Burma to Japan with Azad Hind by Ramesh S. Benegal

A familiar face in an unexpected place
I had a very interesting experience while reading this book.
I’d received it some weeks ago and, flipping through it felt it deserved a wider readership. It hadn’t come to me through one of my regular channels (Sunday Mid-day, various publishers or my regular book-shopping sprees) but had been sent by Joseph Thomas to whom I’m connected through an old-school tie. We’ve never met but are good friends. He’d served under Air Commodore Ramesh S. Benegal, MVC, AVSM whom he described as “one of my heroes. Outstanding flier, thorough gentleman.” I suggested to my editor at Sunday Mid-day that I would write about this book for the 6 December issue and she agreed, and I did … you can read more about the contents of the book in what I wrote here.
The odd experience I had was that, right on page 6, I unexpectedly recognized someone who happened to be a main character in the first section of the book! Naturally that made it much more interesting to me.
This was the author’s uncle, Tirkannad Sunder Rao, and his two sons, one of whom had been married to my father’s sister. When I knew Mr. Rao senior he was elderly and bedridden. I don’t remember ever hearing him speak. But I do remember being, as a child, always impressed with the kindness and devotion with which my aunt nursed and tended him.
Reading about the adventures of his young days and the bravery and generosity he had faced them with, I wished I had paid him more attention - perhaps had a conversation, or in some way shown affection or respect.
So for me, the book was not just a few hours of vicarious adventure to enjoy but also something of a lesson in how to live.

Five Queen's Road by Sorayya Khan

The Englishman, the Hindoo and the Mohammedan
I tend to leap eagerly on books like this, hoping to learn from them something about the land of my ancestors which the Partition of India and Pakistan lost my family forever.
It did give some information, and I did enjoy parts but ...
More about the story and what I thought in my Sunday Mid-day review on 22 November here.

To the last bullet by Vinita Kamte & Vinita Deshmukh

Tragic end of a real-life hero
Ashok Kamte was one of the many who were shot down and killed during the terror attacks in Bombay last year.
But his is an extraordinary story. An exceptionally gifted child from a privileged and cultured family, his decision to join the Indian Police Services arose from a true vocation and a straightforward dedication to a safe and disciplined nation. When he died in the prime of his life, India lost a rare and precious person.
My friend the journalist-activist Vinita Deshmukh was writing the book for Mrs. Kamte, and I was privileged to hear this story in person from the two of them.
When Vinita Kamte spoke, soft, calm and objective, I often felt myself close to tears. You may get an idea of how I felt if you watch here what this brave and lovely woman said at the launch of the book.
Her objective in writing the book was not just as a tribute to her dead husband but also particularly to remove the misconceptions and mystery surrounding his death. Along with the shock and tragedy of losing her husband, she also had to cope with the gossip and conjecture of one billion people who were jabbering away, “Why on earth were three senior police officers travelling together in a jeep that day? What on earth was Ashok Kamte doing out of his jurisdiction? How on earth could they have been so ill-prepared?” and so on.
Anyone who knew Ashok Kamte would know that he never did anything without a perfectly good reason. He was a man of order and discipline, and with the highest standards. He would always, always be prepared for any and every contingency!
So Vinita, with the help of her twin sister Revati, started looking for the answers to these questions. To their great surprise, they did not receive answers. Instead, obstructions were put in their way. They had to file dozens of RTI applications for the simplest information. They even had to file 3 RTIs just to get the post-mortem report of Ashok Kamte, surely the prerogative of any widow whose husband is killed on duty?
This book is the story of Ashok Kamte’s life and of the circumstances behind its death. It does no credit to the Bombay police force but Mrs. Kamte is firm that she in no way means to demean it. The force was her husband’s life; he knew and understood all that was good and bad about it. In the end he gave his life in the line of duty.
The stereotypical Indian policeman is lazy, corrupt and invariably a pervert too. But Ashok Kamte was well known for being spotlessly clean, brave, incorruptible and contemptuous of those in power, no matter how powerful, who exploited and contaminated the system. When I casually asked friends on the force, I heard nothing but the most respectful praise for the man, and deep regret that he was no more.
This book is bound to give rise to controversy. But if it also leads to more transparency and reform, Ashok Kamte would not have died in vain.

A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

An Old Hand
Much to my disgrace, I had never read a book by Paul Theroux before this one. I had bought a copy of Riding the Iron Rooster (by train through China) years ago and when I received this one from Sunday Mid-day, it stared down at me from the bookshelf, even more reproachful than before. I read bits but it was far too interesting (and thick) to read in a hurry.
I found the style of the books very different from each other – not surprising since they were written more than twenty years apart. Besides, Rooster is a straightforward travel book whereas Dead Hand is a travel book in disguise – rather a sad disguise actually – as a crime novel.
Rooster was full of fun and I liked what Theroux said about Paris: “The centre is a masterpiece of preservation, but the suburbs such as this one are simple and awful. The brutal pavements and high windows of St. Jacques seemed designed to encourage suicide.” Of course this is true of most cities – even of Bombay if you remove the word “masterpiece”. In Rooster, Theroux was travelling in a tour group and wrote, “It was extremely hard for me to appear to be a quiet, modest, incurious person. These people seemed to be illiterate, which was a virtue, because they didn’t know me.”
I was overwhelmed by the vanity of the statement till I it struck me that it’s probably better to be frank and honest than falsely modest. (Is that a poem? Ah, so there, perhaps I have more talent than is generally suspected.) My Sunday Mid-day review of A Dead Hand appeared today, and you can read it here.

The girl who kicked the hornets' nest by Stieg Larsson

The girl who didn't get what she should have
How lucky I am to have received this wonderful book just before I left for Sweden! Besides enjoying it immensely, I also learned something from it about social activism and Swedish life and culture while I was there. Better still, I had people there mighty impressed with me for knowing something about this local book. (And, characteristic of the Swedes, they did not swell up in pride or ask boastfully whether I had also enjoyed Henning Mankell, the other ultra-famous crime writer their nation has produced).
Now I tend to be a bit of a Swedophile, so it did surprise and rather alarm me to learn that Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s partner of 30 years (or was that 20?) was not going to inherit anything of the £20 million and more worth royalties the books would bring in. Larsson had been largely unknown – except locally for his exposé journalism – before he died. By Swedish inheritance law, the booty all goes to the author’s father and brother, and guess who isn’t sharing.
You can read about the Let’s Give Eva Something cause here.
If you'd like to read my Sunday Mid-day review of 15 November, it's here.

Excerpts from the memoirs of N.M. Kamte, Bombay state's first Indian Inspector General of Police

A hero in his time
N.M. Kamte was Bombay (now Maharashtra) State’s first Indian Inspector General of Police, and a few days short of being the first in the country.
His memoirs are written in a wry, humorous style, reflecting the language and values of the time. They show him as fiercely proud, intolerant of nonsense (no matter who it comes from), fearless, of exceptional intellectual and operational ability and keenly conscious of detail.
I found it a fascinating account of life for a policeman during the last 25 years of British rule in India, outlining the very different law-and-order situations of the time as well as the particular emotional dilemma of an Indian working for the British government during the struggle for Independence.
Rather than writing a review of this exceptional book, I am giving here a summary of some of its important points, and reproducing certain particularly fascinating paragraphs which I felt were best told in his own voice.
N.M. Kamte joined the Indian Police in 1923 when he was 23. Under the then British regime he served as ASP and DSP in all Divisions of the old Bombay Presidency (except Sindh); as Deputy Commissioner in most branches of the Bombay City Police, and as DIG, Northern Range and CID. He was deputed to the Government of India as Deputy Controller-General of Civil Supplies, and undertook study tours to the U.K., USA and Europe. After retirement at 55, he enjoyed a successful career in business. Through all this, he continued to uphold not just his personal quest for excellence in all that he did but also family rituals, beliefs and traditions, remaining devoted to Lord Pandurang at Pandharpur. Life for officers like him who were duty-conscious, disciplinarian, hard task-masters and long reared in British service tradition, was grim. Indians working in government faced racial disdain from some but they learnt discipline and even-handedness from others. In spite of the discrimination, they remained loyal and dutiful.
As a student, N.M. Kamte managed to create the record of being confirmed just two and a half months after graduating from the Police Training School and scarcely a year after first reporting on duty though confirmation normally occurred after two years.
Of his days in the PTS he writes: In the early 1920s, the Civil Services in India recruited a number of British ex-Officers who had been demobilized after the recently concluded Great War; these were relatively senior in age. Of those recruited at the normal age, the 1923 batch consisted of four Indians and four Britons.
As in the Indian Civil Service, so in the Indian Police, Indians still formed a small minority, and we could not help feeling ourselves to be to some extent “on trial”; indeed, two or three Indian officers had recently been removed from service, presumably as “unsatisfactory” or “unreliable.” There was moreover a clear discrimination against us as in the matter of the daily P.T.; British ex-Army trainees were automatically exempted from this whereas I, who had acquired considerable experience of P.T. during my military training, to say nothing of the Honorary Commission I had held in the Indian Territorial Force, was refused exemption.
Our day at the P.T.S. began at 6.30 with a three-mile run, followed by a course of hurdles, and then some strenuous P.T. The physical strain tired some of my colleagues so much that they could not even keep step while marching. For my part, I was determined to go through to the end without a murmur; I was ready to fall dead on the parade ground rather than utter a complaint. The policy, obviously, was to toughen us; and I approved of it.

He then writes of his reputation as a bit of a prig who had come from College with some high-flown ideas of “temperance,” and how he changed his ways: Tuesday were Guest Nights, when the cost of drinks was shared by all equally, and the proceedings used to be further enlivened by boxing bouts. Some of my colleagues felt that I, who had no experience of the manly art, should be taught to box. The result was that at the Wednesday morning parades of swollen noses and black eyes before the Civil Surgeon, no nose was more swollen, nor eye more black, than mine. This sort of thing, I decided, must be stopped. And at last I hit on a plan for stopping it.
“Since you’ve been so kind as to teach me boxing,” I told my instructor on the next Guest Night, “I would like to repay it by teaching you our Indian wrestling.” I was not adept at this sport, but I knew something of it, and felt confident of being able to teach my “persecutors” a lesson in more ways than one. I picked on Bert Caffin for a start, and he agreed to wrestle with me. The chap knew nothing about the game, and I quickly threw him and sat on him, whereupon I began to hammer him fairly hard. Bert’s fellow Britons started to object to this, but I told them not to interfere. “This is the only way to learn wrestling,” I assured them. “Nobody interfered when you were teaching me boxing so painfully, so now you just keep away.” My scheme worked, and from that time there were no more boxing lessons for me. Any strain that might have crept into our mutual relations was relaxed when I began to take drinks with the others.

Working in the Bombay Presidency required skill in many languages. On graduating from the academy, Kamte was posted to Kaira in Gujarat. He says: I went to Ahmedabad without having passed the Gujarati Language examination, but I quickly learned to speak and follow Gujarati well as a result of attending dramas at night with Mr. Dhirubhai Desai, Deputy Superintendent of Police, who used to tell me the meaning of any word in the drama that I couldn’t understand. While attending these dramas, it was quite natural for me also to do night rounds, and this recommended me to my Superintendent as a keen and energetic young officer. The ability to interrogate suspects and witnesses in their own tongue greatly helped me in my investigations.

Along with native languages, it was also important to be well versed in all that the British understood by the expression “etiquette”!
The District Superintendent at Kaira was Mr. W.L. K. Herapath, a fine gentleman and a bachelor, whose sister kept house for him. He at once took me to the Ahmedabad Gymkhana, introduced me to the members present, and proposed my name for membership.
Miss Herapath was very kind to my wife, initiated her into all the mysteries of social etiquette (British style) and taught her all that a Service wife was supposed to know. (This included, of course, the oft-ridiculed little “Not at Home” box for receiving calling cards, which was put up at the outer gate). As a newly-married couple, my wife and I were expected to receive calls from those already in residence at the Station, after which we should return them.

In Ahmedabad Kamte also learned what it meant to belong to a Covenanted Service: I happened to write a Personal letter to the Inspector-General of Police, Sir Francis Griffith, whom I had known since before my father’s death. I received a reply, but Sir Francis evidently wrote separately to my DSP, because Mr. Herapath sent for me and asked me whether I had written to the IG. When I said Yes, he asked how I had begun and ended the letter. I told him, “Dear Sir” and “Yours obediently”.
Then the lecture began. “Look here, Kamte, I’ve received a letter from the IG saying that I’m not training my young ASP. Just remember you belong to one of the Secretary of State’s Services, and when you write to any other officer of those Services, you start “Dear Mr.-“ or if he’s a Knight, “Dear Sir-“ using his Christian name. And you end with “Yours sincerely” or at the most “Yours faithfully.” Understand?”
On another occasion Kamte was reprimanded, You seem to have forgotten that you belong to a great Service in which we are all socially equal!

Rural crime in the 1920s meant fighting gangs of dacoits. Some of these were tribes classified as criminal, and every boy who reached the age of eighteen was required to report to the police for daily “hajeri“ at 10 p.m. The man could not leave the village at night without the Police Patel’s written permission. Kamte writes of the reforms he observed by the SP Ziauddin Ahmed who succeeded an Irish SP, to correct this highly unfair and discriminatory practice.
Transferred to Sholapur District as ASP in charge of the Pandharpur sub-division in 1927, he found himself in a hotbed of potential labour and communal trouble, with a large population of the minority community, a railway headquarters and four big cotton mills. Moreover, the District bordered, and was partly surrounded by, the dominions of HED the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Able to worship at the shrine of Lord Vithoba unlike the other police officers, who were British, he was soon able to break the nexus of greedy priests who kept the local police force happy with their “hapta” and had been extorting money from the poor pilgrim for years.

Faced with an extremely dangerous criminal who had been captured and escaped and tracked down after much effort and stealth, his instructions were, “Shoot to kill; and afterwards plead Self Defence.” As soon as my party came face to face with Tatya Padalkar, they faithfully carried out my orders. Thus ended the career of a notorious dacoit who had spread violence, robbery, death and the fear of death all around him, wherever he went.

His next posting was as officiating SP, Sattara – with immediate effect. He wasn’t even given time to go home and pack. An uncle, following with his luggage, committed a traffic offence: Just inside the city limits, he halted the lorry opposite a restaurant and went in to take refreshments. This was on a busy thoroughfare, where parking was not allowed. The constable on traffic duty, unaware of whose luggage was involved, objected to the lorry’s presence. His questioning annoyed my uncle, who refused to answer, pushed the man in uniform aside, and drove on to my bungalow. The constable reported the affair at the Head-quarter Police Station, and an offence was registered.
When the ownership of the lorry’s contents was discovered, the Police came to me and apologized, assuring me that no further action would be taken. But to their surprise I refused the offer. “My uncle has committed an offence,” I said, “and you must prosecute him.” Much put out by my decision, my uncle requested me to drop the case, but without success. On returning to Poona, he persuaded his sister, my mother, to write to me and make me change my mind. In reply to her letter I explained my position. “As DSP I must not show any partiality or discrimination between one offender and another; however, do not worry about Mamaji, because it is not a serious case.” My uncle was accordingly prosecuted and sentenced to a fine of Rs. 25 (which I paid from my own pocket). This incident enhanced my prestige among my Police force, who now realized that I was a strict officer and would spare no offender, whoever he might be.

Another interesting incident occurred in Mahableshwar, where Kamte was put in charge of the traffic arrangements during the busy Summer Season.
Going for a walk one day, I met a car being driven considerably faster than was permitted. I stopped it and told the driver – a European – that he was going to fast. “Do you know who I am?” he asked me in some irritation. “I am Mr. Green, Secretary to Government, PWD.”
“Do you know who I am? I replied. “I am the DSP, Sattara. And I must warn you not to drive fast again; otherwise action will be taken against you for a traffic offence, and you may even lose your license for driving in Mahableshwar.” Highly annoyed at my “interference”, he drove away.
Appreciating that I had clashed with a very senior official, I sent him a polite personal letter about the incident. His response was, “Looking to our relative positions, your letter is rude and not in order.” Again I wrote, referring him to the Motor Vehicle Act and Rules, which, I pointed out, contained no mention of “relative positions”, and warned him that in case of a repetition of his offence, his license would be cancelled. Mr Green then wrote to my IG complaining of the whole affair; but nothing came of it.

Ego clashes with British officers were not uncommon, but being always uniformly correct and polite, Kamte was able to preserve the law and his own dignity. During the Summer Season mentioned above, he was even able to convert a white Police Sergeant who refrained from saluting him, the DSP, until he saluted not only me but my Deputy as well; moreover, he now stood to attention, as he had never done previously, before my Sub-Inspector Rao Saheb B.L. Khedkar, who was officially his senior.

In 1929, Kamte was posted to Belgaum, a hot-bed of crime. Murders and dacoities were everyday occurrences.
One such crime that I investigated originated in Bail-hongal, a village in which certain powerful persons competed with each other in the number of women they kept. For a woman to exchange one man’s protection for another’s, would set off a bloody fight which might even end in murder. In the case I followed up here, one of the kept women had died, and as her body was being burned, one man threw his rival on to the blazing pyre, so that he was burned alive.

With the launch of the Quit India movement in 1930, a new and particularly poignant struggle began: At this point, I would like to pause and invite the reader to reflect for a moment on the extremely difficult and embarrassing position in which Indian employees of a colonial government, from Ministers to humble orderlies and constables, found themselves in those days. Their natural patriotism as Indians, often aggravated by examples of white-skinned arrogance, was inevitably at war with their age-old traditions of loyalty to the authority which recruited and paid them, as well as with their sincere admiration for British efficiency and their realization of the many benefits accruing to India from the Pax Britannica. For a few individuals, patriotism proved too strong to be resisted; but by far the greater number of Indians who served the British Crown remained “true to their salt”, while at the same time exercising more gentleness, patience, tact and understanding than all save a few Britons would have shown in their place. It was men of this sort, who could honourably, faithfully and humanely reconcile their divided loyalties, who proved themselves the most reliable instruments in the hand of an India which at last achieved Independence.

On 4 May 1929, the Viceroy (“in his wisdom”) arrested Mahatma Gandhi, and within forty-eight hours the whole of India was aflame.
On 6 May, Kamte had been at Pandharpur dealing with the case of an old woman shopkeeper near the big temple who had obstinately refused to close her shop during a hartal which others had observed. A resentful crowd had looted her shop and run off. Visiting the place, Kamte had sent for the local Congress workers and asked them, “You fools! Is this what Mahatma Gandhi teaches you – to rob an innocent old woman?” They returned the amount the woman had lost and the matter was settled amicably. Meanwhile, riots had broken out in Sholapur. Two policemen were burned to death. Arriving back, he was astonished to find a white-capped Congressman directing the traffic! If that wasn’t enough, a “white-cap” was sitting in his chair, another in the DSP’s chair and one even holding a police rifle and guarding the Treasury.
Controlling this situation took enormous courage, and Kamte describes how he talked reasonably to the Congress leaders, defused inflammatory situations and brought the situation back to normalcy.
Hectic days followed. The eyes of all India were on our Sholapur. Cipher telegrams (whose purport was often known in the bazaar before they were laboriously deciphered by me) arrived for the DSP from all quarters, from the Viceroy downwards, and all these I acknowledged, answered or acted upon on my superior’s behalf.
Various stressful events took place, but Kamte’s ever-present sense of humour has him describe some amusing ones too: Another time, the military court prosecuted a man for “resisting and evading arrest.” I tried to explain to the President of the court that such a charge was faulty, since it was not possible for a man at the same time to “resist” and also “evade” arrest. The point was perhaps too subtle for the gallant Judge at first, and he showed his displeasure at my venturing to correct him. Later, however, he must have understood my criticism for he quietly reduced the charge to simply “evading arrest.”

Now taking charge of the Panch Mahals District during the Civil Disobedience Movement, Kamte often had to trace Congress “workers” whom the Government wished to arrest but had gone “underground”. Warrants would be “served” and if the person did not surrender within the stipulated period, the court was entitled to confiscate his property. One who they were trying vainly to trace was a certain Wamanrao Mukadam, but Kamte received a personal request from Col. Parab, who was Khazgi Karbhari to H.H. the Maharaja of Baroda, and a personal acquaintance, that Mr. Mukadam’s property should not be confiscated. Kamte promptly suggested that Mr. Mukadam should meet him to discuss the matter – and he did. Kamte promptly requested Mukadam not to create any trouble. Mukadam promised to honour the request and was even able to give him some assistance in a particularly interesting incident, a small indication of how little the press has changed from that day to this:
There came a day when Miss Hamida Tyabji, granddaughter of the grand old Mr. Badrudding Tyabji, announced in the Press that she intended to address a public meeting in one of the principal squares of Godhra (the Headquarter town of our District). I at once requested Mr. Mukadam confidentially to do me the favour of arranging that nobody should turn up at the announced meeting.
When Miss Tyabji arrived at the time fixed, she saw scarcely a soul there except me and my force of Police. Greatly surprised, she waited for half an hour, after which I approached her and suggested that since the planned meeting had fallen flat, she might as well return to Baroda whence she had come. She said she would not go, and asked to be arrested. I replied that I would escort her from the spot, which she might consider, if she liked, as equivalent to an arrest. “Oh, but you must handcuff me,” she insisted, but I said this would not be necessary and that I would see that she did not escape.
I took her to my bungalow and ordered tea for both of us. She showed considerable annoyance and vowed that she would not drink tea with me. So I assured her that it was not “Government” tea, but came from my own private store. “Surely,” I urged, “you won’t object to accepting my personal hospitality?” Then she consented to drink the tea.
“I’m sure Col Parab must have spoken to you about me,” she accused, “and that is why you are not arresting me. Will you deny it?”
“The Colonel has not spoken to me about you,” I answered, “and the reason why I have not arrested you is that you did not deliver a speech, and there was nothing we could prosecute you for.” In the evening I sent her back in the care of an old Muslim Sub-Inspector in plain clothes, who conducted her safely to Baroda and left her at her home.
Next morning’s local papers – soon to be copied by the Press of other parts of the Presidency – carried banner headlines describing how Miss Tyabji had been arrested and her audience forcibly dispersed by means of a lathi charge!

Dealing with royalty required another dimension of management:
On the occasion of one Viceregal visit to Baroda, I was present in uniform at the Railway Station along with the Maharaja, waiting for HE’s special train. HH enquired whether his guest would be wearing top hat and full ceremonial dress, only to learn that the Viceroy planned to detrain wearing an ordinary lounge suit. Sayaji Rao, who was more jealous of his due dignity and respect than were most of his brother Princes, then declared that he would exchange his ceremonial robes for ordinary clothes, and that although the Guard of Honour would still attend, the Baroda flag would not be lowered as the Viceroy alighted from his carriage. Intimation to this effect was hastily sent to HE’s staff, while his train still waited at the Outer Signal, and he then agreed to put on his ceremonial dress instead of a plain lounge suit.

Still at Panch Mahals, Kamte writes of another event in 1936 – where once again the villainous press has a role to play!
Communal riots broke out in Bombay (later, in Poona also) during the hot months, when brittle tempers are apt to reach breaking point. Bombay is only a few miles distant from my headquarter town of Thana. While passing a mosque, a Hindu procession had played loud music, which had angered the Muslims. Fighting ensured, causing casualties whose figures were published daily in the Times of India and other papers. The publication of these figures had the effect of touching off a fiendish rivalry, with each community determined to kill a larger number of “the others” than had been killed from its own members. The favourite weapons were, as usual, knives and daggers, and many of the victims were women, children, elderly men, and other such helpless persons whose only “crime” was that they belonged to the “wrong” community.
I was astounded at the way in which the Bombay Police allowed these provocative figures of dead and mutilated to be publicized, as well as at the inexplicable delay which was allowed to occur in taking preventive measures such as enforcing curfew or banning the carrying of deadly weapons. Such measures were taken, I noted, only after the carnage had raged for three or four days, by which time all sanity had vanished and the situation had gone completely out of hand. I vowed that if ever I should find myself responsible for keeping the peace in Bombay, I would nip the trouble in the very bud and save the lives of countless innocent citizens.

In April 1938, Kamte was sent to the UK to attend a short course at Scotland Yard in London but finding it too short to be of much practical use, applied for leave to stay on and learn more about the working of the Metropolitan Police.
In September he came back to India and was posted as DCP Motor Vehicles Department in Bombay, responsible for all the traffic control of the city.
In 1939, the first Congress Ministry had introduced prohibition in Bombay Province under the Bombay Akbari Act and in early 1940, Kamte was appointed DCP Prohibition. When he told the Commissioner WRG Smith, “Sir, I have no wish to be in charge of this business. I like my daily drink, and I don’t believe in Prohibition,” Smith replied patiently, “Look, Kamte, I know that Prohibition will not succeed. But one British officer has already failed at it, and if I appoint another British officer, Government will say that we Britons have no interest in enforcing Prohibition and are making it fail on purpose. So you please take charge of this Department. Even if – or when – you fail, Government will at least know that it was an Indian who failed. Government has a very high opinion of you, and won’t blame you, whatever happens.”

The race divide led to interesting situations, and Indian officers found many ways to deal with it. It often made them extra-sensitive, on occasion unnecessarily so, as in the situation Kamte describes here. At the end of May 1941 I was made DCP Divisions, and presently DCP Headquarters. In the latter capacity I served as a virtual Personal Assistant to the Commissioner, and was considered as the senior Deputy Commissioner. Mr W.R.G. Smith would ask me to bring him papers from the steel Confidential cupboard, which contained highly confidential and secret matters such as codes and records of senior officers.
At first this caused me some resentment, from a sense of being treated as a kind of clerk, but I put up with it. And the day arrived when I understood that my superior must have been purposely familiarizing me with all the confidential records and preparing me for the Commissionership. This I realized after becoming Inspector-General in my turn, when I read his note in my own confidential file: “He is doing well and perhaps may be tried as the first Indian Commissioner of Police.”

Next Kamte was posted to Dharwar as DSP and this meant that
I should now have to make a serious study of the local language, Kannada, which I had just begun to learn at Belgaum thirteen years earlier. I applied myself to such good effect that one day, when a subordinate of mine annoyed me, I was able to give him indecent abuse in Kannada. With his face registering as much surprise as repentance, the man exclaimed admiringly, “Sir! Now you’re really one of us!”
In Dharwar, Kamte soon had the opportunity to show his intention and ability of maintaining law and order without resorting to violence. In the case of a well-known freedom fighter who was evading arrest, he was able to trace him to Bombay (through letters written to his wife) and there have him arrested. But, bringing him back to Dharwar, he cleverly arranged for him to be taken off the train at a small flag stop a few miles outside the town and detained in utmost secrecy at the nearby Police Headquarters. He also handled the imminent riot at the town police station with bravery and tact. Trucks had been kept on standby to take the injured to the Civil Hopsital where doctors and nurses were standing by – but were not needed because no shot was fired and there was not a single casualty.
As the law situation got out of hand, Kamte decided to impose curfew on the area, much against the advice of the Collector, finally convincing him that he had to only pass the order and it would be Kamte’s responsibility to actually enforce it.
The way I had in mind for enforcing the curfew was this. I sent out very many small parties of armed men all over the taluka, by night. Each party would fire a few shots in the air, after which some of them would howl and scream in the dark, “Oh God! The Police have shot us! ‘We’re dying!” and so on. Vivid accounts of these “brutal Police firings” used to appear in the Samyukta Karnataka and other newspapers of the region, with the result that people were terrified of venturing out of doors during the prohibited hours.
Now these curfew orders had been passed when the Home Inspector was investigating a dacoity in Alnavar and he was unaware of the situation. On his way home one night, he was surprised to be confronted with a red light. Assuming this meant either dacoits or Congressmen, he continued without stopping, only to hear the crack of a rifle and feel the smack of a bullet striking his car. The situation was later explained and sorted out, but some time later the Collector turned down a dinner invitation to Kamte’s house, saying he did not care to leave his house after sunset and when pressed, said, “No, thank you, Kamte. If your men are capable of firing at their own Home Inspector, they will certainly fire at me!”

Another amusing incident was in the case of the district governor who had complained that, wherever he went, he saw nobody but policemen about – no members of the public – and he had thought it a pity that the Police did not allow the common people to come out and show themselves to the Governor.
I therefore made arrangements so that wherever H.E. went in Dharwar District, no policemen in uniform should be seen, while all such policemen as security demanded should be in plain clothes and squat by the roadside like ordinary villagers. During a rehearsal which we held beforehand, one or two of these “ordinary villagers” aroused my fury by jumping up and springing to attention as soon as I drew near. However, all went well on “the day”, and at the end of his tour the Governor congratulated me on my “very satisfactory arrangements.” Wherever he went, he said, the common people had been allowed to see him and be seen by him, without a single uniformed policeman anywhere.
Kamte continues:
The affection with which the public of Dharwar honoured me was exemplified in 1976, more than thirty years after I had left the District. I hope I may be forgiven for recalling the incident here.
I happened to have gone to Puttuparthy to attend some “miracle” performed by Bhagwan Sathya Sai Baba, and together with a friend of mine I was sitting next to a gentleman who was a Pleader from Dharwar. My friend asked this gentleman whether he remembered “Mr Kamte, a Police officer.” “Who in Dharwar does not remember Mr. Kamte?” was the response. “He was a most popular officer, and during the Quit India Movement he never harassed our citizens. Even a child knows his name.”
“Is that so?” asked my friend. “Well, you can meet Mr. Kamte again – right here!” The Pleader quickly rose to his feet, shook hands with me warmly, and apologized for this failure to recognize me on account of the great change which age had wrought in my appearance. He assured me that the public of Dharwar still cherished my memory as that of an “ideal” Police officer!

In January 1945, Kamte was posted to Bombay as Deputy Controller-General. Here his principal efforts were directed against black-marketeers, a breed which The Great War (as The Second World War was then called) had encouraged to an extent never known before.
One week before Independence was finally granted to India, Kamte “had the crowning honour of being appointed as Bombay’s first Indian IGP.”
The years 1948-49 saw the smooth accomplishment of the tremendous task of merging half a thousand Princely States, of all sizes, with Independent India. One off-shoot of this was the far from inconsiderable job of reorganizing the Police force in all Districts affected by the merger, and of integrating the old State Police personnel with our own.

In October 1949, Kamte was sent on deputation to the USA and Europe to study the Prohibition experiments there. In the USA he was told by the head of the Narcotics Bureau that “you can say that Prohibition in America has been a total failure” and that the crime rate had gone up in the states which had Prohibition. In Holland he was intrigued to find that Prohibition applied only to those who neglected to order some eatables with their drinks; liquor was readily available provided you took something to eat along with it.
Submitting his report to Morarji Desai, Chief Minister of the state and strong proponent of Prohibition, he was faced with an angry reaction,
“Was it for this, that we spent all those thousands of rupees on your foreign tour? You are reporting that Prohibition won’t succeed, just because you like whiskey yourself!” “If you knew that I like whiskey, Sir,” I replied, “why did you send me on this deputation? In any case, I cannot possibly give you a false and dishonest report.”

Kamte’s biography tells many stories of his encounters with the Indian politicians of the time. Despite the Prohibition disagreement, he was apparently a great favourite of Morarji Desai.
On one occasion in the mid-1930s, he was responsible (at the behest of Sardar Patel) for retrieving the love letters of a young Gujarati girl who was being blackmailed.
Soon after Independence, Patel, the newly elected Home Minister visited Bombay and Kamte decided to pay him a courtesy call.
Going to his residence, I sought out his Secretary, Mr. V. Shankar ICS and enquired if I might see the Sardar. “Have you got an appointment with him?” I was asked. “No?” Then how can you see him? I am afraid it can’t be done.”
At that moment the great man’s daughter, Miss Maniben Patel, came into the room and asked what I had come for. On my telling her, she left the room. Returning a minute later, she said – to Mr. Shankar’s amazement – that the Sardar would see me at once.
When I entered his room, he was taking his morning tea, somewhat in the style of the old Moghal breakfast. Before him was a large thali containing milk mixed with saffron, besides halwa, almonds, pistachio nuts and other delicacies. He invited me to drink a cup of his saffron milk, but I declined, saying, “Thank you very much, Sir, but I have just taken my tea and don’t want anything now.”
“I see,” he growled with irritation, “You want toast and eggs like the British officers, I suppose?” To pacify him I accepted a cup of milk and a sweet or two, and after a brief conversation, I took my leave.

Another interesting event occurred in 1950 when the Congress Session was held at Nasik, in an open plot opposite the Railway Police Lines. The Prime Minister was known to be allergic to the close proximity of policemen, even of those whose presence was considered necessary for his protection. I therefore put all my security men into plain clothes; they occupied the first three rows in the pandal, but could not be identified as policemen.
Mr. Morarji Desai asked me to invite Pandit Nehru to dine at the Police Mess. I called on the Prime Minister and said that we should feel honoured if he would visit our Mess and give us the pleasure of his company for dinner. The reply I received – “I have not come here for dinners” – was as rude as it was curt. I saluted without a word and departed.
The Home Minister, however, was keen for the Prime Minister to attend a Mess dinner and convinced him to do so, informing Kamte that the PM would visit the Training School at 9 pm, address the cadets and then have dinner. Kamte objected, saying that 9 pm was the time for Lights Out, after which no cadet could move outside or keep a light burning in his room and it would not be possible for any cadet to attend any address held after 9 pm.
Eventually, the PM did arrive at the PTS at a reasonable hour, an address was held, dinner enjoyed, a good joke made by Kamte at the PM’s expense – and a photograph taken “which shows Pandit Nehru laughing and Morarji Desai nervously wondering what on earth would happen”.

In 1951 when Pandit Nehru visited Ahmedabad, a huge crowd had assembled and Kamte instructed the DSP to throw a police cordon around the PM’s immediate vicinity. Nehru angrily demanded that the cordon be removed. Kamte refused. Then Morarji Desai ordered him, as Home Minister and his superior, to do so, at which he did.
The crowd surged forward, threatening literally to submerge Mr. Nehru in the exuberance of their affection.
In his habitual fashion, the PM charged back at the crowd, punching, slapping, kicking, and shouting furiously at them for their utter lack of discipline. All I could do was to keep close behind him and do whatever was possible to shield him from his adorers. Unknown to me, our Chief Minister and Home Minister themselves took shelter close behind me; and as I wielded my cane baton upon those pressing too closely on Mr. Nehru, it was inevitable that I should occasionally strike them also. (Afterwards, Mr. Kher humorously accused me of having “beaten him up”, and showed the marks of my baton on his body.) In the general scrimmage, both Ministers had their shirts torn and lost their caps and chappals – for which, of course I had to offer my apologies.
That evening, Mr Desai wanted me to call upon Pandit Nehru in his special train that was waiting to convey him to his next stop, and converse with him for a few minutes. As a result of the day’s unfortunate incident, I was extremely reluctant to do this, but my Minister insisted, and I had to go. And now our PM showed his true greatness of heart. “Kamte,” he said at once, “I’m sorry for making a fool of myself, getting your cordon removed. Will you have a glass of sherry with me?”
At my polite refusal, he went on, “Oh, I forgot, you belong to a Puritan State! But see, I order you to have a drink, this time!” Then I put down a couple of quick sherries and returned to Mr. Desai to report what had happened between Mr. Nehru and me. On learning that his IGP had accepted an alcoholic drink, even though offered by the Prime Minster, our austere Home Minister was “not amused.”

The book also mentions Kamte’s contributions in various areas such as recruiting women officers to the force, setting up battalions of a Special Reserve Police, new traffic regulations in Bombay, Silent Zone and various Welfare schemes, and initiating a system of tatkas or Information Boards which gave an immediate indication of the current position regarding all serious crime in the State – murder, dacoity, house-breaking and so on.
He also describes a fascinating personal interview he had with Nathuram Godse during which he obtained information from him using gentle tact rather than crude violence. One of the things Nathuram Godse told Kamte in that interview was, “Gandhiji was a great man, one of the greatest this world has ever seen. But he began to sympathize too much with Pakistan, who was our enemy. The last straw was when Gandhiji went on a fast to compel the Government of India to release fifty-five crores of rupees to Pakistan. Then I decided that Gandhiji must be done away with, whatever the cost.”
When Kamte asked him, “What if your own father had done what Gandhiji did?” Godse replied, “I would have murdered him without hesitation.”

After retirement, N.M. Kamte went into business and did exceedingly well. His first initiative was a unit producing containers for pharmaceutical products. Bharat Containers prospered, but Kamte did not enjoy running it, and he sold it for Rs. 75,000 – an enormous sum of money for the time. “Needless to add, those who had once disapproved of my starting the venture, were now no less critical of my relinquishing it!”
One of his greatest pleasures was golf, and during his career he won many trophies. After retirement he also served on the UPSC Selection Board. People were puzzled at the frequency with which the Chairman called me for work, but the explanation was quite simple. Wherever the Board went – Poona, Nagpur, Bangalore, Calcutta, Hyderabad – it just happened that there was a golf-course, to which Mr. Hejmadi and I devoted some careful attention every morning!

After running another business concern briefly before handing it over to other members of the family, he then set up the Expert Services Bureau which offered Security services to Industry and Private Detective services to the Public. Unlike the earlier ventures, this was something for which his previous life and training had prepared him well and the company continues to run with great success, having been inherited by his son Col Marutirao Kamte after retirement from the Indian Army, and which would have been inherited in turn by the valiant Ashok Kamte, his grandson, if he had not been shot down and killed during the terror attacks on Bombay on 26 November 2008.

The Life You Want by Emily Barr

Getting it right in India
I found this book to be a good, thought-provoking read that gets under the skin of the way things work in India. It’s always interesting to read about travellers coming to one’s homeland and seeing what they make of it. The story was compelling and well told, and covered a range of characters and themes. Here's the review I wrote for Sunday Mid-day.

The Englishman’s Cameo by Madhulika Liddle

Once upon a time, long, long ago …
I had expected something light and frothy, so when I started reading and found that the detailed descriptions and somewhat unfamiliar names needed concentration, I wished for a while that I was watching the movie version instead.
This book is a murder mystery set in Delhi in 1656. Madhulika Liddle’s descriptions of the city during Shah Jehan’s reign are lifelike and convincing. I felt (though I don’t have the knowledge to verify) that the wonderful detail in the book has been painstakingly researched. The food, architecture, customs, eccentricities – all are described in simple, effective language and skilfully woven into the circumstances of the story.
Muzaffar Jung is the lightweight hero of this book. He’s an aristocrat, but not pompous; literature and poetry impress him but he’s not particularly an intellectual; he’s an orphan with a loving family. In addition, he’s extremely brave, tolerant to pain, with noble inclinations – and fabulous to look at, too.
This murder mystery acquaints us with a range of characters of the Mughal court: courtesans, jewellers, eunuchs, boatmen and more.
I enjoyed the book but found that the setting overwhelms the plot. I feel even more now than before that this book would make a fabulous movie, and hope that a skillful director takes it up soon.

One Life to Ride by Ajit Harisinghani

A friend for life
Here is a man who once said “sorry” to his Royal Enfield.
And the Enfield forgave him.
When I first saw his book One Life to Ride, it was amidst a pile of other books sent to me by Sunday Mid-day and I had to pick the ones I would write reviews of. This one seemed, quite unusually, to be by an unknown author and a non-mainstream publisher. Wondering why Sunday Mid-day’s very smart editor would bother to send something like this, I picked it up and started reading – and soon discovered why.
It was the story of a middle-aged professional who took a month off work, hopped on his bike and zoomed off from Pune to Leh and on to Jammu. It wasn’t just a travel book but a simple ode to the joy of living. It was easy to read and, though full of editing lapses, also full of fun. You can read my review here.
Since Ajit and I live in the same city, it was inevitable that we would one day bump into each other, and we did, at the Amit Varma reading last week.
He has now presented me a copy of the brand-new second edition, assuring me that he’d fixed the problem with the tenses that I’d complained about in the last one. I was delighted to see it had photos of some of the characters he met on the road – and whom I remember fondly though I last encountered them one year and about a hundred books ago.
He’d also included my comment (along with excerpts from other reviews) that, "By the time you finish, you feel you’ve made a friend. Harisinghani’s writing comes from the heart and reading his book you get a clear sense of an uncomplicated, sincere guy with easy priorities and no hang ups."

The Great Indian Love Story by Ira Trivedi

A glimpse into Delhi's low life
Sometimes Pune station is genteel and welcoming. But 2 weeks ago when I visited to drop someone off, it was so teeming with travellers, and with such a long platform-ticket queue (the machine had vanished – stolen, perhaps?) that I entered without one. But when I went again a few days ago to receive her, assuming I’d have to push and shove again, it was saintly calm and I was way too early.
Staring at the book cart near the entrance, I saw this one and couldn’t resist buying it. What a promising, if ambitious, title! Eager to get started, I decided to find a good seat and start reading.
Pune station has as many indicators as clouds in a monsoon sky, but none of them work. Nobody I asked seemed to know when my train was due or on which platform it would arrive. Calculating the average of various guesses, I hiked up and down and found to my pleasant surprise that platform 2/3 had several rows of comfortable-looking empty seats. I sat down and started reading but that distinct and rather fruity railway-toilet smell began to haunt me. I moved to various seats up and down the platform but the smell followed me everywhere. It was a familiar feeling from the long and tedious train journeys of my childhood on wooden-slat berths and one-rupee chaya-coffee and the hot Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharshtra winds blasting through the compartments and occasionally aiding in sunstroke. So instead of making me vomit, I started feeling nostalgic. It was a bit like having an old and sweet but very annoying friend (or cousin) sitting behind you, trying to read over your shoulder.
However, that was not the reason I wasn’t very impressed with this book. I read more than half of it while waiting for a train (which mysteriously crept in and emptied itself out, unannounced, on a dark platform, while other trains’ arrivals and departures were being heralded in loud, continuous klaxon wails).
When I got home, I made sure I read to the end before I went to sleep because this is just not the kind of book I would give a second chance to. It is well written and paints a vivid picture of a certain section of Delhi society. These people are very wealthy, and they spend their money on large, ostentatious homes, and nightly parties where part of the entertainment is the abuse of expensive and mind-altering substances. However, bringing this alive briefly in your mind is the book’s only success. Otherwise, I could only see flaws. The plot is weak. Some of its links are entirely unconvincing. The narrator starts out as a character of the book – but then suddenly disappears, and ends up as a voice that abruptly winds up the story at the end.
I'm not complaining because this book is not great literature – after all, it did help me pass a pleasant hour on the stinky railway platform – but because it does not even do justice to the simple and popular genre to which it belongs.
Ira Trivedi has used the device of getting various of her characters to tell the story, but this doesn’t make any of them more real to us and in fact opens the way for far too many loose ends.
Before I wrote this, I came across an internet article (inappropriately titled "Writer Ira Trivedi takes a look at Delhi’s high life") in which Ira Trivedi claims that her book is about “India trying to come to terms with western values”.
I feel sorry to admit that I don’t even agree with that. The book is about people who are simply following a lifestyle and a tradition that they have always done. Over centuries they have been cruel and exploitative, whether as landlords or as administrators. Over centuries they have ill-treated and objectified their women, forcing them into subservience of every kind, and brutalizing and killing them when they pleased. They have always favoured intoxication over sobriety.
To me, many of the characters in the book were like pigs in a pen – snuffling and grunting and eating their own faeces. A book whose characters disgust you is not always a bad book – many wonderful books have completely disgusting characters who add colour and charm to the tale. But not this one.
Then, this book calls itself a love story. Surely love means more than just a feeling you carry within yourself? Surely it’s inclusive of the other person or thing and involves your care, nurture, understanding and giving of focussed attention to the loved person or thing? So to me, The Great Indian Love Story was not about love.
It’s also not about India – only a tiny and horrid part of it. And, sadly, there is absolutely nothing great about it at all.

Happy 50th Birthday, Asterix!

Obelix in Mumbai
One morning, Getafix was out in the woods cutting mistletoe for his magic spells when a little sprite by the name of Inbox came to him with a message from a faraway land. It was an invitation from an indomitable fishing village across the seven seas.
Our doings had reached their ears and they had sent Inbox with the offer of an exchange of friendship. They had chosen us, of all the little fishing villages in the world, as their sister village and had invited me, Obelix, on an exchange visit. I would be the recipient of their warmest hospitality, and one of their inhabitants would later come back with me to Gaul to visit us.
Excited by the prospect of this new adventure, I packed a few little boars for the journey and a menhir or two as a souvenir for my hosts, and set off, Dogmatix tucked comfortably on my shoulder. Cacafonix tried to sing a farewell lament in my honour but Unhygenix the fishmonger sat on his head. I tried to wheedle a little pouch of magic potion out of Getafix to protect me on the way, but he refused. As you may know, I fell into the potion when I was a baby and its effects have been permanent. So I climbed aboard the Phoenician trading galley that had brought a supply of silks and spices to our village, and set off for Mumbai.
My host Outforasix and his family were very friendly and showed me around. Asterix and Vitalstatistix had warned me that the inhabitants of the indomitable fishing village of Mumbai were accustomed to strange forms of transport and cautioned me to be careful not to fall off any of their wagons. I assured them that I was quite safe since I’d been on the wagon ever since the morning after our last banquet when I’d woken up with such a bad headache that I could only eat 6 boars for breakfast.
On the first morning, Outforasix said he would show me his office and we squeezed on to the 84 Ltd. Some of the other passengers called me “Jadiya” which, Outforasix told me, means “Handsome Prince”. I knew at once that I was going to enjoy my stay in this indomitable fishing village. These Mumbai people were jolly good fellows.
Outforasix introduced me to his friends Allergictovix, Chinesepunjabimix and Diplomainmechanix who travelled with him to Glasgow every day. I was a little confused by this because I seem to remember Getafix mentioning once that Glasgow was an old Caledonian town but I suppose this is an extension of the expression All Roads Lead To Home. Getafix always says that travel broadens the horizon, and I now saw for myself how right he was.
At one point I looked out of the window and saw some wild boar sniffing around a garbage skip. Naturally I tried to leap off the bus to get them, but a young man by the name of Broadspectrumantibiotix clutched tight to my overalls and since I hadn’t packed any clothes, and Outforasix’s daughters had promised to take me to a Dandiya Nite, I decided I’d better not climb off.
I wandered around on my own when Outforasix went to work and who do you think I met but our old friends the Pirates! These guys, as you know, do get around a lot but I was really surprised to see big signs celebrating the Pirates of the Caribbean. I tried to push my way in to get them, and was really surprised that the ferocious Mumbai crowds simply pushed me right out again. I wish I’d brought a few Romans along, I would have loved to share them with these guys.
That evening I went to the Dandiya Nite with Outforasix’s daughters Veni, Vidhi, and Vissy. Their names made me feel strangely homesick because they reminded me of something, I’m not sure exactly what. We had a wonderful time dancing and a lot of people called me Jadiya here too. What nice hospitable people Mumbai has. Veni and her boyfriend Teachersbumlix even won a prize for the best dressed couple. Oops! I promised not to say anything about the boyfriend – don’t mention this to Outforasix, will you.
Dogmatix, meanwhile, was getting along famously with the neighbourhood dogs. He loitered around street corners with them and they sang loud songs till late at night, living the good Mumbai life.
It was now getting time for me to set out on the long journey home. I had made good friends with a dabbawalla, Palamburwillfix, who lived right near us. The first time we met I had tried to snatch away his dabbas and get at what was inside but he defended them brilliantly. When I later heard that the Mumbai dabbawallas are certified as six sigma, I wasn’t surprised at all. Anyway, he invited me to his home and we feasted on bheja fry and kulfi. When I got back home, the whole village was crowded round, waiting to hear my stories. They refused to believe some of what I told them, even when I gave them the recipes for the bheja fry and kulfi. Perhaps you find it difficult to believe me too but I promise it is the truth, Qasam É Dastaan – or, as we usually put it, QED.

The Dog Who Came In From The Cold by Alexander McCall Smith

Coming in a little late, but …
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of more than sixty books on many different subjects. To have read just one is to have become a fan forever. I love the Ladies’ Detective series and rely on them completely for non-fattening comfort.
In the first Corduroy Mansions online novel series, the author wrote a chapter a day, starting in September 2008, and the series ran for 20 weeks in The Telegraph.
The second novel, The Dog Who Came In From The Cold, started on 21 September 2009 and you can read or download the audio or listen to it free here.
The project is apparently a collaboration between the Telegraph Media Group, Little Brown Group and Polygon, the fiction imprint of Birlinn Ltd.
As Corduroy Mansions is released online, readers have the opportunity to interact with each other and the author himself through online discussion boards, edited by the Daily Telegraph staff.
The concept for Corduroy Mansions is based on Charles Dickens’ episodic writing – Dickens apparently serialized his novels through journals in weekly or monthly installments in the 1800s. The first time Alexander McCall Smith used this model was in 2004 for his novel 44 Scotland Street in the newspaper The Scotsman.
Unfortunately the podcast for session one is no longer available but you can read a summary of book one here.

Tinker.Solder.Tap by Amitabh Kumar and Bhagwati Prasad

Media affects our lives in many ways
Tinker.Solder.Tap is a graphic novel with graphics by Amitabh Kumar and text by Bhagwati Prasad. The book was funded by Sarai, and you can download it free here. Like most of the other graphic novels I’ve read, this one gives an accurate impression of a particular culture, and to me this was its most striking feature. I also found the graphics superb.
Since I’m a traditional and rather manic reader, I tend to rush ahead and concentrate more on the text than images but do realize that in a graphic novel the illustrations are often works of art and deserve focused attention, such as this one which depicts Mother India holding her arm up – balancing a video cassette on it.
Another clever one was the conceptualisation of a map transforming from blurry to integrated-circuit designry as the internal relationship of the character to these places changes. In a graphic novel, the language should be secondary and perform the function of sign posts.
Though there was a certain amount of economy applied here which I appreciate, it upset me that there was careless use of grammar, something which shows a lack of production standards and which I consider unforgivable.
Sarai says that the protagonists of Tinker.Solder.Tap bring alive the ways in which the relationship between life and the media has been re-scripted in the various neighbourhoods of our cities (here). However, to me this book was more about how our struggles for survival in this country bring out the entrepreneur in us and give us the ability to nimbly adapt to new technology and put it promptly to commercial use.
When I started reading, I imagined the story to be based in a small town. Only after I had read two-thirds did I realize that the location was actually New Delhi! This brought the insight that our cities’ suburbs are identical in outlook and culture to our towns and villages. One of the most attractive things about this book is that it portrays life in these towns and suburbs, with their rituals and customs, very well.

"Schumpeter" on The Three Habits of ...

... highly irritating management gurus
A few days ago I read this patronizing article in The Economist’s Schumpeter column (to know why the column is called “Schumpeter”, read here)
Now I’m silly enough to operate on the principle that if something works, why complain? I continue to feel that Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits – while they may have become clichéd from (well-deserved) overuse – can actually be used to make the world a better place.
Most people I know don’t do their jobs as well as they could (and should); don’t relate well with their families, don’t manage their finances or look after their health – etc. etc. So while I do empathise with the “Schumpeter” annoyance at this listing of habits, I also believe that a little attention to one’s actions would make one more effective (a la Covey), more happy, and generally improve the state of the world. On the other hand, mocking Covey and others like him might make readers of “Schumpeter” feel good for a short while, but isn’t going to actually improve anything for anyone.
In January 2009, I interviewed Stephen Covey for Sunday Mid-day amongst surroundings that I may or may not write about, squirming, in my memoirs at the age of 98.
For the time being, I will just say that it was a disappointing experience.
Only later did I realize that I had been expecting to hear amazing words of wisdom from The Great Guru Covey. But what he told me was stuff he’d always been saying and which I’d read and practiced (oh how virtuous I am) for 20 years.
So Stephen Covey rah rah rah, and if you can bear to read any more, my Sunday Mid-day interview is right here.

My Friend Sancho by Amit Varma

In conversation with Amit Varma yesterday evening
What surprised me most – overwhelmed me, in fact – was Amit Varma’s unassuming, completely down-to-earth manner. Even though this was his event and everyone was there to see and hear him, he was intent, in a relaxed sort of way, on blending into the crowd.
His novel My Friend Sancho was well received in India. One review says, "The mighty Bombay blogger Amit Varma’s first novel, My Friend Sancho, is a quick and entertaining summer read, which also manages to make some serious points along the way."
His blog India Uncut is one of the widest-read in the country with more than 40,000 regular readers, and in May 2009, it put Amit on the Business Week list of India’s 50 most powerful people.
Anyone in his early thirties with these formidable achievements already behind him could be excused for feeling just a little bit pleased with himself. To be honest, I do see little traces of smug self-satisfaction on his blog occasionally - and who can blame him? But this is why I was all the more surprised to see that in person, Amit’s entire persona says, “Hey I have no idea what you’re staring at, I’m just an ordinary guy.”
In Pune yesterday, a small crowd gathered at Landmark to hear him speak and read from his book.
I had interviewed him by phone and email when his book was launched in May 2009 (you can read that here), but this was the first time we were meeting.
We talked about Amit and the journey he followed to become a writer, and he said he had worked first in Advertising, then Television and later became a print journalist. His first major experience as a widely-read blogger was with Cloudburst Mumbai after the flood disaster in Bombay on 26 July 2005. Through this blog, people were able to locate and get news of loved ones who were stranded, and it became a huge success.
Amit said that he had always wanted to be a novelist and had actually tried to write a novel unsuccessfully years ago. But with My Friend Sancho, he started writing and knew that he had found the voice of the novel long before four major Indian publishers vied for the manuscript.
The polarization of Indians writing in English is well known: some write for western readers, interpreting and often exoticizing our culture; while others write, often with a defensive who-cares-about-THEM, India-is-the-greatest! tone, exclusively for a home readership. My Friend Sancho is one of the first in a new trend of writers who write for an Indian readership but can be read and enjoyed without stress by readers from other countries.
The event was well attended, and some of the well-known people present were Ajit Harisinghani, author of One Life to Live, the prolific children’s adventure novel writer Deepak Dalal, the financial literacy activist Dr. Anil Lamba, and the short-story writer Aruna Jethwani, short-story writer and former Principal of St. Mira’s College for Girls. After the event, many in the audience told me that they had been impressed by the way Amit expressed himself and his ideas. They also mentioned how much they had enjoyed the passages that he read out from his book – but this I already knew, having seen them rocking with laughter while he was reading.

From bullock-cart to Mercedes-Benz by Dr. P.N. Singh

Reinforcing the basics
Last week I received a mail from Dr. Singh in which he said, among other things, that this book was going into its fourth edition. I wasn’t surprised. It isn’t a racy bestseller and nor is it a work of literary genius. However, and despite not having been reviewed in any mainstream publication, it has turned out to be a popular and widely-read book. When writing in the second edition about the lack of reviews the book had received, Dr. Singh very kindly mentioned that, “Saaz Aggarwal had promised a review. She is a very sincere person. She must have tried her best. Her efforts did not produce any results.” (I will have to admit that he was quite correct on all counts.)
Dr. Singh and I have known and respected each other professionally for around 20 years. He was my first and most important HR guru. It was the articles he wrote for Ascent in the early 1990s when I had just launched this HR supplement for the Times of India that made me understand that good-quality Management is really rooted in common sense, a fact that was useful to me in the many long years that I myself worked as a manager.
He wrote (in simple language) of simple problems managers face every day, and the simple solutions that they could easily use to deal with them. I loved the fact that his consistent style was to reinforce the basics – the fundamental issues of existence that we so often forget when we enter the rat race and our lives become a continuous flurry of activity with no time or energy to stop and think whether we are really doing what we want to do or what is going to get us what we really want.
It is this basic skill, of focussing on the most important issues, that led Dr. Singh to set up a self-development centre which conducts a range of education and infrastructure project in his native villge of Ganj (Ganj, P.O. EKMA, Dist Saran, Bihar; details here). In this book, he has written about his childhood, his education, his family, and each step of his career and how he went from a child for whom a ride in a bullock cart was a special treat to the hakim-hukum his grandfather knew he would be, and with a Mercedes Benz that he takes quite for granted.
Along with the facts he has also woven in his opinions about bureaucracy, the differences between working the public and private sector companies, some special impressions of “My Hero: Aditya Birla”, and his journey as an entrepreneur. There are also nugget-sized lessons on nearly every page, some of these HR gems, such as:
- When you find an employer too keen to recruit you, he will soon become too keen to get rid of you. - Overemphasizing the importance of promotion is dysfunctional. Organizations should find other methods to motivate their employees.
- Don’t accept peanuts as a salary unless you are a monkey. Sack your employers at the earliest.
- One mistake does not justify another mistake.
- Being too close to a subordinate can be disastrous to a CEO.
Regarding the success of this book, I would attribute it at least partly to Dr. Singh’s formidable personal network. Its continuous sale despite lack of mainstream coverage is a testimony to the power of word-of-mouth as most-effective marketing tool.
In the preface Dr. P.N. Singh wrote, “This is the story of an ordinary Indian, who is neither an industrialist nor a political leader. If he were one, he would have got the book written by a ghost writer. Instead he had to write his story by putting his heart instead of ink in his pen.”
Now this, I feel, is entirely my loss – I’ve always admired Dr. Singh and regret the loss of professional opportunity in writing his story myself.

Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar

Tourist, poet, pilgrim
As I read this book, I smiled with the words going round and creating images in my head, and I longed to get on that bus to Jejuri.
The one that is no more than a thought in the head of the priest (as he wonders whether there’ll be puran poli on his plate) when:

With a thud and a bump
the bus takes a pothole as it rattles past the priest
and paints his eyeballs blue

The bus goes around in a circle.
Stops inside the bus station and stands
purring softly in front of the priest.

A catgrin on its face
and a live, ready to eat pilgrim
held between its teeth.

I smiled again and sighed with pleasure when I read:

Chaitanya
come off it
said Chaitanya to a stone
in stone language

wipe the red paint off your face
i don’t think the colour suits you
i mean what’s wrong with being just a plain stone
i'll still bring you flowers
you like the flowers of zendu don’t you
i like them too

Then I wasn’t smiling and my heart dipped low for the old woman:

She won’t let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.
When you hear her say,
“What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?”
At Jejuri (where every other stone is god or his cousin) you will also meet a sheep dog (who had never told a lie in his life) the temple rat (who knows to jump away from the temple bell just before it swings into action) the reservoir built by the Peshwas (not a drop of water; nothing it it, except a hundred years of silt) cocks and hens in a field of jowar (seven jumping straight up to at least four times their height as five come down with grain in their beaks) while your brother who came along stands outside in the courtyard where no one will mind if he smokes, and you will soon find it terribly, terribly hard to find out when the next train is due.
You don’t have to go to Jejuri to feel the colour and the thick flowers (and the heat and the crowd of pious peasantry and their smell). They are all here in this book, a little mythology, a thousand-year old tradition, the reality of what you see today, a sociological commentary, and a word-painting that shows vistas, landscapes and people you wouldn’t see even if you actually went there yourself.

Truth, Love and a Little Malice by Khushwant Singh

A history book that’s fun to read
It seems the film Indian Summer which was going to tell us more about the great romance between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten is not going to happen. Reading that reminded me of this book and something Khushwant Singh wrote about these alleged lovers during the time when he was Press Attache and PRO at the Indian High Commission in London:
"Senior members of the staff were ordered to be present at Heathrow airport to receive the Prime Minister. It was a cold winter night when the plane touched down.
“'What are all of you doing here at this unearthly hour?' he demanded, obviously expecting us to be present and pleased to note that we were discharging our duties.
"Menon asked me to introduce myself to the PM and ask him if he desired me to do anything. I did so only to be snubbed. 'What would I want of you at this hour? Go home and get some sleep.'
The next morning when I reached the office I saw a note from Menon lying on my table asking me to see him immediately. I took a quick glance at the headlines of the papers to see if anything had gone wrong. The Daily Herald carried a large photograph of Nehru with Lady Mountbatten in her négligé opening the door for him. The caption read “Lady Mountbatten’s Midnight Visitor”. It also informed its readers that Lord Mountbatten was not in London. Our PM’s liaison with Lady Edwina had assumed scandalous proportions."
I had read this book many years ago, and recently misquoted something I read in it – about newspapers in England reporting Bandit Nehru in London. In fact, this never actually happened. The headline was for a new weekly tabloid, India News, and was to go on a page devoted to Panditji’s visit and the importance of the Commonwealth Conference he had come to attend. Though Khushwant Singh and Jamal Kidwai, who were working on it together, corrected the word back to “pandit” a number of times, the final proofs were set by a new typesetter who had never heard of the word. In the end the issue was scrapped.
This well-known photo was shot by Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Anyone interested in Indian history should read Khushwant Singh. He’s funny, readable, completely irreverent, and his perspective is fabulous.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour

Writing Lolita in Tehran
My friend Manohar sent me this message on facebook a short while ago: "Saaz: just read your book review of 'Censoring an Iranian Love Story' in OPEN magazine on board the Kingfisher flight from DEM to BOM....good stuff!"
Vain as ever, I logged on and located it right away (here) - and was delighted when Manohar asked for the link so he could post it on his facebook page.
I'd enjoyed the book very much and wish I'd had more time to savour it the way it deserves to be savoured. Besides mocking the concept of censorship, this book can be used by "creative" writers as a primer of instruction. There's quite a lot of theory here about literature and how to hold a reader's attention ("From the late Henry James, may God rest his soul, I know that to heighten the dramatic energy of my story, I have to limit its perspective to either Dara or Sara.")
We also learn a little about Iran and some contributions of Iran to world heritage. The story of Shirin and Khoshrow is told, and crops up in this book in many different variations.
One of the interesting things I learned in this book but the Open review didn't have space for was that "in olden days and current times, when Iranian men search for a spouse, they search for a woman whose lips have never touched teeth and whose teeth have never touched lips. And when they seek a lover, they want someone with extensive experience in biting. Unfortunately, oftentimes either they don’t find her or they end up with her opposite …"
Another was a searing penetration of the nature of hypocrisy. The official Porfiry Petrovich (yes, an alias borrowed from the detective in charge of solving Raskolnikov’s murder) who works at The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance apparently has his own personal depths. "He looked into Sinbad’s eyes. Tears welled up, and he looked down. “You are right. No one can be completely sure … Hypocrisy has many faces and many shades … Throughout history, all the calamities that have befallen us Iranians have been because of this hypocrisy …"
Closest to home (for us in India) is that many arty Iranian films which receive golden awards from reputable film festivals around the world, tend to portray misery, poverty and despair in Iran.

2 States by Chetan Bhagat

Stephen Covey and Jeffrey Archer rolled into one
I found the first 50 or so pages of this book slow and not very engrossing. That could be because they described a campus romance, something I’m too far removed from to really relate to. I’d begun to think that maybe Chetan Bhagat was losing his touch (instead of, to use the kind of expression that sometimes appears randomly in his books, sustaining his readability growth curve) when I suddenly realised that time had passed, I had nearly finished the book and, ignoring yells from family members to join them for dinner, was shrieking with loud inelegant laughter as Chetan Bhagat did the very best “going to Kashi” ever.
Many south Indian wedding ceremonies incorporate the going-to-Kashi ritual in which the groom tucks his umbrella and a copy of the Gita under his arm and leaves the pandal. The bride’s father is supposed to trot anxiously after him, begging him to come back and marry his daughter instead. So Chetan (who with his IIT-IIM background would naturally have an especially brilliant way of doing things) strolled outside and hopped into an auto and let it drive along for a few seconds and only stopped when his sober, intellectual father-in-law-to-be was racing behind them in all his wedding finery screaming, “Hey! Come back!” or something like that.
2 States is a fun story about a Punjabi “boy” and a Tamilian “girl” who meet at IIM A and all that they do before they finally get married. What I liked most about it was that it brings out the pain and confusion inherent in a close encounter between people of different cultures very clearly, and that it uses humour and candour to do so. There’s a lot that one can learn here, and not just that marble flooring is to a Punjabi what a foreign degree is to a Tamilian.

Chetan Bhagat apparently had a tough time finding a publisher for his first book Five Point Someone, a story about life at IIT. It appeared in May 2004 and met with instant success, as did One Night @ the Call Centre the following year. In 2008 the 3 mistakes of my life apparently topped the sales figures of the previous two books. One Night is a well-researched story of the call centre life and a lovely tale that tries to make people understand their own priorities and motivations. 3 mistakes is based on his most ambitious theme to date, the Hindu-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad. I wasn’t able to get through Five Point Someone, but I did enjoy the next two. Technically, I’m supposed to sneer at Chetan Bhagat’s books because they don’t have a literary quality, which they don’t.
The language is casual, which would have been fine by me if the editing and proofreading weren’t unforgivably sloppy. I like it that there's no forced Yo! cheeriness, and no purposely-stuffed-in Indian words as some writers do to show how cool they are. But why keep using the F word as if it's some kind of growth vitamin? Don't they teach you at IIT (or IIM) that using sexual expletives to express anger or frustration is bound to eventually ruin your sex life? And why would his editor allow the book to say that someone was "hitting upon" someone else, as if they were an idea, instead of just "hitting on" them which is all they were actually doing?
Then the main character, even when it’s not Chetan himself (as in the first and the fourth books) tends to be a clone of him, with predictable thoughts and responses. Many ideas - and even clothes, the heroine in more than one has an exquisite turquoise blue sari - are repeated.
Still, if you can read a book from one end to the other without stopping, lose yourself in the author’s world for a few hours and come out of it slightly different than you were before – Yeah Baby, and who am I to argue?
I also found that the books were unpretentious and with a strong social-activist flavour, which I admired though at times I found it rather half-baked. He writes about young people, and tries to introduce what he sees as forward ways of thinking, encouraging them to cast off the shackles of restrictive and sometimes primitive traditional ideas. Traditional middle-class Indians might find him a little too generous in the matter of premarital sex – two weeks after the first brush of hands, they’ve invariably gone ahead and Done It.
I guess that’s ok because it helps young people who are going ahead and Doing It in spite of all the restrictions they’ve been reared with to temper their guilt – but to my prissy sensibilities, there’s not enough talk in band-leader Bhagat’s books about condoms. If people start following these new rules in a country where abortions are as easy to come by as Aspirin (and dread of swine flu is apparently more consuming than reservations about HIV), there’s a lot of biological trauma on the way.
Then he goes and buys in to the primitive western concept that a man must go down on his knees to propose marriage to a woman, who has no say in the matter whatever, and has been waiting anxiously all the while for him to do so which I think is a terrible, terrible pity considering how much power he has to shape some decent values.

Chetan Bhagat's books have been wildly popular, and not only because they are all priced lower than Rs. 100. People are reading and enjoying them. After the second one, newspapers began to carry interviews of people across India who claimed that they had never read a book in their lives before but absolutely loved Chetan Bhagat and had sworn to read everything he ever wrote. You can read fan comments from some of these people on the official Chetan Bhagat website here. Even my husband Ajay, who in his spare time organizes volunteers to conduct road-safety campaigns in Pune, tells me that when he asks a hall full of undergrads whether they’ve heard of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, someone will almost always raise their hand and call out proudly, “Chetan Bhagat!” In short, here is an amazing never-seen-before national phenomenon.
At the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2009, I saw Chetan Bhagat with the media and fans flocking around him. I saw him hanging out with his wife and twin infants (and their "maid"). I even saw him pleading, rather endearingly, with the cranky genius Vikram Seth for his autograph. And I felt sorry that the extraordinary sale of his books had been unable to protect his self esteem from the barbs of pompous reviewers. He came across in all these situations as defensive and a bit cocky, and the impression was perpetuated in other ways as well. This book opens with: “This may be the first time in the history of books, but here goes: Dedicated to my in-laws*
*which does not mean I am henpecked, under her thumb or not man enough.
The previous one was dedicated to his twin sons and the woman who produced them “with just a little help from me”. I found this invitation to the world at large to acknowledge his private moments with his wife distasteful and a little, excuse me, "Yawn".
Still, I have to say that, like Chetan Bhagat's hundreds of thousands of fans, I look forward to his next book and wonder what it will be about, which number will appear in its title, and what he'll be trying to convert us to or from as he keeps us engrossed and amused.

Culture Shock! India by Gitanjali Kolanad

Welcome to the zoo. Please don't try to feed the animals.
About a year ago, I visited a home-sundries sale of a Swedish expat who was leaving Pune for good. I got some lovely brand-new Ikea pillows and pans at a terrific rate and, mighty pleased with myself, stood gazing at the book shelf. I picked up Cactus & Roses, the autobiography of S.L. Kirloskar, and My Life So Far by Jane Fonda – another 2 good bargains. (I’m always buying biographies, believing them to be Good For Me, but hardly ever get round to reading them.)
I was looking for more when I noticed the lady of the house trying to hide this one. Naturally I became curious and, before she could back away, twisted it out of her helpless grasp.
She was still shaking her head, saying, “No, no!” when I quickly put the money down and ran off with it triumphantly clutched under my arm. Swedish people are among the most civilized on our imperfect planet, and she did not give chase or alert the building security.
I was dying to know what this lovely lady had been trying to protect me from, and I soon found out: Flipping through the book on the ride home, I noticed a little blurb in the middle of the book that stood out because it was printed in red, unlike the rest of the text which was black:
I attended a party in the company of an American woman who wore, with her stylish dress and hat, blue stockings. A guest not used to such sophistication said to me, in Hindi, “Poor woman. Does she have wooden legs?"
Gitanjali Kolanad was 16 when she first visited India with her father, and, “looking like an Indian girl and feeling like a Canadian teenager, India was an exotic foreign land to me.”
Here are a few tiny gems from her book:

• The rule is to ask at least three people, and then take the majority decision. (When trying to locate an address)
  
• Foreigners can even find celery at a neighbourhood market in New Delhi.
• Quality Control is one of the most serious problems facing the Bullock Cart Economy.
• It would be easier to drive in India without brakes than without a horn

She also quotes what she calls “the authoritative publication, People of India,” without giving its publisher or source, to declare here that the billion people of India speak “325 different languages and practice more than seven religions (sometimes two or more at the same time)”
In short, the entire book is based on the premise, “We know more than they do. We are smart; they are simple.”
It reminded me of the concept of “Orientalism” described by Edward Saïd, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a founding figure in postcolonialism.
Broadly, the Western study of the “Orient” is a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes towards the East, for example that the West is rational whereas the East is irrational; the West has Science while the East has Religion; the West has the rule of law while the East has potentates, and so on.
In this kind of study, you define the other culture just so that you can feel good about what you have, and superior to the other because they are different. It gives you a justification to rule.
Every culture has a tendency to judge other cultures in this manner. The whole point of talking about culture shock is to know that it’s not going to be easy, first understand this basic premise, and only then try to interact or communicate or understand the other.
Cross-cultural studies have shown that intimate long-term relationships across cultures are almost invariably doomed to failure.
I have to admit that this book is an early edition, somewhat before India emerged as a global outsourcing base (and, even better, a world market.)
It’s a good book for someone who thinks they’re visiting a zoo (like Clare Jay below). Please don’t try to feed the animals.

The Music Room by Namita Devidayal

A little girl and what her teacher taught her
This book is now just about two years old, and has so far sold 20,000 copies worldwide, of which 10 or 15 must go to my account – I loved it so much that I bought at least a dozen copies as presents for friends. It is a memoir, and its central character is Dhondutai, the inheritor of the riches of the Jaipur gharana, one of the most powerful schools of Hindustani classical music.
A few months after The Music Room was released, I wasn’t surprised to read that it was on the “Best Reads of 2007” list of Sonia Gandhi, Shyam Benegal and Ramachandra Guha.
In February 2008, a book discussion group I belong to in Pune read The Music Room and invited Namita Devidayal to answer questions. It was a lovely morning, we sipped coffee with little fingers outstretched, Namita played us some rare tracks of the complex genius Kesarbai Kerkar who features in the book, read out an excerpt, and even sang a short raga for us in her beautiful baritone voice.
After the event we were supposed to have a quiet lunch together with a few friends but the media had got wind that the famous Namita Devidayal was in town and reporters from one newspaper and then the next and then the next kept her busy as we sullenly played with our food and waited for them to go away.
Now the thing is, Namita has been a dear friend for many years. When Sunday Mid-day asked me to review her book, I had a difficult choice to make. To have refused would have been to do my friend, and her wonderful book, the injustice of refusing them space in one of the few widely-read publications in India that has a books page. To write a review would be very difficult. Even though I knew I could look at the book objectively, it was also very important to me that the review be SEEN to be objective. So for every sentence I wrote, I stopped and asked myself whether I was fawning, or whether I was being needlessly nasty.
In the end, here’s the review which appeared on 4 November 2007, but before you read it, I must confess that what I enjoyed most was being able to call my dear friend Namita, one of the most warmhearted and generous people I know, a “ferocious professional” in public.

This is an autobiographical novel whose author was fortunate enough to be steeped, at once, in separate worlds that seldom intersect. Born into a traditional upper-class business family, her mother was well known for her penetrating and humorous art rather than her ikebana or table linen.
At a young age, Namita was sent for music lessons to an area of Bombay that few of her compatriots would have dreamt existed, let alone experienced. When her rendition of a classical raga wins her a school music competition – by a wide margin, one would imagine, considering the years of rigorous training that preceded it – and was met with the taunt, “Heh heh, did you forget the words?” all she could do was to collude with the sniggering.
Soon she was travelling on her own by bus and train to the Mumbai heartland of one BHK flats with noisy steel cupboards and water-shortage, which might even have caused her peers to recoil from her with shuddering looks of alarm had they known. Most exotic and exclusive of her worlds is the one she chose as a backdrop for her debut novel, the world of Indian classical music.
Dhondutai, Namita’s teacher, had inherited the spectacular legacy of the Jaipur gharana and it was a fond dream that Namita would carry it forward into the next generation: “Give up your foolish studies and focus on something you are uniquely gifted with. Anyone can go out and get a BA. It is an insult to God to throw away a gifted voice,” she urges her. With her exposure to the different worlds, Namita already has a perspective that allows her to examine each one and objectively select or discard. Now Dhondutai inducts her into the great secrets of her art. But she teaches more than just music, even more than the rigour of backbreaking practice that holds no room for anything less than perfection. The simple act of making a cup of tea is unobtrusively turned into a lesson on the interconnectedness of all things, and a warning not to allow one’s ego to puff up at every small achievement. When introducing her to the relationship between melody and rhythm, she makes her conscious of the circular recurring rhythms of our own life: breathing, the diurnal routine, and the motions of the universe. Praising a student from England, Dhondutai observes, “It’s their work ethic and desire to succeed against all odds that we should take from the west. Instead, we take the worst – their dress habits and their music!” The secret of performing pure music, she later confides, is that when you are singing a particular raga, you have to train your mind to pretend it is the only raga you know.
Dhondutai’s unrelenting morality, her boundless faith in her gods, her superstitions and her skill at warding off their ill effects, her jealous guardianship of the sacred musical IPR that rests with her, all hold lessons of their own. But the book is also richly strewn with engaging historical facts, and stories about the great singers of yore, about kingdoms where their art was revered and cultivated or sometimes even colonised.
As compelling as any of these legends is the one of how Dhondutai, a young woman from an orthodox Brahmin family, came to acquire her wealth of knowledge from a very traditional family of Muslim men.
At Princeton, Namita’s learning crystallizes, and she tries to put into practice what was written thousands of years ago: “try your best and accept the rest”. She has now acquired for herself a double burden of heavyweight education. One is the unique gift of music in the tradition of the Jaipur gharana which traces itself all the way back to Haridas Swami, guru of Tansen himself, as lovingly tendered by Dhondutai, with all her deep spiritual wisdom in attendance. The other is the degree in political science from Princeton.
Finally choosing to follow neither path but to carve one out for herself, Namita has produced this book. It is thoroughly researched, with deft extrapolation of events from the lives of the great musicians of this gharana such as Kesarbai Kelkar. It is startlingly frank, with intimate events from Namita’s own life and random musings about the teachers. And the imagery is great fun, with a street display of hanging brassieres likened to filigreed stalagmites, and a placid tabla player who plays with his eyes shut likened to a sleeping turtle. Like its author, The Music Room professes an outwardly relaxed and amused demeanour that masks the ferocious professional within. You will want to read it through at one sitting. Enjoy it by all means, but don’t do it this injustice – you’ll miss all the wealth that you can absorb between the lines.

Kama Kahanis - the new Indian Mills and Boon

Kissing and sighing in the good old days
I read these historical romances for Sunday Mid-day. One of them (Ghazal in the Moonlight) was quite decent but I think I might have outgrown the genre.
Here's what I wrote in the 4 Oct 2009 issue:
“His restless gaze settled on a bewitchingly beautiful girl, not older than seventeen. She was angelically exquisite, from her radiant honey-coloured skin to her dark eyes, rimmed with kohl and speaking a language all their own.”
I really can’t be a hypocrite and pronounce grandly that I object to books constructed with sentences like these. As a genre, such books are not literature – but they don’t pretend to be. When critics complain that their plots are repeated, the language daft and the endings always happy, publishers will reply smugly that it’s the predictability and happy endings that draw the fans – and the language suits them just fine, too, thank you.
Looking fondly back to the days I myself blissfully employed books of this nature to relieve the tedium of Physics class, I could even claim quite placidly that they don’t really turn their readers into quivering neurotics by creating unrealistic expectations or lowering their self esteem.
So I won’t complain about sentences like “You scorn at everything we do” and the use of words like “wager”, or ask why we’re saying “bua” on one page and “paternal aunt” on the next – and say instead that if the purpose of the Kama Kahanis had been to teach their readers history, I’m afraid I’d have to be rude and point out that they’d failed rather badly.
The Zamindar’s Forbidden Love and Mistress to the Yuvraj both read like small-town one-set amateur productions with a few dubious historical elements randomly thrown in. Ghazal in the Moonlight does it a great deal better, actually transporting you to another time with much more visual imagery and absorbing detail. How accurate it is I can’t say – though I can fairly observe that Ghazal is so much more mature than the other two in terms of plot, language and romantic escalation that it’s unfair to even classify it as part of the same series.
In any case, the Kama Kahanis only use the historical background as a means to provide an added edge of romance, a device that was also useful considering the archaic language and concepts used in the books.

All three freely use words such as “quivering”, “impulsively” and “achingly” when referring to the girls, while the men bark with laughter, cock their heads and twitch their devilish mouths (the rogues). Because, though many things have changed, and the heroines here fight duels to win the bag of gold and walk jauntily past tigers to prove a haughty point, they continue to be virgins pure. The men on the other hand are still swashbuckling, experienced studs.
Most interesting is to observe how the romantic-novel formula works in an Indian context. While the publisher coins the catchy phrase “chaddi-ripper” to describe the books, the dress code is (exquisite) period costume of every hue and fabric. Interestingly, the men here are more aware of their own feelings than I remember them ever being. I’m not sure whether this is cultural or a function of the present.
Most hilarious and incongruous of all was the ending of Zamindar in which (unmarried) Madhu and Som have worked themselves up into a frenzy and are now on the verge of Doing It, not fretting in the least that the door is open and the young servant boy might walk in at any moment.

Breathing in Colour by Clare Jay

All the world's a stage, especially India
I saw a large review of this book in a mainstream paper in my city recently and couldn’t help thinking, “Hah, another sucker”.
I’d bought it because the cover is pretty and the contents looked intriguing. The author has a PhD in creative writing and I did find that she’d done a reasonable job.
A review I read on-line said, “Clare Jay's stunning debut novel explores the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship.” Now there’s something about those words “stunning debut novel” that makes me shudder – remember that sound of chalk screeching on the blackboard?
Anyway, what did actually stun me about the book was something no one else seemed to have noticed, not even the large review in the Indian newspaper last week. India was described as dirty and dangerous. That’s fair enough, I suppose. But to talk about it as some kind of zoo which only really brave, desperado-type people would visit; and to relegate Indian characters and situations to the status of props – and then try to sell the book in India – well, I’m sorry I really don’t understand that. In short, the story is good, its components are strong, some parts are silly, and the book made me angry and a bit disgusted.
For the long version, read the review I wrote for the 21 Jun 2009 issue of Sunday Mid-day:
This book has an appealing cover and an intriguing blurb. Alida Slater suddenly receives a phone call from a police station in Madurai. Her daughter, who had gone backpacking in India from the UK, is reported missing. She flies there immediately to try and find her. With this promising premise, we are now led into a story that entertains but does not impress. Clare Jay has a PhD in Creative Writing. Her knowledge of the fascinating sensory condition known as synaesthesia, as well as her work with the interpretation of dreams, form an attractive backdrop to the book. She is also an artist, and her central character Mia who we never actually meet in person has created interesting collages which add to the texture of the story.
To have disappeared in India – something that apparently happens to a significant number of tourists who come to this country – is a theme that would certainly hold interest. The tracking down of a missing child adds its own emotional allure. The author is skilled at developing characters and sustaining interest. There has been tragedy in Alida’s life before. Gentle hints and veiled references to it, and the impact it had on the various family members, continue through the book. We guess and imagine what exactly it might be, until it is finally described towards the end. Of course it is closely connected with what actually happened to Mia, the daughter.
The mystery and the clues that are followed, a romantic interest with its own little captivating story, the way the past is described and woven into the story are all quite gripping.
Unfortunately, however, the plot hinges on a premise that is weak and implausible. How could anyone believe that such a thing was possible? It made me question the author’s connection to reality, and even suspect that the culture she represents was far too emotionally self-indulgent. It reminded me of something I recently overheard at a museum in her country.
A little boy asked his mother, in connection with one of the exhibits, what a mistress was and she replied, “Oh it’s when a man has another … another girl friend … when he … when he’s already married … because … because he is a man.” Most of us turn out unprepared for such questions, but surely to say “because he is a man” rather than “because he is dishonest” or “because he is undisciplined” to a child, or even not give any reason, would only consolidate a culture in which it’s acceptable or even necessary for a man to have a mistress.
Thinking about my anger and feeling of scorn towards this author, I suppose it arose as a reaction to the way I felt India is portrayed in this book. It is described as a place which is not just dirty and dangerous but not even real. Instead, India appears to be some kind of zoo to which real people – daring people, not ordinary ones – could make visits and have real experiences while the characters and systems in it were simply props to which no real connection was possible.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

A day I don’t regret
So – the book reads exactly like his previous ones.
Well, we already knew it was part of a SERIES, didn’t we!
So – his language is careless and clichéd.
Well, sack the editor!
Doubleday (doubtless dizzy with delight) reports that more than two million copies of this book sold in the United States, Canada and Britain in its first week, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history. 55,000 copies sold in the first week in India alone, not bad for a book priced at Rs. 699!
The book launched on Tuesday last week. I took the day off work (where they're quite oblivious of this little secret life of mine; don't breathe a word, will you), stayed in bed all day Wednesday reading it, and wrote Predictable but Gripping for Sunday Mid-day. A day I don’t regret!