Lonely gods by Shivani Singh

Desi Barbara Cartland
One of the things I liked about this book was the great detail about the relationship between Physics and spirituality. Since I know very little about such esoteric matters, it was hard to decide whether to admire the depth of research or the extent of imagination. Either way, there is enormous information here about a range of subjects from the scriptures and other fields such as astro-palmistry, ‘saints’ and their partners, healing energies, karmic pegs, the universe being in ‘cahoots’, the Cosmic Egg, and even an academic discipline called ‘Quanti Mytho’.
One of the things that made me uneasy about Lonely Gods was the language, rife with phrases like ‘rocksure Punjabi confidence’ which I found jarring, and a tone which I felt more suited to a giddyheaded adolescent:

After the ceremony, the group sat gratefully under a spring sun that warmed them and lit them up in just the way they wanted. Chomping on VNP’s ubiquitous samosas, a formal introduction of the team members finally took place.

We will only find out what VNP stands for at the end of the book, but there are six team members. The genders are ‘evenly spaced’, with three males and three females. A spectrum of ages is represented, and a token from another race too. They are, of course, going to save the world.
The hero and heroine of this book are Twin Flames. Hot, magic energy flies between them! Sadly, circumstances have contrived to keep them apart:

They would wake in the middle of the night to the sensation of lips against their skin, of hands clutching their hair, of hip against hip. The sensation would be followed by extreme physical pain, as if their bodies were stretching to be with the other. Soon after, it would start raining. As if the sky and the clouds and the private parts of Nature were conspiring and participating in the wetness of their thighs, their nights, precipitating their union almost like the grand partner in a ménage a trois.

Some of the lusty scenes are even more ludicrous:

She became aware of a slow trickle wetting her thighs and his body started to ache from the strain of staying away from her.

A slow trickle wetting her thighs? Hm - sounds more like a bladder accident than someone getting horny. In general, I did find that this book painted a rather unrealistic world, one in which hospital staff are concerned about a patient in a way I don’t think ever actually happens. But I liked the frequent spikes of casual humour:

The doctor squeaked, “There are too many toxins in his system coming from too many avenues.”
Stop making my uncle sound like Park Street during rush hour, Uma thought, but held her tongue.

I can’t say I enjoyed this book, but tried hard to think that there must be many who would. The Secret of Sirikot by the same author was also a highly romantic thriller set in a palace but I found that better written and more absorbing.

I too had a dream by Verghese Kurien

Good things can happen
I picked this book up to flip through but could not put it down. Published in 2005, it is the story of Verghese Kurien and how he set up the Gujarat milk cooperatives. Written in the first person, it is easy to read and, though written for Kurien by a journalist, Gouri Salvi, gives a clear sense of hearing him speak in his own voice – crisp, blunt, and authoritarian.
The book starts with Kurien’s childhood and education in the 1940s, and the series of events which led to him being sent by the nascent Government of India, soon after Independence, to work in the Anand Dairy. Kurien hated the place, hated his job, and felt disliked and unwelcome. What was it that led this man to bring the milk farmers of the region together in a cooperative which began supplying good-quality milk to the cities and soon brought economic and social change to the region? What kept him there year after year, decade after decade?
The historical events this book documents are well told and engaging. Besides streamlining milk supply and giving ownership to the farmers, we also learn how Kurien took on the might of the advanced dairy-farming nations and multinational organizations which, fearing the loss of an enormous milk-consuming market, did all they could to throttle dairy farming in India. And we learn his simple, common-sense economics and techniques of marketing which contributed to this success.
The Indian bureaucracy was another battle Kurien fought, frequently brought to the edge of disaster when he vented his hot temper and scathing tongue on lazy, self-serving officials, only to be pulled back into the fold by those in power who admired his sincere efforts and immense contribution to the development of the country.
I too had a dream also tells how Kurien’s tremendous success in creating dairy cooperatives led to efforts to create similar structures for oil seed, and fruit and vegetable. He was also requested to help streamline dairy farming in Pakistan and Sri Lanka – but sadly was unable to break through the corruption and vested interests that continue to preserve imported milk powder as the main source of milk in these countries.
Unlike other memoirs, the cover of this book is not a flattering photograph of the author – but an artistic wallpaper montage of Indian cattle. Photographs inside the book show Kurien with his family, and with personalities at historical events.
“I am not an employee of the government, I am an employee of the farmers,” Kurien says repeatedly. His vision of a country owned and managed by the people is a compelling one. One of the most powerful messages of this book is how a real democracy can function – with things are run by real people rather than an officious bureaucracy.

The Fatwa Girl by Akbar Agha

Engrossing, informative - and sad
One of the most insistent thoughts in my mind as I read and enjoyed The Fatwa Girl was that a book could actually be a good book even if it doesn’t have a strongly pervasive literary quality.
For the last several years, the books I’ve read coming out of Pakistan have been of a standard of English that easily matched up to the best writing anywhere in the world. Even Moni Mohsin, with her giddy-headed and ungrammatical character Butterfly, has a style that clearly arises from an orthodox, rather elite tradition of English literature. For the first time I was reading a Pakistani English book written in language drawn from a wider section of the bell curve; one that even used ‘flouted’ when it meant to say ‘flaunted’. And never once did it upset me.
I think the main reason for my easy acceptance was that I found the plot very interesting, and revelled in the wealth of detail about Pakistani history and the different aspects of its religion and culture which are easily woven in to it.
The story is told by Omar, a young man from an upper middle class family in Karachi. The Fatwa girl is his neighbour and we learn how, despite being from religious sects that detest each other, they become friends. Amina is a smart, carefree young woman. What is it that turns her into a suicide bomber? The suspense builds up as we find out. And, as Akbar Agha takes us to this final turn in the storyline, we journey through a variety of concepts and landscapes: historical information from the Arab world and the subcontinent which contributed to the fabric of modern-day Pakistan; the myths that arose because of the nature of its people; the contrast between traditional and modern lifestyles and ways of thinking; the economic conditions which have allowed corruption to flourish and created power blocks and an ever-widening rift between socio-economic classes. From Karachi to Lahore to the beautiful but desecrated Swat and even a cameo from the Pakistani effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan; from Kipling to Lear to Jung; from comparing the plight of oppressed women in Pakistan and the USA: the fabric of this book arises from this knowledgeable author’s perspective on his country and the world. Says Omar,

I recalled the moment we laid Grandpa into the grave and a strange thought entered my mind. It made me think differently about religion from that day on.
I thought, a billion people can’t be wrong. But a billion people would swear that Grandfather would go to Hell for saying Jesus is the Son of God. Another billion would swear he would go to Heaven for saying Jesus is the Son of God. Which billion would be right?

Reading The Fatwa Girl, I wondered whether the story, too, was drawn from something Akbar Agha had experienced himself, and I emailed him with a few questions. He replied:

Perhaps the only thing I share in common with my protagonist Omar, who eventually, like me, joins the Foreign Service, is the feeling that the sorrow of parting is never sweet. I was a bachelor for many years in the Service and just when you got to really know someone you’d receive orders for transfer to another country. I guess the sadness of parting from someone you’ve become intimate with is reflected in Omar’s story.
If the Shia-Sunni divide is at the core of my story it’s because I’ve felt its presence even as a schoolboy. My best friend at school was someone I’d hang out with most of the day, go to movies and parties and dances together and do all the fun things teenagers do – except during the month of Muharram when we couldn’t meet at all because he was busy attending religious meetings or participating in self-flagellation which as a Sunni I couldn’t understand, and during this entire month my best buddy would become an alien to me. I’ve always felt the divide between the two sects should have been repaired a thousand years, but it’s no better now than when it started and will eventually raise its head even among the best of friends.

I asked Akbar Agha about what he is writing now and he said he has just completed a novel entitled The Moon Belongs to Everyone. Its main character is Alvi, a young Pakistani in America, a barista at a Seattle Starbucks, but his grandmother thinks he’s a barrister, and this results in a comical situation. He described the book in some detail, and it struck me that it would also very likely be filled with interesting information and perceptions, and include an element of rising suspense, both features which I had enjoyed very much in this book too.

Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat

A seamy, distasteful world
Ever since Chetan Bhagat’s first book Five Point Someone appeared seven years ago, he has been the most successful Indian novelist ever and his popularity has grown steadily.
I found Five Point Someone unreadable, but quite enjoyed his next three books, and believed – while naively looking forward to the next one – that although he would never be accepted by anyone who expects a certain basic literary quality, his readability was improving.
Gladys laughed aloud many times when I read 2 States to her and naturally that enhanced my enjoyment - and improved my opinion - of it.
Revolution 2020 has an impressive theme: the alternative system of higher education in India. This is a system which, tragically, has far less to do with real education than with anxious students desperately seeking a means to escape their economic deprivation, and the nexus of politician-crooks who exploit this distressing but very real anxiety. Chetan Bhagat has done an excellent job of describing how the racket works. There are details of the sordid coaching classes which aim to prepare mediocre students for an education for which they have no aptitude. The book also exposes the sordid methods used in setting up large and glossy but fundamentally hollow ‘universities’ or institutes of technology, with the primary motive of profit.
Maybe it will help to protect the many young people who read this book from being duped; maybe it will help them to try and understand their own needs, abilities and aspirations and follow paths of education and career accordingly.
However, some of the situations it contains are ghastly and distasteful. No matter how ‘not ok’ the education system is, surely one’s personal values and behaviour are based only on one’s own choices. The heroine of the book, for instance, has two childhood friends and romances both alternately, but also sometimes at the same time. It appears as if she is swinging between them depending on whose material prospects are better at the moment. And when the hero of the book, in an attempt to nobly exit her life and leave her to the other, more decent and capable man – he does not honestly explain his thoughts and feelings to her. Instead, he fabricates a ludicrous and revolting tableau with the purpose of shocking her away from him forever. If it was an erotic scene Chetan Bhagat felt it necessary to introduce - surely he could have invented a more imaginative and wholesome one.
Chetan Bhagat says he writes primarily to entertain but also to create awareness. I did like the expose of the crooked education system, and, instead of wanting him to improve his language - we're actually quite lucky it isn't even worse - can’t help wishing that he would create better role models.

1888 dial India by Anuvab Pal

Tandoori Tycoon
This book is not just a novel. As the memoir of Arun Gupta, Indian entrepreneur, it’s a complete postgraduate course in Business Management. Arun has launched his latest and most brilliant entrepreneurial idea – a suicide helpline call centre for victims of America’s economic crisis. And in the course of the book, along with his mad and thrilling story, we pick up invaluable snippets of business wisdom:

People ask me, “Do you have no morals?” In business, never directly answer yes.

And:

The main thing in business is the main thing everywhere – keeping costs down. There are some ladies in Florida that run this thing – Suicide Watch. It is America’s main suicide hotline but these ladies are fools – no MBAs, just three chicks called Anne, Jane, and Margaret. All above 60. Not even in suits. They have some psychology degree or some shit and are running this for charity like an NGO. Unbelievable. This must be the same as when the Europeans discovered that the new world had no system of land ownership. How can someone not own land? How can you not monetize suicide? Same thing.
These Florida ladies near this golf ball place are costing this suicide hotline thirty thousand dollars a year to operate. Plus phone bills. Plus absentees. Plus old. Plus benefits, coffee machine, chit chat about grandchildren crap. I am doing this at five thousand. The word is arbitrage. That’s real business. It’s like making the iPhone for three dollars and selling it for four hundred. Another word – China. And in the context of Chinese manufacturing, a third word – respect. They are so dedicated at keeping manufacturing costs down that they refuse to learn English. English would mean wasting time talking to each other. They understand that in international business, silence = productivity. That’s why respect.

Arun, a typical Indian businessman, was once arrested at JFK:

In my interrogation, they asked me if I knew a lot of people. They asked me if I knew Osama. I told them, I have no contact with Al Qaeda but that I only deal in C-level executives (CEO, CFO), so, yes, if Al Qaeeda got in touch with 1-888 about potential business collaborations, then I would meet Osama to sign the deal. I should clarify, we would be open to only phone and technology related Al Qaeda work, not terror attacks; we are not into bricks and mortar or blowing up bricks and mortar. Material costs are too high – the chemicals, explosives – besides being illegal. Even though they keep the same hours and work at night like us.

And, a typical Indian businessman, he makes enormous efforts to develop and train his employees. Through this praiseworthy mission we get a glimpse of the lifestyle of the great Indian middle class:

“What do you do Saturday nights? Sit at home and eat chips?”
“We sit as a family and watch the Baba Ramdev programme on Janmat channel and do the yoga exercises.”
“Lame. So un-American.”
“We may not go out Saturday nights sir but we are not traditional. I want to clear up that misunderstanding. We have gone to Dirty Splash Water Park in Bhandup, Inorbit Mall, we shop in Hyper-Fresh Goregaon and order from Pizza Hut every night. Plus PVR movies on Sunday .Good fun. I’m a member of Raghav’s Gym and I’ve taken my father and sister bowling in Pleasure Lanes at Andheri. I like gelato, it is Italian. Also TGI Friday mocktails we’ve had. As a family, we watch BBC, not K-serials. We are new to discos only.”

Several times while reading this book, I wondered whether it would have readers who did not understand its sarcastic overtones, and might take it all literally. How likely will digs at Chetan Bhagat be successful in a world where Chetan Bhagat’s readers and fans sadly outnumber Anuvab Pal’s by a large margin? What would people who don’t know the truth about Arindam Chaundhary make of a sentence like this:

In my thirty years as a business leader and India Inc. ambassador, I have never seen such a tense fundraising effort. Except once, while watching the great guru Arindam Chaudhary asking people in Indore to fund a business school he wants to start exclusively for Indians in Las Vegas...

And how many would find the following para perplexing rather than responding by rolling on the floor laughing:

My work with Mhatre, however was neither with Mhatre nor Karnik. It was with Ms Devine, a Christian lady from South Goa. In this case, Mhatre changed his name and his sex. Some businesses you can do as a man, some as a woman. Ms Devine bought smuggled goods from customs officers and sold them to other smugglers. Commission-based business. He already had two police records as Girish Mhatre and Anthony Karnik, so he thought it best to diversify into this third business as a woman. That’s an important business lesson – don’t let your sex get in the way of your business idea. Women say that when it comes to rising to the level of CEO of a company, they face a glass ceiling. I look at this as a similar scenario but with a critical difference. For reference, see Coke and Pepsi. I call this a genital ceiling.

What I admired most about this book is, even more than it’s crazy humour (or even its radical business truths) is the very strong voice of Anuvab Pal’s character Arun Gupta. It is full of confidence and authoritative opinions.

I knew chettinad is from Chennai (in fact, it’s Chennai’s Tamil name)

Even the language is consistent, with just minor misuse of preposition or article for that extra-natural touch of Indian English.

A few days after I finished reading this book, I bought a roll of adhesive tape. India is a great global software and manufacturing superpower but our adhesive tape is horrible. Not only that, but the back of the box read:

• Appears invisible after sticking.
• Lasts long without yellowing.
• Ideal for permanent applications like mending, splicing, sealing etc.
• Prevents tampering of amount on cheque/DD
• Easily tearable; can be written on.

It was not easily tearable; I did not try writing on it. And I couldn’t help but think fondly back to Arun Gupta.

Our lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif

The wrath of god's henchmen
Mohammed Hanif writes beautifully. His sentences are spare and clean, and evoke strong imagery and caricatures. He is cynical, and deeply witty, and he paints a vivid picture of Pakistan and all its beauty, savagery, and incongruity.
Alice Bhatti is a trained nurse in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Karachi, a place where grand old ladies in luxurious private rooms defy death and wear two-toned shatoosh shawls which cost as much as a two-bedroom house, something sweet, spunky Alice could probably never aspire to. Her best friend is the boy Noor – he's not just a little boy, but a respected ward boy. His name is not on the employees’ list but he has more responsibilities than any paramedic with a full-time, pensionable job – and he puts food on the table even though there is no table. (He hasn’t read Gray’s Anatomy, but there is nothing in that fat book that he hasn’t seen strewn on the floor of A&E.)
At the Sacred, religion is as pervasive as elsewhere in the country. Some of the 'Musla' girls petition against anatomical charts in classrooms, describing them as pornographic and against the decent behaviour prescribed not only by Islam but by every other faith as well. When their petition is denied, reproductive organs from the charts began to disappear: ovaries are ripped out, black ink thrown on mammary glands and penile depictions mutilated.
Somehow Alice finds herself in the eye of a miracle. The Catholic Church has adopted a number of borderline pagan habits and fallen into the local custom of burning incense at the mention of anything holy and covering every slab of marble that carried a saint’s name with garlands of marigold. However, it had never allowed a female member of its congregation any role that didn’t involve carrying a bowl of holy water, washing the dead, or preparing the native cuisine for visiting clergy (Goan prawn curries for foreign bishops and aloo gosht for common priests from Punjab). You will have to read this book to find out who Alice marries and why, and what happens to her in the end.
Like Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Mohammed Hanif’s last book, A case of exploding mangoes, was also one of those dark satires which, even more than this one, could be confusing to someone who didn’t realise that it was supposed to be funny. After reading and enjoying it, I interviewed Mohammed Hanif for my Sunday Mid-day column. In answer to my question

You’ve managed to write a book that’s Pakistani only because the story and characters are Pakistani, but is truly international in style, language and plot in a relaxed and friendly way. How about some advice for the thousands of writers from the subcontinent who are trying to achieve something similar?

He mailed me this lovely reply:

Are there really so many of them? I think the only advice I can give is that they should read, they should read a lot. And if they are lucky enough to get the inspiration and actually write something then they should print it out, and read it and see if it’s as good as it sounded in their head.

I had an amusing experience while reading Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. I happened to be reading Serious Men by Manu Joseph aloud to my friend Gladys at the same time. I had read, enjoyed and admired it very much a few months before and was getting a chance to do so again, and was very happy to see Gladys listening with rapt attention, admiring the turn of phrase and bone-accurate descriptions of Bombay life, and completely absorbed in the plot from one week to the next.
Manu Joseph is also a journalist, very expressive, and extremely funny; these basic features are common to both writers. However, reading Mohammed Hanif’s book and observing Gladys’s reaction as I read her Manu Joseph’s, I felt a bit as if I was watching an Indo-Pak cricket match and thinking, “Yay! We’re winning! We’re winning!”
One of the little things I enjoyed in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is the use of the expression Charya Ward. The Charya Ward is a forgotten loony bin (no easing-in time, no guided tours, no orientation course). I recognized ‘Charya’: it’s a Sindhi word, and I knew what it meant, along with all its implications and baggage, and felt happy to see it written down in a book that would be read by many people all around the world.

Remembering PG Wodehouse on his 130th birthday

The Code of the Watsas
I was sprawled on my bed, engrossed in the final episode of Sex and the City when Jeevan sidled in to tell me that my flight tomorrow was likely to be late.
“Fogs in Delhi, Batty-baba,” he said. “Thereby all flights in country being delayed.”
This just put the cap on it. Preeti would be livid. I had promised to pick up fresh stocks of Fortnums’ goose liver paté from Patel Stores, our friendly neighbourhood bania, and if I failed to arrive on t. – well, you know, hell hath no fury like a rakhi-sister scorned, what?
“Jeevan,” I said, “there is no time to be lost. “Get Captain Modi on the phone pronto.”
Homi was one of the best. We’d been at Lovedale together – shared our tuck, travelled home by Bombay-batch every hols, and what not. If ever there was a bloke who could get something done in this desperate situation, it was old Hormuze Modi.
“Hey Batty!” Homi’s mellifluous tones attacked me from the speaker phone. “Have you heard the latest on Ma Gupu?” and he proceeded to drone on and on about our old Geography teacher who apparently had been through some rather awful times but was now retired and last sighted vicinity of Coonoor. Now I loved old Nergis Barucha, and the sound of her bossy “Bharat Watsa! you will accompany me to the headmaster’s office!” was still enough to wake me in a cold sweat from deepest slumber, but this was not at all the time for this kind of thing.
“Listen, Homi old chap, will you be quiet for a second and allow me to confide the most awful problem a man ever had to face?”
“Oh no Batty, not the clap again,” Homi said worriedly. He was one of those few chaps who really cared about a chap.
“Worse,” I assured him. “Preeti’s having her annual bash in Goa tomorrow, and the boat pulls out at 7 pm sharp. Jeevan tells me my flight is likely to be late. And you know what Preeti’s like. If I don’t get the paté there on time I’m for it. Do you think you could get the old Lear out?”
“Any time, Batty, you know that, but tomorrow is Binaifer’s annual candle-light vigil, that Save the Dolphins thing she’s been doing ever since she was three – so sorry old boy.”
You know, if anything ever did get me to tie the k. it would only be the hope that a cute thing like little Binaifer Modi might spring from the Watsa loins. I sighed and put the phone down heavily – then picked it up again.
Arvind and I had lunched at the Bombay Gym last week, and he’d let slip his new acquisition – a hovercraft, don’t you know. Surely he would – ?
But Melissa, Arvind’s delicate half, was out of sorts. “Bai trouble,” Arvind confided. “Poor Melissa apparently told her very clearly to cut the kakdi gol-gol but she went and served it cut lamba-lamba. I’d really better go in and check whether she’s regained consciousness, she’s been lying in a faint since lunchtime. Pip-pip, old man.”
Sighing, I now tried calling Rajeev, Preeti’s second husband,
No. 2 (ha ha, nice coincidence there) at one of these enormous oil corporations that have their own helicopters and what not. He was a jolly good chap, though an old Mayo boy, batch of 1968 – to tell you the truth I like him a darn sight better than any other husband Preeti’s had. But the silky voice that answered his direct line said he was busy with Japanese visitors. Out on the golf course I’ll be bound. Never can understand how these oil fellows ever get any work done, honestly.
I had my hand on the phone again when I heard a small cough. I let go of the phone. Jeevan, as you may have long suspected, was the brains of the family. I knew from the expression on his face that my worries would soon be relegated to an earlier period.
“Don’t mind it Baba, but how about we can try the Gidwani-madam?” he asked solemnly.
I looked at him aghast.
“What, that old battleaxe!” I stared at him haughtily, waiting for an explanation. Old Jeevan was clearly losing it. It was all that fish he ate – mercury poisoning, don’t you know. The Gidwani bird, to put it plainly, was the rudest, ugliest old harridan that dined out every night of her life on a bridge story. The one and only time my dear departed mater and pater had her over had been one fateful evening seventeen years ago. I had just learnt to play myself, and they’d called me in to make up the fourth.
“Do you play Stayman?” Mrs Gidwani asked me. I did, of course – I mean to say, what sort of bounder doesn’t play Stayman. But instead of responding with a simple “One no trump” which would have sufficed the likes of you and me, she gave a loud cackle and started telling us about the time she’d sat down to a rubber at the Willingdon and politely asked her partner, “Do you play Stayman?” To which the gentleman had apparently replied: “Madam, I AM Stayman.”
Now I mention this only so that you will have some idea of the vintage of this Gidwani. But while one expects that temperance and wisdom shall follow great age, as the night the day, our Gidwani has only got successively more ghastly. I shudder as I reveal this awful fact but since that evening she has gazed at Jeevan with covetous eyes and I assure you I have lived in utmost dread these seventeen years.
Now Jeevan unfolded his plan, “Baba, you are knowing every time Gidwani-madam is telling to me her desire for man-servant like my good self and her intention of ample reimbursement?”
My eyes narrowed. What on earth was the man trying to get at? Surely, surely Jeevan wasn’t suggesting that he sacrifice himself to the Gidwani just so that Preeti could get the paté on time? Where on earth was his sense of proportion!
“I am talk to Raju, Gidwani-madam’s driver,” Jeevan continued, heedless of the young master’s visible agitation. “They are having first-class new SUV, and Raju is anxious for opportunity to travel on new, improved NH4. I can be telling to her that I will go now itself and tomorrow morning bringing for madam young chap for household work from my native village of Karad. I have speak to my sister and one fellow is there able and willing. From Karad Goa is nearby only. Raju will quickly dropping your good self at Preeti madam’s place late night. Next morning we shall be coming back with servant boy for Gidwani madam.”
By golly, the chap was a genius! “Quick, Jeevan,” I cried, “chuck some things in a bag and let’s push off!”
“I have took liberty of already packing bag, baba,” smiled Jeevan.
So that’s how it happened, and there was great happiness and r. all around. Preeti’s paté got to the party well in time. Mrs Gidwani was delighted with the bloke from Karad. Melissa soon recovered – it had only been one of her regular migraines – has them every now and again don’t you know. Even sweet little Binaifer managed to save the dolphins. I mean to say, I was going to Goa anyway, and a chap’s got to do what a chap’s got to do, what?

The Songbird on my Shoulder by Saaz Aggarwal

The Songbird on my Shoulder by Saaz Aggarwal
black-and-white fountain has been silent for a few weeks, having been working on producing a book of its own.
The Songbird on my Shoulder is a collection of short pieces, most of which have been in print before in mainstream Indian publications. Put together, they form a worldview – and in particular views of Mumbai and Pune – from the perspective of an upper-middle class woman in India. Aiming to be funny, poignant, and thought provoking, this unorthodox mid-life autobiography has a revealing section towards the end in the simulated voices of characters such as Bridget Jones, Bill Bryson and Dave Barry.
For a preview, click here.
This book has blurbs from some remarkably important people – in a transparent attempt to prove to readers and critics that it aims to fall into the ‘takin-the-piss’ genre rather than the more popular ‘wannabe’ one.
The Songbird on my Shoulder will be launched in Pune on 8 October and available in bookstores and online shortly thereafter.

A free man by Aman Sethi

Like a journey to the moon
This book tells the story of Mohammed Ashraf, a day-wage worker at Bara Tooti, a place in Delhi where people go to hire labour for construction work. Written by Aman Sethi over a period of five years during which he spent days at a time with Ashraf and his friends, it is partly a diary of his experiences and observations, and partly descriptive narrative. Like the best biographies, this book gives a strong sense not just of the person, his inner strength and demons, but also his geography, culture, politics, and the fabric of society which he inhabits. And Aman Sethi has pieced together this history like a jigsaw puzzle from a number of conversations, much contradictory information, sudden revelations; he has coloured it with his own feelings, insights, and contextual information.
Some people believe that the life of a mazdoor is equal parts azadi and akelapan: independence and solitude. And sometimes Aman Sethi feels he may have asked too many questions:

It’s bad form to keep asking people about pasts that they are reluctant to confront. At Bara Tooti people come and go all the time. A man could get up from a drinking session, walk down the road for a piss, keep walking till he reached the railway station, hop onto a train, and return after a year without anyone really missing him.

But what about tickets?

‘You don’t need tickets. If the checker doesn’t come, you travel for free. If you get caught, you simply go to jail.’ Jail, according to Ashraf – who has never been to one – is an acceptable way of spending three months of a life in exchange for a short train ride. ‘They don’t make you work if you are in for less than six months,’ he claims. All you do is eat and roam the premises.’

It’s a complicated journey that Aman Sethi takes us on, exploring Mohammed Ashraf’s life. How did he get to be head kasai of Fauji Halal Shop in Malad, Mumbai? Never mind – we learn here fascinating details of why speed is crucial for anyone working there.
As Ashraf goes about finishing his half bottle of Everyday,at the haunt of a successful woman entrepreneur, the memory of an Everyday hangover has prompted Aman Sethi to refuse politely. We learn that new recruits often shun this intoxicating brew, in favour of more bombastic brands like Hulchul that shake the very foundations of a man’s being; Jalwa Spiced Country Liquor that speaks of youth, fire and passion; Toofan, infused with the pent-up vigour and vitality of an impending storm; and Ghadar Desi that is a perfect antidote to colonial oppression.
Sitting at the chowk, trying to look sober and employable, Ashraf and Lalloo are saved by the lucky charm he saves for such situations: his ‘kandome’.

The kandome is a broad, heavy brush with long, thick bristles encrusted with paint. The bright red handle is solid wood and fits just right. It is the most useless brush Ashraf owns: it’s too heavy and soaks up too much paint. ‘I bought it when I was just starting out. It looks like a brush a professional would use.’
A well-stocked bag is a sign of tajurba, experience. A maalik likes a workman with impressive-looking tools. At the chowk, where safediwallahs are arranged like mannequins in a shop window, the maalik is drawn to the one with five, six, seven, brushes in his bag. He thinks this man is a true karigar; he has a different brush for each surface. It’s not a brush, it’s a badge of honour. “It’s just like a kandome, Aman bhai. On TV you may stand next to Shabana Azmi and promise to use it, but you know you never will.’

These are people who live on the fringe. They have come to Bara Tooti from pasts in different places around the country. Their lives are expendable to those around them, even to themselves. Each has a different story. The one that chilled me most was the one told to Aman Sethi by Guddu, a young man of twenty-two, who ended up in Bara Tooti when his first dream ended in disappointment. Tired of working as newspaper boys at Lucknow Railway Station, Guddu and a friend took a train to Jaipur in search of a hospital that bought kidneys for about two lakh rupees. ‘We would spend the money in full masti, and when it finished, buy a ticket to Bombay and become full-time beggars outside one of the mandirs where all the film stars come to pray.’
And Aman Sethi hauls us, agog, to the Beggars Court at Sewa Kutir, the place where designated government employees bring beggars to trial and punishment. Begging in the national capital is a serious offence, and under the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, the Department of Welfare can arrest anyone ‘having no visible means of subsistence and wandering about, or remaining in a public place in a condition or manner, [that made] it likely that the person doing so exists by soliciting or receiving alms’. How would these skilled government employees ever know the difference between any of the Bara Tooti majoors and a beggar? Aha – they certainly can, it’s easy, read this book to learn the unmistakable signs.
Unlike the Beggars Court, which has an office with a signboard, the kidney snatchers of Ashraf’s nightmares are harder for Aman Sethi to find. But he did meet and interview some of their victims whose stories are also given here.
Grimmest of all are the wards of RBTB, the Rajan Babu Tuberculosis Hospital where hapless families leave victims of drug-resistant tuberculosis. To get discharged doesn’t mean the person is cured. But it is not an entirely bad thing either – because even if someone is dead, or even if he or she will now carry the infection out to others – it does mean that a bed is vacated for another languishing patient. To visit RBTB is to risk illness and possibly death – but it’s certainly safer than driving an autorickshaw. One of my favourite parts of this book is when Aman Sethi’s sister visits one of the Bara Tooti gang there, to bring him underwear, a mug, a bucket, and some soap.
The writing in this book is exceptional.

The smell of blood is overwhelming; it prowls along the alleyways of Kasaipura like the ghosts of the buffaloes that lie dismembered before me. The floor is sticky – a chip-chip texture that holds my shoe soles just a fraction more than the tarmac road outside, but could as easily turn slick and treacherous. It’s a bit like walking on congealed blood – in fact, that’s exactly what it is.

And here’s a description that felt to me like poetry:

Money: About one hundred rupees.
The half bottles are over. Fifty rupees have been spent on something, but on what exactly? Ashraf isn’t sure. There was some food – boiled eggs, maybe a roti or two? With dal. If there was roti, there must have been dal. Possibly a cup of tea. Six rupees were spent on squishy packets of water – that is certain.
The pauwas, or quarter bottles, are still intact; Ashraf keeps them in his breast pocket. He keeps the money in his shoes. He wraps his shoes in his pants. He puts his pants under his head – like a pillow. He throws a shawl over himself.

Even the translations show the author’s flesh-connection with language. The Urdu word kaafi Aman Sethi describes as, “Enough: not ‘just about enough’ but closer to ‘more than enough’ – enough with an emphasis”.
Towards the end of this book, Aman Sethi becomes involved with Ashraf’s life in a way that builds suspense for the reader and brings an experience of the terrible pain and cruelty of life. I think it unlikely that anyone who reads this book will ever get any closer to someone like Mohammed Ashraf than between these pages.

Desperate in Dubai by Ameera Al Hakawati

Arabian Nights comes to 2011
I’ve never been to Dubai so I dived straight in and this book turned out to be just what I needed to make yesterday, my first Sunday after months without enormous looming deadlines, pleasant and relaxing. The four Dubai women here give a good tour of the city and lifestyle, and though it added character that the book was strewn with phrases like “wudhu for Salaatul Fajr” and infused with the intoxicating scent of “bakhoor”, I did sort of wonder wistfully what they meant.
Dubai is a place teeming with single women on the make – most, but not all, just looking for the financial security of a stable, uncomplicated marriage. (And, depending on the woman, the man could be fat, old, balding, ugly, smelly, obnoxious – even short.) It’s not normal for a decent Arab guy to just leave two girls alone in a club without offering to drive them home, or at the very least, see them to a taxi. And Arabic hospitality is remarkable – they are generous with their time, attention and material possessions. Says one of the characters,

I can’t imagine being invited to join in someone else’s family picnic in Springfield Park. In fact, they’d probably nick our stuff when we weren’t looking.

In hijab, you get labelled as that “Muslim girl” rather than the “Indian girl” or the “short girl” or any other part of your identity. And:

Emirati men are incredibly thick-skinned when chasing their prey, and usually never take no for an answer. They firmly believe that a woman who ignores their attention is simply feigning indifference. They understand a downward gaze to be a prentece of chastity, an open car window an invitation to sinful acts, and a direct look a declaration of lust.

And you know all that stuff about family honour, right?
The bread in Dubai is awful – but it’s a place you don’t have to watch what you eat because all food is halal food. Your salary is linked not to your experience or competence – but to your nationality. And you can get away wearing huge Chanel sunglasses even at nine in the evening.
As this book progressed, I was drawn into the plot, agog as secrets unfolded, suspense built and collision was imminent. Most of the women characters, even the ones painted negatively, were likable and worthy of admiration – or sympathy. And in a book like this, what can you expect but the promise of a happy ending? So I didn’t like the fact that some last links in the elaborate plot had been left dangling. And while the language is racy and flows beautifully, neater editing would have ensured that “impart” was not used instead of “impose”; removed phrases like “amount of men”; and resulted in fewer confusing sentences like

I glance back at the couple and realize that the guy is Daniel, her Daniel, and the way he is looking at her suggests that their relationship isn’t purely platonic.

I didn’t much care for the nicknames of some characters – Lady Luxe, Goldenboy, Mr Delicious and others – though I suppose veils do make a subject more fascinating in a way.
But I did very much enjoy this book’s fabulous – rather Shakespearean – coincidences.
What I liked best about this book is the pervading sense of religion as a means to strengthen and stay in touch with your inner self – rather than something that isolates you from a world that views you with revulsion as violent and unpredictable.

The vague woman's handbook by devapriya roy

Neither here nor there
I started reading this book because a friend passed it on to me saying she had quite enjoyed it.
Why I continued reading till I reached the end I have no idea, but I did.
The Vague Woman’s Handbook is a brilliant and attractive but basically misleading title. It is not a handbook. I looked for, and didn’t find, guidelines for instructional use of how to cope with a woman’s vagueness – your own or others’ – or turn an asset into it, or anything related to instructional use or application of women’s vagueness.
Then, there is a basic dichotomy in the content. It is a contemporary story, with a number of progressive features. The young couple – neither is even 24 yet – are setting up a cosy establishment all their own and are coming to terms with a life of their own choosing. There’s a teeny bit of wish fulfilment here because they have broken away from their parents’ oppressive demands and are experiencing exhilarating, though sometimes painful, independence. I liked the other main character in this book – an endearing woman more than twice the age of our heroine, and the fact that the two became best friends.
However, the other basic fabric of this book is its horribly archaic language. Compressed between the fab title and the trendy author photo is an alarmingly large collection of yesterday phrases and usages. Can anyone in post-1991 India relate to the concept of “church mice”? With qualifiers like “for one” and “not exactly”; expressions like “voila” (used seriously and not as parody); an overdose of coy parentheses, exclamation marks and italics used for emphasis, I felt as if I’d suddenly arrived in Blyton-Wodehouse Wonderland.
There’s something else that rather alarmed me about this book. It’s a story about a young married couple – and for heaven’s sake they never have sex! Not even the slightest hint of it. Perhaps if this book was written specifically for a readership of under-tens, it could work. Otherwise I’m sorry to say this young couple is a very poor role model for the younger generation :-)
This author has the skill to create a plot, weave believable characters, establish a good beginning, middle, and end – and even look glamorous in a jacket photo. I sincerely hope that her language and situations mature to produce more realistic fiction of a higher literary quality in future.

Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga

No Booker for this one
The White Tiger was going to be a hard act to follow. Still, I was disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this book as much. It wasn’t just the story and narrative style that I found less gripping. Aravind Adiga says he loves Bombay more than any other place – but I thought that while he wrote about Delhi and the rural north like an insider, in this book he is an observer, not a participant.
I did like some turns of phrase and descriptions. Mango sellers wait by the station for returning commuters – each mango a heartfelt apology from the city for the state of its trains.
It’s the new India, where construction workers’ children clean their teeth using toothpaste, though still only by the water pump under the tree.
And there’s that shopkeepers’ refrain: a man must want something. Everyone who lives here knows that the islands will shake, and the mortar of the city will dissolve, and Bombay will turn again into seven small stones glistening in the Arabian Sea, if it ever forgets to ask the question: What do you want?
Shah, a ruthless land developer is touring a building site, musing. A worker’s family was spending the nights on the unfinished fourth floor, which one day a technology executive or a businessman would occupy. Shah touched the workers’ washing, which hung in the alcoves where Versace would soon hang; their little bars of soap and detergent did the work that expensive perfumes would soon do.
Folding a twenty-rupee note, he left it near a bar of soap as a surprise for the worker’s wife.

Is this book about an old schoolteacher in Bombay, a lonely man who lives by his principles?
Is it about a “housing society” where people from different backgrounds, different ideas, different values, different aspirations – different ways of speaking the same language – live side by side, because that’s the way things work in Bombay?
Is it about drab lives and what greed can do to them?
A man has to bend his rules a little to enjoy life in Mumbai. Just a little. Now and then. But the law in Mumbai was not blind: far from it, it had two faces and four working eyes and saw every case from both sides and could never make up its mind.
Powerful, wealthy men – dying of lung disease. Ruthless men with complicated relationships devoid of love – but employees so loyal and devoted that they sign cheques for them as part of their job, and go home to their scrupulous single-room shanty dwellings.

On page 301, after three-fourths of the book was over, I finally caught a glimpse of the real hero of this book: a gaunt, middle-aged man in a dirty blue shirt.

He looked Muslim because of his beard. Masterji guessed he was one of those he had just seen pulling carts on the road. The labourer picked a biscuit from the stainless-steel plate and chewed. Done with it, he breathed, picked a second biscuit, and chewed. Each movement of his bony jaws spoke of fatigue; the permanent fatigue of men who have no one to care about them when they work and no one to care about them after they work. The thin body broadcast a raw minimal silence. Middle-aged? No. His hair was greying at the edges, but youth had only recently been exorcised from his face. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the most. Masterji watched this young man with sunken, shocked eyes and barely enough strength to lift one milk biscuit at a time. This is his daily life. Pulling that cart and coming here for these biscuits, he thought.
The tired Muslim man returned Masterji’s gaze. Their eyes met like foreign languages, and the labourer, without moving his lips, spoke at last. Have you never before noticed how many are all alone?

Geek nation by Angela Saini

Rich source material, shabby output
This book sets out to investigate the Indian characteristic of geekiness. To write it, Angela Saini explored situations and people engaged in many different and fascinating aspects of science and technology in India: the international science and maths Olympiads; electronic waste dumps; software companies and associations - from the giants to technology startups; advanced technology universities; biotech institutes; Vedic science; forensic laboratories; tuberculosis clinics; nuclear reactors and even the Lavasa Corporation.
There’s a lot of information here, and much of it is interesting.
However, I found the reporting was superficial and strewn with howlers. Here are a few.
Reliance is a mobile phone company. Really?
Once upon a time the shop buildings of Jaipur were painted red, but they have now faded to a "peaceful" pink. Really?
Angela Saini drove down the streets of Mumbai in “a crumpled black Ambassador taxi”. Really? An Ambassador?
India was under British rule for eighty-nine years. Really? And the Great Indian Mutiny (or First War of Indian Independence if you prefer) which happened in 1857, was a mutiny (or war) against whom?
Though these are circumstantial details unrelated to the science information, it left a bad taste and tainted the authenticity of this project.
From this book, I learnt that:

• the Indian system of education encourages dependence and rote learning, and there is little effort to provoke original thought;
• young people in India sacrifice their leisure time, their sanity, and sometimes even their lives, to examination results;
• infrastructure in even our best academic institutions is weak and outdated;
• Indian IT guys have poor general knowledge;
• we have no adequate system of checks in research, and with our tradition of superstition and ignorance, we provide a lush setting for pseudoscience and crackpot ideas to flourish;
• more people in India will one day own mobile phones than can write their own names;
• the emerging environment of awareness and opportunities is likely to enable Indians to contribute new scientific ideas in the future even if they never did before …

Basically, nothing any of us didn’t know before.

The other thing I found distasteful was the way the author mocks her sources. Do we really need to know that Professor Vijay Singh, a former teacher who now runs the country’s International Science Olympiad training centre has a slight lisp and likes to be dramatic? That Ananth Krishnan, the “person in charge of innovation” at Tata Consultancy Services, has a balding crown and enormous head, and a voice “that reminds me of Kermit the Frog from The Muppet Show”? That Yusuf Motiwala, promoter of a technology startup, has a laptop that Angela Saini heard “squealing like a banshee” and that he “presses the computer between his palms and gives it a hard thud” to stop the sound?

With a smashing cover like this, and an author who has a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University, and is an award-winning science journalist – I assumed this was going to be a great book. I was disappointed.

Murder in the Ashram by Kathleen McCaul

Dirty, murdering, holy river
I wouldn’t call this book an enormous success as a murder mystery.
There were no parts of it that had me glued to the pages, turning faster and faster in a tizzy to find out what happens next. To be honest, the fact that there was so little suspense is not the only reason why I’m not sure whether this can be called a murder mystery at all.
But while I wouldn’t call Kathleen McCaul a genius thriller writer, I did feel that this was a brilliant travel book, exploring such matters as the quaint food superstitions of northern India (you’re not really supposed to eat chikki in summer … and it's very, very dangerous to eat yoghurt at night) and local notions of hospitality, portraying them in a very natural way without appearing to poke fun:

“… er … my wife is out of station now you see. She’s not at home so I couldn’t offer you anything good to eat.”
He didn’t sound suspicious, just slightly uncomfortable. He wasn’t the kind of man to revel in having a girl come alone to his home.
“It’s a shame I can’t meet your wife. I would have loved to. But I don’t want anything to eat at all, honestly.”
…
He paused to think. “Ah. Why not. Please come. I’ll send the boy out for crisps and juice at least.”

The scenery is spectacular too:

It wasn’t so hard to find the paan wallah’s house, even without his name. We walked along the lanes into the heart of the slum, picking on a benign-looking man, sitting smoking a bidi cigarette. Shruti asked him if he knew the guy who made paan outside the Hanuman Temple. He thought for a moment, took a drag on his bidi and shouted into a nearby house. A woman ducked out of the door with a ladle in her hand. She thought for a minute before pointing towards a small store, squeezed between two houses, just a counter made from bits of wood. Her husband got up off his haunches and padded over to the shop where he had a chat and bought a pack of biscuits. His wife brought a steel plate out of the house and he placed the biscuits out carefully before sharing them between us all. He told Shruti the shopkeeper knew the guy we wanted, bought paans from him for festival. He lived a few streets down. A small boy scurrying past was hoodwinked into taking us directly to the paanwallah’s home.

I particularly liked the two stereotype Indian journalists that feature in this book. One is a young Delhi wannabe star reporter with a New York accent (she got her degree at Columbia) and the other has neither talent, aptitude nor curiosity but plenty of money to buy expensive high-tech equipment (his father is “in steel”).
This book is a work of fiction, so I was surprised that it featured a few real people and institutions – for example the erstwhile Rajneesh Ashram in Pune, and darling of the Delhi press, Mayor Sheila Dikshit.
The scene I admired most was when the heroine of this book, a journalist herself, is asking what happened to the money she was offered for the article commissioned by Guy Black on the foreign desk at Telegraph, and Guy Black’s slimy responses – so typical of the way freelance writers are treated in every country.
I thought I might mail Kathleen McCaul and ask her if she’d really had something like that happen to her but decided not to because, what the hell, there’s hardly a freelancer I know who hasn’t.

Theodore Boone - The Abduction by John Grisham

The Disappointment
I’m a sucker for John Grisham and was waiting eagerly for this one. When a complimentary copy arrived from the publisher yesterday, well in advance of the one I had “pre-ordered” online the day I saw it advertised, it was a moment of great happiness and I threw everything else aside to enjoy it.
Theo is as cute as ever and his best friend, April, has gone missing. The first half of this book is gripping and plausible and the hunt for April fraught with tension and poignancy.
Other characters you might also remember from the first one, Young Lawyer, make their appearance – notably Theo’s Uncle Ike. And our young lawyer makes a very effective appearance in Animal Court - yes, a place we’ve enjoyed visiting before.
The judges of the Stratten County Courthouse still have endearing nicknames, and Theo’s parents are still as warm, wise, career-focussed, careful to remind him that he's still just a kid and has got to school every day, and generally as appropriate role models as before. Sadly, though, the plot runs thin and though I think this book is meant for kids ten years old and up, I doubt if even a six-year-old, even one who was dropped on its head as a baby, would be engaged with what we have here.
Even Grisham’s adult books can be enjoyed by younger readers. I know that the kids I gave Young Lawyer to read went right on, hooked, to read the older Grisham classics and loved them. They are going to leap at this book and fall away sadly disappointed and disillusioned.

What annoyed me most of all was that the words on the inside of the pages were so close to the binding that to read them you have to make an extra effort to stretch the pages out, and I wondered whether every edition would plague readers thus - or only this one, which is only for sale in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

1/7 Bondel Road by Gautam Benegal

Tutul’s stories
Gautam Benegal added me on facebook, we had many friends in common, and when I saw his paintings, particularly his Mumbai Irani café ones, I was impressed indeed. Last week I saw this book on his wall and ordered it online for just Rs145. It turned out to be good value for money.
1/7 Bondel Road is a collection of short stories set in Calcutta in the 1970s. The cover design, the layout and the paper quality are all excellent. Best of all, this book is well written and I found most of the stories to be of a very high quality. They give a vivid experience of a region of this world in a particular section of time.
In the 1970s, the impressive industrial base developed by the British in and around Calcutta was on its last legs and factories were closing. The city is full of ditches and other depredations of the CMDA, the Calcutta Merry Diggers’ Association, and even the street cleaners have heard about Venice. To cut the cellotape holding a box closed, a smart kid would run and bring a blade, unscrewing his father’s razor to get it out. Keshto is opening a fish plate shop and his clients will be the Bengali taxi drivers who generally stopped to answer “Nature’s call” near the corner of the park in Ballygunge Phari. To install a black-and-white television in your home is a profound ceremony that involves confusion, much passion, and involvement from all in the neighbourhood. Sit and watch and you will see a new Baul (till then just a fake because he was only a Sharma and not a Das) take birth on stage. And also a cyclist who will not stop for three days (food, bath, big job, small job, all on the cycle itself) to raise money to buy medicines for his six-month-old son.

These stories are told by a child, and when I asked Gautam Benegal on facebook chat how much of it came from his own childhood, he replied, “Quite a bit, actually...”
So you might as well know that Tutul’s father is a well-known artist and he has an extremely annoying elder brother who reads the Communist Manifesto at the dinner table and writes “Enjoyed the Cubist undercurrent in your work” in a visitors’ book at of their father’s friend's exhibition.

Two of the stories made me laugh like anything. In one, Tutul is travelling by train and speaks English in a fake accent, pretending to be from Marlinspike Hall in Somerset (his parents are settled there; they sell coal to Newcastle). His copassengers' responses are brilliant.

In the other, Tutul, despairing at ever getting an objective critique of his artistic output, invites a pair of children street singers in to look at his work. “Hahah…,” said Gautam Benegal, “Yeah...that one is 100 per cent genuine...”

Bangalore calling by Brinda S Narayan

Call Centre Tapestry
I picked this book up without much enthusiasm, finding the title and cover unappealing, and the thought, “Yawn, could there be something here that Chetan Bhagat might have missed?”
Even after reading a few pages I was still thinking pompously, “Hm, yes, while that one could be called Great Fun – we’d have to use adjectives like ‘pleasurable’, ‘enjoyable’ or ‘delightful’ for this.”
As I read, a more appropriate comparison struck me: if One Night in a Call Centre was a McDonald’s burger, then Bangalore Calling was a wedding feast by the best caterer in town.
The book opens with Yvette leaning on the trainer’s desk in Room #3 and appraising the agents as they stream in after a tea break.
Yvette is an interesting person – intelligent, self-contained, and with all the attributes of a good narrator. In the next chapter, however, the focus changes and our new protagonist is Panduranga, a driver of one of the call centre’s pick-up cabs - and we get to learn something about his family, his aspirations, and what he thinks about as he drives.
It wasn’t until I had read another two chapters, one giving us a view of the life of Natalie, an American woman who works with the American client of the Bangalore call centre and whom we had met briefly through the eyes of both Yvette and Panduranga; and the other showing us how another young woman, Bitty, copes with her life and her job as an agent at the call centre, that I understood how this book worked. Through a number of very different characters it takes us into different homes and minds and through them gives a good look at different Indian cultures and lifestyles and how each of the people representing it has reacted to the American influence and aspirations introduced by their association with the call centre.
Bangalore Calling is very well written and the story compelling. I wondered why it had not received more fanfare and felt curious to know more about the writer so I mailed her to ask from where the idea to write this book came from. She replied,

I was working as a quality consultant with a global call centre, and like Yvette, the trainer in Bangalore Calling, I was intrigued and disturbed by the identity changes I was witnessing. By then, I had worked for nearly fifteen years in various corporate jobs and I had a gnawing sense that I should be doing something else. So I took a sabbatical and conducted research at three centres. Bangalore Calling is the outcome of my study.

The publishers of this book tell us that its author “has worked for fifteen years in the corporate sector. She holds a BA in Economics from Wellesley College and an MA in Communication from Stanford University. She currently lives in Bangalore.”
After looking into the souls of Brinda S Narayan’s characters, I felt this was just a bit too tame and complained that readers of a book so strewn with anthropology deserved a less clinical description of its author. She said:

I've always been a wide reader and I'm curious about how larger forces act on families and individuals. Having been a working mother for several years, I've also been fascinated by the interactions between life and work. Besides reading, I dabble with paints at a very amateur level. I'm married and have two kids.

I was now curious to hear about Brinda S Narayan’s next book, which I look forward to reading, but all she would tell me was

I'm currently working on a novel, and though it's too early to talk about the theme, I can tell you this: it's not set at a workplace.

Khallas by J Dey

Goodbye, Dey
Jyotirmoy Dey, Editor-Investigations of Mid-Day, had worked in crime reporting and investigation for nearly twenty years when he was shot dead in broad daylight in a crowded Mumbai locality yesterday by four unidentified men on two motorbikes. The newspapers this morning are filled with the shock and horror of the journalistic fraternity, “shock waves” in Bollywood, and calls for the resignation of Maharashtra home minister RR Patil and Mumbai police commissioner Aroop Patnaik.
Dey had received death threats in the past, and the Mid-Day editor Sachin Kalbaug is reported to have said that there had been instances when Dey’s story ideas were considered too dangerous for his own safety and abandoned.
Nobody knows yet who killed J Dey, or why exactly.
I was associated with Sunday Mid-day as a columnist off and on since 1995, but had never met Dey and only knew him through reputation as a rather tall, quiet and popular person, and a meticulous and sincere journalist.
When I read this book three years ago, I had vivid images flashing before my eyes. Through the placid and descriptive but drama-filled text, I could clearly visualise characters who looked and spoke like clichéd Bollywood characters Loin Ajit, bald-headed Shetty, and Inspector Arun Bhosle from Page Three. Amidst loud ha-ha-ha’s, guns rang out in the distance and even Vivek Oberoi reared his cute little head from Shoot Out at Lokhandwala. It struck me that for most of us, images of Mumbai’s underworld of crime come primarily from Bollywood. J Dey, however, was deeply and starkly immersed in its reality. I felt, as I read, that it was a world that did not just provide him material for his reports but was one that fascinated him as a privileged viewer.
Khallas documents some of its unique and peculiar facets. Its alphabetically-listed entries cover all kinds of gangland trivia, slang, and historical information.
To take bus number eleven means to walk. Telling someone to bring their camera means you’re asking them to carry a gun. And don’t forget the capsules – the bullets, that is. Applying cricket code, a four is to scare while a six is to kill. Chabbis (26) refers to a young promiscuous girl, whereas Atthais (28) is an alcoholic.
“Daddy-Mummy” are the dreaded gangster Arun Gawli and his wife Asha. The Arthur Road jail is affectionately termed “Guesthouse”, and we learn here which of the gang lords and their henchmen, while inside, lie on their bunks reading James Hadley Chase only to replicate crimes described in the books when they’re out. The way to the underworld don’s heart is surely through his stomach, claims this book – adding that it’s actually the use of dabba as conduit for messages and contraband that makes the dabbawala so popular.
“Shopping kar le beta” is the crafty technique of paying out little sums of pocket money to lure innocent recruits into the gang. It could get a college boy doing a look-out or passing weapons, and unwittingly becoming trapped into this lifestyle forever.
We also learn from this book that Mumbai don Chhota Rajan’s gang believes they are true patriots and greet one another with “Jai Hind!” Of other gangs, we meet the Golden Gang (all members wore gold ornaments), the Diamond Gang (who presumably wanted to be considered better than their Golden rivals), the Pathan Gang (their stunts would make you smile if there wasn’t murder involved as well), and others. Interestingly, the rolls, besides the stereotype Shettys, Shakeels and Gawdes, include the more white-collar (and upper caste) surnames of Kulkarni, Joshi and Joglekar.
Along with the horror and sorrow at the loss of Dey I feel sad that Khallas is an unfortunate word because it means “finished” and is used as callous slang to indicate that someone is no more.

Priya by Namita Gokhale

Been there, done that
I’d never read anything by Namita Gokhale before, but had always viewed her with respect as a founding director of the wonderful Jaipur Literature Festival. So when I received this book, I was disconcerted to see that the publishers had placed it inside a cover that screamed “Yaah! Chick-lit! So there!”
Still, this did not prepare me for the mediocre idiom that populates this book. I read intently, waiting for it to improve.
Priya is a married woman in her mid- or perhaps late-fifties. Her husband has risen in his profession as a lawyer and is presently a Minister of State for Food Processing, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Canneries. This makes him a mighty important person – and also tells us that the book is supposed to be a spoof. They lead a comfortable and privileged life in Delhi, which, Priya occasionally reminds us, sometimes leaves her out of her depth since she grew up a simple middle class girl in a “one BHK” apartment in what was then still Bombay. On the surface she copes well and there’s no doubt that Priya has her moments of wit and intelligence. However, her language is largely uninspired, and my eyebrows rose in cynical disbelief to see it described as “elegant prose” in this review.
The world Priya depicts, of people with an enormous sense of self-importance but skewed priorities, has been done before – most famously (as I thought then) by Shobhaa De. Any number of equally pointless books of dubious entertainment value have done the same.
One of the things I did like about this one were the descriptions of Priya’s interactions with her twin sons, which showed her to be sensitive, self-aware and a very “today” thinker. It’s also quite hilarious in parts. Still – why does anyone have to pretend that this is a good book, and worth reading? Priya made me feel a bit derailed – somewhat like its Mumbai local trains, which the author tries to route from Churchgate to VT.
And it made me rush to read Paro, a book Namita Gokhale wrote in 1984 and to which Priya is linked by having the same characters, 25 years later.
Here lurked another big surprise. Priya is the narrator of this book too, and, 25 years younger, has a much more substantial literary style! Not only that, Paro is a completely unselfconsciously Indian book. I was impressed to see that there was no exoticising or contextualising whatever – in fact, even less than in Priya (which explains "one BHK" but does not bother to clarify "hall".) Commonly-used Indian words were left un-italicised. Even expressions like “kitty party” remained unexplained. And this was 1984 – when Salman Rushdie was the first “Indian” writer to have won a Booker. When every Indian who wrote in Engish was writing for a western audience. And several years before Shobhaa De (then still Shobha; one of the issues this book takes a piss at is the trend of changing the spelling of your name on the advice of a high-profile “numerologist” – possibly a roguish dig at Shobhaa De herself) was somehow awarded the IPR for the subject of chalu lifestyles!
With renewed respect, I picked up Priya again to see whether I had misjudged it. Despite every effort, I still found it rather coarse, and embedded with just a few rare-jewel moments. Priya’s life experience and her perspective had changed, and - rather sadly - so had the way she expressed herself.
And I thought about Philip Roth who, as a young man, wrote about horny young Jewish men and their love problems, and as he aged wrote about cantankerous old Jewish men and their trysts with prostate enlargement. What remained constant were the texture of his prose and the grip of his story-telling prowess.