The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

A memorable journey
This is the story of a sea voyage from Sri Lanka to Britain, told by one of its passengers, looking back to his time on it as a young boy with two other boys of the same age. It’s a story filled with every element of drama – not just the usual seaboard romance and idle crime but such delicious features as terrifying illness, a mysterious prisoner, an intense young woman with a disability that turns out to play an essential role in the plot, a terrible storm that causes danger to the children and results in mayhem on board, an exotic herb garden that could bring the passengers intoxication – or even worse … and too many more to list here.
But this book is not all masala. I would read it over again for the way its language and imagery wash over your emotions and intellect. Here, as an example, is a small description of what the boys saw at Aden Market when they (slyly) went ashore:

I was used to the lush chaos of Colombo’s Pettah market, that smell of sarong cloth being unfolded and cut (a throat-catching odour), and mangosteens, and rain-soaked paperbacks in a bookstall. Here was a sterner world, with fewer luxuries. There was no overripe fruit in the gutters. There were in fact no gutters. It was a dusty landscape, as if water had not been invented. The only liquid was the cup of dark tea offered us by the carpet salesman, along with a delicious, permanently remembered almond sweet. Even if this was a harbour city, the air held hardly a particle of dampness. You had to look closely, for what might be buried away in a pocket – a petite vial of oil for a woman’s hair, folded within paper, or a chisel wrapped in oilcloth to protect its blade form the dust in the air.

Each short chapter offers vignettes: a look at the different characters, new angles, thoughts and insights. They hang well together and build together to form a powerful story. I was particularly impressed because Michael Ondaatje’s last book, Divisadero, was so bad – neither well written, nor interesting, nor, to my mind, any sort of redeeming feature.

In a book about childhood memories, one of the most critical attributes is the difference between what the child actually experienced and the perspective of the adult telling the story, and there is a brilliant balance between the two in this book. In the privileged position of being invisible to ship officials such as the Purser, the Head Steward, and the Captain, the boys learn about life. There’s an Australian woman they watch carefully, observing that none of the female members of their families behaved this way. Why is their table called the Cat’s Table? They discover that each one on it has an interesting reason for the journey – even if unspoken, or as yet undiscovered.

Yet, the table’s status was minimal while those at the Captain’s Table were constantly toasting one another’s significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

They experience total independence, smoking twigs broken off from a cane chair that they lit and sucked at. (Because of his asthma Ramadhin was not enthusiastic about this, but Cassius was eager that they should try to smoke the whole chair before the end of our journey.)
Most interesting of all is that our narrator’s name is Michael. So is this a true story of his own journey from childhood to adolescence? There’s a disclaimer at the end. And yet – in the author’s list of ‘thank-yous’, there are indications that much is rooted in reality.
It’s nice to wonder.

Conservation by Murder by Sudipt Dutta

The Royal Bengal tiger has always been a creature of fascination – but over the centuries, the Sundarbans tiger reserve has had limited appeal as a source of tiger study and sport. This book gives us a privileged view of the reserve, and strips away the confusion, myth and false data that further endangers the tiger by obscuring honest study of it.
Sudipt Dutta first visited the Sunderbans as a young journalist in 1985. Over the years he went back a number of times and was so committed to spending time in and studying the area that he built his own motor yacht and made it his home for 50 days each year between 2006 and 2010. Added to his own observation and analysis, in this book he also examines data from various sources and interviews officials and experts.
There is apparently a popular belief that the tigers that live here are different from other tigers physically and psychologically, and Sudipt Dutta explores each myth in detail, showing logically that these tigers are not different. In this book he also proves that the Sunderbans tigers are not natural man eaters and if they eat humans it is almost always because of poor management by forest officials.
There are two things I admired very much about this book. One is the author’s passion and dedication to his subject. He has used personal resources and gone out of his way to speak on this important subject, and he has taken the considerable risk of exposing bad governance in this area, in particular the tendency of forest officials to alter data to show themselves in a positive light. The second is the fact that, even though this book was peer reviewed and accepted for publication by a reputed international publisher, he set aside personal glory to bring out the book quickly but without fanfare rather than wait for the years the international publisher said it would take, a period the tiger might not even survive, without the practical means this book prescribes.
Sadly, however, this has meant that the book lacks in production values – its paper, print and edit quality are mediocre, though the cover image, by Devika ‘Inca’ Dutt is original and very striking.

Conditions Apply by Nishant Kaushik

That couple next door
I spotted this book on facebook and it looked interesting so I bought and read it. As the plot built up, I was impressed with the flow of events, realistic characters, and contemporary idiom. The central theme of this book is the relationship between a young urban couple in an arranged marriage and how the stresses of work and their expectations of each other shape their future. Subsidiary characters create an environment in which Nishant Kaushik is able to highlight a number of important issues in an unpretentious, effective way. As in life, daily tedium is unexpectedly peppered with drama and, occasionally, horrors of life. Some of the things I admired in this book were the brilliantly caricatured scenes from corporate life, insight into preoccupations with reality TV shows and their impact on individual lives, the chafing of community prejudice and how simply a new paradigm can remove it, and the gentle hint to prodigal offspring to reconsider the benefits of the parental bosom. Best of all was the simple understanding that 'love' might be as simple as ‘I like it when she’s at home’.

The Reluctant Detective by Kiran Manral

But what about the ghost?
Kiran Manral, I, and two other writers, Shital Mehra and Tishani Doshi, were on a panel together at an event for new books, Fresh off the Shelf, at the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai yesterday. We each read out a little from our respective books and answered audience questions. It was fun.
I had just finished reading The Reluctant Detective and wondered, when Kiran Manral introduced me to her husband and son before the event, how much of them I had already met in the book!
Kay, a young housewife and mother in Bombay, is the giddy-headed narrator. At first I found the language convoluted but once it had made me laugh aloud a couple of times, I decided to stop being judgemental and enjoy myself. The rapid-fire monologue is even in tone and describes the people and events in Kay’s life – her obsession with clothes, her hyperactive son (um – wonder where he gets that from), her neighbours, friends and rather serious husband. Check this.

I am a kind-hearted sensitive soul. I take stray cockroaches from my home and let them loose in the balcony, hoping they find other homes to inhabit, favourable wind conditions permitting. Before they hit the asphalt. It is not in my nature to splat them with a slipper. Murder and violence of any sort disturbs me. I cannot watch news bulletins without tears trickling down my face, and if by some chance of fate I land on a documentary on starving children, the world is guaranteed a full-fledged howling session.

A dialogue that had me in splits was between Kay and her housemaid Jamuna, when she instructs her not to disturb her unless there was need for immediate evacuation of the building.

Jamuna nodded the kind of nod she has when she values her life and limbs.
“Phone aaya toh?” she asked warily.
“Take a message,” I replied.
“Urgent bola to?” she persisted with the kind of attention to detail which has me pleased should she choose to use it to get that last bit of grime out from behind the door in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
“Saab ka number de do,” I replied in the kind of tone which brooked no further conversation. But not to Jamuna.
“Saab ne nahin uthaya to?” she went on.
I blew a mini fuse and did some yelling, and ended with closing the door hard and loud, and had the effect quite ruined with the child pushing the door open the next second and asking me to hop and shaoud laoudly agin so he could call his frens to watch.

There is even a dead body – two of them, actually – so I kept thinking that Kay was one of those Inspector Clousseau type bumbling detectives but was ultimately disappointed there because there’s no serious building up of suspense or the kind of dramatic revelations that one expects in a murder mystery.
At Kala Ghoda, Kiran explained that she had wanted to write about the specific demographic that she is immersed in – that of young, educated women who have chosen to devote their lives to their families rather than career. This she has done well – Kay is a magnificent example of this group with all her matching accessories, Wodehouse-Blyton-Austen language (including sharp spikes of Manral original), domestic staff, incessant tweets, and more. And The Reluctant Detective is a funny, enjoyable book – but not really a serious detective story.

The body in the back seat by Salil Desai

Murder mystery in my backyard
It’s always a pleasure to read a book set in a place you happen to be visiting. So … why did I pack this one in my things for Hampi? I think it was simply because I was so excited to discover a thriller writer who lived in my own city that I couldn’t bear to leave it behind. I had actually been reading a much-acclaimed ‘literary’ novel with a blurb by none other than Amy Tan on the cover! But that soon fell by the wayside. As I confessed to my (disappointed) husband, there’s no use in my pretending to be an intellectual – give me a good murder mystery any day.
And this did turn out to be gripping, well written and very local to Pune, which I particularly loved. I have to admit that I’m tasteless enough that the macabre humour also made me laugh:

“What’s this new technique of custodial death you’ve adopted, Ghorpade?” asked Saralkar cheerfully. “You tow away people in their cars, and then eliminate them?”
PI Ghorpade chuckled. “No, no, it’s our traffic colleagues who’ve decided to start penalising all parking violations with death.”

Our hero, Senior Inspector Saralkar is astute, afflicted by mood swings (though generally of grumpy nature), and a reader’s delight, sarcastic about the Secrets of Living spirituality course the department has deputed him to attend, and astute at popping perfect Catch 22 questions to his longsuffering subordinate (“Are you in a hurry, Motkar?”)
Luckily 'raps' were a thing of the past; he can but pound the table with his fists and hiss with contempt,

Get out, Motkar! You aren’t fit to be a police officer! You ought to be a clerk in one of those fancy companies that give paternity leave!

But Saralkar can be gentle too – surprising even himself – when the need arises. I liked almost everything about him – except perhaps the fact that he didn’t care for some of the many thumb rules and unofficial norms of policing – such as delaying police intervention to let matters sort themselves out – it’s a tactic that the sadly overburdened Pune police really cannot do without.
One of the things I liked best about this book was the author’s sensitive and commonsense approach to life.

• When children lose a parent – there may be no immediate sense of loss. But the loss grows and continues to haunt them long into adulthood.

• On the Mumbai-Pune expressway: Why in the world did people believe that their reflexes would work at such high speeds, and prevent fatal mishaps? Why couldn’t they stick to the recommended eighty kilometres per hour?

• When a child gets out of hand, a little brutality from a normally meek policeman father might just be the solution to the problem.

• When even barber shops keep fresh magazines for their patrons, why do doctors, who earn much more, only leave tattered ones in their waiting rooms?

• The seven deadly sins are called so because they draw you into a world where sin becomes a lifestyle – the new virtue for sustenance and success. And the only way to survive the consequences of deadly sins is to commit still deadlier ones.

By the time the second body appeared, I was concentrating more on the book than the fabulous rocks, foliage, ruins and Israeli food of Hampi. And in the end, why hadn’t I been able to guess the killer?
Looking back through the pages later, I noticed the clever nudges that prevented it.

Viva Voce by Gouri Dange

An Every Friday Novel
Gouri Dange’s new novel, Viva Voce is being published simultaneously on The Friday Novel
and black-and-white fountain in weekly installments.
Vibhavari Pradhan is approaching her 61st birthday. Listen, as this outspoken woman speaks about the events of her life over the period of about a year. Says Gouri Dange: "This is an Every Friday novel! The story is set in contemporary urban India, Nepal and parts of Scotland. It is peopled by Viva (61), Dhruv (13), Moni (40), Aidan (54), Shirish (42), Shruti (36), Farhan (49), Imanto (6), several street dogs, and some other beings. How they are related to each other will emerge as the story unfolds."
How easy is it to live life on your own terms when you’re 61 years old? Listen to Viva and find out.
Gouri Dange is a well-known writer, columnist and counsellor. Her three published books are
3 Zakia Mansion, The Counsel of Strangers, and ABCs of Parenting.
Many well-known authors have published in installments: all Charles Dickens’ novels were published serially – and Dickens created the episodes as they were being serialized. Explains Gouri, “The weekly installments put a different (and positive) pressure on me – and it is a bit of a trapeze act – you can’t go back and modify anything…you are compelled to tell the story in a way that you haven’t before.”
The first online novel was Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith; he wrote a chapter a day starting from 15 September 2008. This was published daily in The Telegraph, UK, until the final installment of what was the third novel appeared on 17 December 2010.
But why would the successful and much-read Gouri Dange want to give away her wonderful new novel free to internet readers?
She explains: “It’s not the garboesque 'i vhant to be alone' so much as 'i vhant to just write this'!”
To understand why Gouri has gone to this extent to do away with publishers, distributors, bookstores and accountants, here’s something she wrote for Open magazine about her tryst with the tedium and monstrous hierarchies of that world, and her darkly funny word-picture on how to behave at a book launch that touched many a raw nerve. “This is an attempt to sidestep the elaborate and absurd dance that is publishing, and pare it all down to just writer and reader, sentences and stories,” she clarifies.
black-and-white fountain salutes Gouri Dange’s initiative at making Indian publishing a more democratic institution and expects many readers to log on to The Friday Novel or black-and-white fountain and subscribe to weekly email or reader updates of Viva Voce.

Mumbai's Dabbawala by Shobha Bondre

Icons of Mumbai
Mumbai’s lunch boys came to public notice and became a world icon of ‘Quality’ when they were certified Six Sigma. I always felt this was rather unfair because so many of Bombay’s systems also work at Six Sigma levels of precision – the doodhwalas, the pauwallahs, the fruitwallahs, the engine drivers, the office boys, the traffic cops (and on and on) without anyone ever stopping to notice. But after reading this book I did get the sense that the success of the dabbawalas is not just a consequence of (a) economic factors and (b) the molecular structure of the professional that Bombay coerces onto its inhabitants. In particular, there is also the clearly-articulated customer philosophy which every member of this exceptional service industry is expected to read and preserve in his record book:

• The customers should always be treated with courtesy and respect

• The customers should be dissuaded from using any ‘exotic’ and ‘fancy’ tiffin boxes which are prone to get damaged

• Except for extremely rare, unforeseen reasons, the tiffin box should always reach the customer on time

• If a tiffin box is lost in transit, half the cost should be borne by the concerned dabbawala

Another important factor that has made the movement so successful is that it is run as a cooperative – members are not just workers, they are owners.
Corporates should be as clear-headed – no wonder management schools started looking to them for lessons.

Originally written in Marathi, the translator, Shalaka Walimbe, has done a good job of turning the text to idiomatic English. Mumbai's Dabbawala is written partly as the memoir of Raghunath Megde, present president of the association of dabbawalas - his father’s uncle, Mahadu Bacche was the first dabbawala back in 1890, and as such, founder of the association. And, it is partly a historical and descriptive narrative by Shobha Bondre, filling in blanks and creating context and perspective, in alternating chapters.
As memoir, it is engaging, informative about village life in Maharashtra as well as the life of the dabbawala, and often touching, as well-told life stories should be. The author’s narrative is also easy to read and strewn with fascinating detail.
However, there are a few slips which I felt made this book fall somewhat short of perfect. For instance, we are told that when Mahadu Bacche came to Mumbai in 1890,

There were very few restaurants in Mumbai in those days and certainly no fast food outlets. There were only a few Sindhi and Christian housewives who used to provide home-cooked food.

I’m not sure how well the concept of Sindhi and Christian housewives providing home-cooked food fits into this historical framework: to my knowledge, in 1890 most Sindhi housewives were still in Sindh; a large majority of the Christians belonged to the Anglo Indian community, and I’m not sure if its housewives would have considered sending out dabbas to others – surely the larger phenomenon took some decades to emerge.
In another instance, a character introduces himself saying,

This is Rashid miya speaking.

But would any Rashid ever call himself 'miya'?

Mumbai's Dabbawala devotes considerable space to the much-hyped fascination and subsequent association Prince Charles has with the Mumbai dabbawala – including the details of their presence at his wedding to Camilla.
I have a fascination with the Mumbai dabbawalas too: they are a fascinating part of life in that fascinating city, and many of my paintings, which strive to capture its incongruities, feature them.
The part of the book I enjoyed most was Shobha Bondre’s experience of hearing the new management gurus Raghunath Medge and Gangaram Talekar address a gathering of students and executives at a two-day seminar in a luxurious, ultra-modern auditorium in Bombay. These dabbawalas had lived many years of their lives in village huts in rural Maharashtra and tiny overcrowded rooms in Bombay; and many years of their careers running balancing 75 kg lunch-box crates on their heads as they leapt into overcrowded Bombay commuter trains. Shobha Bondre was tense that they would feel out of their depth. “I didn’t even realize when I had stopped holding my breath!” she writes, and goes on to describe just how these wonderful men held their own and charmed the sophisticated crowd with descriptions and lessons from their inimitable lives.

Suits by Nina Godiwalla

Mom… dad… here’s why I did it …
This book is a memoir, but it reads like a ripping good novel.
To be working on Wall Street is the culmination of a dream – in Nina Godiwalla’s Parsi community in suburban America, something better even than being a neurosurgeon or rocket scientist. It turns out that naughty Nina is brilliant enough to be the first freshman ever to intern at a top-tier Wall Street firm. And yes, she’s naughty enough and brilliant enough, once she’s been there for a while, to write this book which exposes all the sham.
As an investment banker, you are the most respected of the high-powered executives. There is a strict power hierarchy that is based on the paychecks: bankers, lawyers, accountants, and company executives. Hierarchies continue to dominate across university, across company brand. Oppression – and, often, petty vengeance – is a natural consequence. And Nina Godiwalla reveals here what she learns: that in corporate finance, you are rewarded for being a monkey – for agreeing not to think, speak, or have an opinion. It’s a fossilized culture, and pervaded by a terrible, crippling snobbery. Nina towers over Wall Street, reducing it to the width of an Excel spreadsheet cell, understanding from the heavy scent of musk cologne that she isn’t the only one trying hard to make a good impression. Comes the moment when realisation strikes: the overpriced gourmet stuff charged to expense accounts doesn’t really taste better than the Ponsri Thai food around the corner from work! And that exciting pace, the intellectual challenge, the unparalleled exposure to top executives – comes at the cost of dignity and sleep.
I wondered how Nina could write as bluntly as she does and escape legal action. In the course of the book she answers the question herself:

“You better not tell anyone,” she reminded me.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “No one would ever believe me.”

Written like a diary, this book intersperses scenes from Nina Godiwalla’s childhood and they add colour and warmth to the Wall Street life of screeching adrenalin. Nina's love for her grandmother - and her feelings when the specially-prepared pista barfi is greeted with snickers from her classmates ("barf! barf!"); her close relationship with her siblings, one of whom is interning with the Peace Corps in Morocco at the same time Nina is having this tryst with the apex of capitalism; incidents involving her dominating father and wise, long-suffering mother - are all told in an engaging style that paints an impressively lifelike picture.
In both these very different planes of existence, Nina Godiwalla excels as snoop reporter. I enjoyed her descriptions of New York and its inhabitants, so immersed in the urgent necessities of their lives that they don’t see anything around them. Even the bus drivers have an attitude familiar to anyone who knows Bombay’s BEST. And I loved the relaxed way she muses about men.

If you were standing close enough, you would choose Scott, though they were both second-glance guys.

One of the things that horrified me was Nina Godiwall's descriptions of how women are treated in Wall Street firms. They are mocked and degraded just for being women – the men use raunchy banter as an oppressive tactic during discussions; they proudly de-stress by frequenting strip clubs – there are any number of ways they make a woman feel small:

“Ladies first” always felt like a dirty trick, especially when you were caught in the back of the elevator and an older man near the front would say it. Smashed in the back corner, as the only woman, I’d grudgingly try and squeeze my way out.

Another thing that upset me was thinking about how Nina Godiwalla’s father would feel when reading her frank and beautiful descriptions of her childhood and his role in it, and I kept hoping that he wouldn’t read past the dedication:

To my mom and dad,
for giving us everything

But then it struck me that the sentiment behind this dedication was so strong that it would follow him through every trial Nina Godiwalla faced, right through the book.

The Wednesday Soul by Sorabh Pant

I'm dead - but nothing seems to have changed!
Sorabh Pant and I were neighbours, lying placid and box-like next to each other, on the pages of Sunday Mid-day for some years – an adhering subliminal kinship. Sorabh is a stand-up comedian too and the first time I saw him was when he performed in Pune and my unladylike guffaws earned me an Oscar from him. I was looking forward to this book, though a bit worried that I might have to ignore it in favour of saying rude things. Luckily, it turned out to be well written and with a solid plot, racy, spiced with romance and violence, and I really, really wanted to know what was going to happen at the end. But it wasn’t just that. As a book about the ‘afterlife’ this one has its share of deep philosophy (with Sorabh’s inimitable twist). As a book written by a voracious reader, it had quite a few references I didn’t get. And as a book by a really funny guy, it had a range of ha-ha moments – from ‘nooooo!’ groans with eyebrows raised, to any number of mild tummy tickles, and a few times I laughed like anything. I loved the reassuringly familiar overtones of Sorabh’s hereafter – in particular its bumbling bureaucracy, its hyperventilating junior executives, the crazy superimposition of Indian scriptures with Indian Penal Code, its free employment of fictional and historical characters, and even a movie (“Chaplin directed by Hitchcock”). I enjoyed the way he suddenly tossed in phrases that looked like they had been dragged in from another book and dressed up a bit:

Moments later she wished she hadn’t opened her eyes.

Unhurt, but shaken.

I also found the caricatures in this book hilarious – especially the language in which lack of idiom gets a special Sorabh spin. Says the policeman:

Money accomplishes wonders. Madam, do you even know the bribery costs for undergoing the wonders of my “investigation”? They is huge.

Now, instead of spoiling all the surprises by describing the book and its people in 200 words as us books guys are supposed to do, I thought I should give Sorabh a chance to let him reveal only as much as he wants:

How would you react if someone said that your book was what would happen if Douglas Adams and Arthur Koestler decided to have a baby?

I would first want to know how they actually met and who initiated the courting, and also the tougher question of the biological creation. Then, I would smile - because, I love Douglas, even though, my limited literary pursuits have not yet led me toward Koestler, though they shall now. I want to know who wrote the words of my father (or mother).

I enjoyed the innovative names your characters had … Chitr, Kutsa, Harithi, Air-Awat, Bàri … but was a bit mystified … could you help?

I actually did some insane research for all these characters. For me, the character's name has got to resonate with their actions and their personality. Chitr is short for Chitragupta, the accountant of the Hindu afterlife. It seemed funny to give a burly, ass kicking dude a woman's name.
Kutsa was Indra's right hand man, who apparently betrayed him and went out there and did the monkey (sex) with Indra's wife, Sachi. It would have been a cliché to name the villain, Ravana, Arjun or Rampal or whatever. So, I dug deeper for someone who would be an utter immoral bastard.
Harithi is my continuing fascination with North East women - they're gorgeous and fascinating. They never felt the same about me. I did lots of research but I think it either means, 'protector of children', or 'eye seeing'. I've forgotten, but, once you read the book - you'll know why both those names fit.
Air-Awat is of course based on Ayrawata, the legendary flying elephant in Hindu mythology. The story goes that he has eight Eledactyls (elephants that evolved from pterodactyls and can hence, fly - oh, it's complex :)) who work with him in the afterlife. So, his airline is Air-Awat (like Air India but, with less cancelled flights) and Ayrawata is his name (Sanskrit pronunciation).
Bàri is a detective in the afterlife who used to be a Swiss rescue dog, a St. Bernard. He is based on Barry, who was an actual St. Bernard who rescued roughly 50+ people in the 1950s. I changed his name to Bàri, because it sounded vaguely Swiss, even though, it's not!
There's also Khangard - a depraved bird of the afterlife who is based on Garuda. Khangard is the Indonesian version of Garuda.

When you were writing the book, what exactly were you ‘on’ and where can we get some?

Mainly my own story!! I was obsessed with this world for five years - it's the ultimate drug. And, also a mixture of pineapple juice, wine and just a small kilo of cocaine.

The books I enjoyed most in 2011

2011 was a year that brought me a number of intense events with a ‘Seize the Day’ message. In April, a close family friend, Raghu Pillai, suddenly had a heart attack and died. He was only 52. In May I found myself stricken with an alarming affliction – a 400ml haematoma, a pool of blood, lazing silently in my abdomen (it shrank and exited gracefully after a 3-month tenure). And in June, an experience with a client made me realise that if I wanted to write a book that met my own standards, the best way would be to do it just for myself.
So I published The Songbird on my Shoulder. I suppose I'm obliged to say that that was my best book of 2011. It’s in the shops Jan 2012 onwards – flipkart has it listed already. So in case you don’t have it already – go get it! You can preview it here if you like. And if you can possibly read the teeny-meeny lettering on the back cover, with blurbs from some remarkably important people, you will know that this is a 'takin'-the-piss' book rather than in the more prevalent 'wannabe' genre.

Now for other people's books which I read and enjoyed most...
The best literary fiction I read this year was
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
The Folded Earth by Anuradha Rao
The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran
Tales in Colour by Kunzang Choden
and the best literary nonfiction
The Convert by Deborah Baker
Road Runner by Dilip D’Souza
A Free Man by Aman Sethi.
In terms of ripping, carefree enjoyment – and with the bonus of a strong anthropological slant – my best books were
On Two Feet and Wings by Abbas Kazerooni
The Weddingwallah by Farahad Zama
The Fatwa Girl by Akbar Agha
Bangalore Calling by Brinda S Narayan
I hope you will enjoy them too!

Fate, Fraud And A Friday Wedding by Bhavna Rai

Neel and Anand
I didn’t like the title of this book but Bhavna Rai emailed me a link to a teaser on her website and it promised a lot of action. So I decided to go ahead, and must say I was very impressed. It wasn’t just the fast-packed action and the well-thought-out and carefully-built-up plot. It was the authentic detail of setting, and its unusually perceptive application of everyday situations, that I felt made this book really stand out.
At one point I worried a little about one of the main characters who has studied at New York University – but is totally disconnected from the letters of credit and purchase orders at her father’s import-export business where she works. Until I realised that the whole point of being an import-export heiress is that you can go abroad to study and get a good education without ever caring a bit about tedious necessities like LCs and POs.
Other people and situations in this book are equally genuine. We get to watch a client presentation by an IT outsourcing firm, see how the team thinks and reacts, and how the client team behaves. And to observe the eccentricities of a call centre floor – but also the dynamics at an ‘exclusive’ golf club in Delhi, and a havan conducted in the hope of resuscitating a failing business. There are possessive and emotionally castrating parents – and I loved the instructions their son gives his long suffering American girlfriend before taking her to meet them.
Bhavna Rai showcases the social changes catalysed by the fast-opening Indian economy well. And her focus on the many different man-woman relationship formats in this book does a really good job of exposing human needs and points of vulnerability.
I enjoyed this book so much that I almost didn’t get irritated by its numerous clichés and clumsy proofreading. I asked Bhavna Rai what she’s working on now and was very disappointed not to hear that there’s another blockbuster on the way soon – instead, she said:

Some ideas have been taking shape, but I haven’t committed to any of them, yet

Hurry, will you, girl!

When I told her I found this title annoying she replied,

My manuscript was initially entitled "What time is it in Delhi?" but then it was suggested to me that I need a more descriptive title which is when I changed it to the alliterative title it now has.

And when I asked her which authors' books hers should be displayed alongside in a store, she said:

I'm part of the new breed of India's contemporary writers, so probably alongside Chetan Bhagat, Karan Bajaj and Advaita Kala.

Well – this I definitely do not agree with.
If it was my store, this book would be next to Jeffrey Archer’s, not Chetan Bhagat’s.

Now … rereading what I just wrote, I suppose I should clarify, for the record: Bhavna Rai didn’t pay me. And I don’t know her at all – in fact, we aren’t even facebook friends (yet). And I’m wondering whether I should be embarrassed about all my lavish praise. But perhaps not – because I know I’m unlikely to be so very effusive while writing about a well-publicised book by a well-known author.

Roadrunner by Dilip D'Souza

Bikes, oysters, jazz, and much more
Some years ago, Dilip D’Souza took time off and drove across America. This book is about his travels – how and where he went, what he did there, and who he met. But it is also about his thoughts while he was travelling, and Dilip is not an ordinary travel writer. He is much better informed than many; his views and opinions are generally more profound. I enjoyed this book and learnt a lot from it too. Each chapter is of a different length and tells of an experience on the journey. Some themes are repeated. The book also compares attitudes and ways of living in India and America. Check this, on the very first page:

An effort to raise captive bison in Kentucky gets me thinking about the audacious things men do, and then about Alang in India’s Gujarat, where wiry workers break apart ships with bicep power and little else. And some members of a family died years before they were born. So say their gravestones in a tiny North Carolina cemetry, I swear.

We in India tend to have a certain stereotyped exposure to American life and culture, and this book gives a wider and more realistic view, showing that country to be much more culturally diverse than the movies and talk shows portray.
I read Roadrunner aloud to Gladys who is friends with Dilip’s parents and knew him as a child. And this is not really a book to be read aloud: it had too many words I had never heard said aloud before so had no idea how they were pronounced. There were too many concepts (names of cars and musicians for instance) that neither Gladys nor I had heard of. And the large number of parenthetical asides made for clumsy reading. So when (for example) Dilip visits the Casey Jones museum in Jackson, Tennessee, I found myself stuttering and lisping over

Tucked behind, yes, is another dreary American landscape: the recreated ‘Older Towne’ style village. You know: ‘Old Country Store’ with attendants in ‘authentic period costumes’, store selling Elvis knick-knacks, ‘Southern Magnolia Dolls’, ‘Gifts Etc’, and all their signs painted in the heavily serif font that practically screams ‘Wild West’. Above it all, ‘1978 Old Town’, thankfully minus the ‘e’s. Just decades old, this place, and it even admits to being so. Why does it pretend it is so much older?
Besides, why is this museum to a brave hero part of this faux-historical tromp l’œil kitsch anyway?
I ask that question because in India I sometimes ask its opposite. Why do we remember so many heroes from our history – so much of our history itself – mournfully?

Casey Jones, incidentally, was that legendary locomotive engineer who ordered his fireman to jump and save himself but gave his own life as he tried – unsuccessfully – to prevent a collision.
Dilip’s memories of his own long-ago culture shock when he first went to America as a student years before he made this trip are poignant but written in a way to make you smile. Like this writer, I came to love Route 66. The story I marvelled at most was Fifth Wife, in which Dilip wanders along a deserted North Carolina beach with Pete, whose last four wives were Filipinas:

About now, I’m wondering if the years add up: seventeen here, fourteen there, ‘a few’ with that other woman, one and half for Susie’s papers. I’m also a little dizzy with the wives, the drama, the wives, the two-timing, the trips to the Philippines that result in wives. Like a bizarre fairy tale.

I thoroughly enjoyed every session until the book got over, and was glad to have the opportunity to savour each chapter. This is not a book to rush through but one to return to repeatedly, over time. And as a travel book – it’s not really meant for tourists. If you do happen to take it along with you to read on a visit to the USA, definitely allocate special reading time too.

Mumbai Roller Coaster by Rajorshi Chakraborti

Love, education, and saving the world
Mumbai is different things to different people. As I read this book I didn’t really get the sense of the Mumbai I know, which is, in essence, about staying afloat and doing your own thing in the midst of, and despite, overwhelming crowds of others doing their own thing. It was more the kind of Mumbai experienced by people who live in hygienic, isolated homes and spend time mostly with others from similar spaces, interacting with the city primarily through the safely-closed windows of their air-conditioned cars. A very small minority. But it’s this minority that Rahul and Zeenat belong to – and very likely to which readers of this book will also belong.

I liked the fast-paced action in Mumbai Roller Coaster. It starts with a dead body – slowly dripping blood on our hero. Capture and escape follow, a number of times, in quick succession. The plot has intriguing twists and at one point I wondered whether this was science fiction. It wasn’t. Mumbai Roller Coaster is about bourgeois kids and is a fun book that might get bourgeois kids to understand the dangers of a world ruled by giant corporations with brainwashing strategies of the nature of:

Thus in a topsy-turvy world, those who wish to pursue the path of common sense must sometimes resort to such drastic underground measures.

Rahul and Zeenat are at different schools and carry on their romance in an abandoned construction at Khar. Like other parents of kids like them, Zeenat’s

were very strict with her. They had warned her numerous times that her ‘career’ should be the only priority in her life right now, with all the exams and other challenges coming up over the next few yeas, and lost no opportunity to remind her of the sacrifices they were making to be able to afford her various private tuitions, as well as her violin, modern dance, and tennis lesson, so that she would be as well-rounded a candidate as possible for one of the insanely competitive full scholarships she’d be applying for the following year at several top American colleges.

I liked Zeenat’s dad – he watches Simpson’s reruns and honestly does not know which channel MTV is on. But I did worry a little about whether he (and Zeenat’s energetic Ammi) would be ok with a book where the characters are quite so free with the use of f**ker, ch**t, and, er, ‘dickhead’.

One of the things that worried me about this book is the strong class divide.
When they get off to change buses, the stop is

on a narrow, ill-lit sloping side street, which didn’t look like it was served by any major bus routes. On both sides were gates to large blocks of flats: tall buildings hulked above them, making the now-evening sky appear even further away. No one else had got off here: it was the kind of stop that only the domestic help or drivers who worked in these flats would probably ever use.

I tried to remind myself how prevalent it was in the Victorian novels where only the upper class consisted of real people. But in an India, and especially a Bombay, where education is available to most kids and everyone knows its value, where everyone is up and coming and pretty much equal, I didn’t care for the way Rahul and Zeenat patronise Ganesh, the shadow hero of their book, even though this is very likely the way a real Rahul and Zeenat might. I still don't think an author should endorse it.

One of my favourite bits in this book is when Rahul is riding home victorious and notices, while talking animatedly to his father, that everyone at his end of the compartment was openly eavesdropping and staring. He hangs up, and then his copassengers start chatting with him, demanding to know what was going on. I loved the lies Rahul made up – they were really funny. And I enjoyed the descriptions of the other passengers and the different groups and thought processes they constituted.
But Bombay commuters don’t get into conversations like this. Nobody listens; nobody engages. People get off where they are going without noticing anyone in the compartment.
So I went online to check out Rajorshi Chakraborti and found here that he had lived in Bombay as a child, leaving at age 11 for Calcutta, and that explained a lot.

When Bill Bryson came to Mumbai

Happy Belated Birthday Dear Bill Bryson
I read somewhere that Bill Bryson was going to be 60 on December 8 this year. I had meant to put this post up on that day but for various reasons couldn't. It's something I wrote years ago when I had a column parodying humour writers and got people like Woody Allen, Dave Barry, Bridget Jones and others to do their act in my favourite city. I don't think any of them ever has actually come yet. Anyway - here's me being Bill Bryson:

I landed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and stood at the entrance to Mumbai in that state of mild indecisiveness that comes with the sudden arrival in a strange country when you’re pounced upon by hundreds of swarthy young men clamouring to take you home. I breathed in the warm, humid air that carried whiffs of petroleum fumes, drying fish and the impact of water shortage on several million bodies, and bravely resisted twenty-seven taxi drivers urgently tugging at me until I spotted with relief the hotel welcome board with my name on it.
The first time I came to Bombay was twenty-five years ago, with a high-school acquaintance named Steve Gatz, which I soon realized was a mistake. The best thing that could be said about travelling abroad with Gatz was that it spared the rest of America from having to spend the summer with him.
We stayed in a guesthouse near the Gateway, sharing a room with two Germans who knew where to get good dope and we would have featured in Shantaram if it’d been two decades later. One evening we decided to get some native colour and walked down to Churchgate Station to experience the death-defying sport of catching a commuter train into the suburbs. A filthily ragged woman in a headscarf squeezed into the carriage loudly orating the tale of her troubled life and asking for money. The baby on her hip was so startlingly ugly that it was all I could do to keep from putting hands to ears and screaming, “Baap re!” (for by now my Marathi was coming on a treat). I quickly gave her twenty rupees before Junior loosed a string of dribble onto me, but soon discovered that my wallet had been lifted. The woman of course was nowhere to be seen – she was probably at this moment sitting down to a feast of truffles and Armagnac with seventy-four relatives on a secluded railway siding near Dombivili with $1500 worth of traveller’s cheques, not bad for five seconds’ work.
But this was only memory, and the entire workforce of my hotel now glowed with joy at my arrival and the bellboy all but touched his forehead to the ground near my feet, a welcome change from last time when I would don my rucksack each morning, staggering around in the manner of one who has been hit on the head with a mallet.
The TV in my room showed a local soap, alive with beauty, agony, and malice, and I watched with appreciation. Here was progress: before, Indian television was only good for the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience. About every fifth word was in English, but the strain of putting it together became wearying and I decided to go for a walk.
Mumbai is not a good city for walking. The humidity makes biscuits soggy, preying insects plentiful, people sweaty and exhausted. There’s also the constant danger that you will fall into open pits, and even when you stumble out limping, it’s all you can do to dodge the rush of dilapidated taxis and occasional Mercedes Benz that come sweeping down. It’s not that Mumbai drivers intentionally want to kill you as they do in New Delhi – they’re just too busy blaring horns, cutting off other vehicles, talking on cellphones, indulging their lap-held progeny with a chance at the wheel. You can’t help but admire the free spirit of this great democratic nation.
I wandered around, looking for The Ideal, which Gatz and I had frequented. I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, “You want to go where? Mohammed Ali Road? Boy, are you lost. This is Andheri you dumb clot,” then stop other passers-by and say, “you wanna hear something classic? Buddy tell these people where you think you are.”
So I trudged on. Rats the size of young swine scuttled alongside. Lounging at intervals were some of the most astonishingly unattractive prostitutes I’d ever seen – fifty-year-old women with crooked lipstick and body parts reminiscent of flowing lava. They stood side by side in a seemingly endless row of doorways. I couldn’t believe that there could be that many people in Mumbai – that many people in the world – requiring this sort of assistance just to ejaculate. Whatever happened to personal initiative?
Just as I began thinking about phoning my wife and asking her to come find me, I turned the corner and there it was.
By now I was so hungry that I would have eaten anything, even a plate of my grandmother’s famous creamed ham and diced carrots, the only dish in history to have been inspired by vomit.
The Ideal used to be one of those places that had marble-topped tables, bentwood chairs, a surly owner, and a list of stern instructions regarding Outside Food and Hand Washing. They served chai in glasses but Gatz and I would be honoured with white china cups. It now had formica tables, muted lighting, and a menu that included paneer dosa, Manchurian pizza, and even Mexican and Lebanese food. I tried to think what my jaljeera put me in mind of and finally decided that it was a very large urine sample, possibly from a circus animal with hepatitis. The kheema pau at the Ideal (short, I now realized, for “Ideally you should stay home for dinner”) had been our staple for weeks but it was absent. The intriguingly named Vegetable 65 I now ordered was so bad that to say it was crappy would be to malign faeces. I returned to the hotel and retired with Philip Ziegler’s classic account of the Black Death, imaginatively entitled The Black Death – just the thing for lonely nights when travelling.
I walked down Marine Drive next morning, revelling in the beautiful sweep of bay and energetic morning walkers, but stayed clear of Chowpatty. I remember Gatz’s enthusiasm as we climbed down Walkeshwar after an early morning excursion to Ban Ganga, sighting the flock of exotic migratory birds that appeared to be roosting there – and his horror when we found it was just some squatters engaged in alfresco excretion.
When I was twenty I liked Bombay for its laid back attitude but it was oddly wearisome now. Indians have been congratulating themselves on their tolerance for centuries, and it’s now impossible for them not to be nobly accommodating to graffiti and queue jumpers and excrement and litter. I may be misreading the situation. They may like excrement and litter. I hope so, because they’ve certainly got a lot of it.
Later, I headed for Dharavi, pausing briefly to admire Mumbai’s Gothic railway station that had once been named for Queen Victoria but now, like many other city spots, revered the mountain hero Shivaji who with his band of guerrilla warriors successfully stayed Moghul penetration to southern India.
Dharavi seemed agreeable enough in a thank-you-god-for-not-making-me-live-here kind of way. I walked through narrow lanes, stepping over gutters oozing slimy, ill-defined fluid, when two vaguely thuggish-looking men walked purposefully towards me. Uh-oh, I thought, causally sliding my hand into my pocket and fingering my Swiss Army Knife, but knowing that even in ideal circumstances it takes me twenty minutes to identify a blade and prise it out and I’d end up defending myself with a toothpick and tweezers. But all they wanted was a friendly chat to practice their Conversational English – where I was from, my wife’s maiden name, how much I made last year – that kind of thing.
Back at the hotel, I wandered the maze of shops selling pashmina, jewellery, carved elephants, silken garments and leatherware. Tourists from every continent beamed, dazed and laden with shopping bags. I heard an American trying to knock the price of a jade figurine below two hundred rupees, less than $5. There was no pharmacy here – strange for a city that has several on every stretch of road – more medical shops than litter bins. Gatz had once bought a bagful of dangerous and addictive medication at one of these without the word ‘prescription’ mentioned once in the transaction. This must make it fun for people who live here. Still, if you wake up with a bubo on your groin, better see a doctor all the same.

A pack of lies by Urmilla Deshpande

Victim kicking below belt is ok, then?
Some months ago my friend Asha asked me to get her this book. I ordered it online and happened to peep in when it arrived. But this is the kind of book that has you turning pages faster and faster, so I barely looked up once or twice before it was all gone.
A Pack of Lies is written in the first person and the heroine, Ginny, has a problem with her mother who happens to be a writer.
I enjoyed the racy style and the descriptions of Bombay in the 1970s, which took me back to a time and place I don’t miss at all. But I did not enjoy the desperation, loneliness and the kind of defiance-inspired craziness it was suffused with - they made me nervous. Whether it was the description of food to a love-starved child, her arrogance towards her mother’s lovers, her grand plans to get rich by selling dope, Ginny’s modelling career, her unexpected inheritance, or the many other twists in her tortured life – I felt repulsed, but also pitying of a human being who was painted as steeped in bitterness.
It was only after I started reading the book aloud to Asha, who had been actually looking forward to a literary treat – having known the author’s mother, herself a well-known writer – that I realised the story was using Urmilla Deshpande’s own life as its peg and that there are any number of other characteristics and historical features Ginny shares with her creator. Even Sahitya Akademi award winner and Padma Shri Shashi Deshpande says, on the book cover, “A rare coming-of-age novel, frighteningly honest and exceptionally mature." Right!
Reading the book out to Asha, we kept digressing – bits from the book would set her off reminiscing; other bits would make her angry with the implicit libel they held. When Urmilla Deshpande’s alter ego is sexually abused by her mother’s husband, were we supposed to feel horrified and sorry for her – or admire her subtlety in naming her novel A Pack of Lies? Either way, both Asha and I found it revolting.
Urmilla Deshpande has impeccable grammar and it matches well with her impeccable lineage: her mother Gauri Deshpande and grandmother Irawati Karve were well-known writers, and her great-grandfather Dr Dhondo Keshav Karve was the great social reformer and educationist who came to be known as Maharshi Karve. Is it the grammar or the lineage or the hot parts that got her book attention? I wonder.

The Litigators by John Grisham

Finally
Finally.
Finally, on page 92, after a long, tense stretch with hope rising warily, my heart began to sing.
After all these years – a real, super-duper John Grisham! Since The Street Lawyer in 1998, he turned out more than a dozen duds. It seemed as if the steam had run out. Eager readers leapt on each new title with anticipation – only to fall away, disillusioned. Had he lost it? Was he holing up (in the Caymans, perhaps), sated, exhausted, and having outsourced his brand and pretty straightforward formula to a team of lesser writers without the ability to cast the spell of the master? One damp squib followed another, managing a slight spike with The Last Juror.
Now, finally, the real Grisham is back. David Zinc, hero of The Litigators, is an overworked lawyer at a plush Chicago law firm. His hourly billing is $500 and, like others of the tribe so familiar to Grisham readers, he’s so overworked that, as his financial assets multiply, his health and family remain neglected.
In another – faraway – section of the city, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg run a ‘boutique’ firm and practice a variety of law best classified by the name of their dog AC – short for Ambulance Chaser.
John Grisham was responsible, long before Ally McBeal, for bringing phrases like ‘ambulance chaser’, ‘probate’, ‘file a motion’, ‘deposition’ and even ‘DUI’ – driving under the influence – into the mainstream consciousness of readers in faraway India. Through his stories, we’ve become familiar with any number of situations which engender hatred, arrogance, greed, revenge and the other emotions that underlay the territory that lawyers deal with. Grisham’s books have introduced us to a range of situations in civil and criminal law, product litigation, the homeless, those awaiting the conclusion of a death sentence, dramatic verdicts overturned by appeals, and many more. The dip in his readability followed his move from the fast-paced legal thrillers he excelled at writing, to books which continued to be based in law but began to focus more on other issues in which he was personally interested, such as baseball, a lifelong passion, and the rural south where he grew up, the second of five children of a construction worker and a homemaker.
Even in his most ‘blockbuster’ book, Grisham was always a bit of a social activist. There’s invariably an underdog – or more than one – whose moments in the sun the reader experiences vicariously. Important characters often present a major real-life-type flaw such as a loved one in prison, a one-night-stand, or some other example of human frailty we need to forgive and live with. Bonds within families, and in particular between couples, are strong and satisfying.
Through the peaks of plot, Grisham’s language is laidback and unselfconscious, with a liberal sprinkling of cute phrases. It may not be high literature – but you won’t find smut or graphic violence either. There’s not much in a Grisham book that you might want to protect your children from. And in 2010, in a superb Marketing move, John Grisham wrote his first book specifically for children, introducing the child lawyer Theodore Boone. Theo is a 13-year-old schoolboy and he knows more about the law than most lawyers in his city. Young Lawyer was great fun and, under guise of a racy plot, covered the basics of court procedure and etiquette as well as some common USA laws and their application. Reading it, more than one Indian pre-teen I know dived straight into the adult Grisham books, devouring them stealthily under the bedcovers instead of preparing for their Unit Tests, having placated their proud parents with the thrilling news that they had decided to study law and become lawyers when they grew up.
Sadly, the next Theodore Boone book, The Abduction, released earlier this year, did not live up to its predecessor. It was good to meet the old familiar characters – but the plot just did not have teeth – a situation Grisham fans had no choice but to resign themselves to while they waited stoically for his next. Classic Grishams, the Theodore Boone books also incorporate human weakness and emotion through different family formats.
David Zinc too is a typical Grisham hero – young, brilliant, handsome, likable. Remember Mitch McDeere in The Firm? Like him, David is also a graduate of Harvard Law School; he’s also married to a warm, supportive, intelligent (and beautiful) woman with whom he shares a loving, passionate relationship. Like Rudy Baylor in The Rainmaker, David has no trial experience whatever – but his performance in court showcases his hard work, ingenuity, and fine legal brain as he takes on a veteran with an impeccable track record who has tried and won the biggest cases of all. Like Clay Carter in The King of Torts, there are moments in his career when you will tremble for him, fearing that all is lost.
David, by a strange turn of events, has joined Finley & Figg just as Wally is preparing to file a suit against Varrick, a pharmaceutical giant. Varrick has survived a $400 million settlement for a denture cream that caused zinc poisoning; a $450 million settlement for a stool softener that backfired and clogged things up; a $700 million settlement for a blood thinner that cooked a bunch of livers; a $1.2 billion settlement for a migraine remedy that allegedly caused high blood pressure. Finley & Figg, on the other hand, is a law firm that a clerk, describing it to the incredulous judge to whom Wally’s case has been assigned, writes, “A 2 man ham and egg operation; advertises for quickie divorces, DUIs, the usual criminal domestic, injury practice; no record of any filings in federal court in the past 10 years; no record of jury trials in state court in past 10 years, no bar association activity; they do occasionally go to court – Figg has either 2 or 3 DUIs in past 12 years; firm was once sued for sexual harassment, settled.”
The Litigators is a story about how the ‘mass tort’ business works. A bad drug is identified. The plaintiffs’ lawyers go into a frenzy rounding up cases. Lawsuits are filed. The big defense firms respond with an endless supply of expensive legal talent. Both sides ‘slug it out’ until the drugmaker gets tired of writing ‘fat checks’ to its lawyers. As things get settled, the plaintiffs’ lawyers ‘rake in huge fees’, and their clients get far less than they expected. When the dust settles, the lawyers on both sides are richer; the company cleans up its balance sheet and develops a replacement drug. ‘Mammoth’ corporations know when to fight, when to settle, how to settle cheap, and how to appeal to the lawyers’ greed while saving their company ‘tons of money’.
The Litigators is pervaded right through with the soothing tones of the underdog singing hallelujah. David rescues himself from the rat race; he somehow resurrects the dubious Finley & Figg; he finds suitable alternative sources of income; he achieves justice for illegal immigrants being exploited by their employers; he wins a handsome settlement for the immigrant parents of a young victim of lead poisoning. He even earns solidarity from a former colleague which enables him to stand up against a hacker who has insulted his wife.
Some Grisham books end abruptly, leaving things to the reader’s imagination – but not this one; all ends are neatly tied up, with realistic and fulfilling outcomes for all
(In case all this sounded awfully familiar to you ... yes ... you read it before ...in the Open magazine issue of 12 December 2011 ...)

A lovesong for India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

A lovesong for Ruth
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is 84 years old and her new collection of short stories has the same calm, crystal-clear aesthetic as her previous work. It felt to my mind the way fresh, sunlit mountain air of mid-morning feels to my skin. The images it inspired were infused with the leisure, clarity, detail, and other values of the old Merchant Ivory films that she was once closely associated with. The sentences, stark and simple, frequently caused me to stop and spend a little extra time savouring them:

She ate in a very nice way, the English way, and she had taught him to do the same.

Brigitte still had male friends – she needed them to tell her what to read

After her retirement from the civil service, Mrs Lord had moved to a town famous for an ancient battle, about two hours from London.

All spoke in the same loud voices, guttural with good breeding and unchallenged opinions.

But Shoki leaped to his feet, in deference to an older man. He appeared flustered, not emotionally but socially, like a hostess with an extra guest.

The eleven stories in this book are divided under three sections; four stories in India; four in Mostly Arts and Entertainment; and three in The Last Decades. While the stories in the first section are indeed set in India, the others also have cameos of India and a few Indian characters. These are sharp caricatures and some have Indian names – Kris is Krishna instead of Christopher – or perhaps a remote Indian parent, but very little else that is recognizably Indian, quite appropriate in our global age. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was always a writer who understood India inside out and wrote with a global perspective, without bias, and without needing to revel in the exotic to make her stories attractive. And from these stories it's clear that she has kept pace with changing society: there are people here from different eras and cultures – both in India and out.
I found her characters unique and often a bit frightening, whether from the world of seedy Delhi landlords, Bollywood palaces or Hollywood starlets, scholars of oriental studies or fake ‘Oriental’ gurus, or New York clubmen living on trust funds. I found them unfamiliar – and this surprised me because in most books you can relate to at least some of the characters. As fictional characters they were satisfying in that they betrayed each other unexpectedly or otherwise suddenly showed new facets of behaviour. And they were real alright – they struggled for power in relationships, and felt stifled, and longed for privacy. Most of them suffered like anything.

Where the Bulbul Sings by Serena Fairfax

Daughter of Far Pavilions
This is an ambitious book, embracing a broad swathe of history, from the time of the Second World War to the present.
I enjoyed the narrative, strewn as it is with exciting events which build up, amidst suspense of all kinds, into a well-orchestrated and fulfilling climax that quivers to a specific end in the time-honoured tradition of the quintessential romantic novel. The characters are well developed and convincing. There are even bits of hilarious comedy casually woven in. And, though there is a certain amount of contextualisation, it is naturally done and more for purposes of clarity than to posture for readers of other cultures. Serena Fairfax even uses Indian words naturally, picking for instance 'shamiana' in favour of 'marquee', surely not an easy choice for someone who lives in London where people are more familiar with marquee than shamiana.

Hermione, the heroine of this book, is beautiful, vain and self-centred. Through her, the specific marginalization of the Anglo Indian community is sensitively documented. This is the main theme of Where the Bulbul Sings. Other key characters represent equally romantic and fascinating groups: the Germans sequestered in India during the Second World War; Indian royalty; highly-paid courtesans; Raj relics who stayed on.
So I felt really sorry that with so much potential, a number of things prevent this book from being the whopping, bestselling blockbuster that it really should have been.
The first is its production values. My copy had bubbles under the laminate of the cover. I felt the margins were suffocatingly narrow. Careless proof reading has resulted in shabby copy. And a good editor might have got Serena Fairfax thinking about using a less gushy style; about dividing the book not just into chapters but sections too; and perhaps managing the transitions from one historical timeframe to another with more patience.
The book also makes copious use of capital letters, italics and bold lettering on almost every page:

‘Greetings and welcome Miss Müller. Welcome!’
He pronounced it like mullah and Edith gave a little giggle.

And:

‘Hush a moment.’ Hartley’s voice was sharp for him. ‘What’s that now?’
He stopped as Prime Minister Nehru came on the air, his voice solemn and emotional. The light has gone out of our lives…
‘Nothing will be the same again,’ Hermie said quietly, her eyes brimming with tears not so much for the dead Patriot as out of disappointment that the bright prospect of home had gone out of hers.

I tried my best to convince myself that the author was an artist who must surely be allowed the liberty of presenting her text in any way she thought best. However, I found it just too tiring to eye and mind and, despite every effort, concluded that I would have much preferred to be allowed to select emphasis instinctively as most writers are content to let their readers do. And I ploughed on because I really did want to know what happens in the end.

The second reason this book falls short of utterly fab is not as straightforward.
“Historical events /incidents have been slightly re-jigged. Any errors are all mine,” reads the author’s disclaimer at the start of the book. Where the Bulbul Sings revels in a wealth of historical fact: not just its setting but all kinds of fascinating detail and trivia, including long-forgotten earth-shattering events.
I enjoyed learning that women made crotchet squares to scrub pots clean with. And being reminded (by an English character)

You know, Mr Gandhi once said that the seven great sins are wealth without work, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, pleasure without conscience, politics without principle, and worship without sacrifice.

I admired all this and felt disappointed with the minor anachronisms. Would someone have spoken of a “daily caffeine fix” in the 1940s? I don’t think so.