Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories: book review

Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories: edited by Catriona Mitchell
--reviewed by Divya Dubey
HarperCollins
266 pp
Rs 399

[Published in Hindustan Times, Jan 28, 2017: http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-walking-towards-ourselves-indian-women-tell-their-stories/story-dsTnGjGm23q3op26Um8EIL.html]


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
atriarchy. Despite the hostile environment more and more women, regardless of the stratum of society they hail from, are constantly rediscovering and reinventing themselves.

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.

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.

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.’

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.’

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.
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.

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 . 
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Thicker than Blood: book review

Thicker than Blood: Munmun Ghosh
--Reviewed by Divya Dubey

[Published in Hindustan Times, Oct 18, 2016: http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/review-of-thicker-than-blood-by-munmun-ghosh/story-3JdUoo9b2CGKvHFiiIdKwK.html]

Munmun Ghosh

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.

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.

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.
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.

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
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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 
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The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer: book review

The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer
 Reviewed by Divya Dubey


[Published in the Asian Review of Books]

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
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).

 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).

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:

‘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.’’

History is significant throughout this book which the blurb describes as ‘a magisterial novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment.’

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?

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…’

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.

Aatish Taseer

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:

‘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….’

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.

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.

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.
The role of language and its relationship with the past then has been clearly defined. As Toby says in the book:

‘…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…’

 A discerning reader with some interest in history and etymology will enjoy this book very much indeed.

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The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travencore by Manu S Pillai: book review

The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travencore by Manu S Pillai

Review by Divya Dubey

[Published by Hindustan Times, May 7, 2016: http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/book-review-a-riveting-read-on-palace-intrigue-and-social-change/story-oSI0ocK0Ee700KeCfhRXxJ.html] 

Manu S Pillai’s The Ivory Throne 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.

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.

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.

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’.

In an interview with The Hindu 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.

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.  

Manu S Pillai

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Divya Dubey is the publisher of Earthen Lamp Journal and the Editor/Instructor at Authorz Coracle.  

The Golden Pigeon by Shahid Siddiqui: book review

The Golden Pigeon by Shahid Siddiqui
-- Divya Dubey

[Published by the Asian Review of Books]

The Golden Pigeon, Shahid Siddiqui’s debut novel, can be classified as a historical fantasy. The author has poignantly portrayed
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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.’

Shahid Siddiqui

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
him.

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.

The golden pigeon therefore symbolizes a new phase in their lives signifying both physiological and psychological changes.

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. 

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:
‘What would you like to be, an eagle or a dove?’ Babur asked with a smile.

‘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.’

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.

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).   

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.
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The Girl Who Ate Books: book review

The Girl Who Ate Books: Nilanjana Roy
Review by Divya Dubey

[Published by Hindustan Times, June 25, 2016: http://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/a-collection-of-nilanjana-roy-s-work-on-indian-writing-in-english/story-sOIBmZLp8IRM2CB78BqsXM.html]

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.

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.

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.’

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.

Nilanjana S Roy

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,
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.

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.

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.

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.

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?
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. 
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The Fifth Man by Bani Basu: book review

The Fifth Man by Bani Basu, translated from the Bengali original by Arunava Sinha
 Review by Divya Dubey

[Published in the Asian Review of Books]

Bani Basu is one of the most prolific writers in Bengal – a recipient of the Tarashankar Award for Antarghaat (Treason), and the Ananda Purashkar for Maitreya Jataka. She has
also received the Sushila Devi Birla Award and the Sahitya Setu Puraskar. It is a pity that her work has not been more widely translated.

It is with pleasure, therefore, that one opens Arunava Sinha’s translation of Pancham Purush—rendered as The Fifth Man—a story that revolves around several characters with interlinked pasts, each of whom carries secrets, hopes and fears.

This highly complex novel threads together several themes: from unrequited love, frustration and lust that form its backbone to ideas about motherhood and widowhood, limitation and liberation revealed obliquely through portraits of the women characters.

A crucial feature of the book is a rich cache of classical and literary references and allusions. The author draws liberally from religion, cinema (particularly Bengali cinema), history, mythology and other eclectic sources. Greek and Roman myths are as much a part of it as their Indian counterparts. Constant references to Shiva, Parvati or Kali, for instance, are deeply symbolic, as are references to Venus or Proserpine. There are specific references to the poet Yeats and passages so reminiscent of Frankenstein (‘a tree felled by lightning. No leaves, the branches fallen off, only a black trunk with the ancient remnants of leaves and boughs on its gnarled surface’) and of the sexual tension in the Marabar caves section of A Passage to India that one can’t believe they are merely coincidental.
While the former half of the novel highlights the main characters trying to deal with past demons, the latter half of the novel centres round a trip they make together to the Ajanta and Ellora Caves, famous archaeological sites near Aurangabad, Maharashtra. The paintings and sculptures reflect the life of Buddha and his previous incarnations (known as Jatakas). They are also known for their candid depiction of the human body portrayed with grace and elegance.

Six middle-aged protagonists form themselves into a variety of triangles right from the beginning. Aritra, a self-proclaimed poet, met his wife Neelam when they were both students of Dr Mahanam Roy at University. The novel kicks off when Esha, whom Aritra spurned in University, shows up eighteen years later for a visit. They are joined by Mahanam (who comes to notice a physical resemblance between himself and Neelam’s teenage daughter) and another couple Bikram and Seema, the former a somewhat smarmy character and the latter an avatar for the proper Indian wife.

In this sexually-charged atmosphere, barring young Pupu (Neelam’s daughter), all the others squeeze themselves into a car for a trip to Ellora. This is where one of the principal themes of the novel is highlighted:

The interiors of the car smelt of middle-age desire. It was redolent in the air […] Everyone – at least, most of them – could indistinctly sense a powerful sexual whirlwind willing itself within them. Aritra felt a strong desire for Esha. Seema wanted her husband […] Bikram wanted Esha if possible, or else Neelam […] Neelam wanted Mahanam. Mahanam did not want anyone in particular […] Esha wanted Ajanta, complete with all its nuanced shades of historical, mythical, artistic and human form and colour.

In fact, almost a third of the book is dedicated to the marvels of Ajanta and Ellora accompanied by numerous myths or history associated with them. Detailed discussions of many Jataka tales reflect the novel’s premise besides the characters’ state of mind. For instance:

Arunava Sinha

Esha stopped in front of the image of Princess Krishna […] Dark-skinned. Downcast eyes. How had the Buddhist artist learnt of such depths of despair? The melancholy of Avalokiteshwar was not the same as this suffering […] ‘Look Ari, how miraculous this grief is. It pervades the entire cave.’
All three women – Esha, Neelam and Seema – achieve their moments of enlightenment in their precincts.  Early on in the book, Esha makes a comment about the Indian society in front of Neelam, ‘Many parents get their sons married because they need a high-class maid.’ Later on Seema is shown as a flesh-and-blood example of this fact before she is exposed to eye-opening conversations and ideas in the company of the other two older women and gains maturity through new experiences. Occasionally though, an excess of abstractions or academic discourse can be a bit trying.

Basu’s canvas is pretty wide. Nor does she hesitate to acknowledge human beings as essentially polyamorous creatures; contentment at any stage of life is impossible. Esha is an embodiment of all of these. Besides the three men in the book over whom she wields power, the fourth – her husband – is an absence. The significance of the title is revealed literally on the last page. It is a novel that invites several readings, and in each promises to reveal new layers.
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