Vanity sans Divinity

Sunil K Poolani
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More Salt Than Pepper
Karan Thapar
Harper Collins
Price: 399; Pages: 255
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Every Sunday when you open the pages of Hindustan Times, you see the mug shot of Karan Thapar followed by his weekly ruminations. Over the years the nature of the column has had started losing its lustre (but once in a while it shines, when he is in his element).
Like the clipped accent he uses while he interviews celebrities or newsmakers on the telly, his columns, too, started looking irritating ramblings at times — a reason why I had stopped reading him long time ago. But, when, I got this book for review — the best of Thapar columns — I was really amazed at the range and subtle humour he had used in his earlier columns that I had missed several times; but my basic indifference to his writing has not changed, though.
Thapar’s pedigree, education (Doon, Cambridge) and contacts have made him go places. He is one of the pioneers of television journalism in India and has been a columnist from eons. And currently he is the host of shows on CNN-IBN and CNBC and is the head of Infotainment Television.
Now, coming back to his columns, he has written about almost all the aspects that unfurled in Indian society and polity every week. Most of them are witty and direct to the point but in several columns himself and his family and friends find a prominent place: his influence, his family’s contacts, name-dropping, you name it you have it.
Savour the one on Indira Gandhi. Once he and his sisters were going for a concert with Mrs Gandhi and her children. The then PM advices the kids to go to the loo (“There won’t be any where we’re going”). So when Thapar’s sister asks the mighty woman what if the PM did when she felt the urge, Mrs Gandhi said: “It’s tricky… It’s so much easier for a man. All they have to do is pop behind a tree. But you can imagine what would happen if I tired that?”
The book is full of these anecdotes, be it of Khushwant Singh, Manmohan Singh, L K Advani, Kapil Dev… In one column he tells how his uncle, Gautam Sahgal, proposed to Nehru’s niece, Nayantara Pandit, and she accepted. But Nehru was not keen on it. In order to show how much influence Edwina Mountbatten had over Nehru, Thapar tries to establish that only because of Edwina did that the marriage ever take place.
Thapar thinks India is a funny place and London is the most civilised city in the world; how Amar Singh donated ten lakh rupees to Doon School; how one Lt. Gen, M N Batra was smitten by Thapar’s mother when she was young; how Khushwant Singh still likes to kick around… it goes on and on.
Arguably the best section in the whole volume is ‘Between the Covers’. Here, too, he takes pot shots at people he dislikes of; like Madhu Trehan. Her book on the Tehelka scam, Thapar says, is “reams of unedited interviews which meander unstructuredly, often losing sight of purpose and frequently dissolving into pointless chatter in disconcerting slang.”
Then there is another column in which he regretted interviewing Benazir Bhutto’s biographer Shyam Bhatia… in another how he regretted not giving Vikram Chandra a job in Hindustan Times… and also how he embarked on a writing career in HT… Phew.
Yes, the book is interesting; in bits and parts. But what I do not understand is what the need for this compilation is? There is no concrete journalism, forget lucid insights or foresights. What I can conclude is that it is just a writer’s vanity exercise to see some of his works in one bound volume. And yes, for the publisher the name sells.
— Sahara Time

Clear and Present Terrorism

By Dilip Raote

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The Al Qaeda Connection – The Taliban and Terror in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas
Imtiaz Gul
Penguin Viking
Price: Rs 499; Pages 308

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This is a good book for understanding how cynical realpolitik games are played, and how the intended consequences of these games are trivial compared to their unintended consequences. Imtiaz Gul tells the horror story simply, like a good reporter; there is no jargon and no pontification of strategic analysts.
The intended consequences were to make life miserable for the Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan so that they quit the country. This required nurturing terrorists who would create havoc in Afghanistan and escape to a safe haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan. The terrorists were funded by America and its close ally Saudi Arabia, trained in combat, supplied arms, ammunition and communications systems, and brainwashed to be Islamist jihadis. The tribal people of a backward area got globalised training and attracted zealots from other countries.
Pakistan’s military and the ISI intelligence agency were given the task of coordinating the activities of terrorists. So, along with the terrorists, the military and the ISI too became powerful and beyond the control of the Pakistan government which had become an American puppet.
Eventually, The Russians got tired of the mess and quit Afghanistan. What were the huge and well-trained terrorist networks supposed to do? Close down their operations and return to a quiet peasant life? That was impossible. They had been fired with a mission, an ideology, and the inspiration of hate and revenge. Their sponsors, who now tried to stop them, became the new targets of hate. The tribal terrorism globalised and created deadly big bangs in many countries. Imtiaz Gul says there are now 30,000 Muslim extremists in Germany and 10,000 in UK. What about the numbers in other countries, including the US?
In a speech on 27 March 2009, US President Barack Obama said the terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas were not simply an American problem. “It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order….. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it is likely to have ties to Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake.” Russian military officers who read Obama’s statement must have roared with laughter and ordered more bottles of vodka.
Gul gives these statistics for terrorism-related deaths in Pakistan: 189 in 2003, 864 in 2004, 648 in 2005, 1,471 in 2006, 3,599 in 2007, and 6,400 in 2008. Add to them the deaths in other countries and the numbers are scary. It is possible that cynics in Washington DC dismiss these deaths as ‘collateral damage’.
American forces never directly attacked Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, but now they are frequently bombing Pakistani territory. And the Pakistan government can’t to anything about it. Pakistan itself has become ‘collateral damage’ in the war against Al Qaeda. It is no wonder that the Pakistani people believe that the US is a bigger threat to their country than the terrorists. This fear about the US is spreading to Muslim communities in other countries.
Imtiaz Gul’s book should be compulsory text for the armed forces, foreign ministries and intelligence services. It gives step-by-step revelation of a deadly game and its consequences. Gul presents a huge amount of information, but it links well and provokes thoughts about the future. Many questions arise after the book is put away. Will Pakistan eventually seek the help of India and Russia? How will emerging technologies and tech-savvy extremists change the form of terrorism from mass murder and destruction of property to something more subtle and more ruinous? What new routes will terrorism funding take and who will be the new sponsors? Will the success of Pakistan’s terrorists inspire guerrilla movements in other countries? How will anti-terrorism technologies and strategies evolve? And much more.
-- Sahara Time

Of Beautiful Women and Other Disturbing Issues

Sunil K Poolani
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The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions
Mukul Kesavan
Black Kite
Rs 295; Pages 302
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It’s an unpardonable mistake from my part. Not having read Mukul Kesavan much, earlier. Part of the reason being his columns and his occasional writings (I missed reading his three earlier books: Looking through Glass, Secular Common Sense and Men in White) that used to appear mainly in the still-venerable Calcutta-based Telegraph rather than the Bombay rags that are only interested in showing Sania Mirza’s bare thighs than carrying pieces by Kesavan who, in one of the essays in the book under review, observes: “Sometimes [Sania] gets fed up with the attention she gets and asks to be left alone, to be given the room to be just an eighteen-year-old.”
For the uninitiated, which is unlikely if you are a reader of this magazine, Kesavan, who presently lives in Delhi, teaches “history, reads fiction, and has a particular interest in cinema, cricket, and politics”. Predictably, this collection of essays, which had appeared in publications like the Telegraph and Outlook among others, mainly touches on these topics.
But the main toast of the collection is the first section, ‘Looking’, arguably the best, save some of his travel writings and two on the media. In ‘Cine Qua Non’ he makes a valid point when he says the fundamental difference between (Hollywood) films and ours is that in Hollywood it’s all right for both heroes and heroines to be good-looking. His ‘find’ of ugliness of the Indian man does not stop there. In the title essay he makes a hilarious statement. “[The Indian male] uses [the index finger and the thumb] to adjust himself in public… You’ll never see women doing this, only men. It’s an important route to ugliness.”
Why is that, men, including me, are ugly? I believe men try to be macho and think they can get away doing dirty, offending mannerisms in public since they have the authority to preside over their women: in life, sex, family matters… They like to flash ornaments (think Bappi Lahiri, who wears more jewellery than his wife) and how much ever neatly they dress they wear the thick bands of rotting pink threads on till they discolour and fall off.
In another piece, the author is in awe of Konkana Sen, the actor, who “represents within Indian cinema the prospect of properly pan-Indian actors who have the intelligence, the linguistic ability, and the mimetic genius to plausibly inhabit the skins of characters from parts of India that are not their own.” He analyses two of her films, Omkara and Mr and Mrs Iyer, to drive this point home. Rightfully so. Never thought of it, though.
One has to admit that Kesavan has this uncanny gift of vividly narrating an issue threadbare, without being nasty, though highly subjective at times, with the aid of his experience as a historian, and with a Biblical simplicity. This is highly appreciated when he writes on politics and religion, where a minor casualness can kill the whole credibility of the writing.
One of the best pieces in the volume is ‘The Men of Madras’. Though he is unabashedly in admiration with the city and its people (he was visiting the city after twenty-two years, mind you) he thinks it is another country, cut off from the ineptitude and lethargy of say the cities of Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. He likes the food, he likes the people in Madras, he looks around the city in wonder, and when he goes back home, with a full stomach and an happiness-brimming mind, what he fears is that will one day the South secede from the subcontinent, for subsidising the laid-back BIMARU states.
One of the brilliant observations he makes is, “Sitting in a plane where the world isn’t north or south but simply below, it becomes clear that geography isn’t a subject, it’s a conspiracy. Mercator’s maps are a plot; they pump Europe up to the size of a continent and shrink India to the size of France… Why should England be North and Sri Lanka South?” Any objection? Not at all.
Travelling interests us all, so does travel writing, and Kesavan has a good section devoted to just that. Though I did not particularly like the piece ‘Antiquities of Egypt’ where he travels with Amitav Ghosh to see the hidden mysteries of that ancient land, another one, ‘Bathing in Istanbul’ is like a dream come true. Reading it we are virtually taken to a swift journey through the lovely, ancient capital city of Turkey, describing the richness of it; ruing, though, by drawing parallels, how badly India maintains its national heritages and monuments.
Another exotic piece is a junket to Australia he undertakes where he finds time to visit the most famous aboriginal place, the great red monolith Uluru. “The guides knew very little about Uluru… because it was what the Anangu considered a male site and their lore about it was kept secret from outsiders and even uninitiated aborigines.” What if he learnt anything, it is “the idiot’s introduction to geological time”.
The section on ‘Reading’ has, regretfully, ponderous essays: one on ‘Fiction and History’ (which does not reach a point); ‘History and Whimsy’ which unnecessarily praises Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown which to me, and several others, is an utterly boring joke; and ‘The Jews of Georgette Heyer’ (meanders). But there are two magnificent essays in this section: one on, why when American papers like to go local, Indian papers like to go national; and the second one on how the Net has changed the newspaper reading habits but people in the West prefer to read columns which are not Web-exclusive.
Then comes the vitally important section of the volume: ‘Politics’. In ‘My Emergency’ he talks about his personal experience and his father’s meeting with Maneka Gandhi. “She was the editor of Surya India, an Emergency rag, now deservedly dead… No one wanted any attention from that family: not from the mother, the son, or even his wife.” But the meeting turned out to be (a)harmless chat about libraries.
In another essay he argues South Asia will begin to make collective sense when India’s neighbours are remade by the idea that made India, while in another he emphasises that “the scale of American virtue — its extraordinary freedom, its myriad careers open to talent, its appetite for improvement — is usually invoked to put America’s failings into context”.
Talking about the Iraqi crisis he rightly points out that “the Iraqis need time and a common enemy so they can dissolve the politics of identity in the vague consolations of anti-colonialism”. It is not gibberish, but a cruel testimony of today’s multi-polar world. You may disagree with this stand in ‘The Defence of the West’, though: “To single out Muslims for special attention is fine because religious profiling is not the same as racial profiling… Liberals shouldn’t make the stupid mistake of equating Muslims with dark-skinned Third Worlders.” How righteous this argument is, is open to discussion.
In ‘Veiled Insinuations’ he touches upon a delicate issue: “The burqa [in the traditional families’] view was viewed as an enabling garment, a form of insurance that allowed anxious conservative parents to send their daughters out into the world.” This is a topical issue, now, since the French President wants to ban that piece of cloth in his country. Kesavan, it looks like, is particularly concerned about this issue because he teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia, founded and nurtured by Muslims.
An essential essay in this impressive volume is ‘A New History of Indian Nationalism’ where his skills as a historian come to play. While lucidly analysing the role of Muslims in the Freedom Struggle, he cleverly sums up thus: “One of the mistakes the Congress made in the 1930s and the 1940s was to imagine that its good intentions in the matter of pluralism and secularism were enough to make it representative of all India.” This argument is becoming more and more important to be addressed at in today’s polity of perniciousness and religious intolerance.
In ‘How Pluralism Goes Bad’ he says Sardar Patel was venerated for his work of territorial consolidation because it addressed this anxiety at a time when the young nation seemed fragile. The problem, he discovers, is that the history of republican India is the history of a state which, when pushed, will recognise every sort of identity — linguistic, tribal, even religious — for the sake of pluralist equilibrium and political peace. This assessment may not find many takers from across the political spectrum, but I have to admit it that it is true.
The biggest article in this volume is ‘Secular Common Sense’, which was earlier published as a pamphlet by Penguin. Since this essay is a book by itself and it will take another long review to explain it, it is succinct to put that what Kesavan likes us to believe is: “In India today, secularism often appears to be a form of Hindu chivalry… Muslims are seen as victims of Partition and the prejudices that it institutionalised.” To substantiate this view, he lucidly examines the history of India, the Congress’ appeasement of the minorities, the Muslim point of view, the despicable act of the Babri Masjid demolition, the rise of the Hindutva, Dalit issues and even the Kashmir imbroglio. Well written.
Some of the interesting essays, according to this reviewer, are the ones on cinema. Particularly likable is ‘Urdu, Awadh, and the Tawaif: The Islamic Roots of Hindi Cinema’. Kesavan enlightens us that it is ironic but true that Hindi cinema is the last stronghold of Urdu in independent India, its last haven in a sea of linguistic bigotry. “It is appropriate that this is because the Hindi film has been fashioned out of the rhetorical and demotic resources of Urdu.” Agreeable, if you ponder over it.
In ‘Patriotism at the Pictures’, though Kesavan lays emphasis on the film Gadar saying it has the implications of communal conflict carefully sorted out, and the film “was so scrupulous in crossing the T’s and dotting its sectarian I’s is a tribute to the bred-in-the-bone pluralism of Bombay cinema,” I beg to disagree, find it naïve and also think the film was anything but a contrived attempt at pseudo-patriotism and a cheap attempt to rake in revenues.
Now I have to confess. This is a very difficult book to review — as in it covers several issues that are sometimes grave and other times frivolous (interesting, mostly, though), is a collection of essays culled out from several years of Kesavan’s writing and can even grapple with you due to a broader canvas. A smorgasbord, this collection is a reviewer’s nightmare but a reader’s delight. Particularly if you read it in several attempts: an essay a day.
Apart from sentences in one essay getting repeated in another, and some bit of typographical and grammatical errors, this is a volume you will always cherish: due to the mastery and beauty over the prose, the historical veracity in analysing facts and figures and, most importantly, the intellectual honesty.
A must read.

Hard bound, soft touch

Sunil K Poolani

There are books in hard cover, when most of them appear first in print. Then there are those paperbacks to cater to a ‘lesser’-audience that piggyback on the ‘hard’ part’s success. Then there is a class called coffee table books that target a discerning audience, to a cherished class, who treats them something like decorated showcase items. So, now, here we talk about the latter category of books that you would like to keep them on your table, when your kith and kin come home and savour brewed coffee. Test (taste?) ten:
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New Delhi: Making of a Capital
Malvika Singh & Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Roli Books
Rs 1,975; Pages 240
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A veritable visual celebration of and a treatise to a city most South Indians love to hate. The authors (Mukherjee: a renowned historian and an eminent journalist; Singh: a known journalist-publisher) are the perfect pair to give a ringside view of the city’s chequered past. Savour that with the visual research by the inevitable Pramod Kapoor.
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Kishore Kumar: Method in Madness
Derek Bose
Rupa & Co
Rs 395; Pages 128
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An impeccable movie writer analyses the mad genius of Hindi cinema: singer, actor, filmmaker, music composer, lyricist. But Kishore was also a miser, madman and troublemaker. Who was he then? This book attempts to provide an answer with a well-rounded picture of his personality and rare and lively pictures to supplement the text.
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Islamic Art: The Past and Modern
Nuzhat Kazmi
Roli Books
Rs 695; Pages 144
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Islamic art, not many Hindutva elements may agree though, has taken from other cultural traditions and has also given to different social structures and visual languages of the world. This invaluable book looks at the artistic output of the Islamic civilisation from the time of its inception to its interpretations in the contemporary world.
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Occupying Silence
Devashish Makhija
Gallery Kanishka
Rs 495; Pages 40
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This is a rich collection of full-colour plates of graphic-verse pieces, interspersed with miniature vignettes of a life of creative confusion. The works provide an insight into an observant mind, which skilfully dissect the experiences, laying bare the other side of real vision. Makhija’s are daily occurrences in our common world viewed with a completely different perspective.
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Royal Enfield: The Legend Rides On
Price not mentioned; Pages 162
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The Bullet is a legend and when it completes 50 years, it is a matter of celebration. The book meanders through many a highway and byway, while trying to answer pictorially why is it so loved by so many people globally: starting with the early days of the Enfield’s birth, at the Redditch Works, England, to the Enfield factory in Chennai, where it is assembled even today.
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Coimbatore: The Emerging Indian Cosmopolis
Pictures: Stalin Ramesh and K Marudhachalam
Text: Shobhana Kumar
Esscom, Esslingen Coimbatore Association
Rs 500; Pages 250
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A great effort to present Coimbatore as an emerging metropolis. The photographs are awesome, so is the writing. It is a clever and effective mix of the ancient and the present in vivid details: from the Perur temple that dates back to the Chola period to today’s shopping centres, restaurants, theme parks… The book, a guide to a visitor, will make the city-dwellers proud.
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Sikkim: The Hidden Fruitful Valley
Parvin Singh & Yishey Doma
Prakash Books
Rs 1,295; Pages 90
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Sikkim is a land of mystery and enviable charm. Any book on Sikkim will transport you to a land of bliss. The text by Yishey Doma supports rich photographs by Parvin Singh, a photographer who spent many years documenting life, customs, people and the beautiful landscapes of this tiny state of India. A virtual photography journey you will always cherish.
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Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats — A Vanishing Heritage
Santosh Kadur & Kamal Bawa
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment
US $50; Pages 240
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The Sahyadris are home to the most intact rainforests in peninsular India. Myriad species of flora and fauna live here, many of which are found nowhere else on earth, and countless of which are still being discovered. This book takes you to one of the last great places on earth: a place to be cherished, a wild heritage to be preserved for generations to come.
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Tipu’s Tiger
Susan Stronge
Roli Books
Rs 595; Pages 96
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This eye-catching book narrates the tiger’s travels from India to elsewhere, explaining how it has inspired artists and authors, and frightened or entertained the public since its first appearance in England. It also discusses the intriguing meanings of the many tiger motifs on Tipu’s personal commissions, from his jewelled golden throne and idiosyncratic weapons to the emblematic wooden semi-automaton.
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The Indians: Interesting Aspects
Sumant Batra
Tara Press
Rs 8,500; Pages 240
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When there is a plethora of books on India (ahem!), this comes as a whiff of fresh air: a humble attempt to showcase the extraordinary spirit of the Indians and a few interesting facets culled out from the daily lives of peoples this great country. A journey through rural villages and small towns which are preserving houses of civilisation, customs and traditions.

It is elementary, Mr Basu

Sunil K Poolani
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The Curious Case of 221B
Partha Basu
Harper Collins
Price: 299; Pages: 277
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Any person who reads in any major language in the world would be familiar with 221B Baker Street and its famous inhabitant. Arthur Canon Doyle’s famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, the detective par excellence, and his extraordinary gift to solve crimes — and even his narratives to his British doctor, Dr Watson, who becomes the friend, sometime roommate, and sidekick — are part of our lexicon and occupy permanent space in our minds till we kick the bucket.
Holmes is like an addiction, or an energy, that refuses to leave our bodies; we are like Obelix, in Asterix comics, who has no need to drink the druid’s magic potion, because he fell into the cauldron as a baby, making its effect upon him permanently.
So it is with much trepidation that I started reading Partha Basu’s first book — a Holmesian, mind you — in which the detective and his storyteller-doctor appear, not in the cobbled streets of London but in distant Calcutta. And I am, after reading the book with tremendous mental pain followed by an excruciating headache, realised that my initial apprehension turned out to be true: Basu can never be Doyle and it is a crime he even tried to do it: a mystery only the original Holmes can ever resolve.
It is the stupid narrative style that will put many a readers in a tizzy. Narrative after narratives, interspersed, in different fonts: by Jit, who apparently stumbles upon a letter sent to his slain dad by Dr Watson; by Emma Hudson, in whose house Homes stayed; Dr Watson himself; and Julia Stoner. As if these are not enough the book has copious amounts of ‘newspaper clippings’ in not only in a different font but in different layouts.
So what is the story about and what is the mystery involved here? Jit discovers certain letters and notebooks that were stashed away by his deceased dad for more than fifty years. The notes, which involve Holmes and Dr Watson, “are redolent of temptation, torture and terminal punishment.” Why? Dr Watson writes of racism, revenge and sexual algebra and the blood money that flowed from opium, ivory and slaves.
The mystery is how and why did these papers reach India of all the places? Basu is trying to ‘find out’ why, and the readers will get to know why if s/he can reach the final pages of the book, which is hugely unlikely. The only plausible reason I can reach why the papers were found in Calcutta is that Basu wanted them there. No one else. Why blame poor Dr Watson or Holmes for that?
Who is this Basu? Apparently he was a corporate honcho and a BBC Mastermind India semi-finalist, which explains why he gets all the knotty questions and so-called mysteries and suspense that he worthlessly weaves into a narrative (or the lack of it) which lacks charm.
The blurb-writer has the audacity to even say that this is a “brilliant retelling that turns the Holmesian canon on its head” and the ‘present-day’ Doyle has “[brought] back a host of readers, except that they are no longer what we had made them out to be”. Even this could have been justifiable if Basu would have used the same simple style Doyle employed, which, even after a century, reads like a dream; instead our man uses all his skills to showcase his vocabulary to hapless readers.
Now, Holmes would have said, unless he is not turning in his grave: “It is elementary Mr Basu, do not try to be a Doyle.”
-- Sahara Time

A home away from home

By Raziqueh Hussain

4 September 2009: Novelist Asha Iyer Kumar talks about her debut book Sand Storms, Summer Rains, and gives an insider’s view of an expat’s life in the Gulf and how she’s made herself at home and etched out a new life in her adopted land.

An article Asha Iyer Kumar was asked to write for the Khaleej Times’ weekend magazine on ‘Gulfees’ (a term for expats she coined herself) was the trigger for her to pen her book Sand Storms, Summer Rains. “I decided to take the thread of privations from the article and weave a story, keeping the sentiment intact but filling it with fictional characters and instances. I stuffed it with my own observations and broad view of people and life,” she reveals.
The premise of her book is the life of expats living in the Gulf. The two main protagonists are symbols of the emotional and personal upheavals men suffer when they travel to distant lands to make money and support their families back home. The book takes the reader on a dune-bashing ride through their agonies and ecstasies, their lives summing up the futility of the expat journey in personal terms. It took three years for Kumar to write her book, and three more to have it published. Kumar moved to the Gulf in 1998 after her marriage, but becoming a novelist wasn’t a conscious choice. “It was joblessness and boredom that drove me to take up writing full time, not the intention of getting published,” she says. “It was a means of keeping myself busy. As my observations and experiences of life in the Gulf grew, I felt an urge to write them down.”
Although Kumar admires authors like RK Narayan, Ruskin Bond and Shashi Deshpande, she vehemently denies any marked influences in her style. “I haven’t tried to imbibe any particular style from any particular author. I doubt if any writer would consciously do such a thing and risk losing their identity. I think, as we evolve through reading and writing, our own style becomes a confluence of various influences — of theme, thought, technique, even the genre of writing. But yes, there might be a mild sway here or there that is evocative of some other author, but that cannot be intentional,” she says.
Kumar, who lives in Fujairah, feels the best part of being an expat is having to make a home for yourself in a different culture and learning 
to adapt.
“You are in a country that has a completely different culture from your own, yet you feel at home because of its adoptive nature and its multicultural and cosmopolitan fabric. I don’t think my first novel would have happened if it wasn’t for the fact that I live here,” she says.
But like all expats, she misses home. “Oh, how I miss the monsoon and the lush green landscapes of Kerala. How I regret not being able to partake in family gatherings and occasions.
“I see the life of an expat as an extended metaphor for life itself. There’s no guarantee of being here tomorrow, so live today to the fullest.”
-- Khaleej Times

A Struggle for Identity Amidst Suffering

BOOK REVIEW

A Girl called Asha Albuquerque
By Vikshiptha
Frog Books, Mumbai
Price Rs 195

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell us of our saddest thoughts”
P.B.Shelley

Vikshiptha’s novel A Girl called Asha Albuquerque reincarnates this idea as the protagonist, in his bitter struggle of life, strives to get an identity for himself. Though the little could be confused for the story of a girl, a reading through the novel turns it a recording of the epiphany of Vikshiptha. Vikshiptha struggles to get a meaning for himself, ‘who is neither dead nor living’, As a teacher, as a worker in “a(n) (M)and agency”, as a son, as a brother, as a husband and as a father, Vikshiptha undergoes a continuous metamorphosis. If Kafka’s hero becomes an insect overnight, Vikshiptha lives like an insect for 40 years. His inability to get the post of a permanent lecturer (owing to the ‘forward’ status of his caste and his commitment to morality by not giving a bribe to get a permanent job) becomes his albatross, though he is not a sinner. The weight of the social dogmas, the corruption in the education departments, the bitter reality of life and the non-availability of an alternative mean to recognize his temperament make Vikshiptha’s metamorphosis a never ending process. The novel is an embodiment of this struggle.
If I resort to give a summary of the novel, then there would be no meaning at all in analyzing the novel as a text. Before I dissect the text in my own crude and amateur way, I beg the pardon of Vikshiptha (Niranjan Sharma), for I am fully aware that my analysis would not be able to access its potentiality to the highest degree.
The structure of the novel is, perhaps, first of its kind. It is far away from the Mills and Boons romances, the “classics” or the recent award winning ‘popular’ fictions. The novel is a document; it is a culmination of experience and scholarship. The reading of the novel prerequisites a base in literary criticism, philosophy, psychology and literature. The author tries to negotiate between two identities: writing for living or living for writing? This struggle between two identities is shown in the description of the girl: A Girl called Asha Albuquerque: with Hypnotic eyes and Ravishing lips….., she is a “child-woman”. The author/Vikshiptha’s struggle goes in parallel with the struggle of the girl. She becomes a sign through which author’s metamorphosis is expressed. While Vikshiptha describes himself, he is also being described by the girl. In between these two narrative strategies, philosophical and psychological extracts are woven inextricably. In structure, theme and style A Girl Called Asha Albuquerque is a different experiment.
The novel cannot be read in the ordinary sense of the term ‘reading’. It requires a preliminary understanding of various thinkers, literary laureates and an acute awareness of the pain that has stimulated the author to write the text. T.S.Eliot, the modernist thinker and writer has said: “……..creation of a work is a continuous extinction of personality. The more the writer suffers, the more creative in him will be the mind that creates”. Vikshiptha’s sufferings, therefore, contribute a lot to the understanding of the metamorphosis and transformation of hisself’. The numerous quotations that the author makes use of in the novel don’t become ‘hanging’ quotations. They suit to the purpose and situation as they enhance the narrator’s metamorphosis to the reader. Therefore the reaching of this novel requires a basic knowledge of Beckett, Freud, Golding, Jung, Tolstoy, Kant, Stendhal, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, William Faulkner, Rousseau, Arun Joshi, Nirad Chaudhury, Baudelaire, to name a few. Hence, the novel cannot be read in the ordinary sense of the term ‘reading’.
The field of education becomes a target (it deserves an attack) in the novel. Its flaws, the rampant corruption, the illogical handling of the department, the hipocracy of the state – all come under Vikshiptha’s scrutiny as he has seen them from a distance during his career as a lecturer. The tasks of a lecturer are parodied in the novel – who has to ‘finish’ the syllabus or ‘portion’. In this process, according to Vikshiptha, the very essence of teaching goes into astray. The students learn English in the manner they are taught – in patches, not in the way it has to be taught and learnt. When it comes to the question of teaching English literature, the knowledge of the professors does not to go beyond Shakespeare. They continue to believe that quoting from ‘classics’ is the ultimate sigh of having a mastery over those particular texts in general and over literature as well. These gunny bags of quotations have turned the seriousness of literary pursuit into a mere academic reproduction of an existing knowledge, far away from a creative and productive venture. Vikshiptha is deprived of a permanent lecturer’s post for two reasons: first, he belongs to a caste that is considered to be a ‘forward’ caste by the constitution. Second, he refuses to pay bribe. Therefore he remains a ‘permanently temporary lecturer’ in English. This prompts him to write: “……….at 40, being a ghastly failure, left with nothing but words, all I could do was to write” (P-16).
Vikshiptha’s genius is at its best while describing the places with pun. The city where he stays is ‘Monkeytown’ (Mangaluru/ Mangalore?) is in the state of KARKOTAKA (Karnataka?). He began his career in a place called IPUDU (UDUPI?) and the village nearby has turned into the Las Vegas of banking and education with a name MONEY’s PAL (MANIPAL?). His early years were spent ALAREK (KERALA?). While naming the characters, Vikshiptha makes use of irony as well. So there are persons like Dr.Icecold Frozen, Dr.Asyoulikeit, Dr.Muchadoaboutnothing, Dr.Sillymind Freud and Dr.Colourblind. The magazines that he reads are “India Tomorrow”, “Inlook” and “Weak”. Of course, we are not asked to play the guessing game. But our temptation is strong. But what should catch our attention is the irony, wit and humour that could be derived in reading the text.
There are still a lot more in the novel A Girl Called Asha Albuquerque. I am not going to deal with them. I leave them for the readers to enjoy and analyze.
Review by:
Subrahmanya Sharma
M. A. (English) First Rank (2007)
Mangalore University
S/O Venkatramana Bhat
P.O. Ukkinadka
Kasaragod-671 552

Whine and Dine

Sunil K Poolani
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Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Hamish Hamilton
Price: 499; Pages: 252
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There was a nice, short girl from the riverside of a Kerala village who wrote a book in the mid-nineties. A sweet, small novel which was likeable but immensely forgettable. But it was not the case. The staccato style she employed got the attention of the Booker judges and it went on to win that coveted award, thanks to which millions of copies were sold, and still counting.
Arundhati Roy became a household name since then. But there was a noticeable lull period in her writing. Her next avatar was in the form of a ‘crusader’, but purely as a heavily subjective commentator who voiced her views in the form of non-fiction but with poetic cadences — which for many was like blurring the lines of fact and fiction. Nevertheless, she was serious.
The Narmada movement led by Medha Patkar was her first foray into her campaigner career that would then span more than a decade. It was a small trip from Meenachil to Narmada, then. Since then she has travelled all over the world; there is hardly any political party, any fundamental religious group, any despicable dictatorship in the world that has not failed to face her wrath.
I have been observing this little-bird-lady for more than a decade, like most of her readers spread across continents. She is determined; and always gets into trouble (including a token one-day jail sentence for ‘insulting’ the judiciary); makes enemies faster than ‘War Criminal’ Bush; and I have an inane feeling that Roy enjoys them all.
There are two Roys. One, a totally devoted, sharp, meticulous and daring Roy who does her homework very meticulously and comes up with periodic commentaries on issues that we tend to sweep under the carpet. An eye-opener Roy.
Then there is the maverick Roy, who finds gratification in upsetting many an applecarta; mightier the better. She is like this: there is a calamity that affects India or things closer to the polity of the country — be it the Bombay terror attacks or the Gujarat genocide — and, voila, you can expect her to comment on that very soon. And make provocative statements (of course, there is truth in what she says) to incite (mostly the neo-Hindutva elements) the masses, or the lay English-language reader.
Admit it. She is very much part of us, but aloof, almost invisible; not present even for the launch of her book in question, Listening to Grasshoppers, which is a collection of her essays that have had appeared in national and international media on all issues close to her heart; and in some way to us, too. Most of the stuff we have read, along these years. And most of them have earned her more brickbats than bouquets. Be it questioning the media, be it how a democratically elected state government like Narendra Modi’s orchestrating a pogrom, be it how the Parliament attack accused have been vilified, be it…. whatever.
Reading through most of the articles in the book, which are not updated “intentionally”, one comes to realise that, how much ever we hate Roy, we love her in an equal measure.
Love her or hate her, she is going to be with us. As a mirror. Doesn’t matter if she is not at all objective in her views. And, yes, she mixes verse and worse in equal measures.
This book should be more of a reference guide and a ready-reckoner than just a book that should be read and stashed away.

Nothing but a bad joke

Sunil K Poolani
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The Gold of Their Regrets
Ravi Shankar Etteth
Penguin India
Price: 250; Pages: 227
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One-two chapters into reading, I was not sure what is the genre of this bizarre book that I was, excruciatingly, trying to make sense of. Serious fiction? Plain fantasy? Historical novel? Or a joke? When I was through I got my answer: it is nothing but a bad joke. Why? Will come to that.
For that you need to know the story (or the lack of it). The supposed thriller begins in circa 1945. A Mitsubishi K1-21 bomber — carrying Subhas Chandra Bose (the commander of the INA), his trusted bodyguard Bezbaruah and 30 million pounds in gold with Nazi imprint, crashes — nothing more is learnt about it since then. Three men masterminded the crash, so tells Etteth, and only the trio still knows what happened to the gold.
Sixty years pass. Bezbaruah’s son, now a trained mysterious killer, is all set to kill the trio and accumulate the wealth; also in the process he learns where his dad’s remains could be found. Now, the Killer is a Tarzan, invincible, and knows everything that is going on in Indian intelligence agencies; he can reach anywhere, anytime, like Superman; he is invincible, like Mandrake. He is ruthless, like Jack the Ripper. Until… until he finds out that his opponents are no lesser mortals: Anna Khan (super cop, whose husband was killed by a Kashmir militant), and Jay Samorin (martial art specialist from a Kerala royal family). Khan and Samorin are now together and have sex all the time when they are not doing dishum-dishum.
DCP Khan and her fighter-gigolo friend are all set to find out how Samorin’s wild pet, Bharadwaj (one of the 1945 trio), his daughter, her lesbian girlfriend, the lesbian girl’s boyfriend, and lastly Khan’s own dad (the second of the trio) were killed. And naturally they want to nab the Killer and squeeze him to death.
The story revolves around Delhi, Kashmir, Haridwar, Kerala… sans any honesty, subjectivity or any sense of timing. Difficult to believe? So what? It is fiction, right? Wrong. Etteth is only interested in showing off his knowledge of a Delhi high life (Versace, Prada, Armani), his convoluted vocabulary, and his possession of the ‘historical’ facts of the INA. But, ahem, they do not contribute to the continuity of the narration he intends his readers would scurry through.
Sorry for the digression. The story is not over yet. Then comes a character called Tulsi, who seems to have even wooed Alexander the Great, is the godmother of all the nefarious and internecine happenings in the whole world, and can even get pregnant by Samorin (so what she is in her eighties — or is it 180s?
Now, the third of the trio happens to be Samorin’s dad. Ha, ha. So believable. And this Tulsi, who is ravishingly beautiful and has had sex with almost all the royals, fighters and mafia goons since a century, is the person who helps Samorin and Khan to get rid of the killer. How? She personally kills him. And the final truth is revealed: the Killer is Tulsi’s son. Surprises galore? Unless you feel like throwing up.
If this weren’t a ‘serious’ thriller, and a joke book, I would have loved it. Nevertheless, I am sure Etteth did not mean it so; so might be the commissioning editors of the novel in question. To be frank, the book is a page-turner; in a way that, you read it in disbelief but with a suppressed smirk. And, hah, the language is good at times. But lexis is, fiction is not. Other defining and ‘entertaining’ moments in the book are the varied sexual activities: from lesbianism, voyeurism, to even bestiality.
The talented Ravi Shankar (Etteth) should have stuck on to what he is really good at: political cartooning and social commentaries.
-- Deccan Herald

Eternal, rustic lamp

By Uma Chandrasekaran & Sunil K Poolani

A Silence of Desire
Kamala Markandaya
Penguin India
Price: 250; Pages: 179

Certain wonders never cease to enchant. Be it the Taj. Be it the Egyptian Pyramids. In literature, too, there are unmatchable gems that stand the test of time. Like Homer’s Odyssey. India also has (now, not talking about the Vedic classics, here) an array of quality writers’ works that refuse to stop fascinating you. The ever-effervescent Kamala Markandaya is one writer.
First published in 1960, about a middle-class Indian family, Markandaya’s A Silence of Desire stages a seamless comeback. Why so? Because it is crafted in a deceptively gentle style in simple-yet-evocative language, much like its leitmotif, the tulasi tree in a homely courtyard, portraying the silent symbol of faith and family. And Penguin decides to publish it, like many of her earlier works, this year, too.
What makes Markandaya so special? For which you should reread the story, at least of the book in question. Sarojini is the dutiful wife of Dandekar the clerk and mother of two daughters and a son: 12-year-old Ramabai, 10-year-old Lakshmi and the youngest little son Chandru. Until one day.
“Three children, no debts, a steady job, a fair pile of savings that his wife regularly converted into gold… ” What more could Dandekar ask of Sarojini, his wife of 15 years, who tended to his neat and orderly needs and was good with the children? She met all his demands placidly and listened to his account of another day in office with the same patience and regularity. And he was always grateful to her for keeping her report of the day brief — ‘not bad’ was good enough.
All is quiet until the day he comes home from office to the deafening sounds of Chandru’s loud crying, the servant girl helpless and whining and his two daughters squabbling. Sarojini is not home. Strange. She says she went to see her Cousin Rajam.
Well, the last day of the month, when, as usual, Dandekar goes shopping to buy little gifts for his family with the money he saves on bus fares by walking to and from the office… who should he bump into but Rajam herself — enquiring about Sarojini who she hasn’t seen for four months. Quite strange. Dandekar hardly hears the rest of the conversation and breathes an uneasy sigh of relief only when Sarojini tells him that was Cousin Pankajam she saw. More unease when he opens the old tin trunk under the bed in search of an old book and sees the photograph of a strange man — a married woman did not have men friends who were not known to the husband, did she? The seed of doubt is sown and starts to show in his demeanour in the office also.
He starts coming back home at odd hours to find his wife not there, the servant dismissed and the children on their own. And one evening he finds his wife sitting cross-legged in the courtyard praying intensely by the tulasi, lamps lit and the man’s portrait garlanded. The dutiful Dandekar, obsessed, takes leave from office and shadows Sarojini. More lies follow. He confronts her about her ‘affair’ and for the first time, she takes her hands away from her face and he sees her face naked and wet; she had always covered her face when she wept.
Has he lost her to the Swamy? Will he be able to persuade this man to go away and give his wife back to him? Does the Swamy teach her the secret of detachment even to accept his own leaving? Sarojini’s one line says it all: “It would be sinful to batter oneself to pieces because one refuses to recognise that another’s life is his own.”
The blurb on the back cover of the book does not prepare you for the deeper storm inside. This is no simple East-West or faith-versus-reason argument. We wish the author were alive to see her readers get all the meanings she has brought out so subtly and, yet, powerfully.
A Silence of Desire is a gentle book spoken almost in silence, but it grips and keeps you thinking about it long after you are through with it. No wonder her work is prescribed reading for students of literature in many American and British universities.
Final touch: It would be too limiting to call this work the usual ‘Indian writing in English’. It is universal in its theme and relevance.
-- Deccan Herald

Our Team at Leadstart Publishing

Sunil K Poolani
Has had a wide and varied career graph, starting with journalism (as a Senior Editor in the Express Group, The Sunday Observer, The Free Press Journal and Blitz); is a regular contributor to mainstream publications like Hindustan Times, DNA, The Asian Age, Deccan Herald, Deccan Chronicle, Sahara Time and Oman Tribune. Founded Frog Books, which later was incorporated into Leadstart Publishing and is now its Executive Director and Publisher.

Mishta Roy
Is a graphic designer, BFA, First Class First, Delhi College of Arts and MFA from Central Saint Martin’s, University of London. She has worked with various organisations since 2000, notably with Tehelka, Saatchi and Saatchi, Explocity and Rave Magazine. She currently resides in Bangalore from where she freelances for ArtIndia Magazine, India Foundation for the Arts and Breakthrough among others. She has been working with Frog Books since 2006.

Derek Bose
Is a senior journalist, author, magazine editor, film jurist and columnist. Over the past 25 years, his writings have appeared in leading news journals in India and abroad. He has authored seven best-selling books on cinema. In 2007, he was awarded the Rashtriya Ratna as the best Indian film journalist of the year. He has been a Consulting Editor with Frog Books since its inception.

Abhirami Sriram
Has at least 10 years’ experience in publishing, working with prestigious publishers that include Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Rupa & Co, Sage Publications, EastWest Books and Katha Books. She has been working with Leadstart since 2008, editing mostly non-fiction.

Sadhvi Sharma
Is a sociology graduate with a Masters in International Development from the University of Warwick, UK. She has worked in the non-profit sector and more recently in the print media, in India (as an Editor, Hindustan Times) and in the UK (Spiked). She has long been associated with the NGO WORLDwrite and has filmed documentaries in Ghana. She has been a Books Editor with Frog Books since 2005.

Shubham Gupta
Is a writer, essayist, researcher, painter and a cartoonist, all rolled into one. His varied interests have seen him work as correspondent to various newspapers and put him on several editorial boards, until he found solace in settling down to become a storyteller. Apart from being a Consultant Editor since 2005, he handles Leadstart’s business operations in Bangalore.

Ramkrishna Salvi
A designer who has worked with several national and international newspapers and magazines, he has had a wide experience of about 30 years in print design and publishing. Has been designing books for Frog Books since its inception.

Abha Iyengar
Is an internationally published writer and poet. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner and is a member of Riyaz Writer’s Group at the British Council, New Delhi. She has recently produced a poem-film that is being screened at international film festivals. She is the Fiction Editor with Frog Books since 2006.

Been there, seen it

Sunil K Poolani
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Arzee the Dwarf
Chandrahas Choudhury
HarperCollins Publishers India
Rs 325; Pages 184
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Immediately after I got this book for review, the books page editor of a national daily called me up and said: “This guy, Chandrahas Choudhury, his debut novel is, what can I say, can be compared to Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum.
Wow. That is a great compliment, coming from him. So I started reading Arzee the Dwarf with great expectations. So does the literary aficionado stand vindicated? Those things later.
Choudhury, whose book reviews I have been reading regularly in several prestigious publications, has taken a great risk: a books reviewer turning novelist and exposing his work to others to review. And, to be honest, he has almost succeeded in writing a good book — not great by any standard.
The book talks about Arzee, a great loser and moaner; he sulks about his life to even people he hardly knows. And, yes, obviously, he is short and he is acutely aware of that fact and, naturally, develops an inferiority complex.
He works as a projectionist in a soon-to-be-multiplexed, fading-away Noor — a landmark movie theatre where Madhubala and Nargis sang and danced to enchant gleaming movie-goers at an era when even television was unheard of.
When the novel starts Arzee is playing cards with his ruffian friends. He is but in a good mood: his senior, Pherozebhai, the ageing Parsi who has fathered a blind daughter who will get married in the last chapter, is retiring, and Arzee will be replacing him. And Arzee’s Mother has found a girl for him, despite his shortness, from Nashik. What else do you want in life?
But all comes to a null when Arzee was told that the once-luminous theatre will be demolished and in its place a multiplex theatre will come up and they will not have openings for redundant, unkempt workers of the Noor. The ground under his feet slips away. He falls into dejection and takes to vigorous drinking.
In between there is this famous and funny encounter with Deepakbhai, who is part of a crime syndicate; Arzee apparently owes him money, because he gambled and lost. Deepak always chases him, and eventually Arzee does pay Deepak all the money he owes him.
His Mother is worried that something has happened to his son (Mother only comes into the picture only towards the end of the book), and learns from Pherozebhai that Arzee’s job will be history. And to add injury to insult she confesses to him that he is not the real son of hers (a Muslim) and Father’s (a Hindu bania). Arzoo is actually a Christian and he was adopted by Mother and Father when they were childless for a long time.
He then goes into another bout of hopelessness and anxiety; another reason being his girlfriend had, thanks to her drunkard dad, left him two years ago. Finally Mohan somehow tracks her down in Goa and his life starts looking up. Arzoo makes plans to visit that place, but before that he has to attend Pherozebhai’s daughter’s wedding. The train is about to leave for Goa and he remembers he had forgotten his sunglasses and there was almost no point in going to Goa sans them.
It is one of the most intriguing, insane and insensitive ending (all rolled into one) I have ever come across. And after reading this short novel, it is not Arzoo, but the reader who is left astray.
Now, about Choudhury’s writing. He knows his craft well, has an eye for detail and possesses vivid imagery. But what pulls him back, intentional or not, is his oft-repeated conversations and thoughts that can be utterly boring and infuriating. The style is gimmicky at times, with a dose of street-smartness; especially so when Choudhury uses this vivacious city, Bombay, as the background for his maiden effort. And if you are an owner of a two-bit brain what you could never decipher is, how almost all the characters in this novel is a philosopher: I have never seen a cabbie or a bargirl talk about the intricacies and complexities of existentialism and karma.
Sorry, Choudhury is no Grass, never. Excluding these flaws this book is a page-turner, and I will of course look forward to his next work. He is a talent to watch, only if he realises that the road ahead is harsher than the potholed lanes of Bombay.
-- Sahara Time

Onam This Year, Every Year

This year too we are going to celebrate our National Festival, Onam, this way. Any problem?

How we Mallus like Gold

Recession? What is that? Well, we from the Mallu Land does not know what it means.
General elections in Kerala? Well, oh we think they just got over. Who cares who won and who came at the Centre.
What we care most is Gold. Yes 'peoples' from this Gawd's own country like only that: Gold.
You know what Asianet, our own Gelf channel, is famous for? No, not for the Star Singer programme.
Then? The ads that come in between -- that of different jewellery shops spread across Kerala, India, the Gelf, the UK, the US...
The real fight was not fought in the ballot box; it was (and is) between two major jewellery shops -- primarily on the telly.
Shop Chain No 1 said: "You do not need salesmen in jewellery shops; they cheat you. You should only go for the "certified", pre-priced gold jewellery in our shops."
Countered Shop Chain No 2: "Bullshit, only our salesmen can give you the right piece for the right price; the "certified" shops cheat you."
Both roped in popular cine stars to endorse their respective claims...
And the internecine battle continues.
(Last month when I was licking my wounds in Kerala, I came across a small news report buried inside the largest newspaper in Malayalam which carried several ads of the above-mentioned jewellers: "A girl committed suicide in Kottayam district because their parents could not afford to buy her a 100-gram gold chain for her wedding.")

WASHINGTON POST COMPETITION ASKED FOR TWO-LINE RHYME WITH THE MOST ROMANTIC FIRST LINE, BUT THE LEAST ROMANTIC SECOND LINE (AND I THOUGHT ABOUT MY EX-WIFE WHEN I READ THIS)

This is the winner:


My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife,

Marrying you screwed up my life.

I see your face when I am dreaming.

That's why I always wake up screaming.

Kind, intelligent, loving and hot;

This describes everything you are not.

Love may be beautiful, love may be bliss,

But I only slept with you because I was pissed.

I thought that I could love no other --

that is until I met your brother.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.

But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl's empty and so is your head.

I want to feel your sweet embrace;

But don't take that paper bag off your face.

I love your smile, your face, and your eyes --

Damn, I'm good at telling lies!

My love, you take my breath away.

What have you stepped in to smell this way?

My feelings for you no words can tell,

Except for maybe 'Go to hell.'

What inspired this amorous rhyme?

Two parts tequila, one part lime

Do not take this call

Sunil K Poolani

BPO-Sutra: True Stories from India’s BPO & Call Centres
Compiled & Edited by Sudhindra Mokhasi
Rupa & Co
Price: 95; Pages: 384

This is one of the most outlandish, blasphemous and ludicrous books that I have received for review in so many years. Before getting into the nitty-gritty, some bit of background.
When the information gateway charted new roads into India, there came a nonsensical youth brigade that jumped on to that bandwagon; they could not talk or write in simple English, but talked in a lingo no one, not even the puppies they owned, deciphered. But there was money; easy money. And then the US, the snake pit of fast money due to conning the rest of the world till then, started losing jobs and those jobs came to India. And more money came into our yuppies’ pockets; easy, filthy money, to boot.
Now, our laadlas, started wearing Chanel T-shirts and expensive perfumes, flirted with “what the f**k-man” babes or dudes, talked jargons like “paradigm shifts”, holidayed in Pattaya; and displayed more attitude: scorn towards the have-nots.
Then came an ‘apostle’ for that breed, who could talk their lingo: Chetan Bhagat. He, and his publisher, smelled a great market here. And Bhagat wrote an all-time bore (what if it sold in thousands!): One Night @ the Call Centre. No one with a two-bit brain could go beyond two pages. But for the BPO crowd, and that includes my cousin sisters and nephews, this book was gospel, manna from heaven. Why not, it still sells; recession or no recession.
Okay, we have all heard lots of stories of this breed: how they worked their ass off at any hour of the day, how they doped, went for midnight binges, how they used to whiz around in their Bullets, how they changed sex partners like they use and dump stained… whatever.
So should not these raunchy, salacious stories be stored for posterity? Of course. So thought the publisher of this book. So did the compiler of this tome. (What I admired most about this ambitious volume is that the publisher priced this book, numbering nearly 400 pages, at a mere Rs. 95.) And no marks for guessing who wrote the endorsement blurb on the front cover: Bhagat.
Mokhasi, the compiler and ‘editor’, poor thing, thinks he has done a great service to mankind in getting this book out; a great contribution to world writing history. But the sad truth, somebody should tell him, is that he has no style, can’t write a line in that’s not in ungrammatical English. And, see, he claims that he was the vice-president of a top IT company and is now, a CEO of a company. Sometimes I am surprised how people climb up the ladder sans even a cretin’s intelligence level.
Now, the book. All the ‘stories’ in the book are basically hearsay and or told by Mokhasi’s friends to him. There is no point in ‘reviewing’ them as they do not fall into any class; it does not even have the quality of a grocery bill.
Most of the ‘stories’ are supposed to be funny, but they are absolutely gruesome; brew that with bad English (I could count 18 mistakes in one page, and almost every page has several of them), bad puns, uninteresting sexual innuendoes… you name what you can expect from a trash bin, you have them all here. It seems Mokhasi is in love with ‘!’ and you can find them in dozens after a sentence he makes, thinking he has just made a funny statement.
Final assessment: Yes, this book is unputdownable. You know why? Because it is immensely throwable. With a thud.
-- Deccan Herald / Sahara Time

Lost in Verbosity

Sunil K Poolani & Uma Chandrasekaran

Chinnery’s Hotel
Jaysinh Birjepatil
Ravi Dayal / Penguin
Price: 325; Pages: 261

It is by now known that Indians can write in English as good as, and in several cases, much better than contemporary British and American writers. This comes at a time when India is considered to be a great market for books published in English — doesn’t matter even if the imprint says it was first published in the late 1800s or it is a pirated version of the Fuhrer’s autography.
But, this soaring market has its own downfalls. Mediocrity of all standards get the front seat… and attention and glamour. Well-chiselled writings, painstakingly done though, get a step-motherly treatment and sinks into oblivion. Sad. True, but. So, it is with immense pleasure that we marvelled at the novel penned by Jaysinh Birjepatil.
Chinnery’s Hotel has style and a huge amount of substance, and it offers a wonderful window into the old days of the Raj. And how Birjepatil could assume and analyse those days in vivid details is amusingly mysterious. But, like every good work of art, this too is flawed with a disease that is spreading across the globe: verbosity.
That does not mean Chinnery’s Hotel is a throwaway dish; it is a smorgasbord. It tells the story of yearning, of homelessness, of a journey in search of her borrowed roots seen through the eyes of Grace, in her old age, travelling back to the India of her childhood — longing to go “back home” while in India, but finding England not as British as she was in India.
Set in Mhow, a British cantonment town in India, Chinnery’s Hotel is more than just a home to Grace, her Mater, Pater, brother Bobby and sister Jo Anna, their chokraboys, ayahs, boxwallahs, and all the paraphernalia that were quintessential to being British in the India of the Raj.
Birjepatil paints a rich gossipy canvas of the life and times of many a mixed-up race: the English-American-European, the Parsi, and, the Anglo-Indian. The subtext is one of the utter hopelessness of being an Anglo-Indian — while the other mixed races are fun and ‘in’, the Anglos cannot rise above their station and there is almost a cry of triumph when they err on the wrong side of Victorian morality.
And incest is natural to Grace’s daughter Camilla, for after-all, she is just another one of them: forever reflected in a cracked mirror “…. Don’t you see, it’s the knowing that’s sinful, not what we did?” And, therefore, her bleeding to death on the birth of her daughter “had a logic of loss by instalment”.
The tone of the book has the pallor of death and old age hanging like stale air but not touching you an emotional chord, as say, an Iris Murdoch. So many big, harsh words tumble out in such numbing succession. Your prayer for relief gets a rare simple, yet picturesque line hidden amidst the drudgery. Sample three: “memory kept alive by touch is the Braille of ghosts”; “face caved in like a document hastily thrown in a grate”; “as though Grace has died in her sleep, leaving behind an empty dress hanging from a peg”.
Don’t read it if you have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia but look at the brighter side: Chinnery’s Hotel can be very useful when you play Scrabble. The author is truly a Professor of English literature.
-- Sahara Time

Life Looks Up

Uma Chandrasekaran

There’s a coconut tree in my backyard. I fought to plant it more than eleven years ago. Everyone, who wasn’t an expert on coconut trees or about anything auspicious, advised – should not plant a single one as its not good for the house. Very practical objection from spouse – where’s the space? A psychiatrist, he gives everything it’s wingspan and doesn’t like Bonsai! I made the decision on the clear household rule for autonomic decisions taking the entire responsibility for the actions and fruits thereof!
I bought a sapling from the nursery (even coconut trees are born there – what containment!), found a fella who needed money for his next drink and recited the technical advice doled out by the staff at the nursery while he planted it. My tree grew so well, the fronds so green, the trunk thick and strong – let me name her– “Life”? Life continued adding more fine greenery to her as many years rolled by. Everyone came – why is she not flowering? Have you got one that takes fifty long years to mature? Will you be alive to taste the fruit or nut? (Come on I’m not in my dotage!) Teams of tree-climbers broke my confidence. Said the tree needed help to mature – we’ll get to the center of her and put some stuff there that will induce flowering. Have you noticed these guys – come in pairs, one drunk and the other wiry older guy will do the climbing? Your regular gardener does not handle coconut trees, if you please.
The pair of climbers came with more big men and they got to the center of the tree, brushing off her protests when she tried to use her foliage as fig leaf. I can’t forget to this day the violent rape of that tree in broad daylight. Some ash-gray chemical, some iodized sodium chloride and some red soil forced into her heart to ‘help’ her flower. We’ll never know if she might have come of age on her own but these guys crowed with triumph when after a couple of months of this horror, Life showed five beautiful fluorescent yellow flowers as though wanting to please us fivefold for all these years of silence. The fruits matured on my daughter’s eleventh birthday and we offered the first coconut to the Lord in true Indian style. The feeling of really having celebrated her birthday was so lovely and pure. The fruits and the water inside were unbelievably sweet. Reaped about ten of them.
Despite the flowering, I hated Life’s violators and banished them. Then the haunting began. Another guy who knew coconut trees happened by. You could see from the way he touched her with so much respect and affection that he worshipped coconut trees. A sad look on his face, he told us that the main shoot had turned direction and Life would start growing sideways. He pronounced mercy killing. Also said she wouldn’t bear fruit – not with that huge gash that would appear with turned head. Nothing doing. Kill a woman if she cannot bear a child? Let my Life live never mind the fruits. We’ll keep trimming the foliage if it gets into neighbour’s territory. He was bang on target. We found her lower fronds drooping downward and upper ones sticking upward instead of fanning out. Like an inverted L or the bright brittle little tinsel fans mounted on thin sticks of chiseled bamboo that children buy at temple fairs and run about to make them twirl.
How did Life react? She just decided to look up. In a quiet simple majestic move, she started reaching out to the Sun the Giver as though she knew her life depended on it. Slowly but surely, she has reversed the downward trend and is now laughing at our worries. The tree-lover climber came saw the wonder and shared in our happiness. She had conquered all in less than a year.
I have seen people behave much the same way as my tree.
A truck knocked down a young carpenter, about thirty, married, with three children, on a fine morning when he went to the teashop for usual round of tea and daily news. I saw him in hospital both legs amputated at the knee, right arm gone too, angry lacerations all over his body. He was ready to be sent home as the treatment was over and he was clinically recovering. His young wife beside him, he had healed himself beyond imagination. They were talking about how they would start life afresh, find a new occupation, wife would find some houses to work in, and continue to put their children through school. A matter of fact acceptance: no emptiness, no bitterness, and no anger, just plain positive sunny hope of making it again. Where many would have sobbed, they had seen it as a mere sniffle! He wouldn’t pass the screen test for Baywatch but so what! His family had given him eight legs to glide.
Recently, an elderly person who wanted to institute a gold medal to be given to the best student of management met me in the university. Only great teachers or researchers and the administrative genre are around in a campus during vacation time. I teach – get the picture! Father of an alumnus, he asked if I remembered his son. But of course I did and the last occasion he was here, he spoke so excitedly about his business venture that had started showing results, was happily married and we admired his new car. The father now said this only son died in a motoring accident a couple of years ago. The tears had dried but the pain had not. The family wanted to keep the memory of their son alive by making meaningful contributions to education. The gold medal at the university and a scholarship at his school were their way of doing it. His wife is doing her MBA and working too. We, the living!
What I recently heard about a friend made me wonder. A doctor couple with a brilliant computer whiz-kid pre-teen son, their car had crashed and taken away her husband and son in a trice. My friend had a head injury and did not know any of this till after many weeks. Now recovered and back to full-time professional work, although mobility restricted, she lives in her flat on her own near her parents’ but prefers her independence, her many hobbies and two children whom she cares for as her own. I dare not offer her anything more. We had once shared the fun of being seventeen, off-class jaunts, visits to the pani-puri joint, so many books, the stimulation of idealism and intellectualism that is at its best at that age. Now she has risen way above in stature, a study in courage and the reason perhaps, why (wo)man is the highest known living stage in evolution so far.
Padmasri Dr.G.Venkataswamy, the Founder Chairman of Aravind Eye Care System and the chain of Aravind Eye Hospitals located in five places in South India. A promising medical professional, serving in the army during World War II, he was struck by a rare form of arthritis that twisted his fingers and toes. A young man with all the usual expectations of life, he drew on reserves of inner strength to fight the acute pain, the social distancing, and the forced bed-rest to train in ophthalmic surgery and dedicate himself to the cause of eradicating needless blindness. Today his hospital chain performs the largest number of cataract surgeries in the world as a single entity, to the largest proportion of patients getting free care. In 2004, they performed 2,27,435 surgical and laser procedures of which 1,41,689 were free of cost to poor patients. Their sister unit operated under a separate Trust, AuroLabs makes and exports Intra-ocular lenses to many countries around the world and supports ongoing eye care research activities. Dr.V as he is popularly called, is an enthusiastic and responsible user of IT for service to humanity. Actively learning, still seeking for newer and better ways to bring light to more eyes he launched CARE – Creating Access for Rural Eye care – a chain of Internet kiosks for aiding consultation and empowering the patients from hitherto unreached villages. Born on 1st October 1918, he is now 87 years young and lives in Pondicherry and Madurai and in the hearts of millions he has helped see.
Life deals each of us our hand, to work around the dents and win. Helen Keller, Somerset Maugham, Stephen Hawking – they have all done it. Instead of asking “why me?” many like them have shot back with “why not!” Repairing a dent can be as simple as kissing away the hurt when your little one comes with a tiny bruise! Or it can mean a huge incision that has to be sutured up. An application of TLC a.k.a. tender loving care can cure or soothe. The healing takes steely inner resolve to keep going sunny side up. A few march way ahead and make things better for humanity.
The coconut tree in my garden is flowering again. Like a proud war veteran, Life has made a comeback with scars and a hunch left by the dent, but the fruits are going to be the braver for it! Ever wondered at the beauty of a face lined with life's experiences? It doesn’t turn you tizzy like the twenty something, but dawns on you. A beautiful dawn.
(Visual by Ambika Bhatt)

From Sorority Sisters

By Sunil K Poolani

Nine by Nine
Daman Singh
HarperCollins
Price: 250; Pages: 250

If you are a debutante novelist in these present-day times, expectations (thanks largely due to global recession and a low-buying power) are high. Higher if you have a famous father, to boot. And if he father happens to be the Prime Minister of India, well, you can imagine.
So, here comes an ambitious work by Daman Singh, the second daughter of Manmohan Singh. Like father, like daughter. Senior Singh always kept a low-profile, not to talk about the unassuming character and the dignified probity he brought into his office; ditto his progeny.
And Daman Singh (and henceforth let’s call this Singh, Singh) has had a great career record; unassuming again. She spent twenty exciting years in rural development and — now here comes the interesting part — is now a full-time author, to wit. I do not know whether that is a wise decision she took, but reading the book in question, I am tempted to say that, she should tread that path carefully.
A gist of the book before we progress: it is primarily about Anjali, who is burdened with her mother’s persistent demands; she seeks solace in Tara, a talented free-spirit. Then there is this Paro, who wants to settle down by peacefully getting married, but her dreams got shattered; she comes as an absolute antithesis of what Anjali and Paro are.
Nine by Nine comes from that ubiquitous ladies’ hostel where rooms are divided in that size. Here is where all the antics played out by the inmates, or sorority sisters; and it is a universal syndrome. There you have everything: bra-strips, dope, lesbianism… Jane Austen, et al, portrayed these well. So tries Singh. The book may not have a great story to narrate; in bits and pieces it does. But the beauty lies in the observation and the uncanny portrayals of individual characters, whether it is the “dangerously handsome” waiter Ashok or Naresh, Tipu and Ajay, the characters who appear and disappear like in a Bollywood flick.
So Singh’s ‘sisters’ indulge in vices that are so ‘blasphemous’: drinking rum, bunking classes, showing the slip… So how is this maiden, ambitious novel different from the chic-lit churned out by our gullible, instant fame-seeking babes of our present times? Well, Singh has style; the book has substance. It is both absorbing and engaging. The simple reason being, this is a book that not only revolves around mundane characters but talks about losses and friendships, in vivid details.
There are surprises, though: Paro gets perfumed anonymous letters. And she thinks her cousin Vivek is behind this act. It is another matter that the real character is revealed at a later stage; but by then the damage has been done.
The plot and characters, if one brows through this, look like they are not in a hurry to catch a train or board a flight; and for exactly this reason, it is equally interesting or equally boring, whichever way you take it.
The final shot: Nine by Nine can never be a great book, and do not expect miracles in Singh’s later writings, too. The debut novel by Singh is a good read underneath a tree when you are holidaying. Nothing more, nothing less.
-- Deccan Herald / Sahara Time

Out of the Closet

By Sunil K Poolani

Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History
Edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai
Penguin India
Price: 450; Pages: 479

If the West is more open to same-sex love (by allowing marriages between two gay people and even giving political positions and power) and the East is increasingly becoming intolerant to this “anti-natural” act of love-making, you only have to blame the West for it.
The Portuguese came to the Indian shores and, apart from looting our natural resources, inculcated in us rigid, and often barbaric, Christian sensibilities, which frowned upon any form of “indecent” sex practiced in India, then. Then came the British and their pseudo-Victorian sensibilities, which did more harm than the postal and railway systems they brought in.
And to think of it, it was in India that open sex and all kind of sexual variations were depicted and practiced since centuries; not to talk about same-sex love, which had great respectability since the time of the Vedas...
Precisely for that reason, Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai should not just be welcomed but celebrated, as it vividly and meticulously tracks down the literature from India since two thousand years. What is more enriching is that the book contains select portions from Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim literary history. The range is amazing: from Mahabharata to Vijay Tendulkar.
What’s more, this veritable and valuable collection is for anyone who is interested in knowing the so-called nether world. Is this book just about same-sex and its literary history? On the contrary. Vanita, herself a lesbian, in her Preface says: “A primary and passionate attachment between two persons, even between a man and a woman, may or may not be acted upon sexually. For this reason our title focuses on love, not sex.”
And Kidwai, a homosexual, analysing the medieval material available on the subject, says: “During the early medieval period there are a few scattered references to same-sex love while in the late medieval period a huge body of literature on same-sex love develops.”
No wonder that the most powerful rulers then — Ghazni, Babar and Khilji — were practitioners and protectors of homosexuality, thus demolishing the myth that Muslims hardly imported homosexuality into Hindustan. For that reason, Muslim women from medieval India to, say, even in the lucid prose of Ismat Chughtai have practiced lesbianism.
And talking about the Hindu gods and their sexual orientations, Lord Ayyappa was thought to be a product of sex between two male deities; some even claim Murugan too is a progeny of that confluence. There are references about the love that existed between Lord Krishna and Arjuna — Arjuna after a sacred bath turns into the beautiful Arjuni who then consorts with Krishna. I hope the neo-Hindu fundamentalists realise this and become more tolerant.
One of the best verses in the book is by the indomitable Vikram Seth: “Some men like Jack / and some like Jill; / I’m glad I like / them both; but still / I wonder if / this freewheeling / really is an / enlightening thing— / or is its greater / scope a sign / of deviance from / some party line? / In the strict ranks / of Gay and Straight / what is my status? / Stray? or Great?”
Some of the best contemporary works are by V T Nandakumar’s Two Girls (translated from Malayalam); Bhupen Khakhar’s A Story (from Gujarati); Hoshang Merchant’s Poems for Vivan (English); and Nirmala Deshpande’s Mary Had a Little Lamb (from Marathi).
Even if you are “normal” but loves good literature, this commendable volume is for you. No, you do not need to hide it under the pillow…

Cry thy country, not mine

Sunil K Poolani

One has to realise that this is one discussed-to-death issue: how to portray India by Indians writing in English. And over and over again, this crops up: when some rookie wins a ‘coveted’ award by showing the ‘real nature’ of India. Recently, this argument got augmented when one Aravind Adiga won a Booker, and critics, mainly those who are jealous of his success, crying wolf, vivifying, in their dawned belated wisdom, not only the book was badly written but it portrayed our ‘great country’ in bad light.
Cry, thy beloved country. Before that, let’s do some soul-searching, ahem, looking back at the Indian writing for the English-reading, western masses, an introspection. Yes, the Vedas and other puranic stuff were all available in English translation by eighteenth century to the Western public. And the bhadralok Bengali did get some of their books in print in British India. Then came Tagore. His writings were one of the lucid ones that I have ever read. But look at the tragedy: the Nobel was awarded because the Committee could lay their hands only on an English translation of Gitanjali, a mediocre work by any standard, and thank W B Yeats, Tagore’s great well-wisher, for that.
By then the English-reading and -writing intelligentsia in India had grown voluminously. But the path to get noticed in the West was not that easy. R K Narayan (thanks to Graham Green) and Kamala Markandaya (due to her British journalist friends) had to literally slug it out to get their voice heard. They portrayed a great India, of townships and non-interesting people; but the beauty was in the writing. Then came Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. All had their respective stints in Britain, without which even I would not have quoted their names in this article.
I believe there is one man who rewrote the whole script of Indian writing in English: Rushdie. He chutnified it for the bewilderment of the upholders of the British English. Then, like fairness creams, the West started smelling a great market and to keep up the demand, one could never write about the huge multiplexes in Bangalore or Bombay, not even about a strange country where “tigers roam around in the streets”, but you have had to talk about the filth in your background — amidst all the beauty one has to show to the world, there, and in detail, the murky, incestuous world of slime and grime.
Arundhati Roy, that today’s great whiner, did try to portray a twisty and charming world of Kerala backwaters. That was a decade ago. And then the economic shift changed to China and India. And people in the US and Germany started losing money and jobs. And the Muslim fundamentalists, afraid of the so-called great success story, started planting bombs in every Indian city you could imagine in. The Bombay terror attacks were the final straw on the camel’s back. So they think.
Like in a role reversal (and I hate the phrase, “the Empire Strikes Back’), even Bollywood movies are showing where one should invest their money to cater to a wisdom for the West’s amusement. So why should literature take a backseat? For good or bad, there are some good writings emerging out of India. And frankly I give a fig whether how India is portrayed or not. If you are disturbed about the way the West is looking at us, well, that is pseudo-secularism. Literature has no boundaries and all it matters is good writing. Not the markets.
Two good examples come to my mind. Recent books by Richard Crasta and Murzban F Shroff. Shroff penned Breathless in Bombay, a collection of brilliant short stories. The period Shroff retells of Bombay is contemporary. Gallons of water have embraced the sea from Mahim Creek, and it is not the city of Salim Sinai any more. No soothsayer might have guessed when Rushdie wrote his magnum opus (thus immortalising Bombay in world literature), that it would, one day, instead of disintegrating, will become one of the most happening, prosperous and trendy cities in the world. But Shroff did show the murkier side of Bombay life: Aids patients, the bhelpuriwala, the prostitutes, the downtrodden…
And now about Crasta: The Killing of an Author is funny, sad, and eye-opening. Like others who are dependent on psychiatric drugs, Crasta has to have them for his depression and anxiety. He knows he needs them to function, but does not know the side-effects. The book presents how most innocent civilians like him get caught up in drug enslavement without the slightest inkling of what could happen if you take this, that and the other. It is also a warning to those who are plagued with mental problems to learn more about what they ingest, even if it is prescribed by their loved ones.
Do you find all these funny and “selling-India” types? Well, I do not. Say it the way it is, said some joker. I could not have agreed more.
(Sahara Time)

How my Column Died a Premature Death

One fine morning, when I was sleeping, A T Jayanti, who claimed was the editor of Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age, called me up and said, she wanted me to write a column for her books page. My answer was: "I don't think I could do that." But she persisted and said: "Give it a try." I agreed.
For around 25 weeks the column appeared, and one fine day, Jayanti called me up and said: "Enough is enough, high time you stopped it." Why? "In fact, wasn't I getting damn good responses?"
She never gave a good explanation. One of the plausible reasons I could arrive at was that I had criticised a crappy book written by a certain kid called Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. Now, she and her family are well connected. (Do a Google search, in case you want to know, how.) I came to know all these from Jayanti's own colleagues, who detest her like hell, and are unhappy with her ways of functioning. "So be it", I said. "Who the hell cares?" Anyway the column was not my idea.
Then came the surprise, bingo, one Sunday. My column has been replaced by, guess who, the Reddy girl.
I came to know about that from a reader from Chennai, because I had stopped reading The Asian Age since M J Akbar was unceremoniously ousted.
Well, this is what my friend from Chennai had to say:

"Hi Sunil
I'm just seething after reading that piece of pedestrian shit dished out in the DC ..... the replacement for your column. Gosh its absolute drivel. No language to speak of, no book sense, no nothing. I wouldnt insult a child by calling it childish - its worse than the worst essay written by a low grade student. The vocab is silly. As to an idea, it just isnt there. What next?? Are we going to have Mills & Boons featured please??? I am tearing angry. Just tearing angry. Am now minus one more piece to read in that paper.
Well, who said the world's a fair place eh?! :-( Obviously you havent 'cultivated' or 'capitalized' i guess!!
Can you tell me where else you write a column - for any other publication? I do miss your column. The incisive brainy analysis, the total command over the language, the hard work that is evident when you draw from multiple readings to get your thoughts home, your real love and feel for books and that special world. You take us there, my friend. Still remember where you wrote about the smell of a new book .... hmmm...
Look, you're an original. Stay so. Just walk away from this goddam mediocrity and keep doing what you do .... you have your own crowd rooting for you and the truth you bring in with your writing.
Cheers!
Uma Chandrasekaran"

Booked for Good

Sunil K Poolani

When my wayward friend who was good for nothing took a lottery ticket, a disparager said, “Sucker, you lost Rs 10.” And when he won Rs 10 lakh and a Maruti car the misanthropist changed opinion, “See, I predicted… he would win the lottery.”
I predicted Aravind Adiga would win a Booker this year. And all my friends pooh-poohed me. And now I stand vindicated. And Adiga won. And how. I write how.
Adiga, through his reportage and columns in the venerated Time magazine, always amused me. He packed much punch in simple words and sentences and it did wonders. He still does that; he is quite young, too. And when I opened his debut novel to savour, I knew what I was expecting.
The novel in question, by now discussed to death, is treatise to the condition the Indian nation is in. Adiga searches for the impossible. He takes the last mile, where none of today’s journalist (if you can call anyone by that moniker) would tread: in a hard way; the weather-beaten way. And, thus, exploring a story he wanted to narrate — in an inimitable style not many a scribe-fictionist in India could easily achieve to do.
Like the writing, the story of White Tiger, too, is reasonably effortless. Born in abject poverty (a pig’s life is much better than him), Balram Halwai (whose age is unknown) is the son of a rickshaw puller. He was taken out of the school to work in a teashop and through various meanderings he somehow gets a break when a rich village landlord hires him as a driver for his son, his daughter-in-law and their two Pomeranian dogs.
From behind the wheel of a Honda he explores the metropolis of Delhi with a gleeful eye. And since then his life is on a rollercoaster ride. He learns English. He sees the dark façade behind the life of many rich people in Delhi and their moral debauchery. Balram’s language and his scorn for the rich only increases as time passes — so does his ambition to become a rich man at a time when the country is going through a new-fangled economic boom, primarily BPO operation.
To cut the story short, Balram eventually murders the landlord’s son (by then the daughter-in-law has left the son) and steals the son’s money to start life anew in another booming, glitzy city: Bangalore.
Balram kicks off an entrepreneurial venture, of hiring vehicles to ply BPO employees, and he has to grease several palms to achieve a dream of a big man in these times.
The novel is a telling tale of two Indias: Balram’s journey to achieve his goals is totally amoral and at times very nasty; it shows both the good and bad sides of today’s make-belief world. Nevertheless, most of the times the novel is uproariously funny, too, and Balram keeps a bold face even when he learns his entire family has been massacred by the landlord’s goons.
White Tiger is written in a novel way: in the form of letters to the Chinese Premier from ‘The White Tiger’, which is Balram. This debut work explores and defies all conventional norms of feel-good writing and comes as a cruel testimony of today’s murky world where only money counts. Adiga’s is a voice to be watched (Booker or not, more photo ops or not, more sales and revenue or not) and White Tiger is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. I am deeply impressed.

Tailpiece
Chetan Bhagat’s “magnum opus”, One Night At The Call Center, was made into a movie (portrayed by some stupid actors making some equally stupid gestures) and was released some days ago. The catch, at least in Mumbai corridors was, that if you buy a ticket for the move you will get to “win” a copy of the book with the ‘acclaimed’ author’s autograph. Ahem. And the movie bombed, thank you. And the books are still piled up in Mumbai multiplexes — untouched, the ink on the signed books still to be absorbed into the newsprint. Who said Mumbai audiences are idiots? Not me.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Ghost Stories and Second-Hand Books

Sunil K Poolani

Fame comes in multifarious ways: business, showbiz, philanthropy, politics, activism, crime, notoriety… you name it. With most ways, money eventually follows and you buy space to remain in the limelight. But is that enough? Not so, if some current trends are anything to go by.
An interesting and rewarding avenue has now been thrown open to failed authors and hacks in the till-now serpentine and serendipitous corridors of chaos and confusion — over how to make big bucks speedily. Many nouveau riche heroes of recent success stories want to immortalise their lives, good or bad, in book format. But there is a snag. How do you do it if you can’t write a line in English to save your life? Get a ghost writer.
There have been ghost writers in the last decades (mainly assigned by corporate houses; sorry, no names), but it was only in the last five-to-ten years that the aspirant ‘writers’ wanted to pen ‘their’ works using outside help. There are three types of ‘writers’ here, though.
One, biographies, written by somebody who possesses some kind of knowledge about the subject’s life and the work s/he is related to. Two, as-told-to pieces, where the real writer only has to have a perfunctory understanding of what s/he is writing about (so the credit goes something like this: ‘George W Bush with Jack the Ripper’). And three, where the writer is the ghost writer of the purest form (no one would ever come to know that who really wrote the book as there is an agreement signed between the subject and the real author).
Last heard in Mumbai: a failed actor and a realty tycoon have planned to write “their own” autobiographies. And, voila, a bahu of a big business empire, too, is writing a novel, and has paid a ghost writer a great deal of money to do the honours.
So, cheer up. The grass is greener here, you failed writers.

Second-Best
They may be second-hand, but definitely not second-best. We’re talking books here. Mumbai’s obsession with old and rare books is now at its peak. I have come across the most amazing collection of books on Mumbai’s pavements, and the prices are unbelievably reasonable. For instance, I’ve managed to lay my hands on the first prints of H G Wells’ works, which I don’t think I could find anywhere else in the world. Here I found not only reprints, but also first editions, for just Rs 125 each. It’s amazing.
The demand for second-hand and rare books went up by around 50 per cent in the last one decade. Sample some of the gems that have changed hands, courtesy the intelligent raddiwalas: 1) Complete bound issues of National Geographic and Playboy magazines from the date of their inception — Rs 50 for a 12-volume set; 2) the first prints of James Joyce’s unabridged and uncensored Ulysses — Rs 50 each; 3) an early 19th century biography of Chhatrapati Shivaji by an unknown Marathi author — Rs 200; 4) an original copy of Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch — a mere Rs 5.
Incredibly cheap, one would say, but these books find their way into the international markets, including major auction houses in London, the city of book-lovers, where sometimes a single title could fetch the occasional buyer-seller a fortune. And the books that find their way outside are not just rare books published in India (in languages as varied as Pali, Sanskrit, Mythili and Chentamil), but books published from practically every nook and cranny of the world.
The roads in and around Flora Fountain are the biggest delight of second-hand book buffs — though the sellers were banned from hawking a couple of years ago, they have just come back, mercy. In a stretch of about two kilometres — on which educated, Shakespeare-quoting street vendors have hawked books for the past 20-30 years — around 200,000 books are up for grabs. Every day. About 80 per cent of them are used books. All types are available here: fiction, non-fiction, technical, non-technical, you name it, you grab it.
Now, it is not just individual collectors who are throwing their hat into the ring. Big corporate houses and hotels are also stacking up old and rare books — of course, in good condition, and preferably gold-rimmed — in their showcases. The money at stake here is definitely higher.
Predictably, several of these collectors’ items are found in bad condition — due, in the main, to poor handling (even in bookstores) and weather conditions — so, they require professional retouching, which itself is a business on the rise, but that is another story, and will save for another day.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Vanity (Un)fair

By Sunil K Poolani

Vanity publishing is today an inevitable and dominating phenomenon worldwide — and a multibillion dollar industry, to boot. It has had existed from ad memoriam. Take the Vedas or the Ramayana to the Holy Bible and the Koran… they were all sponsored trips; by word of mouth or by somebody patronising them to get to the masses.
It is another matter they were done for spiritual (then) or materialistic (mostly now) reasons. Almost all the texts of writing (well, novel-writing was a very eighteenth century occurrence) were all funded by patronising kings or dukes.
Now, a nostalgic trip. I was a kid once and I, even today, lucidly recall how a failed poet tried to get his work published by local magazines; he was a bit successful in that effort. Then he dreamt of compiling his collection of verse in a book. For which, there were no takers in the fledgling publishing arena in the then Kerala.
His cousin, who had made his fortune from the oilfields of Persia, helped fulfil the poet’s dream. The poet used to pedal his bicycle, peddling his ware, from house to house, village to village, and finally from town to town; and in just three years’ time he had almost sold more than ten thousand copies — a quite surprising incident even by today’s standards as even our Shobhaa De does not sell that much. I still preserve the poet’s book; then priced a mere Re 1.
From the backwaters of Kerala to Andhra Pradesh and then in Delhi and Maharashtra I have witnessed, and sold too, copies of several amateur writers’ ambitious works. Some of them, I can proudly claim now, are today household names. And, I have to cheekily admit that my first two books, a collection of poems in Malayalam (when I was sixteen) and a jointly-written booklet on the Narmada movement (in the early nineties), were funded by either my dad or from my meagre salary as a hack.
Personal vignettes apart, in the present days vanity publishing is not an unashamed for business to indulge in, as it used to be, say, a decade ago. With an increasing number of publishers only catering to a clientele who are mostly cretins, a good literary work would not have seen the day of light if not for vanity / subsidised / sharing-costs publishers.
By hook, line, and sinker many aspirant writers want to get their works published — and around half of them feel deceived after self-styled publishers lure the poor hopefuls by offering them instant stardom and high royalties in return, but, alas they eventually get fleeced. Should the writers bite the bait sans thinking aloud? Never.
Writers should be careful about what they are getting into before shelling out hefty amounts to the tricksters in the game. And it is also advisable to think twice before paying money to unknown ‘publishers’ in the US or the UK who just send you ten copies of ‘print-on-demand’ books, and you can kiss goodbye to the ‘rest’ of the copies.
As a publisher I had, and continue to, publish certain books through the subsidised route (mainly poetry and fiction) as these titles, in all probability, would not assure much returns, forget making profits. I had always made it a point to clear whatever royalties the writers are entitled, too. But the problem with subsidised or vanity publishing is the writers sit in the driver’s seat as they think the publisher is at their mercy. And they do not realise that no publisher — and that includes the best in the profession (Penguin, Rupa) — cannot assure which book would sell and which one would bomb.
Discretion is the name of the game, here.

Tailpiece
A couple of years ago, a big Indian publisher brought out a book which they termed the biggest thing that has had happened in the Indian literary history. Printing of a book is pittance, but not the PR costs. Since this young and handsome guy from Mumbai had enough khandani money to indulge in this tamasha, his PR firm, in tandem with the publisher, roped in several ‘intellectual’ books page editors of reputed magazines and newspapers to write favourable reviews.
One of them flew down from Delhi, was accommodated in a five-star hotel in Mumbai, interviewed the author, and devoted three pages for the book (interview; excerpts) in his magazine and called the twenty-something as the next inheritor of Marquez. The book bombed, thank you. But not after he becoming a household name in Malabar Hill families and in Page 3 circuits.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Dreams Die Young, a debut novel by CV Murali, published by Frog Books

Reviews/excerpts of the book have appeared in various newspapers, magazines, websites:

The Hindu, The Tribune, The New Indian Express, The Statesman, The Pioneer, Sahara Time, The Free Press Journal, Navshakti, The Week, Indian Literature(Sahitya Akademi’s journal),The Book Review,NDTV.com, Sulekha.com,Brown paper

A few reviews are reproduced below:
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Murali has woven a veiled commentary on the present seething turmoil.
The writer carefully maneuvers the readers into thinking that though the dream of Rajat is righteous, the method and mode that legitimised violence to achieve it is wrong and also that it is important for the politicians and other government officials sitting on high chairs to know that the callousness on their part to eliminate the suffering of the poor may have disastrous consequences. Murali’s lucid prose, efficacious trenchant realism, an insightful mode of characterisation, psychological overtones has enabled him to unravel a theme of timeless human significance—relationship of the individual and the society, raising the book to the stature of a sociological document
The Tribune, April 2008

Intense and intricate, it is hard to believe that this is C V Murali's debut novel.
Unlike a few writers who just claim to guide the genre of contemporary English literature to glory, C V Murali effectively does the job. His book is not descriptive but paints a clear picture of the lead character's personality.
By analyzing Rajat's actions and thought process the reader can easily interpret his temperament. He has introduced section-titles in the book which embellish it's beauty all the more and link the mood therein. The very first section-title is 'The End' and the story is narrated in a flashback. 'The Requime' and 'The End' are the only two chapters that narrate what happened to Rajat after he quit the revolt; the only two chapters which talk about his present. Intelligently, the two chapters have been placed at the two extreme pole of the book.
But what does the book do to you? It will very effectively prevent you - the reader - young or old, from going astray.
The Free Press Journal, March 2008

There is a freshness about this slim,nostalgic first novel which should sustain the interest of the reader to the end.The author has a facility for quick sketches.He can bring a character to life in a few sentences.As a first novel,Dreams Die Young shows promise,and this will,no doubt,be realised in futureworks as the author matures in craftmanship
Indian Literature(Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-monthly journal),January-February 2008

C.V. Murali has gone into the subject with a quiverful of questions. What are the causes that transform mildmannered, well-to-do and gifted youth into pitiless gun-toting terrorists?
Dreams Die Young seeks answers. Murali prefers a crisp, matter-of-fact-style…
The twist in the climax is well-produced. As also the last turn of the screw when Rajat learns of Romen’s betrayal of his trust…The Hindu, January 2008
Dreams Die Young delves into the psyche of young people, trying to shed light on what makes an ordinary young student turn into a Naxalite.
The New Indian Express, January 2008

The storyline of the novel is finely detailed, as the author subtly depicts the betrayal and sacrifices made by the cadres of the Naxalite movement. Written in a lucid prose
Sahara Time, October 2007

In Dreams Die Young are seeds of a good novel writer.It is also creditable for the subject he has chosen and to write on such a topic is appreciable/commendable.
Navashakti,September 2007

There are lots of pearls one could gather-the style, gripping narrative and the classy opening. The hallmark of the book is its excellent narrative.
The Week, August 2007

After a long long time one book which I could finish reading at a single stretch. The characters flow smoothly scene after scene and at the end of each chapter you are left with a question mark and an inquisitiveness to know what's going to happen next. All credits to the author for having chosen a sensitive subject for his debut novel and dealt with such aplomb. It’s an apt book for the present day hasty reader and a fabulous read.
Geeta Canpadee,Book critic,Blog on sulekha.com

There’s a certain cinematic quality to this briskly-paced novella that cries for translation to the latter medium. The directness and simplicity of the narrative would make an adaptation a cinch. Won’t someone please buy the film rights to the book and champion this dream.
Niranjana Iyer,Book critic based in Canada,Blog on Brown papers

Need Introspection

By Satya Sista

Your article, Macaulay’s Children, set me on a tour of introspection and deep thinking. It made me wonder, whether the ease with which some of our countrymen are able write in English and receive world wide acclaim is due to their proficiency in English or the lack of it in their mother tongue or the other Indian Languages. Not being a literary man myself, I am unable to go in to the depth of their minds and see whether their thought process is western or Indian, whether their characters depict true Indians or mostly Westerners, with shades of Indians thrown in to them. Not being born in this era of Western influence, I shudder at the thought of the gradual disappearance of the regional languages, when most of our younger generation does not know how to read or write their mother tongue. Let alone writing in their mother tongue or regional languages, they are even deprived of the joy to read great works in their own language, understand each and every word in the same mental frame as the author, visualize each and every situation and feel one with the characters of the book.
Am I wrong in so thinking? I question my inner self. May be, it says. It is often said that when this World is becoming a Global Village, language should not become a barrier for expression and one should do so in which ever language one feels comfortable. Is that so? I question it again. Yes, it says and continues “The present day generation is not to be blamed for their lack of interest in their mother tongue. It is not their fault if they have not learnt how to read and write their mother tongue or if they are unable to understand and appreciate the great Indian folklore or Epics, or if they do not have an ear for the Indian classical music. The fault is more deep routed. It is in their parents, in their grand parents and even in the society itself. How many of us will support a family member, who wants to study Indian languages or Indian culture? Instead of feeling happy that here is a person who is truly interested in his or her roots, we will try our best to discourage that person and try to lure him or her in to more socially acceptable and commercially viable options. This is an era, where everything which is homegrown is despised and western is lapped up and generation after generation is only strengthening the feeling. It is not restricted to literature alone; it has gone to the extent of our very nerve centre. Don’t you know that English is the passport for success in the present era and don’t you want your children in their higher studies or careers abroad? Don’t you want proudly announce to your near and dear the achievements of your children abroad and the way they are contributing to the growth of a foreign land? Don’t you remember the Indian Ethos, where in, we work for universal peace and universal brotherhood? Simply stop being a regionalist and raise to the level of a Global Citizen”
Oh! My God! What a brainwash. I say to myself. It is nothing but self effacing rhetoric, I quip. Why is my inner self not aligned to my way of thinking? Why can’t it strongly support my views?. As if hearing my thoughts, it says again “ Don’t be discouraged. I do not say that your views are wrong. They are only out of time and out of context. To bring back our Indian languages to their erstwhile glory, it may require a zealous crusader, to change the system of our learning, the mindset of our society and the focus of our future generations. Though English as a language can not be dethroned, we can at best bring our regional languages to an equal level”
In so saying my inner self fell silent leaving a herculean task in my hands and my mind full of thoughts.
Thanks
Satya Sista
Major ( Retd ) SN Sista
H.No 11-13-162, Rd No 3,
Alakapuri, Hyderabad – 500035
Andhra Pradesh
Mobile 9948330066

Macaulay’s Children

Sunil K Poolani

When the commissioning editor of this magazine called me at 11am asking me to write this piece, after reading a news report mentioning two Indians have been included in this year’s Man Booker shortlist, I was fast asleep: after a night-long, neck-wracking work. I said, Yes, slit-eyed. When I woke up, I cursed myself, Oh! Why did I ever commit to do that? But promise is a promise, and here I go.... And, readers, you asked for it.
Convent-educated I am, as my parents were somewhat affluent; and I learnt a language that is now spoken and written in most of the civilised world (whatever it means). The Brits conquered most of the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and thrust this language, for their own benefit, down the throats of the gullible, especially those people, dumb in most cases they are, who did not have the luxury of weapons or any other means. So we learnt this great language, with great pomposity and glamour and people like the bhadralok Bengalis and Madrasi Brahmins took it as a status symbol, a feather in their cap, to escape from their the then-existent despondent lives.
Then the worst happened. We (now, I only include Indians in this category) started writing in this foreign tongue. And, the ever-grinning firangis wanted this: someone to lap up what they had shat behind. Thus manufacturing Macaulay’s Children. Nirad C Chaudhuri was one of the firsts to believe that the English way is the best in the world to live by. Not all were, to be frank, subscribed to that theory. R K Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Kamala Markandaya did break the barriers to write in and write to the western audiences in their own language, without breaking away from the very Indian psyche and spirit.
So far, so fine. Then? Then came Salman Rushdie. He wrote — with tremendous success — Midnight’s Children. A path-breaking work, no doubt. Destroying the till-then norms of how not to write the Victorian, stiff-upper-lip, politically-correct English, and, to the Brits’ bafflement, chutnifying the English. The book did wonders and spawned hopes among thousands of aspirants in the Indian subcontinent. Till today there are few successful writers from this part of the world who could match Rushdie’s oeuvre. What did he achieve? Fame. Money. Fatwa.
No one could emulate Rushdie’s success story. Then descended a dame called Arundhati Roy, writing a mediocre novel called The God of Small Things. Hello, by then the global geopolitics had changed, for good or bad. India was no longer held a pariah. In India existed a great market; one of the biggest English-reading markets where the West can peddle their wares. (Why do you think India got so many Miss Worlds and Miss Universes? Is it because all of our damsels suddenly started looking sexy? No, dummy, just because here was a market for multinational fairness creams.)
Same thing happened in Indian writing in English. So, how do you get attention and reap in profits when the massive book publishing from the US and the UK has to be unleashed in this country? By awarding Indian writers, of course. Suddenly this over-inflated Man Booker Prize started short-listing or/and occasionally awarding their ‘great’ award to some of our mediocre writers. Kiran Desai, one to get celebrated recently, is an example. And mediocrity cannot stop there: a Pulitzer award to Jhumpa Lahiri, too.
It is all about market, honey. So when Rushdie, though he won the Booker of Booker for the second time this year for Midnight’s Children, has been dumped now, Amitav Ghosh and Aravind Adiga have been included among themselves in the final six novelists this year.
To give their respective honours, both Ghosh and Adiga write well and their works are good by any international standard. Should we complain, then? Shouldn’t we rejoice? Pick your choice. Some questions crop up, nevertheless. Why should we be overjoyed by some western award that is thrust upon us? A Ghosh or Adiga would not have been in our vocabulary if they were not promoted (for all the materialistic reasons) by the firangi critics. When will we improve? We will not.
Why? Giving Rushdie and Ghosh their due credit for the way they effervescently write in whatever language they might have imbibed, one thing is straight: we, Indians, have a rich literature which is still unsurpassed by any new-fangled European language. We should be, and have to be, proud of the great literary traits some of our stalwarts in Indian languages have left behind: be it in Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam, Hindi or even Konkani.
We do not need any recommendations from and by any ex-colonialists and neo-imperialists. They, today, depend on us. But, we still think ‘good’ is better only if it comes from the west. What a pity.

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at: poolani@gmail.com
-- Sahara Time

Blurbs and Burps

Sunil K Poolani

Sometime ago I requested an established writer to pen a Foreword for a book we were publishing. Without mincing many words he said he will charge at least Rs 10,000 for his 1,000-word ‘magnum opus’. My firm had agreed to pay that amount; his blurb on the cover would boost sales of a first-time author, you know. It is another matter the book did not take off and the Foreword was never written.
Move over quality literature’s patronising saints, who benevolently considered up-and-coming authors are their literary progeny, once; big money is here, now. After fat advances and multi-city tours, it is the turn of these time-honoured writers to demand greenbacks to make them richer by resorting to a less-effortful game of writing forewords or blurbs for gullible publishers and wannabe writers.
Evidently, there are ‘friendly’ stalwarts who write blurbs, in favour of a certain publisher, or for a friend, or his or her offspring... Salman Rushdie wrote one for Kiran Desai’s debut work, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. And see what she has achieved for her second novel: a Booker.
Look at the advantages. This tribe might have published one or two best-selling books, and today they might be scrounging for fodder for their forthcoming success stories. That may or may not happen. So what do you do to remain in picture — and, yes, make money, too? Forewords? Well, they do take time to write. Blurb? It is easy, silly; you don’t even have to read the book in question.
These writers can deliver carefully-worded, adjective-laden blurbs at the drop of a hat. Taste one: “A valiant saga of loss and longing, rare bravery and resilience; narrated with remarkable kind-heartedness and forthrightness… An outstanding debut!” The novel could be hardly that. But who is complaining?

Dissimilar Voice
Yours truly and my partner in life and crime, Lajwanti S Khemlani, just finished, and enjoyed, reading Richard Crasta’s The Killing of an Author (Invisible Man Books). This is what we have to say:
The book tells us about the harrowing hardships Crasta had to face in the process of getting his novel The Revised Kama Sutra published. Eventually, his story was published worldwide. But not before Crasta lost all he had — wife, children, money and, most importantly, his health. In the process of writing, rewriting, and trying to get his novel published, Crasta became a prescription drug addict.
Whatever Crasta does, he does passionately. He dares to be different in his writing and behaviour. And this seeps through in his work as clearly as sparkling water. In spite of the book theme being intense, Crasta has a sense of humour which he maintains from the start to the end. In a sense, the book is a lesson to new writers of what could happen to them even in developed nations like the US and the UK.
The Killing of an Author is funny, sad, and eye-opening. Like others who are dependent on psychiatric drugs, Crasta has to have them for his depression and anxiety. He knows he needs them to function, but does not know the side-effects. The book presents how most innocent civilians like him get caught up in drug enslavement without the slightest inkling of what could happen if you take this, that and the other. It is also a warning to those who are plagued with mental problems to learn more about what they ingest, even if it is prescribed by their loved ones.
We need more writers like him. But are Indian publishers ready to take him seriously?

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at: poolani@gmail.com
-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Soft-Porn Blues

By Sunil K Poolani

I am aware that this is a family newspaper and what I am going to write below is neither a blatant promotion or celebration of pornography nor an effort to titillate buried libidos. But, as any growing-up guy or gal in the pre-cable and -internet days, cheap pornographic books and magazines were the stuff that quenched our curiosities of that ‘nether’ world.
Pornographic literature has existed since people started writing — and reading — and it is still, even in this age, one of the biggest industries in the world. It is a matter of prerogative, though, how cheap your tastes can plummet. ‘Straight’ sex stories are considered fine and those ones written classically have stood the test of time. Okay, call it erotica. And it’s just not Lolita or Sons and Lovers, but there has been a wide array of erotica that has the same depth and range of any world classic you can imagine.
But the debauchery in tastes only becomes worrisome if those pornographic or erotic writing deals with and depicts worrisome sex: incest, paedophilia, bestiality, scatology, rape, stomach-churning fetishes, necrophilia…
When I was living in Hyderabad in the late eighties, I picked up a fat book from a pavement stall: Pearl. It has travelled with me to whichever city or house I have since then moved into. Pearl has had an interesting history. It was an underground pornographic magazine that had as mysteriously disappeared as it had appeared in the Victorian England, shaking the so-called moral standards set by the stiff upper-lip British society.
Why so? It started using the f-word without any inhibition, but was an impressive collection that comprised serialised pornographic stories, poetry, ribaldry, anecdotes, short essays, spoofs… all written, though in a salacious manner, in great classicist language.
By today’s standards Pearl appears as sanitised as any genre of feel-good literature, but one could imagine the upheaval Pearl might have caused in the then society: a reason why it is still a bestseller in all English-reading markets. What if you can only lay your hands on a pirated copy.

Magnificent History
Mike Dash’s Thug is the most amazing work of history that I have read in so many years. Some thoughts. While anyone who is interested in the past (aren’t we all?) will be enthralled to read this movie-like narration with rapt attention, one has to rue the fact that we have been discussing for ages: why is that you always need a firang to retell the story of the Raj with clarity, detail and near-perfection? Why is it that, save for a Ramachandra Guha, we do not have, at present, any historian worth his salt to invest more time, hard work, dedication and scholarship (the money part will follow if you have the rest) and create something like Thug?
Apart from the beauty and eloquence of the prose, the book is painstakingly researched and grippingly written. Dash tells a story that we, Indians, have only heard from our grandmothers’ scary bedside recitals (I doubt if they still do that). The inside blurb says that Dash has [had] devoted years to combing archives in both Britain and India to discover how the thugs lived and worked. And he does succeed in revealing all these murderous clan’s methods, secret and skills — a blow-by-blow account, this.

Jargon Unlimited
Recently I read a great line: “We really want to ‘leverage’ and ‘monetise’ our ‘synergy’ with this new ‘initiative’, but there’s a ‘disconnect’ in terms of our ‘reorg’.” Before you chuckle, do realise that this is the kind of verbosity that reverberates in corporate conference rooms, and seldom do we confront the speakers to cut out the jargon and talk vividly. And this jargon has already started seeping into our literature, too.

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at: poolani@gmail.com
-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Do Not Imitate, Thank You

Many readers have been writing to me, asking certain things they have been curious to know about the publishing business in India, and also about books in general — and where we are headed towards. As I had said earlier, readers’ mails are what I really look forward to and cherish every time my column appears in this paper.

I try to answer some of their questions and, ah yes, I really like the effort they take to write to me. So here they go:

1) The number of books especially novels that are published in India is skyrocketing, and how. The rub is that most of them aren’t quite good and would never have passed through editors a decade ago. So what has changed in the publishing industry?

A: ‘Aren’t very good’ is an understatement; most of the books published here are not even worth the stationary they are written upon.

2) Have the criteria for getting books published changed over the last one decade?

A: Without doubt. These days every scum you can imagine sells; mediocrity is the catchword. Also, thanks to lack of serious reading, the mindset of the urban youth is not programmed to read anything heavy; a reason why Paulo Coelho or Arindam Chaudhary sells well. Since there is a clientele, mediocre writers churn out stuff to cater to that segment. And publishers are not complaining as at the end of the day they do not want empty coffers.

3) But is it not a passing phase?

A: For bad of course, the change is happening. In the last one decade numerous national and international publishing houses have set up shop here and since there is an acute lack of good writing, and since these publishers want to tap the local market, they have to publish and promote run-of-the mill-work, which is in abundance, thank you.

4) Is the profile of the author and the target audience more important than the story?

A: Yes. Sometime back, I read about an invitation by a publishing house which said, only men and women who are good-looking need to submit their manuscripts. Also, if you are a celebrity or someone who walks the ramp or is a starlet or is the daughter of son of a celebrity chances are that not only do you get published but you are on Page 3; and, yes, sell voluminously, too. And quality? What is that?

5) Has language taken a backseat, by becoming more simple and easy to understand? Are we catering to the SMS and email-addicted public?

A: Language has not become simple and easy, but it has deteriorated to the nadir that it is a tease to whatever intelligence we are left with. You can blame so many things: fast life, gadgets, television, nuclear families, lack of enthusiasm to appreciate quality literature…

6) What are the main criteria these days that publishing houses apply when choosing manuscripts?

A: Saleability. Cookery, self-help, children’s colouring books, beauty and fitness guides… these are money-spinners. And the no-nos are quality books penned by I Allan Sealy or Mukul Kesavan.

7) Any new writer who has shown promise of becoming India’s next Salman Rushdie?

A: Rushdie? Why should anyone try to imitate him? Leave him alone. Develop your own style. To answer this query, there are many who are promising, but, then, who is interested? Sad it may sound, but that is, guys, the truth.

Tailpiece

Talking about Salman Rushdie, here is what one of my friends had to say: “This ‘genius’ has not published anything readable since Moor’s Last Sigh. What he has been painstakingly churning ever since is either verbal vomit or constipated prose. The way things are going he may not need fatwas from the Iranians, but some good lover of literature might do the honours.” Well, I hope this would not happen, but what Rushdie can do is to take a break and write something other than his nubile wives, divorces and libel issues.

Sunil K Poolani

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Posthumously Personal

By Lajwanti S Khemlani & Sunil K Poolani

Bombay Tiger

Kamala Markandaya

Penguin

Price: 495; Pages: 327

Bombay Tiger, published posthumously, is the effervescent and mysterious Kamala Markandaya’s eleventh and last novel. Markandaya’s life was something that you would come across in fable books. An unassuming Brahmin lady from a small town like Mysore, venturing into a new-fangled wide western world at around the time of India’s Independence is something dazzling.

To put it briefly, after her small stints in India, she moved on to London in 1948 to be in journalism at a time when, save a Mulk Raj Anand or two, nobody made a mark in that arena. She might have been failure in whatever she did. Life. Marriage. Journalism. Literary pursuits. But her outstanding novels like Nectar in the Sieve and A Handful of Rice, though inconsequential by today’s standards, are still path-breaking literature. And that these two books are still taught in universities in India and abroad still amuses one.

Now, coming to the present volume, had Bombay Tiger been published during the author’s lifetime, it might have read differently, and been considerably shorter. Set in the l980s, the novel is about the rise, fall and the ultimate redemption of Ganguli, the protagonist.

Having lost his inheritance at an earlier age, Ganguli leaves his village for Bombay save but a recommendation letter and ruthless ambition. In the city of ‘dreams’, he eventually turns out to be a big-time industrialist. Ganguli always knew what he wanted and how to get it. But being a mere mortal, even he could not control his love — and losses.

In certain ways, he is no different than his classmate Rao, who too migrated to Bombay but became a financier. Rao is jealous of Ganguli’s astounding success. And this has always been a sore point with Rao, no different to others who are competitive and hate one’s guts. Rao’s aspirations and his family are also more ordinary. The two have always disliked each other, but have maintained a relationship of sorts; both are busy-bees, but it is Ganguli who is sentimental and a larger-than-life figure. It is he who loves anything and anyone passionately, suffers losses more tragically and is bullish in appearance akin to his personality.

Rao is leaner, softer in several ways; he spends lots of time and effort plotting ruin of the business magnet, rather than making even a miniscule attempt to understanding his only offspring.

As life may have, when the business giant falls, others follow suit. Storm-ripples are felt by Rao and his family. They, too, cannot escape their harsh destiny. It is the dramatic loss of their children that shakes them to the core of their beings. This abruptly pulls the rug from under Ganguli’s feet and brings him, bang, crashing down. Rao does mourn his son’s death, though he was never emotionally nearer to him. Yet, the tragic event alters his veritable existence. He can now let go of his all-consuming hatred for Ganguli.

Some characters, important nevertheless, show up towards the end, which is a back draw. Markandaya should have introduced more of Ganguli’s private love life earlier in the story, to give the readers more of a picture of his sexual sexapades — Ganguli, the man, rather than a mere businessman.

This literary pursuit portrays Indian life quite accurately, especially where issues like abortion are concerned, though the author migrated to England before Nehruvian socialism started. It is vivid that Markandaya wrote for a foreign audience in mind.

Bombay Tiger would have grabbed my attention had it been tighter and shorter; it tends to wander off the main character in many places. The pace of the novel slows down towards the middle, and, ahem, suddenly picks up in the last 20-to-30 pages. So, folks, Bombay Tiger does not have anything novel to offer. Buy it if you can afford it. Amen.

-- Deccan Herald / 31 August 2008

Middle Sex Mannerisms

Sunil K Poolani

Can’t help it; howsoever one tries to do otherwise. Sorry. It might sound anti-feministic (whatever that means), but the truth is women are on the rise in publishing, writing and, what else, wearing the pant not just in the house but in the office, too.

Hate me (I can hear that ever-flaming protests). But, then, I am not against the ones who put their souls where their soles are in. I mean, who have done their respective and painstaking legwork and have done remarkable work; they are, nevertheless, dismissed for not being, ahem, chick.

Chick, one said? Understatement. Well, then comes, chick-lit. And there is no dearth of that nefarious clan; even this ever-cribbing publisher has published one or two of that ilk. But, one gets penitent, like a puppy that has swallowed her master’s socks.

Last things first. There has been this hype about a book called You Are There, by a twenty-something called Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, for almost a year, on several offline and online avenues. Then, hype sells. More, when there is PR. And this hype got delivered last week, in print. I held the book in my hands, saw the content and tried to read the style of writing and, what to say, I had to sympathise: for her naivety, for her lack of maturity. She has guts, nonetheless: she was quoted in an interview that she thinks she is a great writer.

She should be. Write well she does, in bits and pieces, but her debut book, which has no direction to claim one, reeks of self-confidence sans depth. It lacks of a trajectory her peers had left behind for her, including her supposed-heroine, Jane Austen. Austen took time to write; she is today dubbed a chick-lit litterateur by cultural tsarinas is another story. Austen had substance, and what Ms Madhavan lacks is class; but our chicks find publishers who are convinced there are suckers who would lap all these scoop up without even raising an eyebrow. Ahem.

Do not blame these young aspirants. A publisher puts his money where his, well, whatever is. What if it is bad sex writing (“flutter in panties”)? What amuses me is why do these same publishers give a step-motherly (see, I am not anti-feminist) treatment to their own authors who not just write well but do path-breaking literature, fiction or non-fiction. (I am talking as an ordinary reader; I too do the same mistake; kill me.)

Two recent books come to my mind. A Journey Interrupted by the spirited but unassuming Farzana Versey is the first. Versey struggles to keep her sanity in a land (Pakistan) that could have been hers, if her peers might have decided to settle when the subcontinent was divided by the Brits after they used and abused all what was worth of us. Her writing is dense at times, but the fluidity and versatility are amazing at times when she is at her compassionate best when Pakistanis tease of her ‘dual’ identity — I could have killed them if I were Versey.

The crime of Versey is that she lives a ‘double’ life. She is a pariah in Pakistan; “what are you doing in India?” She is a pariah in India, too; “what are you doing in India?” Needs guts — to have sanity. And to write good English. To explore the travesties of a manmade tamasha. And, in the end, bringing out an outstanding travelogue that just does not explore barren lands, but bruised minds.

The second is 3, Zakia Mansion by the talented Gouri Dange. Hers is a story about one Shaheen, who has to go through tumultuous tribulations. The style of the narrative is marvellous, the prose poignant, vivifying vividly the protagonist’s trials, oscillating between the past and the present. It is about desires and disappointments, the vicariousness and vicissitudes. Moving. Read it.

By the way, I read in a magazine the other day that women head most of the big publishing houses in India today. So, hello, women should not complain that they are under-represented. But which women are represented? The ones that have a life of a melting ice-cream, mind you. And not the ones who leave a sour taste in the mouth. But the latter make you realise what reality is, and they will stand the test of time.

I should not have brought this up, but, again, I could not resist this; pardon me. Just realised that Ms Madhavan is the daughter of N S Madhavan, one of the most phenomenal fiction writers who changed the course of Malayalam literature, and someone I admire till today.

Grow up, chicks, mature up, before mamas have to hatch their eggs again. Life is not short.

Postscript

My experiments with distributors’ truth continue. The other day, one mercifully told me: “Instead of publishing all these books, why can’t you supply us with notebooks?” Notebooks? “Yes, with an attractive cover; and, yes, you can add one quotable quote in every page, since you wanted to be literary…”

I salute that soul.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Of raw life, math and show-off

BOOK WORM

Sunil K Poolani

Raw writing

Rereading Charles Bukowski’s Post Office after several years, one was remorseful to see the effort and pain our celebrity authors take to safeguard their feel-good reputation, to conveniently bury a ‘dubious’ past, if any.

If Bukowski, that ever-so-iconoclastic writer, chose to meticulously demolish his own reputation in almost all his autobiographical books and fiction, our own trapeze artists hog the Page 3 circuit, putting on their best-ever smiles to conceal their bad divorces or past plagiarisms.

Born in Germany in 1920 to an American father and German mother, Bukowski grew up in Los Angeles, enduring a childhood and youth marked by bullying from other boys and regular beatings from his abusive father. If Bukowski smelled of cheap liquor, our ilk reeked of expensive French perfumes; if Bukowski chose to wear his jeans and T-shirt for more than a week, our tribe entered into designer suits five times a day; if…

But Bukowski wrote much better than all our con artists put together. He won millions of admirers for his supremely visceral style; a style that is meant to be experienced more than read. Good writing is not about champagne and caviar, but local brew and boiled potatoes.

Math and fiction

I have just finished an interesting book. A Certain Ambiguity (Penguin Viking), by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal. Mathematics is like any other stream of arts, be it literature, performing arts or plastic arts. There is an infinity that is mind-boggling and there lies the beauty; a realisation that more you analyse and solve the mysteries of the game, the more the awareness that it is vastly and hugely endless. Galileo, Plato and our own Ramanujam realised it, so do most of the contemporary mathematical brains.

One reflective conclusion that can be drawn out of mathematics is how much ever ambiguous it might seem, the more you delve deep into it, with a pinch of modesty and decorum, and more are the chances of solving them and, in the process, enjoying them. It is true that mathematics, like any other art form, is losing its relevance; precisely for that reason this attempt to revive and regenerate interest in this stream of science should be welcomed.

Question of existence

There are people who publish books. There are people who sell books. And there are people who really read books. Finally, there are people who pretend to read books. You can see the last ilk all over around you: in malls, in snazzy coffee shops, in airports… Nothing worrisome, as long as the books are sold (see, I am a publisher).

What amuses me is the kind of books they carry with them these days. No, not Archer, Huntington, Sachs or even our desi Chetan Bhagat or Robin Sharma, but great classicists. I read a report sometime back which said George W Bush has been advised by his spin doctors to carry Albert Camus’ The Outsider while on vacation so that he will look an intellectual.

A White House spokesman said Bush “found it an interesting book and a quick read,” and talked about it with aides. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism.”

I haven’t started laughing since then. The French existentialist should be turning in his grave, crying why he wasted his life writing all those classics.

Tailpiece

An editor in a publishing house was fed up of a mercurial assistant editor. He summoned her into his cabin and told her, “Hello, the way things are going I don’t think you we will be working together from now on.” The assistant’s response: “Congratulations, Sir, so where are you joining?”

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at poolani@gmail.com

-- Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Write Stuff. Right Stuff

Sunil K Poolani

Though I have written — and continue to write — for several national and international print and electronic journals, I have never received the kind of responses I get from the readers of the paper you are now holding in your hands.

The responses have been a torrent, if not mind-blowing, and they are of all kinds: prospective authors trying to send their manuscripts, criticisms (reiterating that my writing is pretentious), overwhelmingly patronising…

But I was touched when, last week, a Chakravarti from a small Andhra Pradesh town, wrote to me, requesting, I should bestow on him tips to improve his writing skills, and tell him which all books would eventually ensure that. He wanted to write a ‘good manuscript’.

I, a college dropout, am hardly a person to help him, I told him as much, but promised I would share some thoughts that had cropped up while delighting in some good writings that I have come across in my short life.

For me, George Orwell is god; he will always be. Apart from his 1984 and Animal Farm, those great political expositions in literature vivifying the traps of both capitalist and communist hegemonies, I was really fascinated with his non-fiction, which talked about the English language and its use.

For any writer worth her or his salt, Politics and the English Language, Why I Write and Writer and the Leviathan are must-reads that should be imbibed into the system. When I compiled the above three essays for a volume one year ago, Ramachandra Guha wrote in the Foreword: “[Orwell’s] clarity of language, his moral courage, and his principled independence from party politics set him apart from the other writers of his generation, and from those who have followed since.”

Orwell was always consistent with his claim that prose degenerated into purple passages whenever it lacked political purpose. And as Orwell once said: “[English] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” He died an untimely death, and that is a pity.

Now, many readers may think this is a devious digression — from someone as meticulous and marvellous as Orwell to, well, a carefree and iconoclastic Hunter S Thompson. But Thompson, mainly due to his irreverence to everything around him, shaped the way I thought and wrote. And I was particularly in awe of the company (of the New Journalism ‘movement’) he kept.

A great collection that I still admire is The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe and EW Johnson. This comprised the best ‘literary’ journalistic pieces I have ever read, written by — apart from Thompson and Wolfe — Rex Reed, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. Fully doped, Thompson wrote The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, a seminal sports article; it still remains a marvel in both journalism and literature — a rare achievement.

Thompson’s much-publicised work is the Fear and Loathing series. Nevertheless, his short works, published mostly posthumously, really stand out. In The Mailbox he talks about his confrontation with the FBI and he sums the article thus: “Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything — especially not if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime.”

If you are in the august company of Orwell and/or Thompson, who needs to dope? Or a stiff drink?

Tailpiece

I used to work with a national weekly some years ago. We were bringing out a special on Orwell on his 50^th death anniversary. A trainee sub-editor was asked to make the page in which we were reproducing Politics and the English Language. When I was checking the page before sending it to the press I realised there was something amiss in the Orwell classic. What happened, I asked the scribe. His reply: “Well, the whole article did not fit in the page, so I had to edit it.” Now, that is what I call guts.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

End of Imagination?

Sunil K Poolani

While growing up reading good literature, it was not books that really fascinated us, but literary journals in which not just stories, poems and essays by the crème-de-la-crème of the writing world appeared, but those publications also carried analyses of and interviews with great writers, and reviews of their books. Armed with those journals, we debated and literally fought for hours, days, weeks and months together about the contents.

In those pre-liberalisation days, we could not afford the price of those journals (between Rs 2 and Rs 15), and at least ten poor souls use to savour one single copy; by the time that copy did that tortuous round, it resembled an opponent in a Schwarzenegger movie: pulp.

Then, unlike today, many large-selling publications from the stable of big media organisations devoted a fair amount of space for good writing. In English, there were the venerated Illustrated Weekly and the Bombay magazine; both closed shop long time back, thank you. But it is heartening to know that some regional languages still follow that tradition — like Mathrubhumi in Malayalam and Desh in Bengali.

Also, there were these brilliant ‘little’ magazines that originated, since centuries, in far-flung areas like Shantiniketan and Karimnagar, espousing issues as diverse as Robindra Sangeet and Naxalism. They had the lives of fireflies but they burnt bright when they were alive, and every death encouraged another firefly to take shape and shine.

In English, apart from the government-sponsored daft efforts, there were, in the last two decades, some great journals that made a deep dent in literary minds. Civil Lines was one. Founded by the indomitable Ravi Dayal, Civil Lines swiftly became the abode of quintessential new Indian writing. Later, it was edited by the talented duo, Mukul Kesavan and Kai Friese. Nonetheless, like its brethren across the spectrum, it too died an immature death, but not before leaving an indelible mark — challenging the till-then norms by refusing to publish to a set schedule.

There were also similar literary endeavours (some still do exist, just in case) like Chandrabhaga, Biblio, Kavya Bharati, International Gallerie and Yatra. All these followed the model of their international ‘Bible’: the esteemed Granta, the UK-based journal which continues to whet many a connoisseur’s taste for new and good writing across the globe.

Today, literary magazine is a diminishing trade and a difficult passion to indulge in; no serious publisher in the world would risk burning her/his fingers in it today. In the last four years, the third issue of my ambitious ‘quarterly’ journal, Urban Voice, just came out. I, nevertheless, would like to bring it out periodically.

So that is why I watch with rapt admiration when I come across two amazing ventures, Atlas and Little Magazine. The former is brought out by the talented poet and prose writer Sudeep Sen and the latter by a dynamic duo, Antara Dev Sen and Pratik Kanjilal.

Little Magazine has, so far, stood the test of time, and has carved a niche of its own — offering, issue after issue, some of the best original writings in English and translations from even remote Indian tongues. Atlas is just two issues old, and Sen was explaining to me the vicissitudes of all kinds while producing a volume of this oeuvre. “It’s a tough game, unless you have loads of money.”

Hope these last vestiges of intellectual sanity live on in an arid land of crass commercialisation.

Tailpiece

C P Scott, the founder editor of The Manchester Guardian, once said: “News is sacred, opinion is free.” If our newspapers hardly believe in reporting news and resort to concocted opinions, a new breed of Indian novels is today banking on contemporary issues and polity for cheap, titillating fictionalisation. What next? I will leave it to you.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Publish your dream book yourself

Brian de Souza

Sunday, DNA, Mumbai, July 13, 2008 03:46 IST

Or you can contact some of the city’s small publishing houses who could make your novel a bestseller

He wanted to become a filmmaker but instead landed up being a homeopathic doctor. And several years into his practice, a story that a patient told him inspired him to put pen to paper and a manuscript Saturn and I, written over many weekends and sometimes well into the night, became a reality. But when Shailendra Vaishampayan, 31, sent his manuscript to the big publishing houses, he got either reject slips or no response at all. “One publishing house even asked me for a large sum of money,” he recalls. But Vaishampayan wasn’t going to give up. “It isn’t easy to get published if you don’t have the contacts, money and the PR machinery to get catch the media’s attention,” he said

Even in this age of the Internet and six-figure advances, a slew of small publishers are attempt ing at carving their own niche. Frog Books in Mumbai has been able to successfully harness the Internet to sell a range of non-fiction books. When he started out five year ago, Sunil K Poolani, Frog Books’ publisher, says the big names look only for marketable names when there is “actually quite a lot of talent that could be harnessed”.

And though he admits that he had done vanity publishing in the past, Poolani says he has been able to tap talent that may have never made it. A case in point is a book by John Mowat, a foreigner staying in India who wrote Strangers Ourselves-Paul Theroux’s Adventures.
“Today, I sell most of my non-fiction via the net through Amazon where I have my own account,” he says. There are also publishers like Zubaan who focus on niche novels written by women. By keeping overheads down and and cutting corners wherever possible, these small outfits are able to offset their expenses and sometimes earn a small profit. Preeti Gill, senior editor, Zubaan, says that for small publishers, it can help if a book they publish is a hit. In Zubaan’s case, the book written two years ago by Baby Halder and published by Zubaan, gave them a lot of mileage. According to Gill, having a niche can help because some publicity comes through word of mouth.

A Google search for Indian literary agents throws up names of publishing outfits, some of whom offer self-publishing services, editing resources, ghost-writing etc, for anything ranging from memoirs, small stories, hobby books to even poems, a category that is difficult to sell. Frog Books has a separate imprint just for poetry: Pe

Some small outfits are known to take money from a new writer who then earns a small royalty on the basis of the sale. Print runs are small -typically not more than a few thousand — and a reprint may be unlikely. In Vaishampayan’s case, an idea struck him when he dropped by a road-side seller near his clinic. “If I can get this book printed on my own, I will need a channel to distribute it. So why not use these guys who sell books on the pavement?”

Having decided to publish the book himself. Vaishampayam located a printing press and commissioned 1,050 copies of his own book. He got in touch with Jamalbhai, who heads the Newspaper Agents Welfare Association and runs a few bookshops himself. “I was eager to help him and so have stocked 20 copies of his book,” he said. To help coordinate with book sellers, Vaishampayan roped in Sushant, a long time patient who read Saturn and I and liked the plot. This informal network called Pavement Publishers, the name that one of his patients suggested, is beginning to go beyond Mumbai. “When you sell on the pavement, you may not always get the printed price of the book,” says Vaishampayan. Vaishampayan has now been contacted by two women writers keen to write books. It seems as if his dream will be fulfilled very soon.
d_brian@dnaindia.net

In search of the new Rushdie

Joanna Lobo

Tuesday, DNA, Mumbai, July 29, 2008 03:52 IST

There's no dearth of new fiction writers, but what's missing is quality

There's a new breed of young, though relatively unknown writers, who are aiming to dislodge the Salman Rushdies and Jhumpa Lahiris from their pedestal. “The time is ripe to make our mark,” says Anjum Hasan, author of Lunatic In My Head. Her book was one of the finalists at the recent Crossword Book Awards. Though she did not win, the feedback she received was unexpected.

The past few months have seen an unprecedented number of books being launched by Indian writers in English. And while all may not achieve the same fame as Arundhati Roy did with her God Of Small Things, the trend is a positive one.

Today, publishing houses are churning out books by the dozen. But there is a catch: Some of these books would not have passed through editors a decade ago. So, have the basic rules of publishers changed?

"Of course it has. Over the last 10 years, publishing houses have opened shop here. An acute lack of good or even imaginative writing has not dampened their spirits in an attempt to tap the local market. They have to publish and promote run-of-the-mill work, which is in abundance" fumes Sunil Poolani, publisher at Frog Books.

So have publishing houses turned a blind eye to style and prose? Namita Devidyal (The Music Room) does not think so. "A well-written good story will always find acceptance," she says.

The majority of readers are no longer that judgmental. For instance, while critics trashed Chetan Bhagat's The Three Mistakes Of My Life, the masses loved it.

VK Karthika, publisher at Harper Collins, credits Chetan with the birth of a new of generation writers. "...People who speak and write English as their first language. They are reckless, brave and willing to experiment." Ultimately, it’s the reader who decides the 'saleability' of a book. Karthika says, "Readers are willing to try out new styles, and are not limited to literary pieces." With more competition, publishers believe that things can only better.
l_joanna@dnaindia.net

The name is Faulks, Sebastian Faulks

By Sunil K Poolani

Devil May Care: A James Bond Novel

Sebastian Faulks (Writing as Ian Fleming)

Penguin

Price: 395; Pages: 295

When I was in the boarding school, James Bond novels were banned. The nuns thought Bond was full of whisky and women and, in all their Biblical simplicity, did not want us to get influenced by Agent 007. Needless to say, we read the Ian Fleming classics in the sly — this was much before our mofussil city talkies started showing the legendary Bond movies.

So it thrilled me when I read Sebastian Faulks short biography: “…the books were banned at his school, but he read them by torchlight under the sheets.” Faulks is no rookie. He is the author of the much-acclaimed novels like Human Times and Birdsong, first an epic and the second sold more than three million copies.

After Fleming’s death, and when Hollywood is still regurgitating the Bond movies to charm the secret agent’s aficionados, Faulks comes as a saviour to millions of Bond admirers across the world. Faulks, you will realise, is the best person, as you savour the book, to recreate the magic created by Fleming.

One may argue why Faulks set the story of the present-day Bond (in this post 9/11 terror attack days) in the former USSR days. In Devil May Care’s case the plot unfolds in the Cold War days. But, as you would know most of the old Bond stories were set in the fifties, sixties and seventies — and Faulks, too, follows suit. Hello, there is nothing wrong in it, as one should realise Bond is not an evergreen hero, let alone immortal.

To be frank, after a long time Devil May Care is one book that hooked me from page one. Seriously. The thriller starts on a very promising note: a murder, that of drugs dealer Hashim. He was killed in a peculiar manner: his tongue was pierced. That lead leads to an intriguing and devastating ploy that a psychopathic schemer is planning. His name is Gorner with a monkey-like left paw, which he is ashamed of, nevertheless.

Gorner is one of the best brains the world could boast of, but only for devastating consequences. Naturally, Bond has been deputed to hunt him down and also to scuttle a sinister plan that would wreck the western world, especially Britain. If Gorner can’t stand anything British, Bond is a proud Briton, all set to save his homeland from the scum of the world.

In between, as it should be (like any Bond book or movie) comes in a lady in armour: Scarlett. She, nonetheless, comes under several aliases (including posing as her ‘twin sister’ who never exists) at different points of time as the book progresses.

But naturally, after a rollercoaster ride-type narrative till the end, Bond survives, and discovers, at the fag end of the book, that Scarlett is Bond’s colleague. But, alas, Garner, escapes. Obviously, Faulks plans a sequel to this book, and it is not anyone’s guess that Gorner will reappear; maybe in several books to come.

Devil May Care has been apparently written to celebrate the centenary of Fleming’s birth on 28 May 2008 and is, sans doubt, a deft furtherance of Bond’s charming legacy. And Faulks is a true inheritor of Fleming’s Midas touch.

Final things finally: do not expect a path-breaking literature here; it is at the best a great thriller; a great bedtime read when you get fed up of pelvic gyrations of Bipasha Basu.

And, yes, I get a feeling that Faulks, if he hones his skills further, which I am sure he will, can be a better writer than Fleming. Blasphemous it may sound, but it is the truth.

-- Sahara Time

Off the Shelf

With the Tiger

Inez Baranay

Harper Collins

Price: 295

Pages: 305

One who grew up with classics storytellers like Somerset Maugham, this impressive volume leads you on a trip down nostalgia lanes. For, With the Tiger is a graceful retelling of Maugham’s classic The Razor’s Edge. Where Baranay succeeds is the way she intersperses Maugham’s characters in Indian context with such brave and unwavering way, without losing the girth and grip of the narrative, cogitative most of the times. Baranay, as she admits, has followed Maugham’s structure exactly and named her characters for his. Brief: The charming young Larry (along with a host of other characters) returns as Australians; his life-altering occurrence is not as an underage enlistee in WWI, but during a teenage backpacking trip to India, where he converts himself into a mysterious hermit. A racy read, this is a worthy addition to your literary vocabulary.

— Sunil K Poolani

Guardian of the Dawn

Richard Zimler

Penguin Books

Price: 350

Pages: 358

Unlike any other year, the last two years have seen a gamut of historical novels set in India. After Rimi B Chatterjee’s The City of Love, here comes Zimler’s Guardian of the Dawn, equally rich in talking about the atrocities and vengeance of colonial India. Zimler, nevertheless, takes a daring turn: he vivifies the Catholic Inquisition in Goa (we Indians, fearfully, never discussed this before, to remain politically correct), and how Hindus or immigrant Jews were strangled by executioners or burnt alive in public. Zimler presents a wide canvass of devotion and discrimination, peppered with lots of historical research and passion. A veritable treat (the beginning may put many readers off, but as the novel progresses it becomes unputdownable), this novel is an enchanting and authoritative retelling of Othello. Zimler, an internationally-acclaimed author, has absolute command over the language which drags the readers into the realms of a barbaric system that we conveniently try to forget. Impressive.

— Sunil K Poolani

-- Sahara Time

Scratch thy back, get noticed

By Sunil K Poolani

A disconcerting although dominant lobby is functioning overtime in the (figuratively speaking) surreptitious and serpentine corridors of publishing in India. Disquieting, yes, but it seems this trend — the dividing line between publishing and journalism getting almost imperceptible — is here to stay.

There is hardly anything erroneous when these two streams of creativity (ahem) getting together to enrich each other’s causes, but that is not the case, if some recent incidents or trends are anything to go by.

In the last few years, publishing has grown magnanimously, and there was, and is, a crying need to find good people to run the show. Journalists, disgruntled or not by seeing the apathetic profession they are in, filled that need, to some extent. And this ilk now dictates what should get published and what should not; akin to choosing your favourite columnists or contributors for newspapers.

That is still understandable. What becomes an eyesore is that these writers, who do moonlight for newspapers as reviewers or consultant editors, dictate which book should be promoted and which authors should get interviewed. It’s a clique, nebulous at that. They, today, make or unmake new authors; they decide, whatever the quality of the book in question may be, whether to denigrate or promote it. And their brethren in other publications too follow suit, lest they will fall off the radars.

To quote one, there is this one group in Mumbai (like in Delhi and Kolkata) comprising mostly journalists, who churn out books like they write 600-word pieces for newspapers. The team endorses each other’s work, provided you scratch their back and, in turn, you can be happy to see your name and picture in print.

What happens when one ‘reneges’? Oh, hell, you would be branded a misfit, untouchable… and this ilk will ensure your book and the ones published by the authors friendly to you get denounced or, worse, ignored.

This, if you are a writer. Well, if one is a publisher, who is an ex-journalist, writer of sorts and a reviewer of books, then you had it. Ask me. Some time back I reviewed a book of a journalist-writer’s novel. I did a judicious job, but the writer was quite upset that I did not praise him to the skies, so he shot off letters to the editors in the paper, shouting, I should be, from then on, debarred from writing for the paper in question. The novel sank without a trace, but the simmering feeling, inside the ambitious novelist, still exists.

Now, this would seem to be a complete debacle of the cultural zeitgeist. Since I had a journalist background every friend of mine in that profession has, I have just realised, a book in her or him. So, can I ever say no to them when they suggest that I should read their magnum opus and publish it? No. But what if the work is bad and it will burn my pocket deficiently? (Of course, they will never part-compensate if the book would bomb.)

Then you go on and say no. Then you had it. The coterie will ensure that there wouldn’t be any interviews with the authors of the books that you would eventually publish and they will, in their wisest capacity, try to stop any reviews of the probable books of others.

Now I know what an incestuous world means and journalism is literature in hurry.

Tailpiece

A friend of mine in publishing told me this story. His company has been publishing an astrologer’s book for something like twenty years. A new editor took charge and she wanted to scrap the soothsayer’s books everlastingly as his popularity was on the decline. So she shot off a letter to the astrologer: “Dear Sir, as you would have, of course, anticipated, hereafter we would not require any new books from you. Have a nice day!”

-- Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Launch Pad

By Sunil K Poolani

Book launches are important as book publishing. Old hat. But what is new is that launches have today become venues where everything else is discussed except books; not even about the book in question which is supposed to be getting ‘launched’.

Predictably, these books launches are now occasions where people, who might have not read anything other than Mills and Boon or Bible, gather — people who do not understand the difference between a bar of soap and a book. Book launches have also become places where the who’s who of the glitterati and chatterati of the city assemble, flaunting their Armani suits or Ritu Beri salwar-kameezs.

These pretentious people only get attracted or want to be seen there for just one reason: if the author is a celebrity or at least s/he is the offspring of one, and/or if the person who launches the book is a great figure. Like? The recent launches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter’s book or Jeffrey Archer’s multi-city book promotion tour.

I normally do not attend book launches precisely for the above reasons. And I do not even recommend that to the authors of my own books as launches hardly contribute to the sales of the books. They are at best a vanity in exercise that costs money for no rhyme of reason.

Last week, nevertheless, I attended two book launches at Oxford Bookstore in Mumbai, a great bookstall to have such events as the people who run it cherish and cultivate the value of books, good and great books. Not trash.

The first one was Farzana Versey’s tremendous and gutsy effort. The book, titled A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, was launched by the indomitable Mahesh Bhatt and Indo-Pak expert Ritu Dewan. Versey’s book is a daring attempt: single lady, Muslim and Indian travelling to the heartlands of Pakistan to explore why India is still obsessed with a nation formed by Jinnah. But why did she choose Pakistan as her subject? For that reason, why are all so-called secular Muslims in India still obsessed with our cousins across the border? I asked her. Her answer was quite simple: “Only because Pakistan is our neighbour and Pakistanis are our brothers and sisters.”

Versey’s book is not a conformist travelogue; it delves into the Pakistani mind rather than the land. It explores that complex society, and Versey also finds herself struggling with her own identity.

When Bhatt is invited for an event, there is no dearth of controversy, no scarcity of sound-bites. But at this launch he was quite serene, was direct to the point, and yes, without making any provoking statements, he was making good sense. And that’s how a book launch should be.

The next one was Prasad Ramasubramanian’s novella, Raising the Bat. Inevitably, the book is about cricket and the 27-year-old writer lived and breathed cricket since the time he touched a bat as a kid. He is quite well versed in all cricket statistics and has never missed a match in action, either on the ground or on the telly.

Acclaimed actor Tom Alter was supposed to be the chief guest, but the previous day his house in Mussourie was burgled and he had to rush there. So the book was launched by the legendary cricketer Nari Contractor, who captained India in the sixties.

Contractor confessed that he has never read a book and has made it a point to not read one ever. Fair enough. But there could not have been a better choice for the book launch as he travelled down memory lanes, peppering with one anecdote after another. The launch was moderated by the best-selling author Murzban F Shroff of the Breathless in Bombay fame.

Good evenings before you hit a bottle of chilled beer.

A confession. I was getting tired and bored of the column I am presenting to you, readers, every week. But, then, I am getting damn good mails and responses from discerning readers. And, yes, I am getting more brickbats than bouquets. Due to which I shall continue.

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Cry, Beloved Books

By Sunil K Poolani

Go to the roots

While releasing some of my recent titles and trying to convince the distributors to take up the copies for putting them up on the bookshelves, they told me bluntly: “Pal, we wanted to tell you this earlier; since you are an old friend we did not want to disappoint you, then. But, now, to tell you the truth, the kind of books you publish, well, there are not many takers, thank you. Why do you publish fiction? And poetry! You should be out of your mind to do that in today’s climate.”

And what should I publish? Pat came the reply: dictionaries, ‘how to learn alphabets’, colouring books for kids, cookery books, or if you I am rich enough, publish coffee table books by celebrity cooks, tinsel stars, businessmen…

I was about the rest the case and disappear into thin air, but they reassured me: “Ok, fiction is fine if there is sex, stunt or drama in it. Something scintillating, you know. Can you do that?”

I am still thinking.

End of hype and hoopla?

The market feedback tells me that the much-hyped books by Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat are not doing well as the publishers thought they would be. Of course, they are bestsellers by any standards in this dog-eat-dog world of publishing, but it seems their respective publishers overestimated their brand value. The result? Unsold copies in the repository.

I don’t know how true these findings are, but the feeling I get from readers — which include laymen who pretend to be reading — that they too are fed up of ploughing through these exercises in vague. Does that mean the mindset of the ‘thinking’ and ‘reading’ Indian readers in English is changing? For good? Time will tell. But, at least for now, the publishers are not complaining, as they are laughing all the way to their respective banks. Ditto, the ever-green ‘people’s’ authors.

Rise of regionalism

Reports from the real connoisseurs of good literature and writing suggest that if the English-reading pretentious clienteles’ range and depth are receding, that is not the case with regional languages. Good works published in languages like Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali are on the rise. This, at a time when no one in a local train in Mumbai will risk reading a regional language newspaper. Why? Inferiority complex. What if they do not understand the difference between Becket and a bucket.

Indian fiction soaring

Just savoured a good book by an unassuming Indian writer: Saikat Majumdar’s Silverfish. The title of the book could not have been more apt. Like silverfish that nibbles away precious printed words, leaving a whitish trail, Calcutta, the city of neither joy nor love, gnaws the already-pathetic and morose lives of two protagonists, separated by two centuries.

Silverfish is melancholic testimony of a debauched land (in this case Bengal) inundated and infested not just by age-old religious stupidities (as in a parallel plot that vivifies the life of Kamal) but also of a skewed polity in the name of a redundant ideology called communism (as in the other narrative in which the ‘hero’ is Milan Sen).

Give it a try; you will never get disappointed.

Tailpiece

The damage management books have done to today’s yuppies is showing. An acquaintance-marketing executive told me recently: “As C K Prahalad said, what we need is a paradigm shift.” I am sure Prahalad would not have said something stupid like this. But I am still wondering what that sentence means. If you have an idea please enlighten me.

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

A Snake Pit Called Publishing and Other Stories

By Sunil K Poolani

I started publishing with just Rs 2,000 in hand; was fed up of journalism and I ventured into it as I loved books, wanted to be with books and wanted to hold books on to my chest.

It was a tough game; it is even today. And as I ventured into it I realised what a murky dog-eat-dog world it is. I am not ruing, thank you. In my initial days, I did vanity publishing, and I did cover some bit of the damages. But all these things did not help in the long run. The question of getting money from the intricate corridors of the distributors’ and bookstalls’ moneyboxes was not at all easy. And I eventually learnt that there is only one tribe that benefit from publishing: distributors.

I am not complaining, though. I am skin deep into this and no way can I get out of these murky waters, at least till that time I clear all the dues. Nevertheless, I do enjoy what I am doing. And I love, every time, when I take a whiff of the newly, and painstakingly-produced book that appear from the printer’s shop. Ahem.

Some thoughts on publishing, if you wish. I know that in a country like the US, a new and unknown author can aspire to sell 30-40 thousand copies of a novel, whereas in India, a new home-grown Indian author is considered successful if the book sells just 1,000 copies. Is it because the many citizens of our great country are disinterested and dull, or is it also because good, original and interesting Indian books are not published and marketed in the right way?

My answer is thus: Who says books do not sell well in India? Trash brought out by Shobhaa De, Robin Sharma, Chetan Bhagat sell. Ditto books on cookery, cinema, self-help (due to growing mental insecurity), and travel guides. What does not sell is meaningful and path-breaking literature. So an aam janata does not know who a Kiran Nagarkar is or M T Vasudevan Nair is. The scene is the same in the US, too, where thousands of books come out every year. If a work of fiction has to sell, in India or in the US, hype and hoopla are important; get a Booker, get dragged into controversy, voila, then your book is in the best-selling list. Yes, volume-wise, there is a chalk-to-cheese difference in the US and India as almost all Americans read English — that is not the case here.

And does an Indian author writing in English have to taste success abroad first? Why the market is dominated by East meets West books, but the home-grown Indian books are hidden away in the back shelves? That is due to our colonial mentality; if we were the slaves of the British, now the neo-colonialists are the US. The mentality is thus: ‘Wow, he got a US award (however unheard of it could be), so it should sell well in India.’ Then in a day’s time you will find a pirated Kavya Viswanathan ‘magnum opus’ on Bombay’s great streets. Also to be blamed are the Indian media which is perpetually lick up the western ‘success’ stories.

It is also true that home-grown Indian writers in English cannot turn out much more than run of the mill masala stories or the same old, hackneyed Panchatantra tales retold for the umpteen hundredth time. Do Indian writers lack originality? What stops them? Yes, Indians are lazy. They do not think. They hardly polish their (so-called) talent or style. They do not imagine. The do not think, plainly. Also to be blamed are poor payments, the lalas of the trade, lack of funds for research... Look at the kind of money British or other writers are besotted for the research of their works. So, save our Ramachandra Guha, the best history books on India are written by British writers. Gregory Rabassa is paid as much as Marquez for translating the latter’s work.

Writers like Hemingway were great storytellers, used language and literary techniques beautifully, created art with words and told great stories which resonated with the masses. Why do Indians cannot aspire to write such stories as well? Why not a combination of great artistic techniques, rich emotional, philosophical and other nuances, and also a great plot and narrative that people can understand and relate to? Hmmm, I do not fully agree with the viewpoint here. The best of the Indian writing is not in the English. A Vaikom Muhammad Basheer or a Sarat Chandra Chatterjee is any day equal to a Marquez or Umebrto Eco. They are not famous because they were not properly translated like their western counterparts. And the problem with us is that we did not rekindle our skills though we claim to have a rich and varied culture. It’s bullshit. We had. But what do we have today?

The case is that most Indian publishers, including multinational biggies, push the burden of marketing and publicity entirely upon the author. No matter how good a book may be, if it is not publicised, people will not know about it, and not buy and read it. How can a first-time Indian author compete with bestsellers without adequate support from the publisher?

Well, it is simple. That’s the tragedy one has to suffer, no matter how talented you are. Like their western counterparts, not a single big publishing house entertains new talent unless it has sex appeal and/or probability of selling. I will not name names. “The best magical realist after Marquez,” that’s what a ‘great’ books page editor of a national weekly called a 20-something Bombay guy who wrote a trashy book. He paid the publisher nearly 10 lakh for launch, pitching stories, interviews and reviews. The publisher got a good deal; the scribes were paid; and for the author, belonging to a rich business family, got instant stardom. What if, if the book sank without a trace.

A rich Malabar Hill lady sent me an unsolicited manuscript, written in ink on paper. The book sucked, so I put it in my favourite dustbin. Few weeks later, I got a call from the lady. Asking me whether I am publishing this book or not. I said, ‘Sorry’. She said, “Ok, can I have the manuscript back.” I said I junked it. “Ooops,” she said, “that was the only copy I had.” So? You did not even take a photocopy of it, I asked. She said: “No.”

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Of Vijay and Vijayan

Sunil K Poolani

Vijay Tendulkar passed away last month. I have never met a person of such integrity in my life. Tomes of tributes have been written about him since his passing, but I just want to acknowledge him for the contributions he had made to upset many an applecart, that includes Mr Bal Thackeray and Maharashtrian Pune Brahmins. He used violence as a theme in most of his plays and also the film scripts he did, but I have never seen a person who is quite serene. Hope he has a nice time there, up.

Around the 1990s, I had the rare privilege to become a close acquaintance of O V Vijayan, a legend in every sense of word, stroke and speech.Those were underprivileged days for me: no money, no steady job, Delhi’s gnawing chill, homesickness, nostalgia… Amidst all these, the doors of Vijayan’s Chanakyapuri residence were one of the few that opened for me, offering me food, not just for the soul.

As I used to sip tea, or swallow idlis, Pooh, the Siamese cat, the one and only pet Vijayan ever owned and loved more than anything else in the world, would stare at the intruder who had come to spoil her master’s calm and cool afternoon.

I, like most people who have had the fortune to meet this extraordinary gentleman, was really awed by the aura he held. He was not just a contact for me in Delhi, where I could while away my time, but my mentor in several ways; he even edited my first article in English. Parkinson’s disease had just attacked him then: his spoken words stammered, his fingers shook, his vision blurred, but his mind was as clear as mountain dew. I even had the chance to see his last political cartoon, which is to appear in The Statesman, which I had personally delivered to the news editor of that paper — his fingers had since then disobeyed him. But his wide and varied constituency of Malayalam and English readers were fortunate that he could dictate short stories or social commentaries to his two personal secretaries.

My relationship with him continued even after I left Delhi for Mumbai, in occasional mails we used to exchange. Then suddenly there was no correspondence at all, and I realised that Vijayan has already started sinking. By mind silently wept, but no one could do anything about it.

II

So, who was Vijayan? For the uninitiated (which is really unlikely if you are a connoisseur of Indian literature, political cartooning or journalism) he is, to put it in one sentence, one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced. And what raised him to that pedestal is his first and best novel, The Legend of Khasak, which was published around the same time that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s path-breaking One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hence one could fairly conclude that two of the greatest of writers of the twentieth century evolved at the same time, changing the course of Malayalam and Spanish literatures respectively, making the two individual works the benchmarks in their own respective languages.

The Legend of Khasak, published in 1969, is often poetic and dark, always complex and rich, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement which took the Malayali psyche (and, to some extent, physique) by storm. The gist of the book is this: Ravi, the protagonist, thanks to a restlessness born out of guilt and despair, embarks on a journey that ends in the remote village of Khasak in the picturesque Palakkad (in central Kerala) countryside. A land from the past, potent with dreams and legends, enfolds the traveller in a powerful and unsettling embrace. Ravi is bewitched and entranced as everything around him — the villagers, their children whom he teaches in a makeshift school, the elders who see him as a threat, the toddy-tappers, the shamans — takes on the quality of myth. And then reality, painful and threatening, begins to intrude on the sojourner’s resting place and Ravi begins to understand that there is no escape from the relentless dictates of karma…

An amazing treat, I personally believe there was nothing that Vijayan wrote since The Legend of Khasak that matched the range and depth of his maiden work. Sample the imagery here:

“Long before the lizards, before the dinosaurs, two spores set out on an incredible journey. They came to a valley bathed in the placid glow of sunset.

My elder sister, said the little spore to the bigger spore, let us see what lies beyond.

This valley is green, replied the bigger spore, I shall journey no further.

I want to journey, said the little spore, I want to discover. She gazed in wonder at the path below her.

Will you forget your sister, asked the bigger spore.

Never, said the little spore.

You will, little one, for this is the loveless tale of karma; in it there is only parting and sorrow.”

Vijayan’s second novel, The Saga of Dharmapuri, is still considered to be the most disquieting novel ever written in any Indian language, but its genre is totally different from his first novel, and hence there is no comparison. It was panned by critics for its scatological depictions but it was a daring attempt, no doubt.

After The Saga of Dharmapuri there was a lull period of a decade and what followed was The Infinity of Grace. Like all his works this, too, was translated into the English by the author himself. It won several awards including the prestigious Vayalar Award (and it baffles one how the literary mandarins decided not to give the Jnanpith, India’s highest literary honour, to Vijayan). The Infinity of Grace, a marvel of course, marked not just the transformation of his craft, but also the evolvement of Vijayan’s ideology itself. From a staunch Communist supporter, he had by that time embraced spiritualism, thanks to his then new-found association with spiritual leader Karunakara Gurukkal. I, though not a Communist, was really sad to see his transformation, but Vijayan told me then: “My health is deteriorating, and what else can I do but to call out to the Almighty?” There was moisture in his eyes.

Apart from his three important novels (he had written three more novels, but they failed to accomplish the status of the first three, especially the first) he was also renowned for penning some of the most beautiful short stories in Malayalam, especially The Story Told by the Wind, Warts, and After the Hanging. They had an uncanny beauty — again — never ever surpassed by any Malayalam writer after him.

Like many regional language writers, Vijayan too had this misfortune: his works were only truly and fully appreciated by Malayalam readers — the beauty of his prose couldn’t transcend the way it should be to other languages. This, despite the fact that it was Vijayan, who could write in Malayalam and English with equal felicity, translated almost all the works into the English.

“Why,” I had asked Vijayan. He said: “The reason is that translation is an act of shifting eggs from one nest to another. In the process the yolk and white are separated, and what you have left with is broken shells.” How one wishes we had an Edith Grossman, Linda Asher or a Gregory Rabassa who made a Marquez or a Milan Kundera a household name across the globe.

III

Vijayan was born in 1930 and has published six novels, seven collections of stories, six collections of political essays, a book of selected cartoons and one volume of satire. Vijayan took a Masters degree in English Literature from Madras University in 1954. After a short stint of teaching at the University, he began his career as a political cartoonist with the Shankar’s Weekly in 1958. He left the Weekly and joined the Patriot in 1963. After four years, having resigned from the Patriot, he began freelancing for various publications including The Hindu, Mathrubhumi (Malayalam) and Far Eastern Economic Review. In 1979 he joined The Statesman.

Vijayan lived a double life, in the right sense. If Vijayan the story-teller was world-class, so was his role as a political cartoonist who took Indian journalism by storm by his deft caricatures of the people in power. Indira Gandhi feared his strokes, so did her son Rajiv. In the foreword of Vijayan’s book, A Cartoonist Remembers, a collection of his best cartoons and writings about cartooning, Ashish Nandy wrote: “I belong to Vijayan’s tribe, comprising those who have betrayed their class, and I have watched in rapt admiration the demolition job he has done for our generation. It covers not merely targets that are easy and fashionable to attack, but also the ones that are politically incorrect to touch. The latter include the slogans which have helped our class to establish its stranglehold over the culture of Indian politics and the media…. Vijayan [was] one of the foremost social critics and chroniclers of our times.”

Vijayan was a true political cartoonist, a rare breed, unlike an unnecessarily eulogised R K Laxman, who doles out syrupy caricatures on a daily basis. Vijayan’s lines never gave anyone a hearty laugh; it always left a sour taste — a taste of reality. A worst critic of Emergency, Vijayan’s wings too were clipped. What was his reaction? “When on June 26, 1975, I told my editor in Madras that I was quitting, he was concerned and asked me to stay on and comment on innocuous subjects; I did not leave in a spirit of bravado but in humility, at my sheer inability to locate the innocuous subject. Brothers in the profession did apparently manage to locate some: in the first weeks of censorship, in its abjectness and debasement, I found our newspapers carrying cartoons on the Lebanese crisis. One might as well have drawn cartoons on the Wars of the Roses.”

IV

Ottupulakkal Velukkutty Vijayan died on March 29, 2005, aged 75. Let his soul lie in peace.

The other day, a lady landed up in my office. She has written a novel and she has been searching for a publisher for the last four years. With no results. And she came and told me her biggest ambition in life is that she wants her magnum opus in print: “I have two kids, and I love my book than both of them. I will do anything. You just have to ask me.” Need I say more? No, I did not sleep with her.

-- Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Frog Elephant to Tiger

By Sunil K Poolani

White Tiger

Aravind Adiga

HarperCollins

Price: 395; Pages: 321

Behram Contractor, one of India’s legendary editors, once said that writing simple English is the biggest challenge a writer often faces. He was right. He wrote well. He won thousands of admirers. And when I read Aravind Adiga I was reminded about the Contractor’s famous words.

Adiga, through his reportage and columns in the venerated Time magazine, always amused me. He packed much punch in simple words and sentences and it did wonders. He still does that; he is quite young, too. And when I opened his debut novel to savour, I knew what I was expecting.

The novel in question, by now discussed to death, is treatise to the condition the Indian nation is in. Adiga searches for the impossible. He takes the last mile, where none of today’s journalist (if you can call anyone by that moniker) would tread: in a hard way; the weather-beaten way. And, thus, exploring a story he wanted to narrate — in an inimitable style not many a scribe-fictionist in India could easily achieve to do.

Like the writing, the story of White Tiger, too, is reasonably effortless. Born in abject poverty (a pig’s life is much better than him), Balram Halwai (whose age is unknown) is the son of a rickshaw puller. He was taken out of the school to work in a teashop and through various meanderings he somehow gets a break when a rich village landlord hires him as a driver for his son, his daughter-in-law and their two Pomeranian dogs.

From behind the wheel of a Honda he explores the metropolis of Delhi with a gleeful eye. And since then his life is on a rollercoaster ride. He learns English. He sees the dark façade behind the life of many rich people in Delhi and their moral debauchery. Balram’s language and his scorn for the rich only increases as time passes — so does his ambition to become a rich man at a time when the country is going through a new-fangled economic boom, primarily BPO operation.

To cut the story short, Balram eventually murders the landlord’s son (by then the daughter-in-law has left the son) and steals the son’s money to start life anew in another booming, glitzy city: Bangalore.

Balram kicks off an entrepreneurial venture, of hiring vehicles to ply BPO employees, and he has to grease several palms to achieve a dream of a big man in these times.

The novel is a telling tale of two Indias: Balram’s journey to achieve his goals is totally amoral and at times very nasty; it shows both the good and bad sides of today’s make-belief world. Nevertheless, most of the times the novel is uproariously funny, too, and Balram keeps a bold face even when he learns his entire family has been massacred by the landlord’s goons.

White Tiger is written in a novel way: in the form of letters to the Chinese Premier from ‘The White Tiger’, which is Balram. This debut work explores and defies all conventional norms of feel-good writing and comes as a cruel testimony of today’s murky world where only money counts.

Adiga’s is a voice to be watched and White Tiger is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. I am deeply impressed.

-- Deccan Herald

Books and Crooks

By Sunil K Poolani

First things first. While contemplating what I would write for the maiden column about books, reading and publishing for this paper, the car in which I was travelling came to a standstill at one of Mumbai’s traffic signals. A street urchin (ahem) knocked at the window, with a tome of pirated books in his furtive hands. I bought one; I never encouraged piracy, though. But the book in question was Polyester Prince, a (so-called) biography of Dhirubhai Ambani. The book was banned, once, in India due to Sr Ambani’s ‘interference’ (so the story goes) when he was alive, and was resurfaced (only on the streets) when the Reliance kingpin’s kids battled it out famously after their papa’s demise.
I always wanted to know why the Ambani patriarch was so infuriated that the Indians should not read this book. I got the answer in few minutes — after I rescued the pirated book from its safe cellulite folder. Except for the initial pages, the whole book was empty. Empty? Yes. Filled with blank paper. (I later learnt that that is the case with almost 50-75 per cent of the books sold on Mumbai’s mean streets.)
By then the car had crossed two more traffic signals, and of course no sign of the kid genius who extracted my 150 rupees. I admire his (or his boss’s) audacity and entrepreneurship.


As an old (by today’s standards) journalist who is in publishing today due to some unforeseen reasons, it has always amused me that almost all the ‘great’ Indian newspapers and magazines published in English have this tendency to equally promote and denigrate authors they think are mediocre. And who are these ‘mediocre’ authors? Shobhaa De, Chetan Bhagat, Robin Sharma… Ok, they are a nuisance to a thinking man’s vocabulary. One might admit.
If that is the case, why are all these prestigious magazines carrying reviews of these best-selling authors’ books (for info: most of the above trio’s works have hit the shelves recently and are still on bestseller lists), and also devote full-page interviews with them? And in the end denigrate them, saying, their works are a tease to intelligence?
The answer is simple. The readers of these books are sizeable and a major chunk of these publications’ readers are also those readers.
So who is complaining? No one, except the ‘intelligent’ books page editors and the failed authors who are commissioned to do the reviews of these mediocre writers’ books.
Publishers gain. Readers are not complaining. And publications gain from pain. But that does not mean I do not rue the brain drain that these authors are causing our newly-started, English-reading generation. Do you?


Blogs and social networking websites like Shelfari are trying to promote book reading habits, I have been told. To an extent it is right. But do you really care who is reading what? I mean someone from Kakinada? No, at least I am not interested. The Internet, of course, has helped promote reading habits, but in an equal measure it has killed them, too. Why? You, if you are a moron, form an opinion based on some jerk sitting at one end of the world who would say Dan Brown is bad. So be it.
Nevertheless, think about those golden times, those pre-Internet days. Those where the days when a Camus or Marquez was refined and whetted down our throats by at least five aficionados who used to discuss their works (say, existentialism or magical realism) for days together. And we never complained. And we were never disappointed. Now, it is a free world, and there is no time for intelligence — passé. Take it or leave it. For good or bad.


One interesting thing I observed as being a publisher is out of the three book proposals I get, two of them are poetry collections. And, needless to say, they are not even worth the A4-size papers they are written upon, forget publishing. Nonetheless, each one of them thinks that s/he is the biggest poet ever to be recognised after Kamala Das or Dom Moraes. That’s not their problem alone. Most mothers think that their children are the greatest ever born.
More interesting stories of my publishing experience in the next columns — that is, if you and the paper’s editor allow.

— Deccan Chronicle / Asian Age

End of Serendipity

By Sunil K Poolani

Serendip. Ceylon. Sri Lanka. A lush green island blessed with and famous for its spices, coconut groves, rice… An amalgamation of ethnicities (primarily Sinhalese and Tamil), influenced by Indian, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and English (to name a few) cultures, and practicing religions as varied as Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim... An emerald. A virtual coral isle. An ideal abode for blissful existence.

Then all went awry. The once idyllic isle got soaked in blood. The green hue turned red. Ethnicities clashed, heads blew up, bombs ripped apart the facades of its rich heritage.

The mayhem continues unabated. What are prevailing now are restlessness, hopelessness, unemployment and basic amenities that are denied to the hapless citizenry who have, long ago, lost their gleam in their eyes.

What went wrong? Instead of pouring over truckloads of newspaper clippings collected over the decades and trying to make sense in political commentary books penned by half-baked experts, read Mosquito (a fiction, nevertheless) by Roma Tearne, whose writing leaves a dent in your heart, unless you are one of those assassins who periodically bring chaos and confusion to the war-torn country.

Mosquito, an allegory of a skewed polity, comes as a whiff of fresh air in a literary arena (if you can really call that) that is infected by bad prose but brazenly supported by hype, hoopla, nepotism and sex appeal. Tearne tells us the story of Nulani, a hapless victim of an internecine war fought between Sinhalese-Tamil brothers (well?). Nulani is a talented painter, who befriends Theo Samarajeeva, a famous writer who, after the death of his Italian wife Anna, had left Britain to embrace the warmth of his land of origin.

Friendship takes turns and blossoms into love, despite a huge age difference between the protagonists. Into their delightful saga of infatuation, and then love, creep in characters who not only add misery into the duo’s lives, but to the country as well. The Tamilian Vikram, masquerading as a Sinhalese, is one among them. Then there are two of his mentors; one of the characters resembles Velupillai Prabhakaran.

There are kind characters, too: Thercy and Sugi (he even gives up his life for Nulani) who take care of the duo when in dire need; Rohan, a celebrated painter, and his Italian (again) wife Giulia who not only give solace and sanctuary to Nulani when Theo was believed to be slain, but help Nulani flee Sri Lanka and later try their level best to track her down in the labyrinthine lanes of London.

Theo, as the story moves on, was held hostage — first by the Sinhalese and later by the Tamils — then manages to escape to his seaside villa, a literal mosquito coast, from where he writes a novel based on his life and his kith and kin, present and past. In the meantime, Rohan and Giulia manage to locate Nulani, who has by then become an established painter, and that lead helps them to connect Theo and Nulani, lovers who were once separated due to cruelty in the name of ethnicity.

So whose story is this? It is fiction, that’s right, and penned by Tearne. It is also a novel penned by the protagonist Theo. But a brief profile on Tearne says she “fled Sri Lanka at the age of ten, traveling to Britain where she spent most of her life.” And in the acknowledgments section, Tearne comes up with this line: “…to my long-suffering family…” Tearne apparently is Nulani, and like Nulani, Tearne, too, is an accomplished artist (she has a Masters degree from Oxford in Drawing and Fine Art and was awarded coveted fellowships).

And do not assume that the novel is totally flawless: a) all the main characters in the book are not only world famous (or are going to be one), but exceptionally talented, rich and, despite living in a morbid country, have the company of a guardian angel who has a twenty-four hour duty; b) about the second-rung characters: well, the author manages to kill them at a time when they are becoming strong and when the story starts revolving around them; c) the language is at times a bit shaky and a tad disoriented — this is especially true when, despite being a Sinhalese by origin, Tearne tries to bring into the realm the ultimate truth that there is no serendipity in Serendip.

If you ignore these flaws the novel reads like a dream, shattering some, creating some. What more can you ask for?

(Author picture courtesy: John Lawrence, The Independent, London, UK

Mosquito

Roma Tearne

Harper Perennial

Pages: 296; Price: Rs 295

— Deccan Herald

Spade

By Prabha Shankar

Translated from the Malayalam by Sunil K Poolani

I used to call her Spade, the girl I loved. It was long, long ago, when my fiancée used to lie down looking at the stars through the glass pane of the tiled roof. Awake.

In fact, I wanted to call her Selfish. Reason: ignoring her younger sister and brother, she used to bring me sugar-toffees and laddus without anyone’s knowledge. Instead of taking her siblings for a stroll or playing with them, she loved to spend her evenings with me.

I wrote about all this: short stories, poems, and in the end — for money — even essays. Still, I vividly remember even now, I was left with a mere eighty rupees.

All this is for those who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths — this love and literature.

Then, there were roaming-arounds, searches…

Shouldn’t I too survive?

With time, I, a jobless youth, became a drunkard, drug addict, murderer, womaniser…

Moreover, I grew into a useless moron.

The village and the villagers believed I would be all right if I was locked up in a room.

When it became unbearable, I had to leave my village and bid goodbye to the loving (hating) villagers.

I swayed in the wind, floated in the water. At last, in a city, a metropolis, I had to calm down myself. Shadowless.

Shouldn’t I too survive? Wasn’t I born minus a silver spoon in my mouth?

For the time being, I sat in a cane chair in an advertising company and typed A-B-C-D. I gave colour and smell to the virgin lies about products. I earned a name, but the pay was little.

Isn’t it a shameful thing to tell four people that I am at the mercy of forty people? So, I didn’t complain. Didn’t crib.

Nevertheless, my all-time friends, who poke their noses into and learn all the nitty-gritties of my life, poked their noses once again and perceived the quandary I was in.

The prescribed the usual medicine: advice.

To borrow means to surrender oneself to the hands of a wild bear. Don’t go for all this. Get lost, man, get lost: try to live on your own. Sell whatever is allotted to you, sell your self-esteem (sorry, I had sold that a long time ago), and then earn more money and get whatever you can lay your hands on. There was a way out, a way to the Arab land along with Air India’s Maharaja.

I didn’t delay. I learnt that sunshine, rain, mist, everything, is part of nature’s immortal wealth. I realised them as much as I could. I sloughed off the knowledge (or, as I realise now, was it ignorance?) I had gained in my last twenty-eight years. I did the packing in twenty-eight hours.

At last, after spending four-and-a-half hours in a serpentine queue, I appeared before a fair-skinned Arab. Also, in front of an Indian, who was keenly observing whether any dust had accumulated on the Arab’s footwear.

What all do you know? — the Arab’s query, translated by the Indian who doesn’t allow dust to gather.

Dissection to dissemination.

Experience?

Very little, but I can improve.

Agreed. But you have to love the flora, especially the flowers. And that’s not all. Love the spade, too. As a dividend, you can love the whizz of the air-conditioner. Also, the dirhams, which you can save and send home.

I was startled. Thinking about the impediments and losses I had to endure, and with tears trickling down my eyes, I started searching out for Gardener.

At last I met Gardner, the guru, and told him about my venture. I received a spade, accepted blessings and shoved the spade into the ground with all my strength. My first training!

I shoved the spade very hard and looked at the earth on it. Suddenly, I thought about the girl who loved me. Oh! this was the same thing she had told me once: “Give me, give me…”

This is so uncharacteristic of a spade. If the substance you collect is not deposited somewhere, it will get accumulated somewhere else.

My god, why did I take so long to know this?

Now what?

(Oh, girl, who is the perfume of my dreams, forgive me.)

It is ridiculous to waste thinking about mundane things. I want to be trained. Somewhere, in some corner of the world. Somehow, I have to live.

I ferociously started shoving the spade into the soil. Whatever I got on it, I deposited on one place. At last, there was a three-foot-deep, six-and-half-foot-long, two-foot-wide trench. With the mud taken from it I made a four-foot-long mound.

Now, I can live! This training is more than I had expected.

Or, I will relax. Isn’t the spade which made this trench and prattles “give me, give me” enough for that?

Ekdum bindaas!

By Sunil K Poolani

Breathless in Bombay

Murzban F Shroff

Picador

Price: 295; Pages: 306

There is no middle business in Bombay (well, what is Mumbai?). Either you are a sharp-shooter or are a point-blank man. Straight, nevertheless. This unswerving candour is what makes the city unique, becomes an addiction and a bright flame where, like flies, migrants are attracted to — Raj Thackeray and his recent juvenile antics notwithstanding.

Bombay, the word, has this onomatopoeic quality to it, like its simplicity. And since centuries, Bombay’s pathos, ethos and voices have been recorded in every genre of writing. In recent history the best chroniclers of the city have been Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, and Suketu Mehta. And, now, Murzban F Shroff can proudly stake a claim to be included in this august company.

In just one month’s time since the publication of Breathless in Bombay, Shroff is hogging the limelight (critical acclaims; in best-seller lists). What is surprising is that he achieved this feat in his debut work (that too a collection of short stories, which normally gets a step-motherly treatment). And the man himself is still an almost-invisible character (except some souls in advertising, his bread and butter) in a city where only the glitzy and glamorous count.

And here is where Shroff scores. He writes about the poorest of the poor, the most ordinary of the ordinary denizens of the Maximum City — in a minimalist way of expressions, but convincingly narrating their stories in sepia tone. Colourless lives in colourful, careful and courageous words and style.

The period Shroff retells of Bombay is contemporary. Gallons of water have embraced the sea from Mahim Creek, and it is not the city of Salim Sinai any more. No soothsayer might have guessed when Rushdie wrote his magnum opus (thus immortalising Bombay in world literature), that it would, one day, instead of disintegrating, will become one of the most happening, prosperous and trendy cities in the world.

Rushdie was never wrong; ditto Mistry; and not even Mehta (his investigative journalistic account published was just a few years ago). But, Bombay is on a constant rollercoaster ride (what you see today, you will not see twenty-four hours later) and even the lower middle-class citizens are reaping the benefits. But is it the real Bombay? Read Shroff and you will realise it is not. Moreover, Shroff is no magical realist like you know who.

Shroff, like most Parsi gentlemen, is basically a philanthropist, if not in deed at least in mind. This philanthropy is personified in almost all his stories (and I hope in the next two books he is planning soon). Bombay’s snooty lot might get offended by the characters Shroff presents, if at all the Malabar Hill types know they exist: the washer man, the masseur, the bhelpuriwallah, the cabbie, the AIDS patient…

Shroff’s language is divine. Savour two. In The Maalishwalla: “Bheem Singh felt blessed and heavenly, holding his bride while she slept… He did not move, even when he felt a mosquito sit on his naked arm, even when he felt a piercing prick and a burning scratchiness thereafter.” And in A Different Bhel: “Hilda looked at her friends and, managing a smile, said, ‘Know what? I think I will try a sweet bhel today. I will try a different kind of chutney. The sweet date chutney. Then, perhaps, I will have a new taste to imagine and remember’.”

Shroff’s stories may not have an O Henry-type sting-in-the-tail ending; they do leave so much to imagine, and savour with relish. Remarkable, nonetheless, is the language used: the unique, Bombaiyya slang: tapori, if you like; bindaas, if you are in a care-free and ebullient mood. Ekdum.

The biblical simplicity is so evident in the stories that one is tended to believe Shroff dons a Christ-like robe, that of an evangelist, a rescuer and a chronicler of the downtrodden. Shroff’s is not an NGO work; though it might, for many, look like: most of the stories read like as-told-to journalistic pieces. Is it a bane or a boon to the overall nature of the works in question, (and to his further expeditions in literature and other writing)? Well, one is not sure about.

One of the best works of fiction that has emerged from Bombay in recent times, buy this book, enjoy it, and take pleasure in it.

-- Deccan Herald