T’ta Professor by Manohar Shyam Joshi

The Village School Master
The hero of this book is a writer who goes to work in a primary school in a village in North India so that he can continue following his literary ambitions and avoid family pressure to take up a government job. It’s just a few years after Independence. There he meets T’ta Professor who has a Dubbul MA but was usurped by an ordinary BA who was unfairly made Principal of the village school. T’ta Professor carries a notebook in which he writes the new words he learns, and looks them up in his dictionary. He asks our hero why he lies down and reads; why he reads a book in English wearing only pyjamas: “You must wear a coat-pant and tie,” he declares, “when you read English books; and sit properly at a desk. After all, Sanskrit scholars have to wear a freshly washed dhoti and sit on a wooden patla, don’t they?” Nearly half the book passes in this type of funny, flippant chatter and the writer, also a Joshi like the writer of this book (we never learn the rest of his name and it doesn’t say anywhere that they are not the same person), lives among the other teachers observing them rather patronisingly as prospective characters for his great literature. Engrossed in the flow of the story, it’s hard to tell when exactly Joshi enters a real relationship with T’ta Professor. Is it as they exchange confidences about their early sexual adventures? Perhaps not, because at this point Joshi is still looking at the “professor’s” confessions as material for plot and setting. But these confessions do make the two more equal as they gently expose the stark, poignant facts of the professor’s life. The turning point is subtle and the tone of the book changes, moving from breezy morning to sullen dusk. This is a Hindi book, very enjoyable and informative, and made available to an international audience in this excellent translation by Ira Pande.

Embroideries by Marjane Sartrapi

Graphic as a genre rather than adjective
Based in Iran, this book represents, through a group of stereotypes, various facets of sexual repression and the feisty, inventive or sad ways in which women deal with them. One woman doesn’t know anything about sex though she has 4 children. How did that happen? Well, her husband comes in to the room at night and puts off the light. Then “Bam! Bam! Bam!” (and the other women listening to her speak go “Ha! ha! ha!”) In fact, she was blessed with four daughters so she has never seen a penis. Another of the women waited for her husband to call her to America for decades – they had fallen in love as teenagers and he had left soon after – only to find nothing, worse than nothing, waiting for her. Another escapes from her bathroom window on her wedding night, yet another nicks her bridegroom's testicles with the blade that was supposed to draw her own blood to prove she was a virgin. A wide-eyed western woman wants to make use of ancient Iranian techniques to bring elasticity back to her vagina. There are more. The chatting, embroidering women span 3 generations and are full of fun. If I compare this book with the only two other graphic novels I’ve read, I’d guess that it would be popular primarily because it is written by the author of Persepolis. Palestine, written and drawn by the journalist Joe Sacco is a very artistic and vivid portrayal of the history and plight of the Palestinian people whose land was suddenly occupied. The illustrations are stunning and depict violence in a uniquely creative and effective way. Unfortunately this aspect of graphic novels are rather wasted on me since I tend to race ahead with the text and create my own mental images. Regular comic books don’t need any focus on the illustrations which are bland and repetitive. With this book, I had to keep reminding myself that I was missing good stuff and turning back to examine the intricate and beautiful drawings. The other one I read a few months ago was Private-Eye Anonymous by Tejas Modak. It’s an entertaining detective story, well written and well illustrated. In comparison, I found Embroideries more like a comic book than a graphic novel because it lacks a storyline and the characters are caricatures rather than real people. Comic books were one of the delights of my childhood. We had no television or computers. It sounds like the ice age but it wasn’t hundreds of years ago … it was just a combination of a particular geography with a particular level of technological development which made us more isolated and less exposed than other kids similar to us in other ways. Comic books taught us American idiom – I would have surely scored high on the TOEFL. They were barely tolerated by parents and teachers, but considered junk. Kids nowadays have many other choices of brightly-coloured and low-mental-stress activity and aren’t as devoted to comic books as we used to be. The first time few graphic novels I saw in shops, on the other hand, made me confused and dizzy and even gave me a little touch of vertigo. I think this is because I felt intimidated by their modernity and their popularity amongst smart youngsters – though I do admire the intense illustrations and the strong activist messages that many of them carry.

Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan

Books are “karmic”
A friend lent me this book to read many years ago. I loved it. The story is hard to believe, but that wasn’t important . I found it fascinating but even more than that, enjoyed its many beautiful and important messages about life and how we can make it more fulfilling and enjoyable.
The author says she was invited to receive an award by an aboriginal tribe in Australia. Expecting to be given a plaque or trophy of some kind, she was bemused to find herself somehow being led off across the Outback on foot with them.
During the journey, she learned how to live simply and began to understand some basic facts about life that, in all her previous years, surrounded by the comforts of affluent western civilization, had been obscured by trivia. She learned something about physical endurance, and about the true priorities of existence. Her companions made her feel included, and unique, and wonderful – for the first time, she felt herself to be in a state of unconditional acceptance.
I returned the book to my friend very reluctantly. I felt it had important messages, and I wanted to share it with others!
Imagine my surprise when I came across a few copies very unexpectedly a few months later while browsing in The Banana Bookshop at Covent Garden in London. They were marked at a wonderfully low price so I bought the lot and gave them away to friends. (Karmic, right?) Some of them thought it looked weird and shoved it back at me, and told me to stop trying to reform them. That didn’t make me love it (or them) any less.
Years later I discovered that this had been a controversial book. Apparently many Australians had been angry and objected to it because it had been a bestseller and had, they said, misrepresented Australian aboriginal culture.
I pulled out my old dog-eared copy and flipped through it . It never claimed to be an authority on Australian aboriginal culture. It merely told a story. Considering the size of Australia and the likely diversity of its aboriginal tribes, how could anyone say it was misrepresenting a culture when all the author had done was write about what she said were her personal experiences with them? The argument reminded me of the lack of logic and vehemence with which vested political interests in our country make art objects the focus of religious ire.
Nobody can ever prove that Marlo Morgan did or didn’t make this journey. And how does it matter whether she did or not? It would be the same as trying to prove or disprove that Dr. Brian L. Weiss (MD) had invented the entire Masters series – why can’t we just read, enjoy the story, and assimilate the inspiring and spiritually fulfilling messages of the Masters?
A sad ending: The Banana Bookshop seems to have succumbed to the recession and is no longer able to fulfill the beautiful karmic relationship we've shared and the many unexpected gifts it gave me over the years …

Why I started writing this blog ... or How to Write a Book Review

Laurane Marchive is an intern at Sunday Mid-day. She is a French student and in Bombay for a few months, and is working towards two different degrees at the same time in France, one in political science, which will lead to a journalism master, and the second in modern literature. Click here to read something Laurane wrote about Bombay. Laurane interviewed me for research paper on “How to enter a literary career”. I sent her answers to the questions she asked, but it was the train of thought they set off in me that led me to create this blog ... thank you, Laurane! I’ve pasted our conversation here because it made me think about why and how I write book reviews.
What kind of formation ( diplomas, professional experience) does one need to have to become a book reviewer?
I received my Master’s degree in Pure Mathematics from Bombay University in 1982. After 3 years as a lecturer in undergraduate Mathematics at Ruparel College, Bombay, I had a baby and took a career break. During this time I started writing. My byline became ” quite prominent (no one was more surprised than I that what I wrote – mostly personal-experience humour – was fit for publication) and The Times of India offered me a job as a features editor in 1989, which I took up. I’ve just flipped through my records and find that my very first book review appeared on 28 April 1991, in a wonderful but short-lived newspaper of the Times group called The Independent. I remember very clearly how this happened: I saw the book lying on someone’s table and said, “Hey can I read that?” And he said, “Sure, review it for us. 1200 words.” Apparently it was all very ad hoc in those days (and no one does 1200-word reviews any more either). But I think it is still possible to become a book reviewer in this way. I don’t think any newspaper or magazine in India looks at your qualifications before they ask you to review books for them. After that, The Independent gave me books to review regularly. I think other journalists must have read some of these reviews or in some way had an idea that I could write a book review, because after that over the years I have received quite a lot of books to review. I think the general understanding is that if someone is an experienced reader, and capable of analyzing, comparing, and writing readable copy, they can be considered as a book reviewer. I think it also helps if the person is capable of meeting deadlines and responding to last-minute changes or requests.
Is it easy to become a book reviewer? Is it a struggle to make a living out of it?
It is probably not very easy to become a book reviewer for the reason that not many Indian publications give space to books. However, from what I know of the way papers are run, it is not difficult at all. But it is not possible to make a living out of writing book reviews unless one has an extremely humble lifestyle.
Is it your only job or are you also writing for other medias, newspapers, or maybe just other beats?
I write books on commission, and also occasional articles for other publications. I’m also a painter and my paintings of Bombay and commissions also contribute to my income: saazaggarwal.com From mid-1995 to early-2006 I worked in HR in a software company and I sometimes get HR process-related consulting assignments or assignments to conduct personal growth training programmes from other software companies (I have 2 training products of my own which I customize for client companies on request).
Do you think it is possible for someone who is not Indian to become a book reviewer in India? Is there an international market or does it remain something local?
Yes it’s possible. Indians writing in English is a comparatively new phenomenon and we have actually read more of international authors than Indian ones until very recently. At Sunday Mid-day most of our books are either based in India or written by Indians but if you go into any bookstore you’ll see many more international authors than Indian ones. The international market is much larger than the local one. But what our book stores get are the ones that our book distributors accept. When traveling abroad I still see many wonderful new books I’ve never heard of, and which we are never going to see in India because they will never be sold in this country.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to become a book reviewer? ...
Read a lot of books, try and read different genres, styles, classics, contemporary stuff. ... As you write your review, always keep in mind that the author has constructed the plot very deliberately, so try not to give away any surprises – that would be unfair to both author and reader. ... Try not to think that you know better than the author of the book or the reader of your review. According to me, readers find preening reviewers repulsive. ... Be as entertaining as you possibly can within the framework of the space the publication gives you. I don’t write intellectual reviews because I’m not an academic or an intellectual, just someone who loves books. I don’t have a background of having studied literature. I feel that for me, writing for the Sunday Mid-day, this background is a big advantage because most of my readers are also not academics or intellectuals. I think of my readers as people like me, who love to read, both for entertainment as well as for instruction. I try to give them what I would like a book reviewer to give me.

Slumgirl Dreaming by Rubina Ali

The Star who Plays in the Gutter
There’s a rickshaw stand near where I live, and one of the guys, Sanjay, very sportingly posed for me reading this book. Unfortunately, the photo of Rubina playing in dirty water with her friends and a few other Oscar-winning ones were going to look better, and I’m going to have to step out and apologize to Sanjay that he’s not in the paper today.
Poor Rubina Ali – not only is she one talented Oscar-winning actress who would live in a slum if it hadn’t been knocked down, leaving her homeless, she’s been cheated of her due fees, lost her privacy, and now the book that tells her fascinating story has been badly written and produced in a slipshod, hurried way. Get a copy – they say she’s going to get part of the royalties though they didn’t specify what percentage – but don’t expect much.

In the Valley of Mist by Justine Hardy

Psychiatric wards and the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Kashmir
Justine Hardy is English, and has been travelling to Kashmir ever since she was eleven years old. For the last 20 years she has been visiting there every year and sometimes several times a year. In the Valley of Mist is a documentary-style book which gives vignettes of her experiences and conversations through the years of the turmoil and conflict in the state. Her books, Goat - A story of Kashmir and Notting Hill, and the novel The Wonder Hill, are set in Kashmir. In Scoop-Wallah she writes about the year she spent as a reporter for The Indian Express in New Delhi.
In In the Valley of Mist one of the things she writes of is the psychiatric wards in the hospitals of Kashmir where helpless victims queue for attention with their loved ones who have been thrown off balance to various degrees by the violence and disruption to their lives.
I contacted Justine before I wrote this review for Sunday Mid-day and she told me “I have been working in this field for many years, and am now lucky enough to be joined in this in Kashmir by some wonderful doctors and psychiatrists who want to help their people.” Some of these are therapists from the UK who Justine had met several years ago through their work in Bosnia, working with victims of the war there in the mid-1990s.
She added, “It has taken a while for the main clinic to be built in Srinagar at SMHS Hospital. The psychiatrist that I wrote about in the book, Dr Arshad Hussain, has been funded by the Central Government to build a new psychiatric clinic at the hospital because the problem is so widespread in Kashmir as a result of twenty years of violence. A large percentage of the population is living with varying degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, ranging in severity from low level depression to full mental and physical breakdown. As the clinic was taking longer to build as a result of last summer’s renewed violence over the Amarnath Shrine land, and then recent trouble over the deaths of the two young women in Shopian, we started taking health camps out to the rural areas earlier this year while the clinic was being finished.These are being done by local doctors, we are covering all the expenses, and I have raised money to bring the therapists from England and to cover their costs. They will be working at both the clinic and joining us at the health camps. The therapists and the local doctors are doing all this work voluntarily.”

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

An off-beat book club set in World War II
Next week, we will finish this book, on our fifth session with it. I’m reading it aloud to my friend Gladys who can no longer read herself, and I’m enjoying the sound of her shaking with laughter just as much as I’m enjoying the story and the way it’s told. There have also been a few passages that brought a lump to my throat – in particular what happened to the children and how the adults dealt with it – and I’ve had to pause for a few seconds, quickly think of something deathly boring to stabilise my feelings and then start reading again, pretending everything’s okay. Of all the books we’ve read together since a year ago when we started spending Tuesday mornings together doing this, this one has been the one we’ve both enjoyed most. We’ve read it fastest, too – otherwise we’re always stopping to chat and rant about how the world could so easily be a better place if only we were running things – and we’ll both be sorry when it’s over. Gladys is already looking for another title and with her vast knowledge of books and her widespread book-lovers’ network, I’m confident she’ll pick another good one – the ones we’ve read together have invariably been better than the ones the publishers send me for review or the ones prominently displayed by the bookstore chains which I find hard to resist buying.
This book tells a little-known story of World War II, something we’ve long forgotten. Even if we ever had a concept of trenches, “Tommies”, food rationing, bombed-out churches in Europe, the concentration camps with all their dreadful brutality, the carnage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the sheer manic delight of the Normandy landings – we certainly never knew what happened to Guernsey, one of the British Isles, which was occupied by the Germans and completely isolated from the rest of the world for five years. This grim story is told with so much humour that it is full of fun. Presenting it entirely through letters written by its various characters, the author has cleverly worked all kinds of details about the war into the book, including the slave Todt workers, the prostitutes imported to areas of command, and all kinds of fascinating specific details about war life and recovery.
The saddest thing I learnt about this book was that its author, Mary Ann Shaffer whose entire career had been spent in libraries, bookstores and publishing – in fact quite similar to Gladys’ own career – had written the book late in life and died before it appeared in print and became the well-deserved success that it did.

HOSHRUBA translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Who needs Harry Potter?

This book has a beautiful cover, but of course that shouldn’t be a reason to rush to pick it up. I loved Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s last book, The Story of a Widow, but that shouldn’t be a reason to grab it either – that one was a novel and this was actually written by someone else and only translated by Musharraf. Hoshruba is a series of stories filled with magic, romance, riches, enmity and passion. It’s a sequel to The Adventures of Amir Hamza – also translated from Urdu by Musharraf Ali Farooqi – and was written by the court storytellers of Lucknow in the nineteenth century, more than a thousand years after the original first enthralled audiences in the Middle East and Central Asia. This book has 447 pages, and there are 23 more volumes, all of which Musharraf intends to translate. The story of the creation of these epics is also fascinating, and well told in the introduction to the book which I did eventually get round to though I, like Musharraf, never read “introductions” first. If you enjoy fast-moving and well-written books filled with magic, romance, riches, enmity and passion, this one’s for you.
When I asked Musharraf how he expects this enormous body of work he is creating to influence the general global perception of the Islamic world, he replied, “Frankly, I find it discourteous to change anyone’s opinion of anything. My effort is aimed at readers worldwide who are unaware of this awesome fantastic story. I want to get the book into their hands. They will know what to do with it.”
When I mentioned that a colleague told me he’d gone through Hoshruba and thought it totally absurd though it might make a good special effects movie, Musharraf quipped, “Please give my love to your colleague. Everyone knows there is far more money in special effects movies than in translating classics. If your colleague’s hunch is right, I will be soon headed for the bank with a big gunny sack.”
You can read the rest of our conversation in the 17 July 2009 issue of Open Magazine at http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/adventures-of-musharraf-ali-farooqi. As for me – I’m waiting to get my hands on Between Clay and Dust, the new novel Musharraf Ali Farooqi is working on.

The Loudest Firecracker by Arun Krishnan

More style than substance

Here’s a book that fails to live up to its early promise.
I was impressed with Arun Krishnan’s craft, his relaxed style of writing and the premise on which his story begins. A young boy’s observations of his world, which has recently become a grim place because his family moved away from a glamorous lifestyle, are well told and captivating. This world soon becomes far grimmer. Unfortunately, at this point, which should have been the build-up to a middle and end of the same high quality, the book begins to fade out.
One of the book’s highlights is its strong commonsense message of the utter waste and pointlessness of communal violence and the vested interests of those who whip it up. Another is the charming stories the boy’s mother and then grandmother tell him. These could have been developed, even leading to the same ideas, themes and conclusion the author has chosen. Instead, however, they taper off and several pages of unrelated events are slid in, sitting incongruously with the earlier and far superior section.
This could have been a far more successful and enduring book – Arun Krishnan certainly has the talent, and I hope he will have the patience to take more time and trouble with his next one.

Life is Perfect by Himani Dalmia

The other half, and all their pain

To read this book is a bit like eating ice cream while suffering terrible backache. At one level you're enjoying it, while at another you’re conscious that it’s not good for health, and all this while you're trying not to scream in agony.
My second and third-hand information (the back cover and other reviews) indicate that Himani Dalmia is not just a stunner to look at, she also holds a Masters in South Asian Literature from the University of Oxford. And if that’s not enough, she’s a “scion” of the Dalmia family with all kinds of assets including substantial social and cultural capital.
With this background, the book seems autobiographical.
Mitali has it all (“life is perfect”) and through this she comes to term with her relationships – with her longsuffering mother; her suave but absent father who we come to dislike almost as much as feel sorry for him; her boyfriend, her music teacher and her cousin who died tragically the previous year.
What was it that made me feel unable to take all this seriously?
Books about niche, peculiar communities are often important ones. Books written in marginalized dialects are often received as stylish and attractive. Books that centre on issues that seem ridiculous or trivial to others can easily meet with great success.
The structure and plot of this book kept me turning the pages. The characters are not badly developed. Some of the themes the book deals with are thoughtful and engaging, and some of its observations perceptive and amusing. And yet, the aching back overwhelmingly overrode the sweet, cool sensation of the ice cream. Perhaps editing of a higher quality would have lessened the pain.

I too had a love story by Ravinder Singh

This is LOVE? Really?
The last two books I read before I picked this one up were Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach and Saturday. On Chesil Beach is the story of a young couple set in the long-forgotten and usually-neglected period just before the 1960s began and birth control, rock-and-roll and other related revolutionary devices transformed our little planet, and Chesil Beach is the place in England where they spent their wedding night. Saturday spans one event-filled day in the life of a London neurosurgeon. Both these books, like this one, can also be called “love stories” but they are also literary masterpieces. To call Ian McEwan a “master storyteller” would be to use a cliché, so let me say instead that his words and sentences fill me with happiness; that the way he constructs his stories don’t just bind me to his books while I long to know what’s going to happen next, they are a great inspiration to me as a writer; and that his manner of strewing his work with analysis and insights in the most casual and unprepossessing way draws not just admiration but quite often even awe from me. With these two books still doing their quiet dance in my mind, it’s hard to describe the sheer plunge into aesthetic dismay I experienced as I started reading I Too Had A Love Story. Ploughing stoically along, I sought desperately for criteria against which I could recommend it and was finally able to conclude that it could be considered an important book as it documents a certain lifestyle and mindset at close quarters.

Since this is not a marginal lifestyle or mindset but a rather mainstream one – even if those in literary circles would prefer to ignore it as being worthy of nothing but scorn or perhaps a longsuffering tolerance, and often try to pretend doesn’t even exist – yes, it should be read and maybe preserved in a museum or prescribed in literary courses, with the particular commendation that it has been written by someone deep within that community who describes it here intimately, even as Anne Frank did her imprisonment and the times in which she lived, in her Diary. Further, this author has been artless enough to expose certain loutish aspects of behaviour and attitude of this community as well-established and normal – precisely those aspects which cause the so-called high-thinking ones to condescend to it. Here you have men who become enraged against their women when their breakfast is not served at the precise moment they demand it, and children who are nurtured to believe that one who wishes to establish affection with them must compulsorily bring chocolates on every visit. When taxi drivers refuse to drive into a flooded area, they are treated with wrath and offered bribes demanding that they do so.

Leaving the sneering, negative view aside, however, there is one rather lovely thing about people who live in this world, and that is their approach to romance. It’s sweet and pure, and they are able to savour it endlessly, much as those who consider themselves more sophisticated might savour a glass of mellow wine. This is rare in today’s world and anyone who can still do it is fortunate to be enjoying an endangered gift of humanity that is fast being replaced with a rude condom-in-my-wallet-just-in-case culture that is sweeping many good things away forever.

But then again the type of "love" presented in this book rather overwhelmingly comprises vigorous fluttering of the inept heart and the kind of baby talk for which I’m unable to select an appropriate adjective. To call it adolescent would be to ignore the cutting-edge biological discovery of hormones and sexual activity at puberty. To call it brain-damaged would be to insult a lot of people (judging by author Ravinder Singh’s blog) who truly believe that this is what real love is. I am intrigued to find so many who in this day and age continue to believe that “love” is just a titillation of the senses that you get for someone you have never met, and even after you meet her all you know is that she looks good and talks silly though she works for a software company too and is slogging away for her "CAT" (the common admission test to postgrad and fellow programs in management at various institutes in India) just like you are. In the world most of us live in, love encompasses a lot more than that, such as day-to-day adjustments, commitment to togetherness in spite of all kinds of obstacles, constant readjustment of goals to accommodate the aspirations of the other, and the never-ending striving towards compatibility in the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social and economic spheres. It’s a difficult and often messy matter. So when someone holds a woman he barely knows in his arms in platonic bliss and calls it the happiest hour of his life, you might smile fondly in sentimental indulgence – or you might slap your forehead and think, “Grow Up, Ravin. We feel for you, but your life lies ahead. You will find a real woman and you will find out what real love is. If you want to be a real author, go read some real books and find out how it works first.”

Apparently more than 10,000 people have read this book and it’s now touted as “a national bestseller” – perhaps through clever marketing and doubtless with the help of Infosys, for which Ravinder Singh works, and shaadi.com, through which he met his “love”. Narayan Murthy has wisely restricted his blurb to three well-chosen and accurate words describing this book, “Simple, honest and touching.” Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of shaadi.com sticks his neck out a bit further and shows how little he knows when he says, “Only a person who has loved and lost, can pen such an emotional story.” Try Ian McEwan, Mr. Mittal.

Griffin Prize shortlist readings in Toronto June 2009

I arrived in Toronto two days ago and on my first evening was already being treated to a literary event, the shortlist readings of the Griffin poetry prize.
Scott Griffin is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist, and he founded the Griffin poetry prize in 2000 with the purpose of promoting poetry. www.griffinpoetryprize.com.
Every year, the prize awards 50,000 Canadian dollars each to a poet resident in Canada, and a poet from any other country. The shortlisted poets were going to read from their work. The internationally-acclaimed writers Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson, David Young and Carolyn Forché who constitute the board of trustees were also present.
Sofas on the stage bore cushions appliquéd with a letter each, spelling out PO, ET, and RY. Large banners with the names and photos of the shortlisted poets formed a backdrop.
What surprised me most was the crowd. 800 people had come to listen, and the MacMillan Theatre, in one of the buildings of the University of Toronto, was House Full. The atmosphere was one of anticipation and enthusiasm – but you could tell we weren’t at a soccer match, because everyone was all dressed up.
Scott Griffin began the proceedings by saying that this would be an evening with some of the best poetry in the world, from some of the world’s best poets. He said that if you looked back down history, you saw that poetry tended to flourish in troubled times, and that recession appeared to have done it good, and bewailed the fact that poetry had disappeared from schools, cafes, and public events, saying, "It's our loss, of course." Then he added, "I'm preaching to the converted" and joked that he had "told the poets here on stage you are a kind audience."
The readings began, and each one was preceded by another writer introducing the poet. Poets and speakers alike were charismatic and witty, holding the audience rapt and making us laugh. I was surprised that most of the themes were taken from everyday life and the poems were quirky and humorous. There really wasn’t much of that stuff about revolution or even about moonlight – how times have changed!
Canadian poet Kevin Connolly was perspiring copiously and explained, “I always get really nervous when I read, so don’t worry about me”. Being shortlisted for the prize, he said, had “messed with my persecution complex”. His poems and the commentary he preceded them with made us laugh, especially the one about an old aunt of his with a goiter, which he had written after going home and having his mother tell him that in the old days “she was very popular with the boys”. “Why?” asks Kevin, and his mother gives him an odd look. So this poem is dedicated to his aunt who Put Out.
The poet C.D. Wright (she was announced yesterday as one of the winners of the prize) prefaced her reading by quoting the genius Canadian poet, novelist and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen who once said, "Poetry is the opiate of the poets." She smiled, then added: "Welcome to our den."
I was still a little jetlagged and annoyed to find myself jerking out of a doze a few times, as a result missing the occasional exquisite stanza.
The German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger was given a Lifetime Achievement Award – and a standing ovation to go with it. Then he also made everyone laugh by pointing out that a lifetime achievement award is a little awkward because none of us really knows how long our lifetime is going to be!
In his speech he observed that every bright child enjoys playing with words. Some people continue doing it in adulthood. These, he pointed out, are the poets.

Hay Festival May 2009

I first visited the lovely Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye nearly ten years ago with my friend Amita who loves the place and takes all her friends there.
This year, my annual pilgrimage to London coincided with the dates of the Hay Festival, and we decided to spend two days there. Often described as the town of books, Hay has the ruins of a small castle on top of a hill, but its chief attraction is the small lanes filled with all kinds of bookshops. Some of these are “honesty” stores without attendants – where prices are marked, and customers can drop the money into a box left near the door and I remember going a little mad with all this bounty on display.
Originally called the Hay Festival of Literature, it is an annual event founded in 1987 and held in May or June in the picturesque little town of Hay which nestles in the idyllic Welsh countryside. It is a major event in the international literary calendar – said to be the biggest book event in Britain – and attracts around 80,000 visitors and some of the world’s top writers and personalities. Over the years participants at Hay have included Bill Clinton, Bill Bryson, William Dalrymple, Kiran Desai, Germaine Greer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Mark Tully, and Shashi Tharoor, to name just a few. As the Guardian puts it, “In two decades it has gone from a whim to a global event.” Bill Clinton called it the Woodstock of the Mind, and Henry Miller apparently thought it was some type of sandwich until he tried it and found it far more appetising.
To tell someone that you are attending an event of this hype is to impress them, and I did so shamelessly, preening with the sheer glamour of it. What a relief when the 2 days there turned out to be not just great fun but also a learning experience at many different levels.

One of my favourites was Sam Winston, a contemporary fine artist whose works explore language. At Hay, he was working on a collaborative word-art project. We watched, intrigued, as he invited festival visitors to contribute a favourite word. They could either give a real word, with a sentence explaining why they liked it, or an invented word, explaining what it meant. Some of the invented words were “wumper” (woolly jumper), “pregret” (to regret something before you do it), and “ice bream” (a cold fish). We remarked to Sam how smart the invented words were and he replied, “Well these are all literary people!” The invented words were hand-written onto a slip of paper, and the real favourite words were typed and printed out on a strip. Sam then pasted each of these onto two separate collages – one a skyline of tall buildings entitled “Towers of Fact”, and the other showing “Clouds of Fiction”. Trying to think of a favourite or invented word we soon realised how difficult it was – there were so many words to choose from, how could we pick one favourite one? What if people thought our word was silly, or not good enough in some way? But the inducement of a limited-edition canvas bag carrying an image of a Sam Winston creation was motivation, and we soon found ourselves contributing our words to this interesting project.
Before this, we had attended our first event at the Festival, a live studio programme in which Mariella Frostrup, the Sky Arts presenter, introduced the Hay Festival to the channel’s viewers around the world, and interviewed some of the participants. We were part of the studio audience, and it was interesting to watch a live anchor in action and see things from the other side of the television – with well-chosen words flowing freely and smartly. It was also interesting to be instructed on when to start clapping and when to stop for the camera!
Festival participants were not only authors, but comedians, musicians and media personalities. It was entertainment of the highest calibre, and there were visible efforts to make books and words the focus of most events.

The food critic Jay Rayner was here to promote his book – The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner. Jay had travelled around the world eating at expensive restaurants and returned home to write this book.
Well known for his hilarious criticism which readers apparently enjoy more than his favourable reviews, his spontaneous wit made us laugh. In fact, many other programmes were also distinguished by high-quality humour – and not just from the participants but the audience too, with comments during the show as well as their questions at the end of it. One member of the audience had apparently eaten dinner at a local restaurant with Jay at an adjoining table. He wanted to know whether Jay had enjoyed the meal and how he rated the meal as a food critic. Luckily Jay had enjoyed it, and even said that this restaurant was probably trying for a Michelin rating. Up popped the next question, this time from the owner of the restaurant who happened to be in the audience too! With just the right touch of indignation, he wanted to know why anyone should assume that the opinion of a tyre company would be of any concern to him!
So although there were successful people from around the world attending, the feeling was one of a close-knit community. As a quote from the portal Wales Online puts it, “It’s basically the same festival but it’s just got bigger. It was always a circle of friends, and although the circle has got bigger, the essentially slightly chaotic informal character remains”.
This chaotic casualness was reflected in the artistically-created but carelessly-maintained entrance to the venue, and also in another event we attended, the premiere of a short film Still Life, made by The Rural Media Company as a collaborative community project in the nearby town of Bromyard, where this little film unit spent one year, identifying issues in the town, producing a script and making the film. The film was a sweet story about a girl whose parents had recently separated – and most actors and crew were picked from the local community. Many of the young actors were present at the premiere in Hay and the atmosphere was charged with their excitement. However, watching the movie, it was hard to understand why it should have taken a whole year to make!
At another venue, Jay Rayner interviewed Heston Blumenthal, a celebrity chef, author of several books and owner of The Fat Duck Restaurant (ranked No. 2 in a list of the world’s top restaurants – with the Bukhara Restaurant in Delhi at number 65 and the Wasabi Restaurant in Mumbai at number 70). Heston uses chemistry in the kitchen to highlight flavours and create intriguing dishes that taste and look distinctive – almost gimmicky though considered intriguing. These include Green Tea Mousse, Bacon & Egg Ice cream, Warm Chocolate Wine and even Snail Porridge. Heston clarified that he had not studied Chemistry but started working straight after school having fallen in love with French food as a boy after a meal at a restaurant in France.
The Hay Festival lasted ten days (21-31 May 2009) and featured over 500 events, including the children’s festival, Hay Fever. We were there for only two day, and as a result missed some of this year’s highlights, including events featuring Kamila Shamsie, Amit Chaudhuri, Monica Ali, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, David Crystal, Chris Patten, Alan Bennet (whose event was sold out several months before), Shazia Mirza and Amartya Sen.
On the first day the venue, a well-laid-out series of marquees in a field on the edge of Hay, had seemed open and relaxed - and we spotted many participants mingling with the visitors. The next day was bright and sunny and visitors poured in. It was the first day of the children's half-term break of ten days, and also of Hay Fever. Soon the site was filled with people lounging on the grass sunbathing, picnicking, reading and wandering around. It was glorious, but the crowd was as thick as you might find at rush hour in a commuter train station. We felt fortunate to have had the space to explore on the previous day and become familiar with the different stages, restaurants, bookstores with authors signing copies of their books, stalls and other settings of the festial, before the vibrant busy buzz began. The Hay Festival was a wonderful, stimulating experience, though the town of Hay-on-Wye (twinned with Timbuktu) is a special place right through the year.
The drive from London to Hay (around four hours) takes you past beautiful mountains and gorges, and the historic Tintern Abbey of which Bill Bryson once famously remarked had given rise to a poem by William Wordsworth entitled I Can Be Boring Outside the Lake District Too.
Bryson's remark that chlorophyll must be the principal industry of Britain was also validated by the dense, bright green of the trees and meadows along the way.
Wales is famous for its terrible weather - it can be grey and blustery, but Hay is always worthwhile. If on the other hand you are blessed with blue skies and a gentle sun, as we were, it feels like heaven and we left promising ourselves that we would soon be back.

A concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Me no speekee Eengeeleeshee

I was drawn to this book by its bright cover and interesting title, and the easy flow of words carried me past the first few chapters very soon. The story is told by a 23-year-old Chinese woman who comes to spend a year in London learning English. To start with her language is broken but easy to understand and the narrative is quite engaging. At first I felt that there were glimpses of a higher understanding and better command over the language showing through, somewhat like a put-on accent slipping. But after I’d finished reading, I looked through the first few pages for this and couldn’t find it so maybe I had just imagined it, perhaps as a result of some kind of prejudice against an assumed or put-on voice, before I got properly engrossed in the story and began to admire the construction and the way strong characters had been developed using the broken language, and how creatively it had been used. In fact, as the months pass, her language does improve in a gradual and significant way.
English life is described and even with few words and poor grammar, there is beauty and poetry in the narration. Zhuang introduces herself as Z because no one can pronounce her name. She lives at first in a hostel, but soon looks for cheaper accommodation: “I checking all cheap flats on LOOT in Zone 1 and 2 of London and ringing agents. All agents sound like from Arabic countries and all called Ali. Their English no good too. One Ali charges Marble Arch area, one Ali charges Baker Street area. But I meet different Alis at Oxford Circus tube station, and see those houses. I dare not to move in. Places dirty and dim and smelly. How I live there?
“London, by appearance, so noble, respectable, but when I follow these Alis I find London a refugee camp.”
People shout at her, but they also avoid her, considering her very rude – though this is not innate rudeness but just a manner of speaking perfectly normal in her culture.
As a result of a misunderstanding (he says to her, “be my guest”) she moves into the home of a man she has just recently met and they become lovers. He is much older, and wants her to learn to be independent, so convinces her to travel to Europe alone, and her observations and experiences there are interesting. In Tavira she writes, “They got a real sun here in their sky, not like in England. English sun is a fake sun, a literature sun.”
This book is rich with feeling. But more than just showing the difference between the feelings of an English man and those of a Chinese woman, their different expectations, habits, ways of thinking and so on, the book also gives a glimpse into their differing political views and, most interestingly, their differing philosophies. And it is the English man who believes in “living IN the moment” while the Buddhist woman who wants to plan for the future and who, having by now developed a far greater grasp of the language, accuses him of “living FOR the moment.”

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

Freud, Shakespeare and murder in early 20th century New York

This book was shortlisted by Richard & Judy’s book club in 2007, and I’d wanted to read it since last year when I first noticed it. Jed Rubenfeld is a professor of Law at Yale University and is an academic with published work on Freud as well as Shakespeare, both of whom make appearances here – Sigmund Freud is actually a character in this book, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet features as a platform to discuss the Oedipus complex.
The scholarly depth of the book does not interfere with its flow, and it is a superb detective story – fast moving and with many ups and downs, twists and turns, which keep you turning the page and in the end the villains are not necessarily the ones who have seemed most villainous. I did find that the second half of the book lost pace and became slightly disappointing.
One of the things I most enjoyed about this book are the descriptions of New York city in the early 1900s. It was a rich and powerful city, and its various aspects, including its architecture, transportation, social and business life are described as background to the story and are absolutely fascinating.
In those days, the New York police force was extremely corrupt – it reminded me of the situation here in my country, and made me wish that the flow of circumstances would improve things for us.
I also learnt a little about some perceptions of Jung (who also appears in the book), and the weaknesses that those in the mental-health profession are susceptible to.