publishing industry and the occupation regime of Marshal Petain. The family tries hard to establish her whereabouts after she was arrested and sent off without any information provided to her family. =The correspondence reveals that her husband’s efforts at tracing her continued for long after she had been sent to the gas chambers ; of course these facts became known only after the war ended.

Suite Francaise was originally meant to be a set of five vignettes of French life under the Nazis but of course only two were completed. “Storm in June” is the first novella. What is interesting about the book is the diversity of characters that Irene has created and their range of responses as German bombs dropped over the Paris sky and people were forced to retreat to the countryside. So there is the aristocracy, the artistes and writers, the trading and merchant class, middle class bureaucrats and commoners; all of whose familiar way of life comes to an end and they must no prepare to move to the countryside. How they do so, the priorities in their lives as they surface under the pressure and the eventual choices they make seems to underscore the basic selfishness of the human race and the instinct for self preservation that overrides every thing when the chips are down.

“Dolce” is the second novella where the occupation is now a reality and German Army is stationed in the villages of France and most things have been requisitioned by the occupation army for military use. Again the reactions and responses of the French villagers are beautifully captured. The young women are welcoming of the German Army – the French young men are all away fighting and the German officers and men are invariably polite and respectful.

The older generation (and mostly women are portrayed) are more confused. they have memories of the First World War when the French were victorious; their husbands and sons are away fighting – some are prisoners of war and some are killed and the fate of many is not clear as France has just surrendered, and here they are; under duress, having to provided hospitality to the enemy who seen and heard close by is courteous, polite and even embarrassed at what is now happening.

A great strength of the book is that although it depicts the political scenario and the military occupation of France for what it was, it doesn’t not demonize the occupying German Army, but rather portrays them warmly with families and loved ones of their own.

What is the Point of Being a Christian : Timothy Radcliffe

2009-02-15T17:10:00.005+05:30

The author is a Dominican Friar and that alone might be enough for many of us to say that this is not for us. Besides the Dominican order as any order – religious or otherwise that has been around for centuries has had its share of controversies in the past that might cloud the present. But if we allow history or our prejudices to cloud our reading, we are making a mistake. Consider the overall message of this book: "God coming to meet us in all the drama of our lives: birth and death, eating and drinking, sex and healing.” the book doesn't drop to the level of answering the shallow questions that people ask, but looks at the person behind those questions, and how they relate to the world.

The title of the book is what is the Point of Being a Christian? In one sense, this is a personal quest but there is much in Radcliffe's search to which I felt able to respond affirmatively. He begins with what was, by his own admission, the glib response of "because it is true" but in the chapters of the book the deeply complex concept of Christian truth is unpacked. Central to the notion of Christian truth is the role of the individual within the community and the difficulties which arise within human relationships.

One thing stands out in the book. Tim Radcliffe, places the Christian faith as one that can only be lived out in a sense of belonging to a community of God’s place. To prove the point, he of course cites many examples from his monastic experience as a member of the Dominican order, but the manner in which he cites them is such that they never come through as some thing that only works for monks and priests. He really sums this up by saying that all the claims that can be made for the Christian faith – even the most basic one that it is not a religion at all but a relationship with a saviour and a God can be best understood and unpacked in the context of God’s people.

He holds up a challenge to the church to become the sort of community that can speak convincingly about the God it clams to believe in and claims that most of the doctrines of Christianity make no sense unless we have a clear understanding of the goodness of our corporeal existence. This is particularly relevant as a lot of us are presented with an atomized Christian faith where only two parties appear to exist – God and the individual believer with the church, the body of Christ reduced to the margins as a shadowy presence.

Apart form his experience as one time Master of the Dominican Order, Radcliffe is able to draw on two thousand years of church history to buttress his argument, some thing which adds weight to his claims. Most protestant writers would not be able to draw on examples more than a century or two old, with the line being drawn at the Reformation. The book, while entirely written on scriptural foundations draws on centuries of history which are distilled in to a 21st century context. Tim Radcliffe’s work incidentally was awarded the Michael Ramsay award for theological writing by the Anglican Church and the book, despite the credentials of the author and the vast frame of reference that the book addresses is a relatively easy read.

Making Choices : Peter Kreeft

2009-02-05T13:19:00.002+05:30

A professor of philosophy at Boston College, a believer, and a deep thinker about the issues facing our times, Peter Kreeft cuts to the heart of our responsibility to make choices, examining how these choices should be made and our duty to choose well. Kreeft tackles questions like, Are there any moral absolutes? Can you live a good life without living a Godly life? And if you can be moral without believing in God, why believe?

Kreeft does an excellent job of explaining, simply and clearly, that right and wrong are objective - regardless of whether or not it is easy or makes someone happy. Kreeft also clears up some moral misconceptions like 'if it doesn't hurt anyone else, then it's ok' and 'the end justifies the means'. While Kreeft argues that morality comes from God, he also argues that one need not know that or believe in God to understand and use objective morals

The last few chapters are really the heart of the book, and where Kreeft most directly engages modern culture. His discussion of sex in terms of sacredness is wonderfully clear - understanding sex as sacred simultaneously avoids both errors of hedonism on the one hand, and repression on the other. Kreeft's bit on society's confusion between sex and money is utterly incisive - that sex is often used as a mere means of exchange (of pleasure), but all manner of legal protections are erected around money, treating it as virtually sacred, even expecting it to reproduce and grow.

While grounding the choices that we are supposed to make in life in God’s plan and purpose for our lives, Peter Kreeft suggests a triangulation between three primary elements based on which God’s will may be known and appropriate choices made. The three elements he suggests are – (1) God’s Word, (2) the circumstances of our life as arranged by God and our private discernment and(3) peace of mind guided by the spark of the Holy Spirit.

Krefft stresses a lot on the pitfalls of depending on only one of these tools. He argues that depending only on scripture without interpreting it in the context of today’s circumstances and context could lead to strait jacketed legalism. Similarly depending entirely on circumstances with out reference to scripture and inner discernment could lead to decisions being made based on the criteria of situational ethics. And again, depending on “peace of mind” alone without referring to God’s Word might mean decisions based largely on emotional comfort and subjectivity.

An interesting foot note is that Kreeft expects the above tools to be used, God’s will to be discerned and choices made in the context of a community of God’s people. We live in a world that values independence and individualism, but to choose to walk the path-of-discerning independently is not the path to God's Will according to Kreeft. The concept of "communal discernment" is not that we surround you with people who will make a decision for us, but rather that these people will be ears more than mouths and question-askers more than advisors. A readable book, though slightly heavy reading in the earlier chapters but as J.I.Packer puts it. “The book clears a straight road through the thorny jungles of skewed modern thinking…..

The Calcutta Chromosome

2009-01-31T11:25:00.006+05:30

The story opens in New York with the Egyptian computer programmer/data analyst Antar discovering an ID card of a missing acquaintance through his Ava/IIse, a computer with an attitude. Ava, who is frighteningly human at times, can speak every language on earth and does not hesitate to show off or throw a tantrum on occasion. Through her, Antar enters an intriguing, timeless world, so compelling that he can scarcely keep himself from becoming involved with the adventures of his fellow programmer, the missing Murugan, or from believing Murugan's theory of a secret, powerful group operating in complete silence that controls the destiny of mankind. As Antar is drawn in by Murugan's tale, he is transported to a Calcutta hundred years in the past, into the laboratory of Ronald Ross and Ross's experiments in malaria research. Here he sees how several fortuitous (yet in Murugan's mind, suspicious,) circumstances leads Ross to discover the method of transmittal of malaria to human beings.

The Calcutta Chromosome is an admirable science fiction novel (It won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award) but it is also much more. It has elements of a horror story, medical history. The book is about the shadowy story of the discovery of the malaria parasite by a British medical man in colonial India, Dr. Ronald Ross. The fictional Ross is green in his profession but is aided by a shadowy religious sect which pushes him in the right direction. They plan on using his discoveries for their own purposes, which rely on the parasite’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and extend far beyond a malarial cure.The medical aspects of malarial fever make it fertile ground for a work of fiction. It can provoke wild dreams and hallucinations, which its remedy, quinine, does as well. And intentional malarial infection was once used as a treatment for syphilis, another disease with end stages marked by mental degeneration:

Drifting in and out of events, like the insubstantial morning mist, are a pair of mysterious figures, the untouchable Mangala and her companion Lakhan. Antar sees them resurfacing again and again but in different time periods, ranging from Ross's 19th century Calcutta to the Calcutta of the 1990s. Antar discovers too that in its modern avatar, the city can still hold many dangerous secrets. He meets (through Murugan) fascinating characters like Urmila, a journalist with a chip on her shoulder, Phulboni, a poet with a mission, and the beautiful, dramatic ex-actress Sonali Das. As Murugan seeks to find the logic in this seemingly chaotic scenario, Antar follows in his enthusiastic wake till events loop back to New York and Antar finds himself in the eye of the storm.

The concept of time plays a critical part in "The Calcutta Chromosome." At one level, it seemed to me, that all events described in the book were taking place simultaneously. At another, it appeared to be linear as one event follows the other chronologically. Ghosh's skillful manipulation of time keeps the reader slightly disoriented and on edge. Perhaps this is what he was aiming at. After all, the jacket of the book describes it as "A novel of fevers, delirium and discovery."

Like all good science fiction, "The Calcutta Chromosome" makes you think. What is the nature of time? Can souls transmigrate through genetic tampering? Can the history of mankind be pre-written by a few? Amitav Ghosh has written a fascinating book with its sly and humorous mingling of science with myth. Capable of being read at several levels, it is the sort of story that remains with you long after you've shut the final page.

Book Review: When We Were Orphans

2008-09-09T14:49:00.002+05:30

When we were Orphans" is a book that oozes gloom and depression like many others by Kasuo Ishigro. The book, which is set in the third decade of the twentieth century hops between Shanghai and London. And is set in the inter war years between World War I and II. It captures the pomp of imperialism as well as the decline of the British Empire very well. The elite Europeans live in the international settlement – a plush, secluded neighborhood while the Chinese live in crowded ghettos and work in the factories so that the rich live their comfortable lives.

At one level, it is the story of a successful detective, Christopher Banks and his quest to discover his roots and solve a case from his own life. Banks had grown up in Shanghai where his father was an officer with a British company dealing with opium – importing it from India and selling it in China. Christopher’s mother is an avid anti opium campaigner who passionately believes that her husband’s company is involved in enslaving the Chinese people by abetting their addiction to the drug and they often have domestic arguments on the issue. In fact for those of us, who have read about the opium wars only in history books, the book offers some interesting insights and background. Christopher has a best friend – a Japanese boy growing up next door by the name of Akura.

One morning his father disappeared from home and never returned back. Shortly thereafter, his mother disappeared too. After the police enquiries turned up nothing, it was arranged for Christopher to return back to England to be brought up by a wealthy aunt. There he goes to a proper public school, trains to be a detective and becomes famous. But as his fame increases and he becomes one of the movers and shakers of London society, he is tormented by the guilt of the unresolved mystery of his parent’s disappearance.

Most of the book is dominated by this over arching theme of Christopher returning to Shanghai, many years later in a world that is rapidly changing – British imperialism is already on its wane and in Shanghai, soldiers of the Japanese Army, the Kuomintang and the communist guerillas as the British and the French watch by nonchalantly from their cosy clubs and hutments in the tony “international settlement” which was parceled out between the various European powers with a base in China. The evening entertainment is punctuated by Japanese bombs falling over the city and imparting it with an other worldly luminescence even as the band plays and the elite waltz in the ballroom.

The concluding chapters of the book will haunt the reader for long. Christopher has for long believed that his father and mother’s disappearance has something to do with his mother’s long crusade against opium trade and his father eventual y beginning to take a stand about this. In fact, he as a detective has built his investigation around this very hypothesis. It therefore stings when it is revealed to him near the end of the film that the reason his father disappeared was that he ran off with his mistress and that his mother allowed herself to be sold as an concubine to a Chinese warlord who in turn paid for Christopher’s schooling expenses.

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has won the Booker and been awarded an OBE conveys the atmosphere of a brooding sense of foreboding right through the opening pages of the book and captures the atmosphere and mood of imperialism at its peak as well as in its decaying days. When we were Orphans” is in spite of the many melancholic themes it addresses through out its pages, still a page turner and that makes it an eminently readable book.

Book Review : The Lady in Blue

2008-07-20T11:06:00.001+05:30

The Lady in Blue is a book that is part history, part fantasy and part mysticism set in the framework of fiction. The fiction is not all that great but this is another book that sells a chunk of history that one could easily pass over. The context is the seventeenth century and the locale shifts from Rome and the Vatican, the Rio Grande region of New Mexico and Los Angeles. The backdrop is the unusual conversion rates among certain Indian tribes in the area.

The conversions have been apparently aided by apparitions of a lady in blue - who has been appearing to the Indians and urging them to welcome the Roman Catholic missionaries when they come to their lands and has thereby been helping the work of evangelization by spreading the seed. This by itself is not new - Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an indigenous Mexican had reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531 and so there was a precedent.

But the lady in blue unlike the earlier apparitions at Guadalupe had appeared to masses of people and several people had claimed to see them leading to an investigation by the Church authorities. The apparitions were largely attributed to a cloistered nun named Sister Maria Jesus de Agreda who it would seem appeared to Indians in the Southwest, but she never left her home in Spain. So how did she do it ? Enter the realm of miracles, mysticism and miracles. The nun in question had apparently the gift of bilocation – the ability to “transport” her body to great distances while still remaining within the gift of the nunnery. Apparently this was aided by a particular harmony of sound produced during a religious chant, although she had mystic abilities since birth. It would appear that “María paid more than 500 spiritual visits, sometimes two or three a day, to the Indians, she said. She instructed them in the fundamentals of the Faith, speaking to them in their own language. Her spirit carried rosaries from her cell to give to her charges. She healed the sick. She won converts. She urged them to contact Franciscan friars at the missions of the Río Grande pueblos and to solicit the construction of new missions for other tribes. If necessary, she would give her life, she said, to save a single Indian soul.

Church intrigue of the Roman Catholic variety abounds in the book, with the author recounting the rivalry between the many Catholic priestly orders to curry favor with King Philip IV of Spain so that they could obtain sole concessions in the newly discovered territories – both to harvest souls as well as to exploit natural resources and mines in the territories.

The book also shifts to the twentieth century as a bunch of Vatican scientists aided by the CIA attempt to recreate conditions in which Maria Jesus de Agreda “bilocated”, so that the techniques could be used for military purposes – similar apparitions could then be “Parachuted” into enemy lines for spying not conventionally possible. The scientists also look at techniques like “chronovision”, a method to apparently make it possible to visit the past and photograph events of past days and record sounds also from the past.

The historical bits of the novel are good – a nun by the name of Maria Jesus de Agreda did exist and it was said of her that she was the “lady in blue” who appeared to Indian tribes for several years and was in fact investigated by the church for complicity in witchcraft. But the other pieces set in modern times – with priests, scientists and the CIA trying to reproduce ancient miracles in modern times – well that bit comes through as nothing more than a lot of mumbo jumbo. The book is fit only to read as an illumination of a spot of history and no more

Book Review : Speaking of Empire and Resistance by Tariq Ali

2008-06-18T17:00:00.005+05:30

Tariq Ali is one of the most articulate leftist and secularist thinkers to have come out of Pakistan and has been living in exile in London since the 1960s when he began to speak out against the country’s first military dictators. Nearly fifty years later, he has lost none of his fire and has consistently spoken out against imperialism, colonialism, religious fundamentalism. In his book Speaking of Empire and Resistance conducted as a series of interviews with dissident thinker, David Barsamanian, the focus is on Anglo – American engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab world.

In this extremely readable and extremely articulate book, Tariq Ali, reaches way back into history to recreate the history of imperialist involvement in the world- both the overt, in your face British imperialism, and the comparatively overt American imperialism. For instance Tariq talks about the nature of British imperialism – viceroys and governors ET all all imported from the mother country – and the American version where they simply bought off purchasable allies willing to do their bidding. King Hussein of Jordan, Suharto, the Pakistani generals, the Shah of Iran, the several Gulf Sheikhs Emirs is cited as examples.

There are also examples from India too – Tariq for instance mentions that except for World War II, when the country served as a transit point for Allied troops headed East, at no point did the British ever have more than 36,000 troops of their own in the huge territory of undivided India; yet they were able to retain control, by buying off the allegiance of the rulers of the princely states as well as the landed gentry and aristocracy. The Americans refined the process and bought off the leadership of countries en masse.

Some observations in the book are quite poignant. Citing numerous instances, Tariq Ali establishes how during the cold war era, in the name of suppressing communism, the secular elements of the polity of many nations were either weakened or completely eliminated. Indonesia which once had the world’s largest communist party outside the socialist countries is one example where Suharto’s brutal repression wiped the nation of a secular, non sectarian voiced. Afghanistan is another example cited where a secular government was first destabilized prompting Soviet intervention and then once the Red Army moved in, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists were intentionally marshaled, trained and then coaxed to fight the godless infidels. The vacuum left by the destruction of these secular forces has now been filled by the rabidly religious, for which the US and its allies alone are to blame.

The book has been written in the context of 9/11 and the subsequent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and has that anti war focus, but surprisingly enough does not appear to be biased. Tariq Ali traces out the many failings in the early communist states – particularly the Soviet Union and points out that their own failings were also largely responsible for socialism losing popular support and subsequently collapsing.

Tariq Ali’s consistently anti American stand may not be popular with those who support the American foreign policy and the actions of the current Bush Administration in particular; but so potent and well researched are his arguments going far back into history and tracing many of today’s burning issues to their very roots, that it would take back breaking research to counter his extremely logically argued point of view. And ultimately of one thing we can be sure; no matter what view point we hold- this book will make the reader sit up and take note that there is another way to go- even if it is a path hardly ever trodden.

Kali katha via Byepass : The Marwaris of Kolkata

2008-06-17T14:31:00.001+05:30

Kalikatha: via Bypass is a strange novel which tries to document the story of the somewhat reviled, somewhat respected Marwari community in Kolkata. This, the author does through the rambling — physical as well as mental — of Kishore Babu, the now retired scion of one of the great Marwari trading families of Kolkata, who is recovering from a bypass operation in a Kolkata nursing home. Apparently as Kishore Babu puts it, the increased blood supply in his brain now that his arteries are unclogged is enabling him to see and perceive things he was hitherto unable to.

Alka Saraogi has captured well the compulsions that made the Marwaris come away from their distant Rajasthan to Kolkata, first, and also to Mumbai. Usually they would come because of famine in their harsh land – Marwar. The generic place of origin of all Marwaris is after all the place of maru (death). Leaving the women behind, the menfolk would come away to the large cities of the British Empire in the single-minded pursuit of money.

Interestingly enough, the book does nothing to sanitize the somewhat unsavory reputation of the community as unscrupulous collaborators and exploiters with the pursuit of wealth being their over-arching goal in life. Even if they indulge in occasional charity there is an implicit quid pro quo that a little bit of charity will predispose the gods a little more favorably and so charity brings a good return on investment.

Of course, the story of the migrating Marwaris is older than the city of Kolkata. Kishore Babu has been told that in the battle of Plassey which brought the British into the country as rulers, Marawai financiers-bankers called jagatseths from the Oswal family were the key movers and shakers. Jagatseth Mehtab Chand, secured for Clive the title of diwan of Bengal, from the still-nominally paramount Mughal throne in Delhi. And, of course, in time, the Marwaris would become one of the strongest collaborators with the British as contractors, builders and become reliable thekedars of the British Raaj.

The Marwaris have the unique capability to simultaneously straddle several worlds – and no doubt that is part of their entrepreneurial character. Despite the strong social conservatism and patriarchy - women have little role outside the kitchen - and the andar mahal and yet Kishore Babu could do business with the British and dine with them with little hesitation.

In fact, many of the traders initially started off by being clerks and translators from the East India Company and made their way up by fawning appropriately at their colonial masters. One of the family elder’s closest friends was a police commissioner by the name of Taggart who was known for his particular brand of brutality towards Indians.

There were the exceptions. Kishore Babu ,himself, had friends who were admirers of Subhash Bose and Gandhi and he himself was inclined towards one over the other. He had two particularly close friends with whom he had made a pact that they would meet together on their 75th birthday. Unfortunately, all this was not tolerated by the family elders. How could they permit Kishore to join Gandhiji’s non-cooperation movement and boycott foreign goods and clothes and wear khadi when all their shops sold only Lancashire mill cloth!

Similarly, it was not acceptable to support Subhash Bose who was teaming up with the Japanese to defeat the British army! What blasphemy! What if he won? For the trading community, a prolonged war was a boon. Many had made fortunes by creating artificial shortages, increasing prices and then bagging contracts to supply supposedly scarce commodities at massively marked up prices. All this while a rapidly weakening colonial government intent only on ramping up its military muscle looked the other way at civilian deaths, which according to some estimates touched 3.5 million.

Alka Saraogi’s award-winning novel bridges the idealism of the past and the disillusionment of the present and reflects it through the opportunism and grit of a community determined to survive at all costs. But although the determination and enterprise of the Marwaris is certainly talked about in the book, the author has not left us with a very flattering picture of the community, which is portrayed as selfish, socially conservative to the point of being reactionary and singularly money-minded, practically oblivious to national interests and priorities.

Mountains beyond Mountains : The Story of Paul Farmer

2008-06-15T23:15:00.002+05:30

The story of Dr Paul Farmer, an unconventional American doctor, medical anthropologist and ethnographer as recorded in Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder is a riveting piece of work; considering it is after all classified as a biography and describes the life and work of an infectious disease specialist dabbling in TB, HIV & AIDS, human rights, international health and a myriad other things.

Twenty years ago, Paul Farmer, then a young doctor met Ophelia Dahl, the daughter of the renowned British author, Roald Dahl, then on a volunteering trip to Haiti. He was 23 and she was 18. Their initial romance did not last but their friendship did and together they founded a rather unconventional charity called Partners in Health.(PIH) Mountains beyond Mountains is as much the story of this charity as much as that of Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl and Jim Yong Kim and their large hearted benefactor Tom White, a unique millionaire with the determination to die practically penniless, giving away his entire fortune way along the way. Now in his eighties, he has largely succeeded in doing this.

A man of Paul Farmer’s eminence as a clinician and an infectious disease specialist with a particular affinity initially for tuberculosis and then for HIV & AIDS would be expected to confine himself to the technicalities of disease control and international public health. But Farmer’s vocabulary includes terms like redistributive justice, preferential options for the poor and published works like Infections and Inequities : The Modern Plague(University of California Press, 2001) and Pathologies of Power : Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor ( University of California Press, 2002). Continuing in the same vein, Paul Farmer could then go on to write erudite articles in the Lancet, International Journal of TB and Lung Disease or the Medical Anthropology Quarterly

The PIH vision says it all “At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill”

This is best illustrated by the story of John, a little boy from Haiti, who was discovered to be suffering from naso pharyngeal cancer and could not be treated in the country. Incurring a cost of close to 20,000 $, the boy was airlifted to the Massachusetts General Hospital for treatment under the world’s best pediatric oncologists. When the boy eventually died, one of his younger staff members brought up the classic cost effectiveness question- the money spent on that one boy who any way died could have saved many other lives. But for Partners in Health, Paul Farmer and his friends, conventional number crunching was not important – saving every life and treating every one who crossed their path was the driver… as Paul Farmer would explain to Tracy Kidder…. People were not numbers and every life was important.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the book is where Paul Farmer’s philosophy of life – and it is profoundly provoking. As Farmer puts it …… “What we are really trying to do is to make common cause with the losers. We want to be on the winning team, but t the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it…… I am not going to stop because we stop losing…..”

The question stares at us … in a culture, society and time where success is every thing and winning every battle counts and tabs are kept of every loss, how many of us can stand up and say that we want to be on the winning team…… but not by selling our souls. Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl and Jim Kim, Tom White and their bunch come through as incredible people who will be an inspiration in any generation. Unlike many charities of this nature, which grow cash rich over the years’ Partners’ in Health hasn’t. Ophelia Dahl, the long time Director reports in her web site that for the first time in twenty years, Partners in Health was not able to raise enough funds to cover the budget for the twelve months ending December 2006. for those looking for a charity to donate, here is a worthy cause.

Stardust : Book Review

2008-05-29T20:05:00.003+05:30

Till I read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, I was of the firm conviction that Fairy Tales were for children. Adults could read and enjoy them an often did but the main audience for me was always children. But in Stardust, the author has come with a work that us a fable, a parable really that portrays life and living, good and evil, joy and sorrow in adult terms, vocabulary and theme.

The story in Stardust is about Tristran Thorn, a young man whose father is a human and mother a fairie and who in a rash decision, decides to go into Faerie Land to bring a fallen star back for the girl he loves. Once in there, he gets caught up in all sorts of adventures. The twists and turns of his journey which is contained in most of the book are filled with parable endowed truths of some sublimity. The backdrop of the book is the village of Wall, a quaint Victorian village on the edge of a dark land of witches, goblins, elves and all manner of strange creatures of whom some are good and some are evil.

There is a unicorn involved among the characters, flying boats that fish for lightning, a trio of evil witches and seven murderous brothers. The border with the land of Faerie always guarded day and night except for a day once in nine years could well represent our own attempt to keep at a distance and often unsuccessfully – the evil outside. Often enough, the unknown and the stranger is always understood or rather misunderstood as some one who is evil, who is out there to harm us, destroy us.

And yet as Tristan discovers, outside the borders, in the land of Faerie, no land and no people can be type caste and good people and bad people exist every where. Some of the witches that he and Yvaine the star who fell to the earth from the skies and who becomes his eventual companion encounter are terribly mean. And yet as they reminiscence later about the witch they wonder if “she transforms people into animals or whether she finds the beast inside us and frees it”

Neil Gaiman captures well the many intangibles that are part of being human and those intangible bonds which outlast the ones that can be seen. As Yvaine the star would one day explain of Tristan himself “He once caught me with a chain…. Then he freed me, and I ran from him. But he found me and bound me with an obligation, which binds more securely than any chain ever could”

At its most basic, Stardust is a good read; a beautiful book, and most of all, perfect for all ages. Gaiman gives his characters real depth & humanity, even the non human ones and by the end of the book, the reader engrossed in all their destinies, especially that of the star Yvaine, who is immortal but can never ever go back to her mother the moon. On dark moon lit nights, long after eventual husband Trystan is dead, the lonely but immortal star climbs up to the highest point of her palace and looks achingly up at the moon lit sky which was once her home and where she will never ever be able to go back. Perhaps the author wants to remind humans reading his book that immortality is not the unmitigated bliss that we some times imagine it might be.

Changing Gods by Rudolf Heredia : A Review of Religious Conversion

2008-05-23T01:20:00.001+05:30

In his work, Changing Gods the Jesuit sociologist Rudolf Heredia very eruditely unpacks the rather prickly subject of religious conversion- no mean job. Fr. Heredia looks at the subject from several angles and poses some probing question. At the outset, he defines some terms – Atmaparivartan - a conversion within one’s religious tradition – for instance sanatan dharmi Hindu choosing to become a follower of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or a Christian becoming born again. Then there is Dharm Parivartan a conversion across religious traditions – A Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Muslim. The author maintains that while atmaparivartan is accepted and tolerated in society, Dharam Parivartan has become increasingly politicized and frowned upon.

Of course, the two terms are not neat packages. If a Hindu Dalit chooses to become a Buddhist or a Sikh, is he doing Dharmantaran or Atma Parivartan? According to VD Savarkar, the father of Hindutva, anyone who whose pitra bhu (fatherland) and punya bhu (holy land) is any where in undivided India is a part of the Indic civilization and therefore a Hindu; the others – basically Muslims and Christians are foreigners. However Neo Buddhists coming in from a Dalit background or Sikhs particular about preserving their particular identity may not agree. Heredia pursues Savarkar’s thesis further by asking if in countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand, Buddhism should be considered a foreign faith or Hinduism in Bali should be considered one as Buddhism or Hinduism are not indigenous to these countries.

The author presents some interesting case studies: The journeys of Dr. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Sister Nivedita and Pandita Ramabai. The stories of the two ladies, both contemporaries are particularly interesting. Sister Nivedita, begins life as Margaret Noble, gets disillusioned with Christianity and is attracted to the teaching of Swami Vivekananda. She becomes his disciple but her vision for India is more radical than what he or his Ramakrishna Mission can digest. Shortly after Swamiji’s death, she is cold shouldered by the apolitical Mission and ends up bonding with Hindu Revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh who she helped in his exile to Pondicherry and Vivekananda’s brother for whom she stood bail when he was arrested on charges of sedition.

Ramabai begins as a Hindu Brahmin; Sanskrit Scholar titled by Hindu scholars as Pandita, is widowed at a young age and begins questioning Hindu patriarchy. She comes in contact with the Anglican Church. Converts to the Christian faith and is scorned by Hindus. However Anglican Christian is not he niche and as she continues her relentless questioning, she falls out with the Anglicans and remains a Christian but without quite belonging in any sect or denomination. Was the journey of Nivedita and Ramabai a Dharamantaran or an atma parivartan or bits of both? In a spiritual journey, the markers get some what blurred.

The author questions the isolationism of the minority religions and says that ghettoism does not facilitate dialogue but rather the furtherance of silence which he says is a fit bed fellow for suspicion and the propagation of stereotypes. Dialogue he says would facilitate greater understanding between different faiths and reduce tensions. Some of the other questions and issues the book examines is the conversion tradition in various religions including supposedly non proselytizing faiths like Hinduism. The book also looks at the many Freedom of Religion Acts in different states including those from pre independence days in the princely states. An interesting speculation is when Dr Ambedkar led his followers out of the Hindu fold into his Navayana school of Buddhism, promising them freedom from the exploitation that they faced in Hindu society , what would have happened if the Freedom of Religion Acts were in place. Would his offer to his followers have been interpreted as an inducement? Interesting question that!

Rough Music by Patrick Gale : A Review

2008-05-19T16:32:00.003+05:30

Patrick Gale’s book Rough Music is no easy read, with melancholia cascading through every page and sadness, despair and a sense of doom permeating every chapter. Yet the book, rambling in is initial half grows on you and in the latter half as the book reaches its ending and climax, it begins to be a book you can no longer put down. And yet having read it and finished it, it is debatable whether I would choose to pick it up for another read on another day.

Rough Music is the story of the transmission of generational grief and the book oscillates between two holidays taken on the same Cornwall beach house spread over three decades and each with its own particular tragedy. Frances Pagett a lady suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her husband John are taken for a holiday by their son Willy to a Cornwall beach house. The holiday is actually a present to Willy from his cousin sister Poppy and her husband but Willy thinks it would be a good change for his parents. The beach house seems familiar to Willy but he can’t be sure and in any case he has other things on his mind- Will I gay and is actually sleeping with his brother in law who is bisexual. The isolated holiday home provides him the perfect opportunity for a prolonged tryst with his sister away in the city.

The story is familiar to John and Frances too for close to three decades ago, when Willy and his sister were small, they had taken a similar holiday and it seems that they had stayed in the same cottage. The memories of that holiday were not pleasant however; the holiday was interrupted for John, a jail official when there was a jail break and he had to hurriedly go back leaving behind his wife and son along with his visiting brother in law and his teenaged daughter.

Patrick Gale manages to explore the deepest frailties of the human being and the extreme fragility of relationships. He dispenses with the notion that children are innocent, guileless creatures by making them the centre piece of some of the most devastating episodes in the book. It is Will, then a small child who reveals to his father hurrying back to join his family after dealing with the jail break that his mother and uncle had been having an affair, it was Will who ha helped out some what unwittingly in the jail break, it was Will who had with shaky, childish fingers taken a picture of his mother and uncle that would keep the affair for ever.

The adults are no better. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Frances may be , but it is she who brings out the fact in one of her more manic moments that Will is gay and that he actually sleeps with his brother in law devastating family relationships. The punch line is where Poppy, the daughter abandoned by her father affair his affair came to light takes her revenge. Nursing a sense of hurt for years, she takes here revenge in the most painful way possible. Knowing the course of Alzheimer’s disease and knowing that memories of the distant past are the last to go, she deliberately maneuvers to buy a holiday at the very same beach cottage where they had stayed as a child knowing that Will would never take a holiday alone and that if Frances went there and recognized the place as was likely, the ghosts of the past would come back to haunt.

Rough Music is a depiction of the hellish depravity to which the human spirit can descend. Spite, jealousy, revenge, anger, sorrow, manipulation and every thing else that can deprave the human race. The story is described well, the characters are deeply etched and all that, and yet the book leaves you with a sense of disquiet. Is it a good book? Well it has some great reviews. Will I read it again? Unlikely. Will I recommend it to others? Well may be as a work of melancholia!

A Dying Banyan by Manzar Ahtesham

2008-05-06T17:07:00.001+05:30

Manzar Ahtesham’s original Urdu work Sukha Bargad has been called a modern classic and has been ably translated into English under the title A Dying Banyan. Set in the late seventies and early eighties when Islamic tendencies are on their rise in Pakistan and Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto has been hanged while in India, Mrs. Gandhi has lost the elections and the Janata Party has come into power bringing in its wake the erstwhile Jan Sanghis.

The book tries to follow the life of Suhail, the son of a middle class and secular minded lawyer and his devout tradition minded wife as observed by Rashida , Suhail’s sister. Along the way, through Suhail’s experiences, it tries to trace the search for identity for a Muslim in post partition India.

Suhail and his family live in Bhopal, a city that has always been Muslim in character and ruled by a Nawab; but in independent India, its character slowly changes as it is rechristened as the capital of the modern state of Madhya Pradesh. Slowly as the Muslim identity erodes and many of the Muslims of means emigrate to Pakistan, questions arise in the minds of those who stay back- or circumstances force them to ask questions. The book touches upon the wars of the 1965 and 1971 and the peculiar tests the Muslims were put to.

Everyone – the Hindus and the Muslims listened clandestinely to Radio Pakistan ; but if the Hindus listened in, they were merely listening in to discover what the “other side” was saying; but if the Muslims did so, they were traitors who tuned into the “enemy” for the news. And yet with so many blood relatives in Pakistan, the Indian Muslims had valid reasons to listen to Radio Pakistan, not because they were traitors but because they had legitimate concerns about the welfare of their families.

Sukha Bargad also traces the silent beginnings of communalism in post-British India and the some what clumsy attempts of Muslims to adapt and adjust. Some like Suhail’s lawyer father held on to their secular ideals; but they had passed their prime and they were left undisturbed but Suhail, his son attempted to follow in his footsteps; he very quickly found that the going was not too easy and that under the veneer of secularism, distinctions flourished and barriers continued to be erected. Muslims react in different ways; some migrate out – that is what seems best for a time till Zia ul Huq comes to power in Pakistan, hangs Bhutto and starts promoting a distinctly unpalatable style of Islam; a few retreat deeper into their obscurantist tradition and ghetto culture and a few like the politician Rajab Ali are rank opportunists – courting the Jana Sangh one day and giving clarion calls about Islam being in danger the next day.

The ultimate message of the book is perhaps captured best by the relentless downslide of Suhail’s life – unable to make peace with traditionalists, distrusted by the liberal as well as the communal Hindu, he finds succor only in drink and decay even as his sister, Rashida, the narrator looks on helplessly. The ultimate message of the book in the translator –Kuldip Singh’s words is to peep into the heart of minorities, wherever they may be and empathize with their alienation, fears and insecurities – and society’s fundamental questioning of anyone who is different- in look, in thought and in belief and the unending agni pariksha that they have to go through – in every generation.

First light by Sunil Gangopadhyay : A Book Review

2008-04-21T21:26:00.002+05:30

Some books are difficult to classify in any particular genre. They span several; of them and in that journey leap into the classification of epics. And yet an epic is typically a piece of work that only scholars can relish. The rest of us can scarcely dream of touching one of those and make do with adaptations or summaries. But Sunil Gangopadhayay is one author who writes history as if it happened yesterday and the vibrancy of the characters , the urgency of the times, and the fast pace of the narrative never let you realize that you are actually reading and relishing a classic.

Sunil Gangopadhyay’s First Light is a book that once again like its predecessor “Those Days” brings history to life. If only school level history books were so interesting! Those Days roughly deals with the period from 1850-70 and First Light from the period 1886 -1906. First Light is like its predecessor populated by giants the nodal figure being Rabindra nath Tagore. Surrounding him is a raft of historical characters from diverse fields, be it religion, education, the theatre and of course politics.

The book pretends to be fiction but is extensively wedded to historical fact and in actuality fleshes out and humanizes for us the giants we have perhaps read about in our history books but known little about them apart from their iconic status. What Gangopapdhay does for us is paint a very believable and human picture of all these icons – be it people of the stature of Rabindra Nath Tagore or Rama Krishna Paramhansa or Swami Vivekananda or the royal family of Tripura – all are researched carefully and the facts about them are all presented –warts and all.

But the beauty of the book is that though it presents its noblest characters with feet of clay – Rabindra Nath’s leanings towards his sister in law and possibly his niece, Ramakrishna Paramhansa’s fear of death as he lies terminally ill with throat cancer, the opulent decadence of the zamindars and the royalty, their nobility comes out more enhanced because they are presented as humans with understandable failings and short comings.

Amidst all these towering characters who are basically shaping and creating history – primarily of Bengal but also vicariously also of India, the author has also managed to sneak in a love story between two fictional characters – Bharat, an illegitimate son of the King of Tripura and Bhumisuta, a rescued Devadasi and the love story serves the purpose of disguising what is essentially a gigantic lesson in history as a work of fiction.

The meticulously researched book has nuggets of information that I not easily known. That Swami Vivekananda was named thus by the Raja of Khetri, after the Swami had himself chosen a tongue twister of a name; the Raja of Khetri also financed Swamiji’s trip to Chicago for the World Parliament of Religions and also bought him his clothes which incidentally included a Western Suit. That Rabindranath Tagore’s first fan of significance was not any one in Calcutta, but the bereaved Maharaja of Tripura who was so consoled on reading Tagore’s poetry that he sought him out with gifts and presents.

First Light is of course a work of historical fiction but it very vibrantly resonates in the present; much like the Bengal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century where tradition and modernity ; struggled for space as did faith and reason, the same forces are still battling it out in twenty first century India – albeit under different disguises.

Snow Falling on Cedars : A Book Review

2008-04-15T15:03:00.004+05:30

I have never seen snow falling on cedar trees but have seen snow fall over spells in the Himalayas covering every thing in sight gradually with a curtain and a cover of snow. It has a bit of a mystical experience for me – ethereal beauty of certain intensity on one end and a deep sadness and amplification of past losses and regrets that one knows can never be redeemed on the other. But with all this mixture, my reminiscences of snow and snow fall are

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson is one such luminous book where nostalgia, beauty and realism blend. It is another multi layered book, a love story at one level, a court room drama at another and a living history of what it meant to be a Japanese American in the US in the Second World War time and its immediate aftermath. At this last level , it documents the treatment meted out to Americans of Japanese origin at that time and the perennial odyssey of minorities having to prove their loyalty time and again around the world – in different times , contexts and ways- some how, some things sadly never change and perhaps never will. Very deservedly, it had won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1994.

The brooding, lonely some what defeated character of Ishmael Chambers towers over the pages of the novel – a war veteran with one arm amputated and some one who never quite made it in life – but in spite of all the pain that filled his life, a man who never lost his decency and big heartedness. Ishmael is the son of a small time journalist on the tiny island of San Piedro where many Japanese Americans live and where following Pearl Harbor, ethnic stereotyping begins to happen.

As he sees his father valiantly trying to portray other facts in the local newspaper - the story of the many Japanese Americans and there numerous contribution to local society at a time when the flavor of the season is to be xeno phobic, Ishmael and his father discuss some timeless questions about journalism: “Not every fact is just a fact”-he (Ishmael’s father) added.” It’s all a kind of balancing act. A juggling of pins, all sorts of pins that are what journalism is about”. ‘This isn’t journalism.’ Ishmael answered. “Journalism is just the facts.” “But which facts?” Ishmael’s father asked him.” Which facts do we print, Ishmael?”

The unspoken answer is that a true journalist prints all facts and if he has a bias or a tilt, it is to report to highlight, to under line, those facts that others are not reporting, others are pushing under the carpet, that others are perhaps even hiding, a journalist is not just a man with a camera and a pen- he is a man who is called to be an advocate on behalf of those who are unable for one reason or another can not speak for themselves.

The most poignant section of the book is the one dealing with the aborted love story of Ishmael Chambers and the Japanese girl Hatsue Miyamoto, who eventually ends up marrying a man from her Japanese community, partly because of the interruption caused by the war and partly because when push comes to shove, human differences driven by ethnicity, language, race and religion will always remain to haunt us….. seemingly for over. This book of loss, lamentation and grief casts a long shadow indeed.

Lessons for Living : Lessons before Dying

2008-04-03T06:51:00.002+05:30

“A Lesson Before Dying” has the overtones of the modern classic –“To Kill A Mockingbird” with its storyline based on racism and the undercurrents of bravery of a few in the midst of the hatred of many. The book is set in a small Cajun community of Louisiana of the late 1940s and the principal characters are a hapless black by the name of Jefferson, who is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, Grant Wiggins, the only man in his community who has been to university and has now returned to teach in the local school an Jefferson’s aunt universally known as Miss Emma. Hovering in the shadows is the local pastor Rev.Ambrose.

The central theme is that Jefferson has not just been sentenced to death but that the White people in the town have also stripped him of his human dignity by referring to him as a “hog”. His aunt is determined that though the death sentence cannot be evaded, Jefferrson will go to the electric chair looking the world in the eye as a man and not like a shivering pig. The man tasked to bring about this transformation is Grant Wiggins the teacher, a man who do not believe in God and the keen onlooker is Rev. Ambrose , a man not to educated but deeply caring of his congregation and who does not believe that such a transformation can be brought about with the active participation of God.

The rest of the book is devoted to how Wiggins and also the pastor in their way try and reach out to Jefferson, who has retreated within his shell. It has some memorable lines like “It was the kind of “here” that asked the question, when will all this end ? When will a man not have to struggle to have money to get what he needs “ her”’?when will a man be able to live without having to kill another man”here” ?

Or read through this dialogue where the pastor defends himself an what he does to Wiggins, the rationalist, who does not believe in any thing that the pastor believes in : “ ‘Cause reading, wring and rithmetic is not enough….. You think that is all they sent you to school for ? They sent you to school to relieve pain, to relieve hurt- and if you have to lie to do it, then you lie. At wakes, funerals, and weddings , I lie. I lie at wakes and funerals to relieve pain…. And that’s the difference between me and you, my boy.. that makes me the educated one and you the Gump. I know my people. I know what they have gone through……”

The multi layered book asks several questions – the chief being that what is the purpose of education if it does not serve a transformational and redemptive purpose and if it is only the mechanical accumulation of knowledge. In fact, in the book Gaines draws analogies between Jefferson and Jesus. One of the first questions Jefferson asks his tutor concerns the significance of Christmas: "That's when He was born, or that's when He died?" Jefferson is executed eight days after Easter. The process of transforming Jefferson transforms Grant Wiggins too and he admits at the end of the book that Rev. Ambrose "is braver than I," and he has his pupils pray in the hours before Jefferson's death.

This is one of those books that deserve to be read at least twice. The first reading should be for the historical background and the pure story. The second time should be for seeing the true value of the story.

White Moghuls : William Dalrymple

2008-03-30T21:13:00.001+05:30

It is to the credit of William Dalrymple that a book on which research was begun in 1997 and was published in 2002 as a book of close to 600 pages with innumerable foot notes, bibliography and other explanations did not end up as a scholarly treatise gathering dust on library shelves but has made a fascinating rendering of political history of the early to middle eighteenth century Hyderabad as its intersects with the expanding political and commercial interests of the East India Company.

At the heart of the story is an unheard of romance between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a long time resident of the Company at Hyderabad and Khair–un –Nissa a Hyderabadi Deccani aristocratic woman in strict purdah. A large chunk of the story concerns their rather unusual romance concerning their respective stations in life – Kirkpatrick was the British Resident, akin to the ambassador of the East India Company to the Nizam’s court and a Christian and Khair – Un – Nissa a Muslim in purdah. Invariably their liaison had political as well as well as religious connotations which could never be fully resolved. Caught up between political and religious intrigue, calamity is never far and the couple’s domestic life is marred with tragedy, and especially so the life of Khair –un –Nissa, who according to the book married around sixteen and before her widowhood at the age of 21 had given birth to two children, and had died by the age of 27.

However to reduce the book to a mere love story however exotic the characters is to minimize the impact of the book. The larger canvas of the book is its attempt to show that the “ White Mughals” through their lives demonstrated in spite of their quaint eccentricities and even excesses that it was possible for different cultures t co exist, learn from and live together. To do that, Dalrymple strings together characters like the Kirkpatrick brothers, Sir David Ochterlony – He of the Kolkata monument, William Hickey, the diarist , William Gardner- of the Gardner’s Horse regiment , army commanders like Hindoo Stuart to demonstrate a way of life that was not uncommon in the early decades of the nineteenth century before the jackboots of the imperialism which we so well know and despise.

Sitting in the early decades of the twenty first century , it looks fascinating to examine the lives of the characters that populate the book and the twist and turns of their life. The facts are presented matter of factly – it was considered “fast travel” to get from Machalipatnam(near Vijaywada) to Kolkata in two weeks, where mail traveled through runners called harkaras , stationed non stop so that the mail never got held up because it was passed from hand to hand like relay race and where the travel options were limited to traveling overland on bullock cart or elephant or wagons or choosing a “fast ship”.

William Dalrymple’s exhaustive research ensures that one can hardly fault him on fact. He in fact brings out once again, what has always been known, that no people who engaged with India for any length of time can not be affected by it- not even the imperious, aloof and class conscious British. This is all fine and one can put the book down with just the simple conclusion perfectly true that India has a rich and composite culture that embraces any one. But Dalrymple’s own conclusion and possible compulsion in writing the book is important. In his own words “ We still have rhetoric about clashing civilizations and almost daily generalizations in the press about East and West, Islamic and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two…East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met in the past. And they will do so again.” Perhaps if we take nothing out of the book but these thoughts alone, we would have done well.

Book Review : Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

2008-03-22T19:02:00.002+05:30

Song of Kali is Dan Simmons’ first novel and was published in 1985. It is set in Kolkata in 1977 with the Emergency as a backdrop. It has been categorized as a horror novel or a work of fantasy in most American reviews and has even been awarded the World Fantasy Award. However, the Indian reader will recognize the work for was it truly is - a work of crime fiction with the Tantric sect of Kapalikas as the centrepiece and the accompanying Tantric rites contributing to the eerie atmosphere and a supernatural element that contributes to the “horror”.

For those who like this genre of work, this is a good read. Simmons is able to capture the atmosphere of Calcutta of the 70s. Those familiar with the city in those times will recollect well the author’s description of the endless power cuts, dead telephone lines, communist posters all over the city and the general sense of decay that made Rajiv Gandhi call it a “dying city”. Considering that Dan Simmons is said to have spent just two days in Calcutta when he wrote the book, I must say that he conveys the essence of the city as it was in the 70s very well.

The chief character of the book is an American Poet and journalist Robert Luczac who is married to Amrita, an Indian born mathematician. He travels to Calcutta with her and their infant daughter to collect a work by a noted Indian and Calcutta based poet, M. Das for publication in Harper’s Magazine as well as a small literary publication called “Voices” edited by his mentor Abraham Bronstein. Das has been missing for some years and is presumed dead but recently rumors have begun circulating of a new and epic work by the poet which Harper’s would like to use. But Bronstein who has been a journalist before and has been to Calcutta briefly decades before warns Luczac not to go without citing any specific reasons – setting the foreboding air of suspense of what might happen if he does go.

Things start going wrong from the time Luczac and his wife land in Calcutta. The man who was supposed to meet them is not there, but there is some one else and he presents convincing credentials and so they allow him to guide him to their hotel – The Oberoi Grand. From there the story proceeds at a very rapid pace till Luczac finds himself sucked into the shadowy world of the Kali worshipping Kapalika community and their shadowy rituals which include their initiation ceremonies which include human sacrifices. Dan Simmons recreates the ambiance by inserting recitations from the Sathpatha Brahmana, an almanac on sacrificial rituals, the Gayatri Mantra as well as tantric verses like:

“O terrible wife of Siva / Your tongue is drinking the blood, / O dark Mother! O unclad Mother……”

in creating a mystical atmosphere in which the super natural occurrences in the book occur.

In the last chapter, Simmons departs from the usual style of horror novels as he gets Luzac to attempts some kind of an explanation for what he has seen and experienced. Luzac’s summary is “I think that there are black holes in reality. Black Holes in the human spirit. And actual places where, because of density or misery or sheer human perversity, the fabric of things just comes apart and that black core in us swallows all the rest”. Maybe Luzac is right. But meanwhile, the book is worth a read not so much for its horror element but for the very vivid way in which Calcutta of the late Seventies when the Left Front government had just come to power.

The manner in which the city is described is vividly accurate and though the fact that the description comes from an American author makes it that much difficult to swallow, few who are familiar with Calcutta of those days will debate its accuracy.

Winterthorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

2008-03-20T22:33:00.002+05:30

Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy is an extremely readable book once you get used to the fact that it is neither a traditional novel nor exactly a collection of short stories. The first few chapters seem to be a bit disjointed and there is a struggle to discern how the diverse characters link up. Once the reader gives up the effort to look for a direct connection and starts concentrating on the many characters that populate the book, it is an extremely warm and entertaining book.

The hub of the book is a Catholic shrine in a traditional Irish village dedicated to St. Ann, mother of the Virgin Mary in an Irish village by the name of Rossmore. Although the local priest, Father Flynn is skeptical about its religiosity, the local people have all gone there to pray for as long as one and his notional superior, the semi retired Fr. Cassidy can remember. People come to the well to make their wishes for marriage, children, cures of diseases, and success in other endeavors. Many of the characters have slim ties to one another through family connections, having gone to school with one together, or employment.

The undercurrent of the book is this shrine which is likely to be demolished soon. Rossmore used to be a small village but no more – traffic has significantly increased in recent years and there is talk of a new express way being built that will cut down the traffic passing through the town but will take away the much loved shrine from their midst. It is this development that makes people think through their connection to the shrine and over the years.

As Binchy brings to life person after person reminiscing about the Whitethorn Woods and the statue of St. Ann and their personal equation to it, we get to see the entire spectrum of human nature of human emotions bared before the statue of St. Ann and some memorable characters come to life – Neddy, the simple but golden hearted man who calls himself “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer but the luckiest”, that will remain with me long after the book has been shelved, though with so many characters to choose from, each reader can pick an choose their personal favorite.

In a subtle and understated way, Maeve Binchy tells us the story of an ancient county coping with change. There are references to the time when Ireland used to be poor and people as a result of the well known potato famines or the over all poverty prevailing. The new express way is a symbol of the many other ways in which Ireland is changing as is the devotion to St. Ann. The parish priest is befuddled as church attendance is declining by the day but the devotion to what is essentially a folk shrine shows no signs of abating and indeed the looming express way about to be built divides the town because to the modern irreligious, it is a sign of prosperity, new and better paying jobs and a thriving economy. But to the tradition bound the destruction of the shrine is nothing but a permanent end to a way of life they have always known and admired.

Two things stay with you after you have finished the book. The first that it is possible to say a lot without being preachy. She could have written a tome about tradition and modernity or about continuity and change but she didn’t. Instead through the format of a novel she has allowed the reader to raise their own questions and through the characters who inhabit its pages, she has offered some perspective but not pat answers. To sum it up, “Whitethorn Woods” is a novel which is really a fable wrapped up as a story. Certainly worth a read!

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name : Vandela Vida

2008-02-27T22:32:00.002+05:30

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name” is a book as lyrical in its content as its title. More so perhaps because it is largely set in a part of the world which is rarely written about – Lapland. Lapland of course is the mythical land of the Santa Claus, north of the Arctic Circle and the story is set in Finland,

Norway

and Finmark among the aboriginal Sami tribe.

Vendela Vida’s second novel is part travelogue, describing the Sami country and their stark landscape, their reindeers, their stark and simple churches and buildings. It is also a description of an inner journey – a journey of two women a mother and a daughter each running away from a scarred past and hoping that running away will bring the relief that only spiritual healing can bring.

The mother and daughter are Olivia and Cecilia. Olivia, an American girl of the hippie generation who has a secret which she shared with her friend and her husbands (two of them) but not with the daughter Cecilia. Cecilia knows the secret only when her dad (the second husband suddenly dies and she has to sort out his papers. By that time her mother has left home and husband and been missing fourteen years. When in grief, she turns to her fiancée- an Indian by the name of Pankaj who teaches philosophy, she discovers that he knew all along. It turns out that the secret, which concerned Cecilia’s birth was known to all but herself.

So, Cecilia the daughter runs away like Olivia the mother. She convinces herself that she needs to discover her mother, her father too for the one she called dad wasn’t the one who fathered her and she needs to come to him. But in reality, she is not coming, she is going, going away from her own private tragedy and she leaves her sleeping and trusting fiancée, much like her mother left her trusting and doting husband a decade and more ago.

Vandela Vida begins the book with the death of Cecilia’s dad and quickly moves into mystic territory with Cecilia’s trip to Lapland. Her sparing use of words to convey images and meanings and symbols is as stark as the bare snow covered landscape that she captures in most of the novel. The many stops and interludes in Cecilia’s own journey parallel life as it were. The book will confront the reader with their own questions of identity, belonging and the needed to be rooted and the horror of it all. How do you react when it all tumbles out that the reality you have always known and grown up with is not really the way things are?

Leaving the mysticism aside, the characters will linger, Pankaj, the abandoned but devoted fiancée, Cecilia’s similarly abandoned but devoted father, the elderly Sami healer named Anna Kristine, who gives her refuge, shelter and a measure of healing and of course, Olivia, Cecilia’s mother, forever running but never quite running enough. And then of course, there is the title of the book itself. A Sami shaman who turns out not to be her father tells her of the northern lights when Cecilia sees them for the first time after crossing the Arctic Circle , “We believe they are our ancestors.” “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name” is a hauntingly beautiful book of such beauty that its fragrance will linger long after the last page has been turned.

Empire Falls : The Withering of a Town

2008-02-20T00:33:00.001+05:30

Empire Falls is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Richard Russo set in a town by the same name in Maine. The book which flits back and forth between the present and the past and captures the small town class hierarchy of a small town has tragedy woven right through every one of its main characters. The book is populated by many characters – some of who are dead but nevertheless retain a larger than life shadow over those who life. The chief character of the book is Miles Roby , a kind hearted man, who is the manager of the Empire Grill, a fast food place owned – like every thing else by the Whiting family, the local zamindar er… tycoons, who own just about every thing in the town. The living representative of the dynasty is Francine, the widow of C.B.Whiting, whose grand father founded the town. At the time when the story is set, C.B.Whiting is dead, though his is one of the larger than life characters that overshadow the book.

"The Planning and Development Commission office, which Miles had never entered before, was large, and along one whole wall sat a scale model of downtown Empire Falls, so obviously idealized that he didn't immediately recognize it as the town he'd lived his whole life in. The streets were lined with bright green toy trees, and the buildings so brightly painted, the streets so clean, that Miles's first thought was that this was an artist's notion of what a future Empire Falls might look like after an ambitious and costly revitalization project. Only closer inspection revealed that the model represented not the future but the past. This, Miles realized was the Empire Falls of his own childhood, he noticed several businesses along Empire Avenue that had been razed over the last two decades, leaving in real life a rash of excess parking lots. The Empire Grill, neglected in real life, in miniature looked as if Mrs. Whiting had given Miles every penny he'd ever asked for. "

Empire Falls was once a town of mills and the factories – all of which were owned by the Whitings of course, but which generated employment for the townsfolk and gave them the stability they needed to get on with their lives. But as the book opens, the mills and looms are shut and a lot of the custom that one day patronized the Empire Grill has also gone. Miles’ brother David is forever trying to come up with innovations to keep the crumbling restaurant going even as Miles himself is worried about the future. He worries about his teenaged daughter Tick, agonizing over his upcoming divorce and grieving and wondering about whether he has failed his mother Grace (another dead character who looms larger than life!) and of course his own timidity and attitude which he believes is partly to blame because he hasn’t been able to talk over any bold initiatives with Mrs. Whiting during their annual review meetings.

Empire Falls is a great attempt at capturing life in a small town and how the economy is often dependent on the survival of a few factories and industries which are its life lines and which in turn provide sustenance to a whole lot of subsidiary establishments like the bars and the fast food establishments. In a way, it would have been a much easier read if Richard Russo and explored the dynamics of small town living by probing the equation of the Whitings and the Miles Roby.

The many peripheral characters make the field crowded as the book progresses. They include Miles’ self focused father Max, a senile priest, an abused child, a bunch of teachers and school kids from the local high school, the town police man. The sub plots around each one makes an other wise story complex though they do serve to make the point that even in a small town, a lot is happening that is below the iceberg. That collective angst could be captured in the line that Richard Russo puts in near the end of his pretty lengthy novel “When you are older, you will understand. There are things that grown ups intend and want to do, but some times just cant”. I suppose that adulthood is about rediscovering that truth afresh. every day.

My Antonia : An Immigrant's life

2008-02-10T11:17:00.000+05:30

When I picked up My Antonia by Willa Cather I was not expecting to finish it, let alone enjoy it. The book was published first in 1918, close to ninety years ago and is set in the later part of the nineteenth century- even earlier. Usually to identify with a setting that far back in time and that too in the context of a culture with which one is not familiar is not easy.

The book is set in Nebraska and the enduring theme is the manner in which Bohemian and Norwegian migrants, particularly girls set about to make their life and the innumerable hardships they went through as they went about making their way there with little or no language, no roots or friends, an uncertain welcome they faced. Antonia is one such is girl and it is her story that is told through the narration of her childhood friend Jim Burden. Jim is a friend and more and although the under currents of romance are presented ; the story of Jim Burden and Antonia is one of pure, unalloyed and unselfish friendship and care; at places so tender that one could be left wondering if such friendships could occur more often outside the pages of books.

The book is not just about Antonia though. There are other older characters who appear earlier on in the book like for instance Mr. Shimerda, the uprooted father of Antonia, who came to the New Land henpecked by his wife, but could never forget the friends of his childhood with whom he played the fiddle at weddings and functions. Mr. Shimerda represents the old order of people who immigrated with their bodies but their souls stayed back in the old land they left. Mr. Shimerda eventually committed suicide unable to make the adjustments that his daughter would struggle to make and master.

Willa Cather not only etches beautiful characterizations in the many people who walk in and out of the book, she I able to draw out masterly portraits of the bleak Nebraska landscape and creates a hunting climate of nostalgia, partings and the inevitable unsettledness of the immigrant’s life.

Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit”, a phrase that Jim Burden learns in college "The best days are the first to flee" is the signature tune of Willa Cather’ book. A poignant story of immigrant life in small town America at the turn of the nineteenth century would be a good way to describe the book- except that it would incomplete…. This is also a story of friendships, determinations and of course the human spirit – all battles that are some times won and often lost too.

As Willa Cather concludes, “We don't lose people when they die or go away” or as Antonia would tell Jim Burden –““Of course it means you are going away from us for good," "But that doesn't mean I'll lose you. Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him”.

My Antonia is a great novel, a classic and reading it nearly ninety years reminds me of its enduring relevance in twenty first century India . we live in times when immigrants from within our land are viewed with so much suspicion, never mind immigrants of other lands raises many questions in the country and in the same breath protest if the US or the UK have similar questions and suspicions and want to strengthen their own border controls. The question of who is my neighbor whom I must love and who is the stranger whom I must suspect isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.

"Those Days" A Walk with History

2008-02-09T16:21:00.001+05:30

Those Days by Sunil Gangopadhyay leaves you astounded. Astounded that giants like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Dwarkanath and Debendra Nath Tagore (Grandfather and Father respectively of Rabindra Nath Tagore) with their towering personalities actually existed and shaped their times. Astounded also at the obscurantism that prevailed in the mid nineteenth century Bengal – all in the name of preserving the traditions and the Shastras.

The book is a mixture of history and fiction and is woven in such a way and you find it difficult to imagine where history ands and fiction begins. Sunil Gangopadhay has undoubtedly spent much time and research to recreate the history of nineteenth century Bengal in such a fascinating way. The significance of the book lies as much in its narrative power and the depth of its characters as the fact that many of the events of that era, even though they occurred in Bengal impacted the whole of India.

In the book, the immense wealth of the zamindars is juxtaposed with their lifestyles - either given over to the pleasures of the flesh or to intellectual pursuits as in the case of the two principal characters, Nabinkumar - supposedly based on the character of Kali Prasanna Singha, a Bengali aristocrat and translator of the Mahabharata into Bengali, and his elder brother Ganga.

The other extreme is exemplified by the likes of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, whose kingdom is annexed by the British and is exiled into Calcutta in all pomp and splendor as the Nawab reclining in his palki is busy composing Babul Mora¸ which of course decades later would be immortalized by K.L.Saigal.

Although the book is principally the story of Nabinkumar and his brother and their families, it is the peripheral themes and the peripheral characters that will stay and haunt you long after the last page in the book has been turned. The situation of the child widows of the time, deported for life to Benares and often picked up as mistresses by wealthy men of the time, the practices of the kulin Brahmins of the time; who made a living out of multiple marriages even as doddering old men, because of the custom that a unwed woman was doomed will stay with the reader for long. As will the personality of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a man known far less than he deserves to be known.

The lifelong battles of Vidyasagar, a conservative Brahmin in many other ways, to create an environment in which women could be educated and go tom school and also to ensure that they could remarry if they were widowed were not easy battles to fight. In fact, Vidyasagar's contribution to women’s education and widow remarriage was at the same level as Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s contribution to the abolition of Sati and religious obscurantism then prevalent. Providing even treatment to the British colonialists of the time, Sunil Gangopadhyay candidly admits that both Ram Mohan Roy and Vidyasagar succeeded largely because of the presence of a supportive group of progressive western scholars and administrators in British India like David Hare and John Bethune. Equally candidly the book describes the untold cruelty of the White Indigo planters and the atrocities they committed.

Although a work of fiction at face value, Those Days is a landmark book for reminding us afresh that history is not about politics, kings and queens and rulers and their reigns. That is what we mostly learn about in our history classes in school. Rather history is more about those apolitical giants, often little known if not totally forgotten who shaped our society and perhaps our destiny. It is on their giant and broad shoulders that we rest today and not on the pygmies we so often see surrounding us today.

Endless Rain: Visiting Kashmir's Pain

2007-01-06T18:14:00.000+05:30

In her book Endless Rain, Meena Arora Nayak captures the story of the unrest in Kashmir and how different people try and cope. She does this through a novel that spans three generations through the story of Salahudin Bhat, a shawl weaver, then his three children Aftab, Maqsood and Jamila and finally Maqsood and his wife Fatima’s four children – Ayesha, Zubaida, Sumaiya and Ali. Although the story effectively begins on the 17th of December, 1971, the day when the Pakistan Army surrenders in East Pakistan and when Ali, whose life will take a tumultuous course, is born, there are flash backs going back to 1947.

There is the Qabailis tribal invasion of Kashmir and the accompanying marauding which left Aftab and Jamila permanently scarred as they see their mother raped before their eyes is described Aftab, the eldest son tries to escape his scars by cocooning himself in the heart of the establishment by marrying a Congress man’s daughter and becoming an orthopedic surgeon in the government hospital and Jamila his sister, studies in the US, marries an American and effectively distances herself from the family, excepting for a lasting bond with her younger brother Maqsood.

Salahuddin and his family are staunch allies and followers of Sheikh Abdullah, all though his accession to India, his imprisonment in 1953, and his subsequent pact with Indira Gandhi in 1975, which many felt was a betrayal and sowed the first seeds of the insurgency. Then came the Iranaian revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which led to the birth of the Muajhideen. The 1977 death of the Sheikh, his succession by Farookh Abdullah and the increasingly blatant interference in the valley’s affairs by Delhi and its increasing alienation from the national mainstream are all well documented.

In the midst of this Ali grows up through a turbulent adolescence and is slowly indoctrinated into the path of violence. The author has weaved into the story , the various players of Kashmiri politics – the various factions of the JKLF – secular in outlook and wanting independence , the various Islamist factions wanting the state’s merger with Pakistan and the pro India parties – the Congress and the National Conference mostly – they are all there. The intrigues, power play and shifts in the balance of power as Islamic fundamentalism rises in the valley quite against the Kashmiri ethos are all described.

But Endless Rain is not just about violence, war and insurgency. It is also an evocative description of life in Kashmir – its secular fabric and Kashmiriyat, the Sufi Islam, the place, culture and political leanings of the Kashmiri Pandits, the elaborate wazwans of Kashmiri cuisine- these and more are all described and lived through the lives of Salahuddin. Ayesha, Zubaida, Sumaiya and Ali, his grand children typify the Kashmiri youth, their hopes and dreams as much as their frustrations are captured well. The case of Zubaida, brilliant in studies and yet able to get a seat in the government medical college only after her father arranges a bribe is poignant. As is the story of Ayesha who goes out with a Pandit boy, is forced to be engaged to a suitable Muslim boy and ultimately commits suicide. Meena Arora Nayak’s sensitively sketched characters living and growing up in the shadow of violence and turbulent change in Kashmir will stay with you long after you have put the book down. And by the way, this book is as good a history book disguised as fiction as you will ever get.

The Patiala Quartet - Neel Kamal Puri

2006-11-19T00:29:00.000+05:30

The Patiala Quartet is a debut novel by Neel Kamal Puri who, according to the dust jacket, is from one of the branches of the Patiala royal family in Punjab. Set in small town Punjab, primarily Patiala, in the shadow of the Punjab insurgency of the late 80s and the early 90s, the book is juxtaposed against the lives of the kakas, the rich scions of the former Patiala royalty, where there is heaps of old and inherited money and working for a living frowned upon as a sign of the nouveau rich.

It documents the lives of four cousins - two boys and two girls - Monty and Michael, Minnie and Karuna, as they grow through childhood innocence, adolescent passion and into an adulthood forever disfigured by the hurts of violence. The way the cousins react and respond to the insurgency also more or less reveals the options usually on hand for most people — conform and live or escape and live. As the book shows, the options don't sometimes work and then one kills or gets killed along the way.

The two boys in the novel come through as weak but sensitive characters living in the shadow of a feudal society that has lost its teeth but not its trappings. They are not equipped with enough of the life skills that are needed in a society that is being devastated by religious fundamentalism expressed in the idiom of violence. They hope to conform and passively bury their heads in the sand, waiting for the nightmare to go away. It doesn't. Both the boys are forever scarred, and while one is scarred enough to commit suicide (Michael), the other (Monty) lives out a zombie like existence. The two girls are on the contrary brave non conformists who brave the wrath of parental disapproval and life-long loneliness and angst to build superficially viable lives in the West. These girls inherit a life of sorts - but it is an inheritance of loss.

The book, to all intents and purposes, intends to create an atmosphere of Patiala as it was then - back in the 80s and the 90s amidst the gathering clouds of violence that will burst through as the Khalistan-inspired terrorism, discreetly described as being supported by "a neighboring country". But the character of the small town in India or Punjab does not quite come through. Pankaj Mishra does this much better in Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. But what Puri is admirably able to capture is the atmosphere of terrorism in Punjab as it slowly builds up and eventually swallows up the four young lives, who though brought up in the decaying wafts of palace spend our find it an inadequate weapon to defeat the ideology of hatred and the ammunition of violence.

In this fascinating first novel, Neel Kamal Puri crafts a heartbreaking tale of people for whom life is often a dead end. Brimming with an array of memorable cameos, The Patiala Quartet is a loving and often hilarious look at growing-up: the pain, the heartaches, the choices we make, and how they make for the difference between survival and death, between holding on and letting go.

Book Review: My Friend Leonard

2006-10-26T20:27:00.000+05:30

My friend Leonard” is a memoir that reads and feels like a thriller all the way to its last page. You have actually got to read the dust jacket to find out that the book is the sequel to an earlier memoir titled “A million little pieces”. James Frey is a man whose life has crumbled under the combined weight of drug and alcohol abuse and associated crime that puts him first in rehab and then in jail. “A million little pieces” apparently describes Frey’s life in rehab and jail and describes the blossoming of an unlikely friendship between him and Leonard, a well connected Mafia don of the old school, who is also in rehab for his cocaine addiction. The two become friends and Leonard begins to look upon him as the son he never had.

By the time” My Friend Leonard” begins, the don is already out and is back in business and Frey is just about to be released. Tragedy hits him as soon as he is out of jail , when he discovers that his girl friend , another recovering addict and Frey’s only other friend in the world has just committed suicide. Shattered and almost defeated, he reaches out to Leonard, a gangster and mobster to the world but one who knows James as only my son, my son MY SON. And there begins the saga of a beautiful story of friendship and healing between two broken individuals trying to reform , recant and make some thing beautiful of their lives , each haunted by their own compulsions and ghosts.

The characterization of Leonard is one of contrasts. Gangster and mobster he is and is surrounded by his hit man called” Snapper” but he exudes old world charm. With ladies, he goes down on his knees, kisses their hand and pulls out chairs, the men he greets with a firm handshake and a profile that identifies as the “West Coast Director of an Italian Finance Company” with interests in “short term loans with high interest rates” (read betting and gambling”. Leonard lives life king size and is the fable godfather to his normative son. When James shuns the break that Leonard offers to begin a career in the underworld, he is not offended but extends all support. As the story lines flits between Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, James builds his fledgling new career as a cleaner, barman and eventually a Hollywood scriptwriter with Leonard’s benign eye looking on appreciatively.

The final section of the book makes it truly human. Leonard is dying. He is gay, has been all his life and some where along the way has contracted HIV. He has kept AIDS at bay for many years and has lived life to the full but as finally it catches up with him, he prepares to meet his beloved son one last time and then having smoked his last cigar and said his final goodbyes, he reaches for his box of pain killers and sails off into the beyond. One can not put down the book without wishing that we should all be so lucky as to have someone like Leonard in our lives and equally importantly , be a Leonard to some struggling James Frey- broken , battered and scarred but still struggling to still stay afloat.” My Friend Leonard” is a tribute to the goodness in the human heart that refuses to fade , no matter how tough life gets and no matter how ghastly the portrait that society paints of us.

Never Let Me Go

2006-10-21T10:51:00.000+05:30

Never Let Me Go is the sixth novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who won theBooker Prize in 1989 for his novel Remains of the Day. The maincharacters are Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, who are students at Hailsham, avery exclusive, very strange English private school. Like Eton,Hailsham has strange customs and names and an arcane terminology.Those in charge are called "guardians" while former students are knownas "veterans". There is a mysterious "Madame" who drops by occasionally and something called "the Gallery." It sounds sinister but it is the opposite.To Kathy and her peers it is almost an Eden, symbolizing the best time of their lives. They are treated well in every respect, but as they grow older they come to realize that there is a secret that haunts their lives: their teachers regard them with fear and pity, and they don't know why.

Once they learn the secret it is already far, far toolate for them to save themselves.They're organ donors, cloned to be broken up piecemeal for spares. The purpose of Hailsham is to prepare them for their future - to help install the powerful mechanisms of self-repression and denial thatwill keep them steady and dependable from one donation to the next. After finishing school they grow from puzzled children to confused young adults. They live in a prolonged limbo, waiting for the call to donate. They're free to wander. They write essays, continue with their artwork, and learn to drive, roam Britain looking for their"possibles" - the real human beings they might have been cloned from.Much of the success of the book has to do with the way Ishiguro renders the normality, even tedium, of the world of Hailsham, and then inserts into it icy slivers of menace. Hailsham is like any other school, and if the children feel different, then they are merely like the privileged students of any happy, self-regarding private establishment.

The first third of the book chronicles the squabblesand jockeying and jealousies of ordinary school children. Kathy isclearly in love with Tommy, who seems to be a troubled boy, but Tommy chooses Ruth, who is dismayingly mercurial in her feelings toward Kathy, supposedly her closest friend. There is much rivalry, power play of a kind familiar from books and films about school days,between Ruth and Kathy.So what is the book really about? It's about the steady erosion of hope. It's about repressing what you know, which is that in this life people fail one another, grow old and fall to pieces. It's about knowing that while you must keep calm, keeping calm won't change a thing. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up oneday and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been. The novel succeeds in involving us with these people because it is really about all of us- about how we cope with the knowledge that death is inevitable, about the myths we create and the lies we tell and jokes we make to hold back the gloom. In that sense, Never Let Me Go is an emotionally compelling, very moving investigation of the human condition

The little prince - a story of hope

2006-10-06T18:55:00.000+05:30

The Little Prince appears to be a simple children’s tale, some would say that it is actually a profound and deeply moving tale, written in riddles and laced with philosophy and poetic metaphor. The narrator, an airline pilot, crashes in the Sahara desert. The crash badly damages his airplane and leaves the narrator with very little food or water. As he is worrying over his predicament, he is approached by the little prince, a very serious little blond boy who asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator obliges, and the two become friends. The pilot learns that the little prince comes from a small planet that the little prince calls Asteroid 325 but that people on Earth call Asteroid B-612. The little prince took great care of this planet, preventing any bad seeds from growing and making sure it was never overrun by baobab trees. One day, a mysterious rose sprouted on the planet and the little prince fell in love with it. But when he caught the rose in a lie one day, he decided that he could not trust her anymore. He grew lonely and decided to leave. Despite last-minute reconciliation with the rose, the prince set out to explore other planets and cure his loneliness

Understanding life is what this story is about, for both the author and his subject. The Little Prince lived happily alone on his small planet until the wind planted for him a new seed, from which sprang the loveliest flower he had ever seen. He lavished his love and attention upon the flower, which in turn tormented him with her vanity and her pride, ultimately driving him to abandon his home and venture forth into the galaxy in search of the secret of what is really important in life. He learns this secret, finally, from a creature of the Earth - a fox. With his new level of understanding, the Little Prince is at last ready to return home, but not before he passes on his new knowledge to the author - knowledge of the healing power of love which makes all things unique, and how the pain of saying goodbye is worth it if it changes how we look at the world. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who is was a French author, journalist and pilot wrote The Little Prince in 1943, one year before his death. The Little Prince was growing in Antonine’s mind through all his youth and in different steps of his life as a pilot and writer... In many ways the little character was the author himself.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

2006-08-18T22:47:00.000+05:30

The Historian of Elizabeth Kostova's novel is Paul, who is drawn into a historical search for Vlad the Impaler, the Romanian tyrant who inspired Dracula. Paul's daughter narrates the story, telling of her search for the historical truth behind Dracula, to understand her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate. As she explores through ancient texts and clues scattered across Europe, she discovers to her horror that Vlad is the possessor of an ancient evil power and is still alive, or at least at some level of existence. It's an evil that she must confront and understand if her father is to be saved. Make no mistake: this story has it all. This is the kind of novel that reminds you once again why you love to read. This is the book you skim a dozen others to get to, just to savour every word.

Like all good stories, it's about a quest that in this case begins in the library at Oxford and expands to Istanbul, Budapest, Bulgaria and, of course, the Transylvania province of Romania – the traditional home and kingdom of Vlad the Impaler. Combining elements of fact and fiction, in a larger sense, the story is about one of the most powerful and enduring myths of our time. As father and daughter engage themselves in a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler or the Dracula, they discover that generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about this ancient evil.

What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed — and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign — and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.

Filled with suspense, wit, and superb dialogue, Kostova gives her readers one of the most realistic vampire tales ever written. Set in the U.S., England, Amsterdam and most of Eastern Europe, and some of the West, The Historian digs deep into the mysterious nature of Vlad Tepes' death, and whether or not the rabbit hole is really as dark and scary as it is deep