tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-719303402981071152024-03-13T23:03:26.656+05:30Within the PurviewViews, opinions, articles, thoughts on books, publishing, reading, writing, literature, etc; and some short fiction.Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-18860518218821473002018-12-10T11:24:00.001+05:302018-12-10T11:31:31.431+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Patna Blues: Abdullah Khan<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Rs 499</span></b></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At its heart Patna
Blues is a story about burning ambition, intense desire, illicit love and loss.
Twenty-one year old Arif, the son of a policeman in Bihar, is an IAS aspirant
confident of cracking the exam in his first <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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attempt. However, the first attempt
turns to second, the second to third and so on once his path is crossed by
Sumitra, a beautiful, much older and much married woman. Arif is dangerously
attracted to her from the very first moment he sees her in the park with her
father. Chance has him running to her aid in an emergency at that point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Later, Sumitra and
Arif connect over poetry apart from other things and the author’s passion for verse
and easy familiarity with it comes to the fore. Being conditioned the way he is,
hailing from a middle-class Muslim family, Arif then tries his best to stay
away from Sumitra in order to allow his desire to diminish and makes a
conscious effort to focus on Farzana, his cousin that his parents want him to
marry. Yet, again and again he is drawn back to Sumitra.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AWq4rMxO57U/XA3-1CfTwEI/AAAAAAAAA3E/WQLwZX_5rLAiz6ugr21kQ20MwdHrijlOACLcBGAs/s1600/51B51w7e3XL._SX321_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="323" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AWq4rMxO57U/XA3-1CfTwEI/AAAAAAAAA3E/WQLwZX_5rLAiz6ugr21kQ20MwdHrijlOACLcBGAs/s400/51B51w7e3XL._SX321_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="258" /></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The best part about
the novel is the utter simplicity of the narrative voice -- a most endearing quality -- that has no literary
pretensions. Arif’s internal conflict, his hopes and fears regarding Sumitra,
his hopes and fears regarding his IAS exams, his love and respect for his
father and brother Zakir; his initial camaraderie and later embarrassment
vis-à-vis his close friend, Mrityunjay, are very well portrayed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Khan deals with several themes simultaneously
– foremost amongst them Muslim identity in a place dominated by Hindus and
constantly under threat from right wing Hindu fanatics. The sense of insecurity
Islamophobia creates in the young Arif as he cycles past a group of Hindu right
wingers shouting anti-Muslim slogans and his father’s anger over being treated
with suspicion by his colleagues, are powerful scenes. So is the exchange
between Sumitra and Arif when she expresses her displeasure over her daughter,
Kavita, being involved with a Muslim man, Manzar Ali, that leaves her young
lover stung. What the author focuses upon with great subtlety is the constant misgiving
and anti-Muslim sentiment even the best of people, perhaps unconsciously, store
in their heart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It isn’t a perfect
novel in that it tries to accommodate too much in too little space – perhaps a
longer saga spread over a few more hundred pages would have done the political
and social events greater justice, but it does not take away from the relevance
of the incidents mentioned. It is certainly an indicator of how much more the writer has to offer in the coming days. A scintillating debut. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-15405088074599821542018-03-03T23:31:00.002+05:302018-03-03T23:31:12.915+05:30The Book Hunters of Katpadi – by Pradeep Sebastian: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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[Published in India Today mag: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20180226-the-book-hunters-of-katpadi-author-pradeep-sebastian-1170896-2018-02-16">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20180226-the-book-hunters-of-katpadi-author-pradeep-sebastian-1170896-2018-02-16</a>]</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Book Hunters of Katpadi by Pradeep Sebastian is a
rare debut. Imagine an India where bibliophilia rules not just a handful of
serious book readers, academics and publishers, but also typesetters, printers,
booksellers and book collectors. Imagine a certain level of knowledge, scholarship
and passion each one of them possesses that makes them engage with each other
regularly to hold discussions about the physical book as a form of art. Imagine
well-attended auctions of rare first editions where learned bidders will go to
any extent to outdo each other. That is the kind of Utopia Sebastian offers his
Indian readers with Chennai as the setting for his ‘biblio-mystery’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The story revolves around Biblio, an antiquarian bookshop
in Chennai, run by two women – the owner, a forty-something Neelambari Adigal
(or Neela), and her younger assistant, Kayalveli Anbuchelvan or Kayal. Kayal is
the protagonist. Through her POV the reader learns about Nallathambi Whitehead,
‘a book collector of particular importance, one among a band of wealthy,
significant collectors in India’ and his archrival, Arcot Manovalan Templar
(owner of the only book-auction house in India). Whitehead tells the women
about the existence of some rare documents about Sir Francis Richard Burton,
the British explorer and writer, having recently come to light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pradeep Sebastian</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On Whitehead’s behalf Kayal visits Selvaganesan, the man
who claims to be Burton’s descendant, in possession of the rare documents,
including the controversial ‘Karachi Papers’. ‘Karachi Papers’ happen to be the
‘unholy grail’ collectors from all over the world have been trying to lay their
hands upon for years. They are supposed to hold the key to the mystery behind
Burton’s disgrace and sudden departure from India.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sebastian’s passion about books and book collecting is
evident on every page; so much so that it pervades the reader. He explores each
aspect of the physical book in detail, offering little stories and anecdotes to
make them appealing. In fact, this kind of almost-academic minutiae and
digressions from the plot might have become tedious but for his clever leaps
back and forth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There are way too many aspects in the book to cover in
this review. For a genuine bibliophile/book collector, however, this book is
nothing short of a slice of paradise. The descriptions of cozy little
antiquarian bookshops and private libraries are beyond beautiful. Many readers
may feel skeptical about the Indian setting, but Sebastian somehow manages to
pull it off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One just wishes the focus
on the plot had stayed consistent – it takes a backseat midway – but the
surprise element in the end more or less makes up for it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*****************<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-36730672415340575492018-01-19T15:31:00.005+05:302018-01-20T22:59:22.633+05:30Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
Fleet<br />
368 pp<br />
Rs 499<br />
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[Published by India Today mag, July 3, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170710-book-the-underground-railroad-pulitzer-prize-winner-colson-whitehead-1021612-2017-07-03">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170710-book-the-underground-railroad-pulitzer-prize-winner-colson-whitehead-1021612-2017-07-03</a>]<br />
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Colson Whitehead’s novel, Underground Railroad, works well as a literary thriller of sorts set in the pre-Civil War era, with all the excitement of a physical chase – a cat and mouse game between the slave and the slave catcher, with the latter closing in upon his quarry all the time.<br />
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At the centre of the story is Cora, an African slave on a cotton pla<br />
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ntation in Georgia, ‘an outcaste even among her fellow Africans’ because her mother, Mabel, managed to run away, leaving her daughter and her fellow slaves to their fate. Cora is welcomed to womanhood by four rapists who drag her behind the smokehouse to finish their job. Nobody intervenes. ‘The Hob women sewed her up’, the narrator informs us clinically.<br />
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When Caesar, a young slave from Virginia, decides to include her in his plans to escape through the Underground Railroad, it does not take Cora too long to give in even though both of them know it would be Death for them if they are caught, especially after Cora kills a white boy in order to escape from his clutches on the way. Accompanying them is Lovey, another young slave, whom they lose at this point.<br />
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The Underground Railroad is not simply a metaphor; it’s an actual track with a box car led by a steam engine that occasionally harbours refugees and conveys them to their freedom. At one of the stations there is even a cave-in, ‘a ruse to camouflage the operation below’. <br />
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Close on their heel is Ridgeway, the most brutal of slave catchers, who despises Cora more because her mother managed to escape him. After a while Caesar’s and Cora’s paths diverge. Help comes from unexpected quarters in unexpected ways – from Sam, Martin and Ethel, Fletcher – amateur rescuers, sympathizers and raw abolitionists who eventually have to buckle before the powerful evil forces. <br />
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As a character says, ‘And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all […] This nation shouldn’t exist […] for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty.’<br />
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Whitehead’s accounts of the horrors of slavery are unsparing. He writes about them unflinchingly. Yet one senses a distance between the writer and his work. The narrative lacks psychological depth that would hook readers who demand more.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Colson Whitehead</td></tr>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-28791394498127391442018-01-19T15:28:00.003+05:302018-01-20T23:00:24.976+05:30 Uncommon Type – Tom Hanks: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Uncommon Type – Tom Hanks<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
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[Published in India Today mag, Nov 12, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171120-tom-hanks-writes-short-stories-collection-uncommon-type-1083708-2017-11-12">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171120-tom-hanks-writes-short-stories-collection-uncommon-type-1083708-2017-11-12</a>]<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_G_0CgVYrKA/WmHDuWgEjzI/AAAAAAAAAp8/sRDAOR5SuAcos8IiYXd5EUoinrpIVktuACLcBGAs/s1600/41ZdAngJK3L._SX309_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="311" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_G_0CgVYrKA/WmHDuWgEjzI/AAAAAAAAAp8/sRDAOR5SuAcos8IiYXd5EUoinrpIVktuACLcBGAs/s320/41ZdAngJK3L._SX309_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="199" /></a>Over the last few years India has seen book launches and literary festivals across the country bombarded with big names from Bollywood. Often these events are described as ‘star-studded affairs’. Now, increasingly, from being chief guests cutting ribbons to release books, actors are becoming active participants as writers or protagonists in their memoirs/autobiographies/biographies. Twinkle Khanna, Sunny Leone, Karan Johar and Rishi Kapoor are some recent examples. Out of these both Khanna and Leone have successfully tried their hand at fiction.<br />
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Skeptics may wonder how many of them can really write, but better than usual sales figures usually make up for other inadequacies. Some, of course, do succeed in surprising their readers with genuine talent.<br />
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Quite natural then that Hollywood stars should be next. Well-known actor and Oscar winner, Tom Hanks, has just published his collection of seventeen short stories, Uncommon Type, about 400 ambitious pages long.<br />
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The obvious question that comes to mind is: Can he write?<br />
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Answer: Sure he can. Better than most people would like to believe. He may not exactly be a literary giant in the making, but he can certainly tell a story and tell it well. A distinct voice – even if the tone is informal for the most part, a racy style and believable characters are the stronghold of his literary universe. Sometimes the stories are interconnected, the characters repeated. The very first story, ‘Three Exhausting Weeks’ has its characters recur in ‘Alan Bean Plus Four’ and ‘Steve Wong is Perfect’. They are also perhaps some of his best stories. In fact it is quite easy to imagine the author playing the male protagonist in a TV/movie adaptation of most of them.<br />
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Hanks also experiments with form. The character, Hank Fiset, for instance, is a columnist at a newspaper struggling to survive. He is also, perhaps, the actor-author’s alter ego whose own stories occur in column inches more than once. Yet another, ‘Stay With Us’, reads like a play. Hanks draws a great deal from his experiences as an actor. ‘A Juket is the City of Life’ is a fine sample.<br />
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To Hanks’s American readers, especially those acquainted with his movies, a lot of it may sound familiar or even clichéd, but it still works pretty well for the majority of Indian readers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tom Hanks</td></tr>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-53320391093559895792018-01-19T15:25:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:00:25.098+05:30Tin Man – Sarah Winman: review <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tin Man – Sarah Winman<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
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[Published in India Today mag, Sep 8, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20170918-sarah-winman-tin-man-1039827-2017-09-08">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20170918-sarah-winman-tin-man-1039827-2017-09-08</a>]<br />
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After the huge success of her first two novels, When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways, Sarah Winman has returned with her third novel, Tin Man, a rare gem and literary feat for any writer. The opening line says, ‘All Dora Judd ever told anyone about that night three weeks before Christmas was that she won the painting in a raffle.’<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gb5I19zOeNo/WmHEkkvzuKI/AAAAAAAAAqM/VuVncmHs1LU9FO6ibNJN75WSS1yQasgqQCLcBGAs/s1600/9780755390960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="441" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gb5I19zOeNo/WmHEkkvzuKI/AAAAAAAAAqM/VuVncmHs1LU9FO6ibNJN75WSS1yQasgqQCLcBGAs/s320/9780755390960.jpg" width="196" /></a>The painting in question is a cheap copy of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers that Dora chooses over a bottle of whisky in defiance of her husband’s wishes at the event. The painting of sunflowers is a recurrent motif in the book as its possession passes from Dora to her son Ellis and later his friend Michael. It is symbolic of ‘the life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty.’<br />
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Right after this prologue Dora disappears and the stage is taken over by two other characters: Ellis and Michael. The narrative shifts from the former to the latter and then back to the former. Ellis is forty-five in the initial chapters and works at a Car Plant at Cowley Road, Oxford, repairing dents with the proficiency and love of an artist. As a child he wanted to be an artist and had his mother’s encouragement. But after her death his father forced him to take up a job.<br />
<br />
When Michael enters his life in his teens, Ellis discovers love. Michael is both his best friend and lover. Michael’s relationship with Dora is that of two equals, both intellectuals and art lovers. Nothing in the book is overly stated; the reader is left to read between the lines. And then Annie enters the lives of the boys. Both Ellis and Michael fall in love with her, though she chooses to marry Ellis. Michael vanishes from their lives – to return much later.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1IiHvdGmru4/WmHEvTz7A5I/AAAAAAAAAqQ/NOfHh8DDL94LXOHNf6YEiAvyQuYfCympgCLcBGAs/s1600/methode%25252Ftimes%25252Fprod%25252Fweb%25252Fbin%25252Fc907163c-7795-11e7-b7e4-cc0394df39fd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="685" height="179" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1IiHvdGmru4/WmHEvTz7A5I/AAAAAAAAAqQ/NOfHh8DDL94LXOHNf6YEiAvyQuYfCympgCLcBGAs/s320/methode%25252Ftimes%25252Fprod%25252Fweb%25252Fbin%25252Fc907163c-7795-11e7-b7e4-cc0394df39fd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarah Winman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This multilayered narrative brings several works to mind to compare and contrast with, including Bill Hayes’s Insomniac City, Anais Nin’s diaries, especially Henry and June and even Ken Follett’s historical novel, A Dangerous Fortune. This novel beautifully explores the themes of love, longing, loss and the easy acceptance of all three. The poetry lies not in the novel’s eroticism or exploration of sexuality, but elsewhere – in the pursuit of liberty and art. The author says much without saying much.<br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-67871737326755282712018-01-19T15:22:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:00:25.311+05:30The Small-Town Sea – Anees Salim: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Small-Town Sea – Anees Salim<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
Penguin<br />
286pp<br />
Rs 599<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, June 3, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170612-anees-salim-the-small-town-book-review-black-comedy-986531-2017-06-03">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170612-anees-salim-the-small-town-book-review-black-comedy-986531-2017-06-03</a>]<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wtv8ZMouHpI/WmHFQ6EyROI/AAAAAAAAAqY/bVyQ56zLw9EMWz4WijviBbM4PtJhR0KPQCLcBGAs/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wtv8ZMouHpI/WmHFQ6EyROI/AAAAAAAAAqY/bVyQ56zLw9EMWz4WijviBbM4PtJhR0KPQCLcBGAs/s1600/download.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anees Salim</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Even a cursory reading of Anees Salim’s latest novel, The Small-Town Sea, reminds one of EM Forster’s A Passage to India, where the most ordinary becomes extraordinary through the writer’s craft. Salim shares that quality with the great literary master.<br />
<br />
To mark the ordinariness we have a nameless thirteen-year-old protagonist from a nameless little town (apparently Varkala) and a nameless father (called Vappa) in the first chapter. The boy is forced to move from a big city, where the excitement of a metro-line is just beginning, to the small city – his father’s hometown. As a patient of terminal cancer, his father wants to die in a house near the sea.<br />
The boy makes friends with Bilal, an orphan who lives at the orphanage with the Imam, near his new home, and the two become partners is the usual boyish ‘crimes’. When his father finally dies, his mother is pushed into a second marriage by her relatives. The boy’s life changes radically as he is left behind alone, lonely and unsupervised in the care of his grandmother.<br />
<br />
Salim’s obsession with human mortality is quite apparent in his novels. Each has been darker than its antecedent, but this is his darkest yet. All the elements of black comedy are there: the terminally ill vappa on his bed surrounded by relatives planning his obituary, while he stubbornly refuses to die; a street-smart Bilal who invents stories about witnessing pirate battle<br />
s at the sea, perched upon a tree, as the narrator looks up awestruck; the narrator trying to use an injured pigeon in his house for pigeon-post, etcetera, buttressed throughout by strong satire.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5CLmezVSi8/WmHFZhU0WWI/AAAAAAAAAqc/YtAJoq69pQI3lRhsPhh1RzeaarwNunM9gCLcBGAs/s1600/51XgmasImtL._SX322_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5CLmezVSi8/WmHFZhU0WWI/AAAAAAAAAqc/YtAJoq69pQI3lRhsPhh1RzeaarwNunM9gCLcBGAs/s320/51XgmasImtL._SX322_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="207" /></a>Motifs and metaphors abound. Vivid imagery prepares the reader for the string of tragedies to occur. The sea, for instance, is almost a character itself, beautifully described as a ‘blast of white, a streak of cobalt’ and yet nothing but a ‘liquid desert’.<br />
<br />
Salim likes to experiment with form. The Blind Lady’s Descendants was written as one long suicide note. This book is a letter by the narrator to his father’s literary agent, Mr Unwin (reminiscent of Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger). A glossary precedes the two parts of the book, dutifully labelled as ‘rising action’ and ‘falling action’ as in a creative writing class.<br />
<br />
Compared with Vanity Bagh or The Blind Lady’s Descendants the pace may be slightly slow. Despite certain bursts of brilliance, the excitement around this book is a notch lower than the others perhaps because the readers are by now familiar with the scenario. An important factor is the similar-sounding narrators in all three: young, male, subtly funny, removed from their surroundings and perceived as somewhat slow by their peers. Over the last few years Anees Salim has easily been Everybody’s Favourite Author. Expectations are naturally high. It will be a treat to see him experiment and whip up something surprising. </div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-25729934358295033972018-01-19T15:19:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:00:24.916+05:30The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told: Edited by Muhammad Umar Memon: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told: Edited by Muhammad Umar Memon<br />
<br />
-Review by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[ Published in India Today mag: Oct 20, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171030-muhammad-umar-memon-urdu-partition-stories-india-pakistan-1067363-2017-10-20">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171030-muhammad-umar-memon-urdu-partition-stories-india-pakistan-1067363-2017-10-20</a>]<br />
<br />
<br />
In 2003 Sahitya Akademi published an anthology, Short Stories from Pakistan, translated from the Urdu (1998) into English by M Asaduddin and edited by Intizar Hussain and Asif Farrukhi. In its Preface Hussain says, ‘…just after the Partition the writers and thinkers had to negotiate questions that were specific to Pakistan. The writers in India were not faced with such questions as they were inheritors of a historical and literary continuity. We had to discover the connections anew. If we were a different nation then what was our national and cultural identity?’<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZIacQlZbkXw/WmHF4L9-g6I/AAAAAAAAAqo/Bl3WfTzKQKsTZNN_3KMTuSmQbdhaA_SvACLcBGAs/s1600/412WqtGwTgL._SX336_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="338" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZIacQlZbkXw/WmHF4L9-g6I/AAAAAAAAAqo/Bl3WfTzKQKsTZNN_3KMTuSmQbdhaA_SvACLcBGAs/s320/412WqtGwTgL._SX336_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="216" /></a>Given that stories of Partition form a significant part of Urdu literature, this is an important point. The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told, Aleph’s new anthology of 25 stories from India and Pakistan, edited by Muhammad Umar Memon, is broader in scope. Memon’s collection traces the journey of the short story in Urdu from the oral, and later written, ‘dastan’ in the early 1800s – with its love for the fantastic and supernatural – to its engagement with social realism and political protest (esp. from the Progressive Movement in 1936 to India’s Partition in 1947) and, more recently, to the exploration of deeper psychological issues and intellectual concerns.<br />
<br />
The collection includes well-established names such as Premchand, Manto, Ismat Chughtai, etc, to new voices such as Khalida Asghar, Sajid Rashid, etc. What emerges, eventually, is a range of themes – from the horrors of war, migration and exile in the classics to fear and desire (‘Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire’), literacy, education and the love of learning (‘The Shepherd’), mixed-faith marriage and terror (The Saga of Jaanki Raman Pandey), trauma and lunacy – both temporary and permanent, women’s sexuality and situation in a highly patriarchal society (Lajwanti, Aanandi, Fists and Rubs, Banished, etc).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sRkZIN805K8/WmHGESvdvaI/AAAAAAAAAqs/KfEGo3stJsQW8UOzbveiPQSWTZcVQplzwCLcBGAs/s1600/leisurerainbow_102017020737.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="647" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sRkZIN805K8/WmHGESvdvaI/AAAAAAAAAqs/KfEGo3stJsQW8UOzbveiPQSWTZcVQplzwCLcBGAs/s200/leisurerainbow_102017020737.jpg" width="151" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Muhaamad Umar Memon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In fact, stories such as ‘Lajwanti’, ‘Aanandi’, ‘Jaanki Raman’, ‘Fists and Rubs’, ‘Banished’, etc, mark it almost as a feminist collection. In more than one story parallels are drawn with Sita and the Ramayana. In ‘Lajwanti’, it is the idea of Ram Rajya, while ‘Banished’ shows yet another Sita. Strong satire and hard-hitting images make a lasting impact upon the reader. Khalida Asghar’s ‘The Wagon’ is a unique story with a unique theme. It is both a reminder of a deadly past and a warning of impending doom in the future. A red sky, three mysterious men, a stench-drenched city and a vanishing wagon are vi<br />
vid symbols suggesting a nuclear war. The story slowly builds up a sense of terror and anticipation. In a way, life comes full circle after the Partition. </div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-55967042202430148452018-01-19T15:15:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:00:25.160+05:30The Book of Dhaka: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Book of Dhaka: A City in Short Fiction: Edited by Pushpita Alam and Arunava Sinha<br />
<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
Comma Press<br />
164pp<br />
Rs 698<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, Jan 15, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20170123-dhaka-a-city-in-short-fiction-pushpita-alam-arunava-sinha-985552-2017-01-15">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20170123-dhaka-a-city-in-short-fiction-pushpita-alam-arunava-sinha-985552-2017-01-15</a>]<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tu67GjTmdoA/WmHGzjN8-EI/AAAAAAAAAq0/yQ5DpYT0LSoGggjAfdYgCS2RHDmKzuiFQCLcBGAs/s1600/Dhaka%2Bcover_HR%2Bcrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="260" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tu67GjTmdoA/WmHGzjN8-EI/AAAAAAAAAq0/yQ5DpYT0LSoGggjAfdYgCS2RHDmKzuiFQCLcBGAs/s320/Dhaka%2Bcover_HR%2Bcrop.jpg" width="209" /></a>The Book of Dhaka is the result of a collaborative creative writing project between Comma Press and several writers/translators, publishers and institutions from Bangladesh, India and the UK (The British Centre for Literary Translation, Bengal Lights Books, Commonwealth Writers, British PEN, ULAB, etc) , working towards a common goal: to broaden the reader base for literature that was once meant for a specific target <br />
audience in a regional language (in this case Bengali or Bangla) in order to help ‘unify experiences’.<br />
<br />
This collection of ten short stories in translation by various writers, put together by Pushpita Alam and Arunava Sinha, combine classic, modern and contemporary literature, exploring themes such as love, longing, misfortune, heartbreak, fear, failure, corruption of the soul, loneliness, violence, class divide and even lunacy (ultimate isolation). Most of the stories are open-ended.<br />
<br />
K Anis Anhmed’s Introduction mentions, ‘In 1952, East Pakistani Bengalis fought against the West Pakistani imposition of Urdu above their own beloved Bangla language. Every February, Dhaka rolls out the largest of its cultural events, the month-long Ekushey Book Fair, honouring the Language Movement that eventually spurred the country’s liberation.’ Military action and violence move unapologetically, and at times unexpectedly, from background to foreground in some of these stories (‘The Raincoat’, ‘The Weapon’, ‘Mother’). For those familiar with narratives of Partition, however, it is still familiar ground; there is nothing new in these tales per se. Their uniqueness lies in the human element, in personal accounts of loss and sorrow. Not all losses are physical or tangible.<br />
<br />
Some of these stories capture, like a camera, the precise moment when one finds oneself staring into the eyes of defeat; when the very effort to fight back a greater force becomes a travesty. Some of the finest examples of this are ‘The Raincoat’, ‘The Weapon’, ‘The Circle’, ‘Home’, ‘Helal was on his Way to Meet Reshma’, ‘The Path of Poribibi’ (with its mythical quality) and ‘The Widening Gyre’.<br />
<br />
‘The Weapon’ is the only story told in the voice of an omniscient narrator, who is also supposedly a character in the story. His intrusive voice insists upon the authenticity of the story and of the tribe of storytellers. This one traces the life of its protagonist, Ponir Ali, as a book-loving child to the time when he becomes a young, formidable man in the neighbourhood. It certainly strikes a chord with a sensitive reader.<br />
<br />
‘The Circle’ shows a couple’s effort at romance. Though on the surface it is very simple, even an amusing one to some, it has a strong fundamental message. Fine nuances and sheer pathos make it one of the most memorable pieces in the book.<br />
<br />
‘The Widening Gyre’ celebrates and satirizes Dhaka’s ‘great tradition of political protest’ similar to India and quite relevant to current-day scenarios. It is a realistic portrayal of what happens at an organized protest rally when a student leader dies. The banner the three protestors carry reads: ‘We shall not let our anti-authoritarian, democracy-loving leader Swapan Bhai’s blood be shed in vain. Justice for the murder of Swapan, etc…’ Towards the end the slogans become symbolic of something else – complex but false ideals, the pinnacle of apathy; the words acquire consequence because of their insignificance.<br />
<br />
Characters belong to different strata of the society and are tied together by the essential human condition. Though the stories are centred on Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, they could have happened anywhere, any-when. In fact, very often Dhaka seems to be built upon the same social, political and cultural blueprint as Delhi. Like Delhi, two very different worlds coexist: posh glass-and-chrome offices of multinationals or wealthy indigenous set ups overlook shanties and jhuggi-jhopdi colonies; the same kind of hustle-bustle, vigour and vitality can be felt in the atmosphere which brings together ‘slum kids, film stars, day-dreaming rich boys, gangsters and former freedom fighters’ amongst others. And it is for this unity in diversity that these stories ought to be read.<br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-46691518776169397622018-01-18T23:09:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.132+05:30Tell me a Long, Long Story: Edited by Mini Krishnan: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tell me a Long, Long Story: Edited by Mini Krishnan<br />
-Review by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published by India Today, Sep 29, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/19700101-tell-me-a-long-story-mini-krishnan-book-review-translations-indian-regional-languages-1054498-2017-09-29">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/19700101-tell-me-a-long-story-mini-krishnan-book-review-translations-indian-regional-languages-1054498-2017-09-29</a>]<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--9yhx2SuD8s/WmHHStoHQdI/AAAAAAAAAq8/eGEwNRQsyqIb8oNTlYKy10Yhfj1b3mUJQCLcBGAs/s1600/9789386021144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="282" data-original-width="189" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--9yhx2SuD8s/WmHHStoHQdI/AAAAAAAAAq8/eGEwNRQsyqIb8oNTlYKy10Yhfj1b3mUJQCLcBGAs/s1600/9789386021144.jpg" /></a>Mini Krishnan, the editor of Tell Me a Long, Long Story, explains in the preface how the anthology came into existence. While she was putting together translations of some novellas from certain Indian regional languages for Oxford University Press, she came across some stories that were neither short enough to be included in short-story collections nor long enough to be published independently. They were in the range of about 8000 to 20,000 word<br />
s. Since she felt they were ‘exceptional pieces of fiction’, she decided to compile them ‘as part of a larger collection’.<br />
<br />
Tell Me a Long, Long Story is therefore a compilation of twelve such stories translated from the original Indian languages, including Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Only one story, Chetan Raj Shrestha’s ‘The King’s Harvest’ doesn’t seem to be a translation. Most of the original authors as well as translators are well-established names (from Mahasweta Devi to Pratik Kanjilal to J Devika, Shanta Gokhale and others) and the stories, naturally, carry the legacy of the Indian classics forward.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QczF25sB0ow/WmHHcPghZsI/AAAAAAAAArA/RNS7gqhFG1AXH4Da8SuuuqfEn4mALL-3wCLcBGAs/s1600/Mini-Krishnan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="304" height="166" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QczF25sB0ow/WmHHcPghZsI/AAAAAAAAArA/RNS7gqhFG1AXH4Da8SuuuqfEn4mALL-3wCLcBGAs/s200/Mini-Krishnan.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mini Krishnan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Krishnan’s preface elucidates the context in some detail: ‘My immense and astounding country […] has a god beneath every stone,’ she says. ‘This Truth and the myriad lesser truths of India present a formidable challenge to anyone who sets out to study the essence of the country, the essence that drives its creativity and informs its fiction.’ Then she proceeds with an account of Indian history, battles lost and won against foreign raiders and the consequent influences of alien people, cultures and languages upon the country’s own literature and culture. The selections in here are a rich example of these.<br />
<br />
<br />
Writers have raised their voices against social evils right from the beginning. Like termites issues of caste discrimination, sexism, misogyny, illiteracy and superstition, patriarchy and insensitivity among myriad others continue to afflict the society even today. Some of the stories depicting these are more hard-hitting than the others. For instance, Shripad Narayan Pendse’s ‘Jumman’ (trans. By Shanta Gokhale) or Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Lingering Fragrance’ (trans. By<br />
Tahira Naqvi). Some are unique and evocative of the realm of magic and the supernatural. For instance, KR Meera’s The Deepest Blue, and Kamalakanta Mohapatra’s ‘The Witch’. Bolwar Mahamad Kuni’s ‘Period of Mourning’ also deserves a special mention as a heart-wrenching piece.<br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-59844300997457668192018-01-18T23:04:00.003+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.674+05:30Paul Beatty: The Sellout: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Paul Beatty: The Sellout<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
Oneworld Publications<br />
292pp<br />
Rs 399<br />
<br />
[Published in india Today mag, Nov 16, 2016: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20161128-paul-beatty-the-sellout-man-booker-prize-829891-2016-11-17">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20161128-paul-beatty-the-sellout-man-booker-prize-829891-2016-11-17</a>]<br />
<br />
Was it as ‘post-racial’ America under Barack Obama? Beginning with Donald Trump, will it ever be?<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x9jzVNQt_4U/WmHIH6kCl_I/AAAAAAAAArQ/61SEJsKSS7cUIlPG3CagTtI4jooYp_zHgCLcBGAs/s1600/25667451.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x9jzVNQt_4U/WmHIH6kCl_I/AAAAAAAAArQ/61SEJsKSS7cUIlPG3CagTtI4jooYp_zHgCLcBGAs/s320/25667451.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
Strange that The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s fourth novel, should not only have won the Man Booker Prize 2016, the first American novel to have received the honour, but that it should have done so at a time when the US presidency is about to be transferred from Obama to Trump. Such a book has rarely been timed so well.<br />
<br />
2016 having been an election year in the US, the country has already seen enough action: unprecedented political polarization, a high incidence rate of the shootings of black people by the police, resurgence of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – later eclipsed by a huge populist counter-movement for white supremacy championed by a bigoted presidential candidate – finally culminating into a shock victory for that very contender. America has not experienced such turbulent waters for a long time. So wide is its impact that on social media the US is now being referred to by some as the Divided States of America. <br />
<br />
Following in the Swiftian tradition Beatty’s tragi-comedy, a biting racial satire, strikes every target with equal wit and force (the civil rights movement; the Black History Month, etc). Its opening lines reveal the tenor of the entire novel: ‘This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards.’<br />
<br />
The first-person narrative flows from a nameless Afro-American narrator, who is occasionally called Bonbon by his girlfriend, Marpessa, or simply ‘the Sellout’ by Foy, the leader of the Dum Dum Intellectuals. It begins with Bonbon is waiting in the Supreme Court, charged with an unexpected crime: trying to reinstate slavery and segregation of the local high school (non-whites only) – as the owner of the black slave, Hominy Jenkins.<br />
<br />
Bonbon is born in a ghetto – Dickens – on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Raised by a single father, a controversial social scientist and ‘a sole practitioner of the field of Liberation Psychology’, the young boy serves as a subject for his dad’s myriad sadistic experiments on race. If the accounts were not so comic, they would be horrifying. Ironically, the father is also a ‘Nigger Whisperer’, a man whose ‘sonorous’ voice calms disturbed black men – a job bequeathed to his son after his sudden killing by the police at a traffic stop. He is also the founder of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, a group of ‘star-struck, middle-class black out-of-towners and academics’ who meet regularly at the doughnut shop. Beatty’s portrayal of this assembly is the sharpest spoof.<br />
<br />
The father’s death triggers the plot. Initially, Bonbon is told that his father’s memoir would solve their financial difficulties, but then he realizes the document never existed.<br />
<br />
As gentrification of the place begins, Dickens vanishes from the map quite literally. Hominy Jenkins, the last surviving member of Little Rascals and Bonbon’s first ‘nigger whisperee’ insists on being his slave. With his help Bonbon takes upon himself the task of restoring the erstwhile ghetto on the map and starts defining the boundary of his hometown on the road with white paint and a line-marking machine. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1farsB7vo8s/WmHIS_TeAEI/AAAAAAAAArU/z-cDTL-j6dImGq3wTu5vfFtCVF9VGJLEwCLcBGAs/s1600/paul-beatty-759.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="759" height="221" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1farsB7vo8s/WmHIS_TeAEI/AAAAAAAAArU/z-cDTL-j6dImGq3wTu5vfFtCVF9VGJLEwCLcBGAs/s400/paul-beatty-759.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Beatty</td></tr>
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One of the major themes in the book that Bonbon returns to over and over again comes from his father: ‘Brother, you have to ask yourself two questions, Who am I? And how may I become myself?’<br />
<br />
Besides the ‘bat-shit crazy’ Hominy Jenkins, the other interesting character is Foy, a caricature-litterateur and the author of The Adventures Of Tom Soarer, Measured Expectations , who also rewrites Twain’s Huck Finn, replacing the ‘n- word’ with ‘warrior’ and ‘slave’ with ‘dark-skinned volunteer’, being overly obsessed with the idea of respectability. <br />
<br />
The problems with the book, as they have increasingly been with the Man Booker Prize winners over the recent years (Richard Flanagan, Han Kang, Marlon James, etc) are the almost esoteric culture-specific references and dialects that appeal primarily to academics and intellectuals. But to a general reader’s palate? Not quite.<br />
<br />
****</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-92124907567966426702018-01-18T22:59:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:01:43.452+05:30Loyal Stalkers – Chhimi Tenduf-La: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Loyal Stalkers – Chhimi Tenduf-La<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
Macmillan<br />
232 pp<br />
Rs 499<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, July 15, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170724-loyal-stalkers-book-chimmi-tenduf-la-1024304-2017-07-15">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170724-loyal-stalkers-book-chimmi-tenduf-la-1024304-2017-07-15</a>]<br />
<br />
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wor7-4dajh4/WmHJbA92S4I/AAAAAAAAArk/r8BRgv35NuoO8V13xAaBISrKzYJBzexxACLcBGAs/s1600/01373.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wor7-4dajh4/WmHJbA92S4I/AAAAAAAAArk/r8BRgv35NuoO8V13xAaBISrKzYJBzexxACLcBGAs/s320/01373.jpg" width="268" /></a>Loyal Stalkers, Chimmi Tenduf-La’s latest offering – a collection of interlinked short stories – is a far cry from The Amazing Racist, his first and perhaps most popular work of fiction. Yet his most serious tales reveal a dapple of cheerfulness that marks him as a unique writer. A stark contrast between subject and style means he risked the collection being dismissed as superficial by some. Curiously enough, this peculiarity only heightens the darkness and makes the narrative more hard hitting. <br />
<br />
An amalgam of sanguine and gloomy the fifteen stories evoke a thousand emotions in the reader simultaneously, keeping them on edge all the time. While the <br />
‘happier’ ones such as Lovable Idiot, My Fair and Lovely Lady, and Everyone Has to Eat, have a somewhat Manu Bhattathiri-like feel to them despite a shadow of melancholy in the background, the others are simply disconcerting. The title story, Loyal Stalker, for instance, where Chin-up Channa, a gym instructor obsessed with his beautiful rich client, first follows her abroad and then takes to living in her house like a phantom, watching, observing, and acting on her behalf – all without her knowledge.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SBQAdPhZCPs/WmHJiLdxWUI/AAAAAAAAAro/Wcb-vMR3ULUw4Qhc_4dkDfxqfhxBWN3UQCLcBGAs/s1600/download%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="179" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SBQAdPhZCPs/WmHJiLdxWUI/AAAAAAAAAro/Wcb-vMR3ULUw4Qhc_4dkDfxqfhxBWN3UQCLcBGAs/s320/download%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a>Another is The Dog Thrown Off a Building, probably inspired by a recent real-life incident in India, whose video went viral on social media, but with a twist towards the end. Other examples include White Knight, Devil Mask Tattoo and Tuk Tuk Bang among others – that create the same creepy feeling and sense of anticipation that Ruth Rendell stories tend to do. As the title points out, there isn’t one stalker but several. But all these stories are also strangely poignant. The best part about them is their ability to spring surprises upon the most widely read reader. Tenduf-La does it over and over again convincingly. Meanwhile, the larger plot develops subtly, almost imperceptibly, and unfolds only towards the end. <br />
<br />
Tenduf-La’s characters throb with life: Chin-up Channa – the gym instructor, the cricket coach (Coach Uncle), Jinesena – the security guard at Monsoon Lodge, Pasindu Amarasinghe – the young cricketer with an overzealous mother, Kiyoma – the battered maid soldie<br />
ring on in her life. Only, the writer seems to have a soft corner for fair women, since majority of those who appear in the book are described as such.<br />
<br />
Overall it is a brilliant collection – one of the few to appear in quite some time that rekindles the reader’s interest in the short format. <br />
<br />
*****************</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-24341727076624686212018-01-18T22:55:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.418+05:30Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me -- Bill Hayes: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Insomniac
City: New York, Oliver, and Me --</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Bill Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--reviewed by Divya Dubey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bloomsbury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">294 pp<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rs 599<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Published in India Today mag.]</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bill Hayes</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At its core<i>
Insomniac City </i>by Bill Hayes is a love story – or rather two love affairs
running on parallel tracks. The first focuses on the author and the distinguished
neurologist, Oliver Sacks, the object of his affections, and the second is the
love affair between him and New York City. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hayes is almost fifty when the book begins – with the death
of Steve, his partner. Steve died of a heart attack, ironically, on a day when
the ‘insomniac’ Hayes was asleep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Guilt-ridden and unable to bear the heartache Hayes moves
from San Francisco to New York City where he meets Sacks, thirty years his
senior and a man who asks ‘What is Michael Jackson?’, has ‘no knowledge of
popular culture after 1955’ and ‘zero interest in celebrities or fame’, and
falls in love with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WUg8PR2ZSm0/WmHKPCBOZ_I/AAAAAAAAAr4/25QxVjwcp9gXyobREZl9iv7LHmAZ9BIxgCLcBGAs/s1600/30038960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="270" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WUg8PR2ZSm0/WmHKPCBOZ_I/AAAAAAAAAr4/25QxVjwcp9gXyobREZl9iv7LHmAZ9BIxgCLcBGAs/s320/30038960.jpg" width="216" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sacks’s unique personality, in fact, comes across more
emphatically through Hayes’s precise, simple descriptions and sometimes single
lines. For instance, Sacks describes the sunset as ‘an attack of beauty’; voices
his thoughts aloud, such as: ‘Are you conscious of your thoughts before
language embodies them?’ or confesses to Hayes in a rare erotic moment, ‘I like
having a confusion of agency, your hand on top of mine, unsure where my body
ends and yours begins’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hayes’s musings on NYC that alternate with the other
thread, emerge mostly from the random subjects of his photography – people he
meets and interacts with on the streets: Ali, a neighbourhood shopkeeper,
skateboarders on the road, an aged artist who just draws one of his eyes for
him, etcetera. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The magic of Hayes’s writing lies in its surprising
minimalism, yet brilliantly evocative images. The focus is so much on Sacks and
his growing deafness, blindness, Cancer and approaching death in the later
pages that one often overlooks the modest, self-effacing Hayes nursing his
aging, dying love as he grapples with emotional upheaval for the second time in
his life. Hayes himself leaves no scope for the reader to pity him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is
tenderness without sentimentality, acceptance of what cannot be altered and a
strong positive attitude that embraces life in its entirety. This book is a fascinating
ode not only to romantic love, but to Life. It is as much a celebration of Life
as it is a reflection upon Death. The little ‘vignettes’ are meant to be
enjoyed slowly and gradually as sips of fine wine rather than in a single
gulp. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">*****************<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Divya Dubey is the publisher of Earthen Lamp Journal, the
Editor/Instructor at Authorz Coracle, and the author of <i>Turtle Dove: A Collection of Bizarre Tales</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-78688357824850836472018-01-18T22:42:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:01:43.332+05:30I Am Watching You: Teresa Driscoll: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I Am Watching You: Teresa Driscoll<br />
-Review by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20180101-i-am-watching-you-teresa-driscoll-book-1113270-2017-12-23">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20180101-i-am-watching-you-teresa-driscoll-book-1113270-2017-12-23</a>]<br />
<br />
Perhaps one of the best psychological thrillers released this year, I Am Watching You by journalist and former BBC news presenter, Teresa Driscoll, is a novel about the mysterious disappearance of the sixteen-year-old Anna Ballard from a club in London.<br />
<br />
The book begins with Ella Longfield, the ‘witness’ watching Anna and her best friend Sarah being chatted up by two young men on the train. Ella is bored to death by the book she has bought and to pass the time she finds herself overhearing the conversation between the four youngsters. Anna and Sarah are travelling to London to celebrate the end of GCSEs – a gift from her parents. The girls are travelling solo for the first time.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0jss1A3cdsk/WmHK_eYTrhI/AAAAAAAAAsA/b4M2tAOyX84Y2aIp4BmLTbIhqvyTWVrVACLcBGAs/s1600/8Fe_b911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0jss1A3cdsk/WmHK_eYTrhI/AAAAAAAAAsA/b4M2tAOyX84Y2aIp4BmLTbIhqvyTWVrVACLcBGAs/s320/8Fe_b911.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Teresa Driscoll</td></tr>
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<br />
Soon Ella’s curiosity is piqued further when she realizes that the two young men are ‘fresh out of prison’. She is shocked when, at an impulse, she follows the girls around and catches the second one locked in the toilet having sex with a man she has just met. Ella is in a dilemma. On the one hand she is tempted to trace the girls’ parents and raise an alarm; on the other she is doubtful about interfering in their personal lives as a blabbermouth ‘prude’. Finally she decides to maintain silence.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b6gV_KpEVhw/WmHLGwWEPaI/AAAAAAAAAsE/E9cJ-HqA6kweNjqmvt4Sb0N7iRnCdFk5ACLcBGAs/s1600/51PeVt0WznL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b6gV_KpEVhw/WmHLGwWEPaI/AAAAAAAAAsE/E9cJ-HqA6kweNjqmvt4Sb0N7iRnCdFk5ACLcBGAs/s320/51PeVt0WznL.jpg" width="213" /></a>But the next day she wakes up to the news that the gorgeous green-eyed beauty, Anna, has suddenly vanished. The police step in. Anna’s family and friends are questioned and so is Sarah, but there is no progress. They all seem to be guarding their own secrets.<br />
<br />
Wracked with guilt, Ella informs the police about her own role in the matter. Somehow her name is leaked and she has to face a trial by the media and the public who roast her relentlessly for failing to look out for the young adolescent. To the extent that she has to disappear from social media and close down her flower shop temporarily.<br />
<br />
A year later Anna is still missing. On the anniversary there is yet another appeal on television leading to new developments. Some people have not forgotten. And now Ella has begun to receive threatening anonymous postcards. Someone is watching her closely and constantly.<br />
<br />
Like any good suspense thriller the pace of the book never dips. Eve<br />
ry thread is developed well and tied up neatly. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger. And Driscoll manages to maintain suspense throughout, heightening it at times, revealing just the right amount of information at the right time. Apart from the overuse of one refrain, ‘You disgust me, dad’ in Anna’s dad Henry’s musings, the book seems to have no real flaw. Certainly a treat for crime fiction lovers. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-19927317690560686022018-01-18T22:40:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.298+05:30Home Fire: Kamila Shamsie: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Home Fire: Kamila Shamsie: review<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, Aug 19, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170828-kamila-shamsie-pakistan-muslims-expat-home-fire-1030158-2017-08-19">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170828-kamila-shamsie-pakistan-muslims-expat-home-fire-1030158-2017-08-19</a>]<br />
<br />
<br />
The personal is political. Nowhere does one find a greater example of this phrase than in Kamila Shamsie's latest novel, Home Fire, long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2017.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4YY0dX8wjw8/WmHMKQZqNQI/AAAAAAAAAsU/5PW9zYexhLY1ULtO1LZ8vMcCOJmujB0cwCLcBGAs/s1600/35491487.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4YY0dX8wjw8/WmHMKQZqNQI/AAAAAAAAAsU/5PW9zYexhLY1ULtO1LZ8vMcCOJmujB0cwCLcBGAs/s320/35491487.jpg" width="199" /></a>Woven around two Muslim families in the UK, juxtaposed time and again, the tale speaks of love, longing, loyalty, rebellion and defiance, justice and injustice, and the price one eventually has to pay.<br />
<br />
Isma Pasha is finally 'free' when the book opens. She no longer needs to play mother to her siblings -- nineteen year old twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, as she had since their mother's death. After struggling with the visa office and quietly swallowing her humiliation she lands in the US to pursue her PhD in Sociology, while the twins stay back in London. Yet she cannot really get away.<br />
<br />
By happenstance Isma runs into Eamonn Lone, an old acquaintance and now the son of the Home Secretary, Karamat Lone - a British Muslim. Eamonn is a handsome young man well aware of his position of privilege and also bound by it. Smitten, Isma reveals her background to him, the fact that her father - Adil Pasha - was a jihadist.<br />
<br />
A photograph Of Aneeka's at Isma's makes Eamonn trace her down to London. Eamonn and Aneeka are caught up in a whirlwind romance until Eamonn discovers her secret mission, which he perceives as treachery - at least for a while. Meanwhile, lured into following his father's footsteps by a 'friend', Parvaiz travels to Syria, only to find himself trapped in a situation far worse than anything he imagined.<br />
<br />
Shamsie's character portraits are realistic: the quicksilver Aneeka as a foil to the somber Isma; the young and defiant Eamonn as a foil to his conformist father, Karamat; the twins as a composite whole with no space to accommodate their elder sibling. The only time the author seems to falter a little is while depicting Aneeka's mercurial nature and whimsical actions, which sometimes come across as contrived.<br />
<br />
Shamsie's novel, which moves at the pace of a thriller, is more gripping than any literary novel this reviewer can recall, except perhaps Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. Every page is fraught with tension and conflict - both social and psychological, and the pitch perfect account of Parvaiz's life, especially in Syria, reflects the author's exhaustive research and familiarity with the subject.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r1qnOFFKBmM/WmHMQSTdvqI/AAAAAAAAAsY/2UaxJHWmvDU-7BiOJfb4BFPlsHECUGlCwCLcBGAs/s1600/kamila-shasie-by-salmar-raza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="300" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r1qnOFFKBmM/WmHMQSTdvqI/AAAAAAAAAsY/2UaxJHWmvDU-7BiOJfb4BFPlsHECUGlCwCLcBGAs/s400/kamila-shasie-by-salmar-raza.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kamila Shamsie</td></tr>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-46236574132136688602018-01-18T22:31:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.072+05:30Himalayan Hazard – Amitabh Pandey: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Himalayan
Hazard –</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Amitabh Pandey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--reviewed by Divya Dubey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Published in india Today mag, Dec 2, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171211-himalayan-hazar-amitabh-pandey-gautam-shukla-new-thriller-book-1098095-2017-12-02">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171211-himalayan-hazar-amitabh-pandey-gautam-shukla-new-thriller-book-1098095-2017-12-02</a>] </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Amitabh Pandey’s first novel, Himalayan White, did well
as a crime fiction thriller with its protagonist, Gautam Shukla. Shukla is a
former lieutenant colonel who used to work with the ‘shadowy’ Special Forces
unit and moves to Noida post retirement in this second book, Himalayan Hazard. In
this one, the second in the Himalaya series, Gautam Shukla is in search of
peace – heading now to the Kumaoni mountainside. In the whole course of the
novel he shuttles between Delhi and his 20-acre Himalayan retreat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Pe_JGyTOwA/WmHM-MJ-2HI/AAAAAAAAAsk/8KPc1KMGzko-SPi5bMNChJQ2FNp2zUcvgCLcBGAs/s1600/51KSlJ25yvL._SX324_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Pe_JGyTOwA/WmHM-MJ-2HI/AAAAAAAAAsk/8KPc1KMGzko-SPi5bMNChJQ2FNp2zUcvgCLcBGAs/s320/51KSlJ25yvL._SX324_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="209" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">However, peace seems a distant dream. This time the aging
hero meets Ruth, a ‘striking young Israeli security officer’ – or rather – he
and Ruth are deliberately thrown together by Annie, the wife of his closest
friend and associate, Datta. Shukla and Ruth hit it off immediately and together
they happen to witness a fatal attack on a politician, a VIP, in the heart of
Lutyens’ Delhi. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It transpires that the assassins behind the killing are ‘bhais’
working in tandem with an international drug cartel to build opium-growing farms in the Kumaoni
region. While Shukla is dragged into the affair against his wishes, trying to
track them down along with Datta and another friend and associate, Sanju, Ruth
is also involved in the matter officially but in a roundabout way, thanks to a
former friend and close colleague. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KoYIzWS6YfA/WmHNFRQdi0I/AAAAAAAAAso/IbkmIfzmKLkdsxOxl83AMgnhyCC0lq3GACLcBGAs/s1600/Amitabh-Pandey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="118" data-original-width="118" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KoYIzWS6YfA/WmHNFRQdi0I/AAAAAAAAAso/IbkmIfzmKLkdsxOxl83AMgnhyCC0lq3GACLcBGAs/s200/Amitabh-Pandey.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amitabh Pandey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One’s reaction to this novel is lukewarm at best. Most of
the characters are interesting and realistic – Shukla, the Dattas, Ruth, Sanju and
the others, but the plot does not have anything new or fresh to offer. The
‘bhais’ and their henchmen, including the mysterious sounding Mo, live up to
their television/movie clichés. They are more of the cardboard variety, quite
predictable in their words, tone, actions and fate. Most of the ‘who’s are
revealed early on in the novel, so there is no real suspense as a whodunit
would have. This novel is more of a cat-and-mouse game with a neat car chase
for a climax – the kind that young men might enjoy, but that would certainly
work much better in visual media than it does on paper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> *****************<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Divya Dubey is the publisher of Earthen Lamp Journal, the
Editor/Instructor at Authorz Coracle, and the author of <i>Turtle Dove: A Collection of Bizarre Tales</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-86654738603261652432018-01-18T20:54:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:01:43.392+05:30Don’t Let Go – Harlan Coben: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Don’t
Let Go –</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Harlan Coben<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--reviewed by Divya Dubey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Published in India Today mag, Jan 11, 2018: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20180122-harlan-cobens-novel-dont-let-go-1144141-2018-01-11">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20180122-harlan-cobens-novel-dont-let-go-1144141-2018-01-11</a>] </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Rrfj5yij_I/WmHNlrDN9MI/AAAAAAAAAs0/M-A0DrGPYr4ova2Ghh3B52bZHR8_H1TVgCLcBGAs/s1600/coben.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Rrfj5yij_I/WmHNlrDN9MI/AAAAAAAAAs0/M-A0DrGPYr4ova2Ghh3B52bZHR8_H1TVgCLcBGAs/s400/coben.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harlan Coben</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Harlan Coben is an American crime fiction and thriller
writer whose last ten novels seized the first spot on the New York Times
bestseller lists. He was also the ‘first ever author to win all three major
crime writing awards in the US’. Translated into 43 languages his books keep
appearing on all major bestseller lists around the world. His latest release,
Don’t Let Go, is already a Global Number One Bestseller. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Needless to say Coben is a master at crime fiction and
knows exactly what he is doing. Don’t Let Go is a stand-alone novel and a great
page-turner. The story revolves around Napoleon Dumas or Nap, a cop, who is
determined to resolve the mystery of his twin brother’s death fifteen years
ago. Leo and his girlfriend Diana were found at the railway tracks one night,
struck dead by a train engine. Most people believe that the teenagers were
drunk or stoned, trying some bravado at the tracks. Some others believe it was
a suicide pact between the lovers. Nap is unconvinced by either explanation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jTeRX4LhoZY/WmHNvACZtiI/AAAAAAAAAs4/ywdamUTafa4VTyUmw5c22Gi-rjBoyJueACLcBGAs/s1600/33295183.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="311" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jTeRX4LhoZY/WmHNvACZtiI/AAAAAAAAAs4/ywdamUTafa4VTyUmw5c22Gi-rjBoyJueACLcBGAs/s320/33295183.jpg" width="209" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When two police officers appear at Nap’s door with the
news that the fingerprints of his ex-girlfriend from fifteen years ago, Maura
Wells, have been found at the site of a murder of another colleague, Rex Canton,
Nap is forced into action again. Maura Wells disappeared on the night his twin
and the twin’s girlfriend were killed. Helping Nap is his dear friend from
school, Ellie, and his mentor, Diana’s father, Augie – another cop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Somewhat like the characters in Elena Ferrante’s
Neapolitan novels, most of Nap’s school friends grow up in the same
neighbourhood and stay on to make their lives. Few leave for greener pastures
far off. In fact it is Ellie who suggests that Leo and Diana’s killing could be
connected to a secret club – the Conspiracy Club – the teenagers used to be a
part of along with four other friends including Maura.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nap is an exceptionally interesting protagonist and very self-aware.
`A la Sherlock, he is only a halfhearted sociopath and does take pains to
appear friendly enough to his immediate neighbours. A part-time vigilante who
doesn’t mind beating up bad guys and breaking their legs on the sly, he is also
ready to pay the price if he is caught. The reader thus knows that he will go
any length to get what he wants. Strangely, he is also a character most readers
will probably identify and empathize with quite easily. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The prologue sets the pace of the entire book. Unexpected
twists keep the reader hooked. Suspense rules every page. Coben makes sure that
the reader will finish the book in one sitting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> *****************<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Divya Dubey is the publisher of Earthen Lamp Journal, the
Editor/Instructor at Authorz Coracle, and the author of <i>Turtle Dove: A Collection of Bizarre Tales</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-66184002731829189922018-01-18T20:50:00.004+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.912+05:30Boo – edited by Shinie Antony: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Boo – edited by Shinie Antony<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, Nov 19, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171127-shinie-antony-new-anthology-boo-13-stories-horror-genre-1087657-2017-11-19">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171127-shinie-antony-new-anthology-boo-13-stories-horror-genre-1087657-2017-11-19</a>]<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-voMB7Lz9uCs/WmHOhEBNNWI/AAAAAAAAAtI/T47lAS7aRUE2lhV4we968WbtpSZNTmuOQCLcBGAs/s1600/61U-u7uGHQL._SX324_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-voMB7Lz9uCs/WmHOhEBNNWI/AAAAAAAAAtI/T47lAS7aRUE2lhV4we968WbtpSZNTmuOQCLcBGAs/s320/61U-u7uGHQL._SX324_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="209" /></a>Not all ghost stories are horrifying. But they do instantly create an element of suspense and anticipation in the reader that no other genre does as easily. Since India has had a long tradition of paranormal tales of every kind – both oral and written forms – right from olden times, creating something com<br />
pletely new is a much more challenging task for contemporary writers.<br />
<br />
In Shinie Antony’s anthology, Boo: 13 Stories that will Send a Chill Down Your Spine, a combo of new and known writers, most of whom have not experimented with this genre before, try their hand at it. The consequent collection, therefore, is a superb amalgam of traditional and modern forms of storytelling with some unexpected twists. And then there is Shashi Deshpan<br />
de’s ‘mythofiction’, with Krishna reflecting upon war, death, destruction and his role in the battle of the Mahabharata after the fact – a story that perhaps falls somewhere in between the two sub-genres.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ACsuyXveQ1Q/WmHOPYljeGI/AAAAAAAAAtE/UDClNCcjrMEKeulmg1BKlB95HXV6lFFTACLcBGAs/s1600/aUYkVzaH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ACsuyXveQ1Q/WmHOPYljeGI/AAAAAAAAAtE/UDClNCcjrMEKeulmg1BKlB95HXV6lFFTACLcBGAs/s320/aUYkVzaH.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shinie Antony</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The ‘traditional’ stories such as Manabendra Upadhyay’s ‘The Face’ (trans. By Arunava Sinha), Madhavi S Mahadevan’s ‘The Tiger Lady of Kabul’, Kiran Manral’s ‘Birth Night’ or Durjoy Datta’s ‘Claws’ follow the pattern of Satyajit Ray’s Indigo Stories and Stranger Stories or Ruskin Bond’s familiar ghost story collections that one might enjoy by a campfire at night. Some of the best in the collection, though, are the modern-day psychological thrillers and feature right at the beginning of the collection: KR Meera’s ‘He Ghoul’ (in which a woman spends a night in a bungalow where her first lover was killed), Kanishk Tharoor’s ‘Monkeys in the Onion Field’ (with a most unexpected ghost who turns up unexpectedly to take care of an unexpected task), Jerry Pinto’s ‘In a Small Room, Somewhere’ (that redefines the relationship between a horror story and fear in the present-day world) and later Shinie Antony’s own ‘Ghost No. 1.’ (about the world’s first – and feminist – ghost). Very few fall short of expectations, given that the writers are well established in their own fields. <br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-53305854529235475372018-01-18T20:47:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.191+05:30David Grossman; A Horse Walks into a Bar: review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
David Grossman; A Horse Walks into a Bar: review<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today mag, July 10, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170717-books-man-booker-prize-david-grossman-israel-history-politics-1022933-2017-07-10">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20170717-books-man-booker-prize-david-grossman-israel-history-politics-1022933-2017-07-10</a>]<br />
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A horse walks into a bar, begins an old Jewish anecdote. The barman turns around to him and says, ‘Why the long face?’<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-11oRdlMhZis/WmHPJRclKcI/AAAAAAAAAtU/8CCPI81EBX4lCCVK1saDLQICSiiGG0_wgCLcBGAs/s1600/download.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="181" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-11oRdlMhZis/WmHPJRclKcI/AAAAAAAAAtU/8CCPI81EBX4lCCVK1saDLQICSiiGG0_wgCLcBGAs/s1600/download.png" /></a>In Israeli writer David Grossman’s Man Booker Prize-winning A Horse Walks Into a Bar, the ‘long face’ belongs to the protagonist, Dov Greenstein, a 57-year old stand-up comic in a basement club at Netanya (a coastal town near the West Bank). One evening he proclaims he is planning to enact the ‘mother of all shows’.<br />
<br />
In the audience is Avishai Lazar, his childhood friend, the narrator of the book. A former judge who retired early due to his inability to control his anger, Lazar has somehow been persuaded by his old friend to turn up at this performance, even though they haven’t met for forty years. ‘I want you to see me, really see me’ he tells Avishai and later to tell him what he sees.<br />
<br />
Also in the crowd is Azulai – a tiny ‘medium’ with a speech defect – whom Dov protected from abuse when they were neighbours. Watching the show, Azulai wonders what has happened to Dov; he used to be a ‘good boy’. Now, Dov is irreverent and offensive, and his jokes, though familiar and clichéd, are also sexist and misogynistic.<br />
<br />
As the evening progresses, the show turns from a standup performance to an autobiographical narrative in which a disillusioned Dov reveals horrifying details about his past life – his violent father and his helpless mother who worked for the Israeli military industry.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-afTtxPivTrI/WmHPO5ApdQI/AAAAAAAAAtY/gXwi1Btbd6QLy4kAX61zsGgwEgjdhlupACLcBGAs/s1600/1024x1024%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="1024" height="269" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-afTtxPivTrI/WmHPO5ApdQI/AAAAAAAAAtY/gXwi1Btbd6QLy4kAX61zsGgwEgjdhlupACLcBGAs/s320/1024x1024%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Grossman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Avishai remembers Dov as a perpetual victim of bullies at an Army Camp that the two of them attended as children, recalling an incident in which Dov walked on his hands to escape a beating while Avishai stayed a silent spectator. The author hints at something more than an ordinary friendship between the two, but leaves the reader guessing.<br />
<br />
Dov’s audience, however, wants jokes and is both impatient and uncomfortable at his stories. Avishai wonders, ‘How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul? And into its hostages?’ Gradually, the audience too begins to leave.<br />
<br />
The whole novel takes place over a period of two hours with long digressions into the past, into Israeli history and politics woven into the personal life of a broken man. According to Nick Barley, chair of the 2017 judging panel, ‘… every sentence counts, every <br />
word matters in this supreme example of the writer’s craft.’ It is slightly difficult to agree with this view. Jokes that tickle Dov’s audience seem either hackneyed or incomprehensible, especially to a reader unfamiliar with the environment and context. Language and expressions may be simple but don’t qualify as awesome. Of course translation has its challenges and that fact cannot be discounted. But these factors do influence the overall appeal of the book. <br />
***</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-54383591333672687602018-01-18T20:43:00.002+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.310+05:30We That Are Young: Preti Taneja: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We That Are Young: Preti Taneja<br />
-Review by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published in India Today magazine: Dec 10, 2017: <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20171218-preti-taneja-we-that-are-young-1102267-2017-12-10">https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/books/story/20171218-preti-taneja-we-that-are-young-1102267-2017-12-10</a>]<br />
<br />
Preti Taneja’s ambitious novel, We That Are Young, touted as a modern-day retelling of King Lear set in contemporary India, is a classic example of a fine writer failing to deliver on a promise. For the book, despite its lovely language and original expressions, comes nowhere close to its original. The original tragedy makes an impact because of its intensity <br />
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and the passion of the characters. In this novel, both are lacking. The primary characters aren’t even introduced until much later.<br />
<br />
The novel opens with Jivan, half brother of Jeet and the son of Ranjit, returning home from the US after a decade. His long and winding reflections are about his dead mother, his altered relationship with his father and half-brother, and his life thereafter. None of it really counts when we arrive at the novel’s main plot – as we later realize.<br />
<br />
In fact almost the first hundred pages of the book describe Jivan’s first day back home, punctuated with several memories, musings and flashbacks. The reader gets the impression that the novel is about Jivan or Ranjit or both – but it is not. The men are only peripheral to the story and the central characters – Devraj, the father of Sita, Gargi and Radha – the owner of Devraj Company or simply the Company, along with his three daughters.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Preti Taneja</td></tr>
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However, they bear minimal resemblance to Lear or his offspring – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Just when the story begins to develop and the reader is somewhat nudged out of indifference at the interaction between Jivan and Gargi, the POV and narration are handed over arbitrarily to Devraj. POV/narration shifts between the characters and the third-person arbitrarily. Unfortunately, in either case, it never quite manages to draw the reader in. At best actions and dialogues remain superficial, never quite creating the desired effect. For the most part the novel remains dry and dreary, offering nothing to the reader to root for. Even the present-tense device, usually employed to create a sense of immediacy, falls flat. It seems as if in the attempt to be intellectually impressive, it completely ignores the reader or the need to connect with them at a deeper level.<br />
<br />
The plot is roughly modelled on King Lear, built around the Company, which has under its umbrella – coffee chains, hotels, fabrics, etcetera – which Devraj wants to divide equally between his daughters. However, unnecessarily long and banal dialogues with occasional sprinklings of Hindi straight out of Hindi soap operas are more frustrating than engaging. Devraj as Lear is a damp squib. The book could easily have been two hundred pages shorter and a great deal tighter.<br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-26677722812355935442018-01-18T20:38:00.003+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.656+05:30Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories: edited by Catriona Mitchell<br />
--reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
HarperCollins<br />
266 pp<br />
Rs 399<br />
<br />
[Published in Hindustan Times, Jan 28, 2017: <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-walking-towards-ourselves-indian-women-tell-their-stories/story-dsTnGjGm23q3op26Um8EIL.html">http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-walking-towards-ourselves-indian-women-tell-their-stories/story-dsTnGjGm23q3op26Um8EIL.html</a>]<br />
<br />
<br />
As the incidence of crime against women continues to increase in India, feminist discourse has acquired greater relevance than ever. Eighteen voices (women with varied backgrounds and histories) in this non-fiction collection, Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories, spell out ‘what it means to be a woman in India in a time of intense and incredible change’. Yet, one cannot but admit the more things change the more they remain the same – especially regarding the majority of the population’s mindset which, even in urban India, is firmly rooted in p<br />
atriarchy. Despite the hostile environment more and more women, regardless of the stratum of society they hail from, are constantly rediscovering and reinventing themselves.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-95-GMSVAllY/WmHQXs0h4HI/AAAAAAAAAt0/9_SvO9EFMfkXrE26bXRuKpmpzf1YKRMgwCLcBGAs/s1600/510ItWt1y2L._SX326_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="328" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-95-GMSVAllY/WmHQXs0h4HI/AAAAAAAAAt0/9_SvO9EFMfkXrE26bXRuKpmpzf1YKRMgwCLcBGAs/s320/510ItWt1y2L._SX326_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="210" /></a>Writer and publisher, Namita Gokhale, says in the Foreword, ‘In a society where women’s minds as well as their bodies are perceived as belonging to their fathers, their brothers and their husbands, women write about sexuality to test the limits of autonomy, to take charge of their intellect and creativity.’ This indeed is a crucial step where women’s freedom and empowerment has clear limits.<br />
<br />
A blend of young and old voices (most of them well known; one anonymous) provides the book variety and perspective. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the younger writers come across as more candid and emphatic, while the older ones sound milder and more circumspect in their writing. Overall though, the compilation is a smooth concatenation of ‘mini-memoirs’. It isn’t possible to delve upon each piece individually, but that hardly makes any less significant than the others. The scope of the subject is so vast and the repertoire of women writers so great, that sequels or series could – and perhaps should – be a distinct possibility.<br />
<br />
Some narratives are more hard-hitting than others, while some have more heart. Annie Zaidi’s piece, for instance, is one of the most appealing and memorable. She speaks about her life as a journalist, about the limited options women had in terms of career when she was young and the way working women were generally perceived: ‘The commute was tough, the deadline pressure insane, harassment was a possibility that lay in wait at every corner. But my greatest worry was not finding a toilet when I needed one […] The official excuse was that women didn’t use them anyway and that if toilets were open, they might be used for “other” purposes.’<br />
<br />
Being denied the most basic rights and amenities, besides being subjected to various injustices and humiliations has always been a matter of course for Indian women. This collection brings them firmly into focus. Several contributors have mentioned the Indian obsession with fair skin, especially while seeking matrimonial alliances. A finalist at the Miss India beauty pageant, Ira Trivedi, who spent a few years working at a marriage bureau, says, ‘…here in Punjab, the Mecca of fair skin, I realize how pervasive the obsession with fair skin is […] cast doesn’t hold as much status as before […] so because of the lack of any other metric, people are using skin colour to judge class.’ Rosalyn D’Mello, on the same theme, reveals: ‘Once, two women who were walking towards me on a street in Mumbai […] noticed how my colour resembled a black cat’s and spent a fair amount of time manoeuvring their gait so as to avoid crossing my path.’<br />
<br />
Mitali Saran talks about being a wildly independent woman in a country obsessed with marriage; Tishani Doshi’s bold and poignant piece reveals her thoughts on the concept of motherhood and choosing not to be a mom; Margaret Mascarenhas speaks of gender identity flux and an affair with another woman; Sharanya Manivannan discusses how she turned the traditional Indian symbols of marriage around (sari, bindi, toe rings, etc) to make a different kind of statement (marriage to her art); the anonymous writer’s narrative about being chained to fear and violence is tremendous.<br />
Almost all the writers have mentioned the 2012 Nirbhaya rape incident as the turning point in Indian history regarding altering laws in favour of women victims. In this context the Preface by Justice Leila Seth, who was directly involved in the case, becomes pertinent.<br />
<br />
Even without the detailed preliminaries this collection would have made a mark. Ideally, it should be compulsory reading at every university, regardless of the student’s gender or specialization. The fundamental theme, i.e., respect for all women should, in fact, be introduced at kindergarten level so that tomorrow’s women do not have to grow up with such horror stories . <br />
*****************</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-66543970649260727792018-01-18T20:36:00.000+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.972+05:30Thicker than Blood: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Thicker than Blood: Munmun Ghosh<br />
--Reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published in Hindustan Times, Oct 18, 2016: <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-of-thicker-than-blood-by-munmun-ghosh/story-3JdUoo9b2CGKvHFiiIdKwK.html">http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-of-thicker-than-blood-by-munmun-ghosh/story-3JdUoo9b2CGKvHFiiIdKwK.html</a>]<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Munmun Ghosh</td></tr>
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<br />
Mummun Ghosh is a journalist with two novels to her credit already: Hushed Voices (2007) and Unhooked (2012). Apart from Stardust and The Economic Times, she has worked for The Daily and Indya.com.<br />
<br />
Her third novel, Thicker than Blood, fits neatly into the arc of a traditional fiction novel: quest, obstacle, dilemma, choice, climax. The protagonist, Mayuri, is a Bombay-based woman who gave up a possible career in Psychology to marry Vimal, her dream man, rather early in life. Both husband and wife are in their mid- or late twenties.<br />
<br />
The quest in this case is Mayuri’s pregnancy – she is obsessed with the ‘maternal urge’ and the desire for motherhood – and obstacles are many: Vimal’s rich but stingy father who resents the expenditure on expensive infertility treatments; Vimal’s mother, who believes children are gifts from God and Mayuri should be spending more time praying and practising rituals to please them rather than chasing doctors and hospitals; Vimal himself, who believes he and his wife are still quite young and have enough time to make babies; and the futility of all the treatment processes already undergone.<br />
Mayuri, however, soldiers on, driven by her yearning for a child. In the process she drags Vimal into several of her experiments – procedures or poojas and rituals. Once he is asked to undergo a surgery; at another time she coerces him into relinquishing non-vegetarian food that he loves. Her desperation has been portrayed very well. She even lands up at a shady locality to visit a tantric on the recommendation of her hairdresser, but manages to leave unscathed. Later, her confession to her husband makes him thaw a little towards her and he agrees to see the doctor with her.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KylXOzCVkPY/WmHRFaFPGII/AAAAAAAAAuA/xQHz704f2QoAoon9KbN_zsLmLzuoTuAzwCLcBGAs/s1600/download%2B%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="182" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KylXOzCVkPY/WmHRFaFPGII/AAAAAAAAAuA/xQHz704f2QoAoon9KbN_zsLmLzuoTuAzwCLcBGAs/s1600/download%2B%25283%2529.jpg" /></a>Another couple that serves as a foil to Vimal and Mayuri, and perhaps occupies almost as much of the story-space as them, is Rahul and Seema, Vimal’s brother and sister-in-law. Seema is a strong woman, the daughter of an actor, who had to suppress her dreams of acting when she married Rahul. However, several years after marriage, now when their children are<br />
slightly older and more manageable and Rahul has taken to visiting dance bars to entertain bar dancers, Seema returns to theatre, her first love. She is the kind of woman Mayuri both admires and abhors, which is perhaps one of the main reasons why they are best friends. When the story opens, Seema is practising reading from Tenessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, with her theatre group. With time she excels at her part, is made an offer and is quick to accept it. To find something that would fulfill her, at Seema’s suggestion, Mayuri joins an NGO.<br />
<br />
Much of Mayur’s personality is revealed through her interactions with Seema, her responses to her behaviour and judgement of her actions, many of which she cannot comprehend since she views her as ‘endowed’ while she herself is ‘deprived’. At times, in fact, the novel begins to seem more like Seema’s story than Mayuri’s own. Her character, too, is better etched.<br />
<br />
Out of the five parts the novel has been divided into, the first deals with the issue of infertility, the second with home, family affairs and resorting to prayers and ritualism. The next three deal with the two parallel storylines – Mayuri’s and Seema’s – as they face and slay their individual demons.<br />
As Mayuri hops/skips/jumps from doctor to doctor in the hope of being able to conceive, her fears and frustration are very well conveyed. The author’s familiarity with the subject and the thoroughness of her research are also apparent in her portrayal of these visits and dealings.<br />
<br />
At one point Mayuri reconnects with a friend from college, Shreyas, whose wife committed suicide. He is a common friend and Vimal shows no jealousy or insecurity towards him. Mayuri, sure of her own love for her husband, encourages Shreyas to flirt with her. Afterwards Shreyas is emboldened enough to make a pass at her. Even though she is tempted to give in to this one indiscretion, she resists and manages to ask him to leave.<br />
<br />
Right from the beginning, Mayuri has been shown as a middle class ‘good girl’ with all the right values. She never had any experience with men before Vimal, barring a vague ‘necking’ incident with a cousin when she was a teenager. Her conjugal life, before the obsession with childbirth, was near-perfect, and she emerges triumphant after the Shreyas debacle, completely in love with her husband again. As a heroine though, Seema is a far more realistic and likeable character.<br />
<br />
The only thread in the story that doesn’t quite hang together is Swati, Mayuri’s sister-in-law from her own side, and her daughter, Payal, about to finish school. There is too little about them, for the family tragedy that follows, to make any impact upon the reader. It seems like an extraneous element introduced simply because the book seemed incomplete without a loss.<br />
<br />
The acceptance of fate and evolution at the end are realistically drawn, if somewhat predictable. However, shoddy editing and absolute howlers take away a great deal from the reading pleasure. <br />
**********</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-25608522376124999212018-01-18T20:33:00.001+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.478+05:30The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Reviewed by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
<br />
[Published in the Asian Review of Books]<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ikZehKnv384/WmMu2TTvlCI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/1St2Gv9PpKkkbMSuzFa-ddi46Q166RcEACLcBGAs/s1600/23075717.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ikZehKnv384/WmMu2TTvlCI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/1St2Gv9PpKkkbMSuzFa-ddi46Q166RcEACLcBGAs/s320/23075717.jpg" width="208" /></a>Aatish Taseer, the son of well-known Indian journalist, Tavleen Singh and Late Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan who was killed by his own bodyguards for standing up against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, made his debut as a writer with his memoirs, Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands in 2009 – a <br />
work which prompted VS Naipaul to declare him as ‘a writer to watch’. Since then Taseer has produced three novels in quick succession that reflect various kinds of turmoil in his own life. The Temple Goers, his first, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2010. The second, Noon, was published by Picador (UK) and Faber & Faber (USA).<br />
<br />
Taseer’s latest work, The Way Things Were, released recently, is a story about the parallel lives of Toby, a half-Indian, half-Scottish Sanskritist and his son Skanda, revealed through the voices of an omniscient narrator as well as Skanda’s own, which take the reader into frequent flashbacks as Skanda recounts to Gauri, his new girlfriend in India, his family’s history and the doomed romance of his parents, and how their lives fell apart amidst major events in the country – the Emergency (1975), Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the consequent Sikh killings (1984) and the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya (1992).<br />
<br />
Toby’s death is announced at the beginning of the book. Toby, the Raja of Kalasuryaketu, had left India for good after his estrangement from his wife, Uma, Skanda's mother. Now Skanda is an adult Sanskritist himself, busy translating the text of The Birth of Kumara in Manhattan. It is his responsibility to bring his father’s body back to his birthplace and he is also entrusted with the task of immersing his father’s ashes in the holy river Tamasa – something he doesn’t accomplish until much later. It is during this time that he rediscovers his roots. By the end of the book Skanda realizes what his father’s death symbolizes:<br />
<br />
‘His father, when he was alive, had, no matter how nominally, embodied the past. But, with that body gone, it was as if he, Skanda, needed the child to come up in him from the depths of a buried past to merge with the adult, like a reflection rising to meet its object […] “Men need history,’ Naipaul tells us, “it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.’’<br />
<br />
History is significant throughout this book which the blurb describes as ‘a magisterial novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment.’<br />
<br />
In the initial flashback pages, after Toby’s talk on adi-kavya at the Indian International Centre on June 26, 1975, the first day of the Emergency in India, a man asks him what the Ramayana means to him. Myth or history?<br />
<br />
Toby replies with a smile, ‘Why not stick with the Indic definition? Of Itihasa! Which is a compound, as you know, iti-ha-asa, and when broken down, means, literally, The Way indeed that Things Were. That covers everything: talk, legend, tradition, history…’<br />
<br />
Unlike most diaspora writers, Taseer’s novels are not focused on hyphenated identities or the angst of second or third-generation Indo-Brits or Indian-Americans still struggling to comprehend their relationship with the country of their ancestors, torn between disparate cultures.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uRLLURcW3nQ/WmMu8gDIVCI/AAAAAAAAAuU/CtBy9lsMTWYC0HRNZnpv_TX27_jV_fL7QCLcBGAs/s1600/13-Aatish-Taseer-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="650" height="283" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uRLLURcW3nQ/WmMu8gDIVCI/AAAAAAAAAuU/CtBy9lsMTWYC0HRNZnpv_TX27_jV_fL7QCLcBGAs/s320/13-Aatish-Taseer-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aatish Taseer</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The most amazing thing about Taseer’s novel is his genuine love of Sanskrit – a language even most Indians living in India look upon as defunct today. Taseer has lived in India, Pakistan, the US and the UK. Yet his knowledge of ‘cognates’ (words with the same origin) is quite deep and has been used as a device that connects father (Toby) and son (Skanda), both of whom share a passion for them. Skanda, for example, is shown pondering over them:<br />
<br />
‘A game of cognates – a game his father had taught him – begins on the plane with the flight map. Distance to destination. Destination: gantavya. The place to be gone to. Gerundive of gam, an old Indo-European thread which takes little leaps of meaning as it travels west: turning go to come. In Gothic, qvam; in English, come; in Latin venio for gvemio….’<br />
<br />
Taseer uses many such as these exhaustively in the book – to the point that one of the critics has commented that his ‘characters pale before cognates’. The observation is justified considering the protagonist and his family – Toby, Uma, their children Skanda and Rudrani, and later the children’s step-parents Mani and Sylvia – seem somewhat insipid vis-a-vis the ideas they represent. The portrayal of other major characters such as IP (Uma’s brother and a major cause of the rift between husband and wife), Viski (Uma’s brother-in-law), Vijaipal (the author), and Kitten Singh (a former friend turned ‘enemy’) too could have been more forceful.<br />
<br />
In a recent interview with Newslaundry Taseer mentioned he believes in two kinds of people: those who are of the intellect and those who are not. His preoccupation with his intellectual and philosophical quests and ruminations is reflected in almost all the characters in this novel, including some who, given their background, should have been two-dimensional. A few of them have been identified as caricatures of real-life ‘drawing-room’ people from Lutyens’ Delhi – the elite from Tavleen Singh’s circles.<br />
<br />
It is interesting that this novel appeared soon after Smriti Irani, the minister of Human Resource Development in India, announced the decision to re-introduce Sanskrit as a subject at school-level (replacing German) – a move that invited much flak from the media and the country’s citizens. Taseer himself spoke of it as an act of piety rather than an intellectual exercise.<br />
The role of language and its relationship with the past then has been clearly defined. As Toby says in the book:<br />
<br />
‘…if we were to associate the genius of a place with one particular thing – the Russians with literature, say, or the Germans with music, the Dutch and Spanish with painting – we would have to say that the true genius of Ancient India was language […] It changed my entire relationship with what remained of old India in India…’<br />
<br />
A discerning reader with some interest in history and etymology will enjoy this book very much indeed.<br />
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***</div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-17464874562021026112018-01-18T20:29:00.005+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.239+05:30The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travencore by Manu S Pillai: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>The Ivory Throne:
Chronicles of the House of Travencore</i> by Manu S Pillai</div>
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Review by Divya Dubey</div>
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<o:p>[Published by Hindustan Times, May 7, 2016: <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/book-review-a-riveting-read-on-palace-intrigue-and-social-change/story-oSI0ocK0Ee700KeCfhRXxJ.html">http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/book-review-a-riveting-read-on-palace-intrigue-and-social-change/story-oSI0ocK0Ee700KeCfhRXxJ.html</a>] </o:p></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GAkzsAUGnag/WmMvwd3A3aI/AAAAAAAAAug/of8PZFZMB3Iq2OzxkOTwHIHcXkr_BG-ogCLcBGAs/s1600/28264135.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="297" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GAkzsAUGnag/WmMvwd3A3aI/AAAAAAAAAug/of8PZFZMB3Iq2OzxkOTwHIHcXkr_BG-ogCLcBGAs/s320/28264135.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Manu S Pillai’s <i>The
Ivory Throne</i> begins with twenty pages of diligently researched history of
Kerala that forms the introduction to the book. A neat chart showing the family
tree of the House of Travencore follows next.
At the end are 131 pages of the author’s exhaustive notes and
bibliography. In between are high quality coloured inserts showcasing
photographs of the major characters in Pillai’s grand narrative. Even a cursory
glance makes one forget that it is a debut work by a writer in his
mid-twenties.</div>
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Apart from being a chronicle of Kerala’s history, the book
brings forward several appealing episodes, social norms and even anecdotes from
the times. One realizes that the scheming vamps and villains in today’s soap
operas do have precedents in real-life historical events. The introduction says
about Martanda Varma: ‘He set an eerie example for instance, by slaughtering
his own cousins in cold blood when they refused to fall in line with him.’ Not
every Kerala ruler followed in his footsteps though discontent, dissent,
political intrigue, deceit and duplicity – and even scheming with the help of
black magic, does remain a constant across the five generations covered in the
book.</div>
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At the centre is the story of Sethu Laxmi Bayi, the senior
maharani and regent of Travencore, granddaughter of the renowned artist Raja
Ravi Varma (1924-32) – and her rival, her cousin Sethu Parvathi Bayi, the
junior maharani. The reader is told that
in pre-colonial times Kerala had a matrilineal society, where a family ‘did not
take after the patriarchal model of man, wife and their children’, but instead
consisted ‘of man, sister, and her children’. The Rani was not the Maharajah’s
wife, but his sister or niece or great-niece. However, it is also mentioned
that as early as in 1747, during Martanda Varma’s time, when Attingal was
merged with Travencore, the Ranis had already been reduced to ‘gloried impotency’
and the male members of the dynasty were gaining dominance. </div>
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When she was five, Sethu laxmi Bayi was ‘propelled into the
seat of the Senior Rani of Travencore, becoming the youngest person to occupy
that exalted station in all its history.’ At ten years of age Sethu Laxmi Bayi chose
Rama Varma, younger brother of the more popular Apollo, Rajaraja Varma, as her
consort – a choice that the majority in the palace viewed as a ‘grave nuptial
error’. However, in the later years the Rani confessed that she had been
overwhelmed by Rajaraja Varma when she first saw him, that she was ‘positively
intimidated by his exceptional appearance’. </div>
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In an interview with <i>The
Hindu</i> Pillai mentions that he undertook research on the maharani’s personal
history because he found she had been singled out amongst the long line of
monarchs royalists had always adored. At Sethu Laxmi Bayi, even the best of
them found themselves floundering. His curiosity about her led him to seek answers
that ended up in this 700-page volume. Pillai’s preoccupation with Sethu Laxmi
Bayi’s life, personality and philosophy is quite evident in his portrayal of
her. Equally clear is his partiality towards her vis-à-vis her rival and cousin,
Sethu Parvathi Bayi, whom he has shown unequivocally as a rather dark character
from the beginning.</div>
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The rivalry and ill will between the sisters Mahaprabha and
Kochukunji carried forward to the two adopted daughters, Sethu Laxmi Bayi and
Sethu Parvathi Bayi. Eventually, it culminated into such intense hatred that
Kochukunji ‘was discovered performing black magic against her niece’. There was
enough evidence against her so that in the late 1920s she was removed from the
palace. Even though Pillai’s sympathies are clearly with Sethu Laxmi Bayi when
he tells the story, his voice and tone remain neutral. </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--l_bGMEp_Vs/WmMv24BJdmI/AAAAAAAAAuk/b1CUabRE1mspUfa8xXUSBzS7x73WFP9eACLcBGAs/s1600/unnamed_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--l_bGMEp_Vs/WmMv24BJdmI/AAAAAAAAAuk/b1CUabRE1mspUfa8xXUSBzS7x73WFP9eACLcBGAs/s320/unnamed_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Manu S Pillai</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1924 Sethu Laxmi Bayi was battling for power against the
Dewan she had inherited from her uncle, over the Vaikom satyagraha. In June
1925, after Gandhi’s visit, Sethu Laxmi Bayi passed orders conceding enough to
the satyagrahis, while retaining enough to please the orthodoxy that still
supported her. Her tenure was filled with reforms and transitions. According to
Pillai, ‘patience, moderation and balance’ were believed to be the ‘hallmark’ of
her policy. Several changes occurred: English education was introduced,
Christians – earlier barred from the Land Revenue Department – moved into the
plantation business with moderate success; state jobs were thrown open to
non-Brahmins; Nairs gained prominence.</div>
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Pillai also makes an interesting observation about the
traditional Kerala society, which did not frown upon the open sexual relations
of women. The author informs us that the freedom of women was actually clamped
down upon by the Christian missionaries with their ‘prudish’ Victorian ideas
and the need to ‘civilize’ India. They
therefore imposed their morality upon Kerala. </div>
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One of the most controversial edicts of the Maharani’s
tenure was the Newspaper Regulation. The press was ‘causing a good amount of
restlessness in the corridors of royal power and of the absolute monarchy that
headed it.’ Like every generation, they too had to fight for freedom of
expression. Pillai admits that despite her compassionate attitude, it is
controversial whether the maharani sided with the government or the press. </div>
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The good part was that by 1928, women were being appointed as
clerks, typists, secretaries etc, and by 1931 the government had 412 women on
its payroll in its administrative machinery. Major lifestyle changes in Sethu
Laxmi Bayi’s family, especially later generations, also reflect these
transformations in society. In fact, some from the royal line relinquished
their titles to spend their lives as ordinary civilians living ordinary lives,
adopting British mannerisms and practices that had become routine by then.</div>
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The evolution in society, politics and history in Kerala over
three centuries, until almost the time of Partition, has been painstakingly
captured. The chapters spliced together thematically rater than chronologically
can sometimes be a little confusing for the reader, especially so since the
royal family stuck to the same names generation after generation, and which the
author has made an effort to distinguish for the reader in his own way. That
apart the book is an awesome achievement. </div>
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Divya Dubey is the publisher of Earthen Lamp Journal and the
Editor/Instructor at Authorz Coracle. </div>
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-42892846950885466252018-01-18T20:26:00.004+05:302018-01-20T23:01:42.013+05:30 The Golden Pigeon by Shahid Siddiqui: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
The Golden Pigeon by Shahid Siddiqui<br />
-- Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published by the Asian Review of Books]<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2IWNrwJf1U/WmMwwyXIBzI/AAAAAAAAAuw/iosG_0DOvTIWI52z4B9ff7X6sUCTeh05QCLcBGAs/s1600/24271690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2IWNrwJf1U/WmMwwyXIBzI/AAAAAAAAAuw/iosG_0DOvTIWI52z4B9ff7X6sUCTeh05QCLcBGAs/s320/24271690.jpg" width="208" /></a>The Golden Pigeon, Shahid Siddiqui’s debut novel, can be classified as a historical fantasy. The author has poignantly portrayed<br />
the implications of being an Indian Muslim in India post Partition. Using the power of imagination as a device, he constructs a world where jinns have the power to aid or obstruct events, great Mughal kings come to life to hold court in ancient obelisks and impossibilities turn into possibilities – even palpable realities.<br />
<br />
Shiraz and Aijaz are midnight’s children. Aijaz is born on the night of Aught 14, 1947 and Shiraz fifteen minutes past midnight on the 15th. Their birth coincides with the birth of India and Pakistan as two separate nations.<br />
<br />
As circumstances turn increasingly precarious for the Muslims staying back in India, Azizuddin Khan, the father of the two boys decides to leave Delhi to create a new life for himself in Pakistan. It is an idea to which his wife, Hamida Begum, is strongly resistant. She is a true descendant of the Mughals, being the great granddaughter of Kulsum Zamani Begum – the daughter of the last Mughal emperor. Like her mother, Qudsia Begum, Hamida Begum is a loyalist and opposed to Jinnah’s idea of a divided India.<br />
<br />
Early one morning she is compelled to accompany her husband to the Old Delhi railway station to escape to the safety of Pakistan. While Azizuddin steps out to buy tickets for them with Aijaz asleep on his shoulder, Hamida Begum rushes out of the building holding her younger son ‘as though possessed by a jinn’.<br />
<br />
Dodging rioting mobs running berserk in the city, she reaches her mother’s home in the street of Ballimaran in Chandni Chowk with the help of Bundu Chacha, their faithful tonga-wala. Qudsia Begum is known for – and often teased about – hobnobbing with her jinns. Hamida Begum waits there for her husband for a few days, and in the absence of any news of him, reconciles herself to the life of a single woman. She pursues higher education and eventually turns into a social activist. Her husband emerges as a minister in his country of refuge.<br />
<br />
Efforts at reunion, once communication is finally re-established between husband and wife, are thwarted time and again by turmoil in both the countries made worse by indications of war. Hamida Begum is upset with her mother; she holds her responsible for conspiring with her jinns to create adverse conditions. Only Shiraz is pleased by these constant interruptions since he considers himself a patriotic Indian. He is fervidly against migrating to Pakistan to join his father and brother. Whenever his neighbour, Brij Behari, a passionate pigeon flyer, teases him as his ‘little Pakistani’, Shiraz retorts, ‘I am no Pakistani; I hate Pakistan.’<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shahid Siddiqui</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Through Brij Behari Shiraz learns that he shares his name ‘Shiraz’ with a breed of famous homing pigeons (from Shiraz, a famous Iranian city) after which his father named<br />
him.<br />
<br />
Pigeons run as a motif throughout the novel. At the time of circumcision, to distract young Muslim boys from the trauma of the ceremony, adults would point to the sky to show them a ‘golden pigeon’. The moment the child looked up, the foreskin would be quickly dislodged.<br />
<br />
The golden pigeon therefore symbolizes a new phase in their lives signifying both physiological and psychological changes.<br />
<br />
But it is not simply a metaphor. Its real significance becomes apparent when Shiraz is falsely implicated in the murder of his friend, Brij Behari – also the uncle of his beloved Anu whom he wants to marry. Trapped by their different religious identities, both the lovers know marriage is impossible – that it might lead to communal riots in the city. Riots follow anyhow in the wake of rumours spread about Shiraz by hostile Hindus. <br />
<br />
At this juncture Qudsia Begum invokes her jinns – her Mughal ancestors – to help her grandson cross the border into Pakistan. This is from the scene that transpires between Babur and Shiraz:<br />
‘What would you like to be, an eagle or a dove?’ Babur asked with a smile.<br />
<br />
‘A dove, a Shirazi pigeon […] I am not a killer; I cannot be an eagle. I am a romantic lover like you and would prefer to be a pigeon.’<br />
<br />
The first part of the novel more or less follows the conventions of a social realist novel. Elements of magic realism are introduced in part two, which begins here. The texture of the prose and the author’s philosophy, however, are very different from Rushdie’s. Simplicity of style and childlike innocence in the tone mark Siddiqui as quite distinct from other writers writing about the Partition.<br />
<br />
The beginning is brilliantly visual with detailed descriptions of the lanes and by-lanes of old Delhi or Shahjahanabad: the culture ruled by disciples of Ghalib, Mir and Momin; an undiscovered MF Hussain distributing his paintings in the street for free; special days of feasting on nahari and nan. The flow too is much smoother than in the latter half where certain actions seem arbitrary and the plot is occasionally ill-constructed and hackneyed (for instance, Shiraz guarding his amazing secret or his term in jail). <br />
<br />
This novel may be criticized for its compactly strung threads and a happy ending for the protagonist. But rather than an attempt at offering a solution to political or social dilemmas, it is perhaps an expression of the author’s overwhelming desire for perfect harmony between contraries. Overall it is a promising debut by a writer who is sure to go places.<br />
***</div>
Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71930340298107115.post-28558503282153295552018-01-18T20:23:00.005+05:302018-01-20T23:01:41.715+05:30The Girl Who Ate Books: book review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Girl Who Ate Books: Nilanjana Roy<br />
Review by Divya Dubey<br />
<br />
[Published by Hindustan Times, June 25, 2016: <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/a-collection-of-nilanjana-roy-s-work-on-indian-writing-in-english/story-sOIBmZLp8IRM2CB78BqsXM.html">http://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/a-collection-of-nilanjana-roy-s-work-on-indian-writing-in-english/story-sOIBmZLp8IRM2CB78BqsXM.html</a>]<br />
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In January 2015 Outlook published a piece on ‘100 books that can change your life’, based on selections by a panel comprising Nilanjana Roy, David Davidar, Mukul Kesavan, Sunil Sethi and Manishankar Aiyar, interviewed by Satish Padmanabhan. The panel was criticized and dismissed by a lay reader on social media (that later made some heads turn), who questioned the panelists’ credentials and authority. The reaction isn’t surprising from an outsider to the publishing industry, since people often think publishers/editors are simply tradesmen/women not on a par with academics when it comes to knowledge. The discontented gentleman in this case should read Nilanjana Roy’s The Girl Who Ate Books. The sheer breadth of her reading and depth of her knowledge is mind-boggling. Roy, as a non-academic, vindicates herself brilliantly with this collection and establishes beyond doubt how someone not from the academia can still be in a position to talk about books and reading with some authority.<br />
<br />
Readers familiar with Roy’s journalistic writings and reviews, her blog ‘Akhond of Swat’ or her novels, The Wildings and its sequel, The Hundred Names of Darkness, will instantly identify with The Girl Who Ate Books. Part memoir, part academic exercise, this book brings together the best of Roy’s work and analysis on Indian writing in English carried over several years and brought up to date. Though she states at the beginning of one of the sections that ‘this collection of essays is chiefly about the history of Indian Writing in English’, this statement is qualified in the prologue where the book is said to be about ‘the love of reading, and about a reading childhood in India’, which is indeed what most of the book focuses upon.<br />
<br />
The Girl in question is Roy herself who, as a young girl, loved to eat books (paper) quite literally. As she confesses in the book, ‘I would discover later, through a process of trial and errors that Bengali books seldom tasted good, that paperbacks were dry and crumbly, and that exercise books were watery and disappointing […] Close up, the paper smelt a little like cookies, or like the waxed paper frill around loaves of plain cake.’<br />
<br />
Age apparently whetted Roy’s appetite for books, which extended way beyond the physical page. She began to devour not just paper, but stories, drama, poetry, literature and philosophy; in fact art in all forms from various nooks and crannies of the world, beginning from those available closest to her at her didima’s house in Calcutta. Right from the beginning Roy has been aware of her privileged position, her ‘location’ as a writer, being born in a family of gifted storytellers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nilanjana S Roy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The book is divided into seven sections: Early Days, Poets at Work, Writers at Work, Booklove, Booklovers, Plagiarism, Expression, which draw upon Roy’s formal meetings and personal interactions with several poets, writers, publishers and booksellers et al during her career. The second and third sections therefore come across as the most exciting and appealing,<br />
for she has had the enviable opportunity to meet, speak to, know and form friendships with some of the best known names in India, a few of whom are alive no more and the memories are therefore even more cherished. Add to it the tantalizing descriptions of the expensive hotels/restaurants where the meetings often took place and the exotic food ordered, and one cannot help but recall that she edited A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food (Penguin India). The foodie in her resurfaces unapologetically.<br />
<br />
Right at the beginning she discusses what it means to be an Indian writer writing in English or who indeed is an Indian writer. In that context references to a writers’ festival of sorts at Neemrana organized by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations in 2003 are recurrent in the book. In the process she brings in discussions and debates about India’s first truly Indian novel, whether it was indeed Bankimchandra’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) or not.<br />
<br />
Her voice, as always, is distinct whether as a little girl wonder-struck at the stories books contain, a rookie journalist at the beginning of her career meeting and interviewing celebrity authors or as a seasoned columnist speaking of the more pressing issues in the industry such as plagiarism, free speech and censorship.<br />
<br />
However, two omissions are rather conspicuous in the book. Perhaps they are deliberate exclusions, since Roy is fully aware of them. The first is current trends in the field of IWE. For a book that explores its history, perhaps the arc would have been more complete had it charted out the entire trajectory. We have, for instance, the highly popular new renderings of old myths by writers such as Ashok Banker and Devdutt Pattanaik who perhaps begat the more experimental Samhita Arni, and these three collectively perhaps begat Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi and their more commercial spin-offs of the same mythological tales. On the other hand is Chetan Bhagat with his Bollywood-style romances and a host of other campus novels and novelists.<br />
<br />
The second is of course Indian writing in translation that Roy has mentioned fleetingly at times. This is often the most ignored category and a significant one. Just as random examples, how about the history of translation of our myths and folktales – the Panchatantra, Jatakas, or the more adult Betal Pachisi by Somdev Bhatt (incidentally, Richard Burton’s version still seems to be the most popular); Abol Tabol or Goopy Bagha, besides the thousands of classic Indian authors?<br />
Certainly there is a wealth of material here for Roy to consider doing another book. If someone can do justice to the research and writing, she certainly can. <br />
***<br />
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Divya Dubeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322385417060648073noreply@blogger.com0