Holiday Reading (by various authors)

When in Rome
For about two weeks before I left home, I was too busy racing against a deadline to make a blog entry, and the growing pile of books I had read waited, but stopped growing. I haven’t read much since I’ve been away. When I left for Paris, I picked up Perfume by Patrick Suskind and found it quite fascinating. Set in the years before the French Revolution, it’s the story of a murderer and moves fast, elegantly describing for the reader a city redolent with the pungent odours of unwashed bodies, choked gutters, tanning leather and rotting substance of every kind. This was of course quite different to the Paris I spent two brief but joyous days in earlier this week, commemorating a visit there with the same friends 29 years ago!
It was too short a time to finish the book – as I’ve grown older it has dawned on me that occasionally there are better things to do than lie about reading.

Back in London I picked up Brick Lane by Monica Ali. This is an engrossing story that moves the reader between Bangladesh and the London of the Bangaldeshi immigrant. It’s a powerful story – and made a celebrity of Monica Ali when it was released in 2003. She has now written Untold Story, a fictional exploration of what might have happened if Princess Diana had only faked her death, and perfectly timed to coincide with the wedding of Diana's elder son Prince William (to the "commoner" Kate Middleton) which, apparently, the whole world has been watching. You can read here an interview where Monica Ali explains that anyone can write about anything they like so please stop accusing her of stooping to tabloid fodder.

I’ve now just completed Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and enjoyed it very much.
I’ve been curious about Pippi since I posed with her last May in Stockholm – and subsequently came across references to other characters by this author in Stieg Larsson’s cult books.
I don't think I'm the first to have loved Pippi - or to have noticed the resemblance between her and Larsson’s heroine Lisbeth Salander. This slender child is extremely strong, lives life on her own terms, is loved dearly by the few who know her well but generally avoided and considered with wariness by most, and would doubtless be willing, like Salander, to defend her independence with her life. Pippi books are very much for children – but that’s no reason why adults can’t enjoy them too.
I’m now looking forward to reading The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, also a book for younger readers, and won’t have much time for more – perhaps just a quick re-reading of Mrs Harris goes to New York by Paul Gallico, an old favourite, before I head back home.

The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Profundus and Snotbog arrive in India
My first reaction to this book was enjoyment – these four stories are well written and great fun. My second, however, was disappointment. With the name Moochander, I was expecting Pakistani stories. Yet these are clearly in the European tradition.
I mailed the author asking about this, and he wrote back (first kindly congratulating me on having won the match - it so happened that yesterday India won the semi-finals against Pakistan for the 2011 Cricket World Cup!) to say,

I wrote these stories for an international audience about eight years ago. I think children do not make distinction between stories as adults do. They are only interested in a good, fun story, regardless of which tradition it comes from.
In my childhood I read a lot of Urdu stories that were published for children, and later learned that some of them were adaptations of well known English language classics such as Oliver Twist, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and others.
I discovered English language children's fiction as an adult, and loved some of the stuff I read. I now feel that there should be more Urdu language story books available for children whose first language is Urdu but in the absence of good Urdu story books, adaptations from English language children's literature, or even direct translation of international children's literature will be more beneficial for the intellectual and creative development of children because it will expose them to new worlds through the magic of stories.
I have plans of publishing the stories in The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories collection in Urdu translation. They have been translated already. The translator has adapted them for Urdu language which is perfectly fine with me.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi also told me that he wrote these books in a span of six months. His wife Michelle is the illustrator of this book and I found her illustrations attractive too – imagining what I might feel if I was looking at them and having the stories read to me as many children are bound to.
This particular illustration comes from the story Profundus and Madam Snotbog, great fun, scary, and very Brothers Grimm. I felt doubtful about how Indian parents might feel about a story centred around cute pigs! A bit hesitantly, I asked Musharraf how come, since this is really more of a western concept and rather alien in our part of the world where pigs are traditionally considered disgusting. He replied, deadpan,

As these stories were written for an international audience, I felt free to use any animals I could think of. And in the West you will find many toys and children's books in which pigs are indeed depicted as cute. I understand that in the subcontinent we have a different take on the animal.

He also sent me a link to an interview he gave Fiona Fernandez at Mid-day where he says:

Probably, the characters came to the mind first. In the case of Profundus, the idea for the grab-itty-scope came first, I think. Madame Snotbog was modelled on a dear aunt of mine although I am not half as clever as Profundus. However, I'm not above stealing pies and regularly overdose on sweets. There are a lot of autobiographical details here for future researchers, I'm afraid.

Madame Snotbog turned out exactly like my aunt. So I was very pleased with that, although it was uncanny because Michelle has not met her. And now I guess it's best that they don't meet.

Though I would much rather have had a book more culturally appropriate for Indian children, there was one thing I particularly admired here and that is its approach to inclusion. The Giant of the Bakery is not just an adventure story where young readers will enjoy reading about cakes and breads – it’s also about the struggle of an immigrant. And it gives an artless glimpse into the life of a differently abled person. Moochhander, too, is a poignant look at aging.

As a child, I would have loved and treasured this book, reading it or perhaps demanding to have it read to me, over and over again. My children would have done the same. As an adult, what intrigues me most is the versatility of the author.
I have never met Musharraf but have liked and admired him since 2009 when I first read his novel Story of a Widow. It impressed me with an elegant style that grips you as it takes you into people’s lives and leads you, unawares, straight into the heart of a culture. (I can't find a link to the review I wrote for my Sunday Mid-day column but if you like you can read it on Musharraf's website).
I was surprised to read Hoshruba a short while later, a translation of an Urdu epic spun out by court storytellers in Lucknow in the nineteenth century, and to learn that Musharraf intended to translate the entire lot. And this was someone who, as a young man, had spent considerable time consuming books along with tea and omelettes at the canteen of NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi instead of attending lectures there till he realised that he was never going to be an engineer and might as well become a writer instead!
Hoshruba itself had a formidable 447 pages, and there were 23 volumes to go. Musharraf was going to be busy for many years, but he was kind enough to spend some time telling me about his journey as a writer.
So now, instead of asking Musharraf how and why these concepts (which would painlessly give children a broader emotional spectrum) wove their way into his book, I am going to guess that it was not done as a strategy but happened subconsciously. I suspect that Musharraf's writing falls into two categories, of which it is only the translating that taxes his left brain. His fiction, I would like to imagine, is simply a product of nothing but a joyful creative process, plucking stories out of thin air with no other intention than to create pleasure in the reader.

Custody by Manju Kapur

Secret formula
The last book I took a day off for was Lost Symbol by Dan Brown – and only because I had a deadline. But every booklover knows the feeling of being drawn into a story and falling, helpless, into its clutches with such intensity that you resent every minute spent away from it and avoid every person or activity that draws your attention from it. As I’ve grown older and developed more restraint it happens less often so this book caught me unawares and I put everything aside, agog till I turned the last page.

This is Manju Kapur’s fourth novel and she has established a reputation for writing gripping stories that deal with the complicated relationships in Indian families. Custody is set in the late 1990s, a period that stands out as a time when India had suddenly begun racing to catch up with the rest of the world in technology and manufacturing capability; when it had been gleefully recognized as a lucrative world market – and when various forces had conjoined to sweep in swift social change too. The last two of these form the setting of this book. Some of its main themes are loneliness in marriage, the plight of children of separated parents, the breach between the realities of society and that of the law courts which are easily manipulated by the unscrupulous, and the wrenching agony of childlessness. As with Manju Kapur's other books, the background here is thick with the oppressive ideas that traditionally abound in Indian families: the necessity to put family obligations above personal happiness; parental manipulation equated with love; subjugation of a woman’s needs; rejection and pain not just from parents-in-law but also “children-in-law” – and more. Yes, this sounds like a grim place to be but I found the story and the way it is told simply irresistible.

One of the things I admire about Manju Kapur’s books is the authenticity of detail. It’s not just joint-family politics and delicate marital relationships that she excels at describing! So when her characters are corporate bosses, as some are here, the text will unobtrusively carry phrases such as “B and C towns”, “out-of-the-box thinking”, easy references to concepts of branding and an insider approach to HR. When they belong to an elite boarding school, the quality of the food, the old-students’ network, the psychological skill of housemasters are all described in a relaxed way, with casual but perfect accuracy.

Manju Kapur also has the skill to give us a detailed understanding of her characters without talking about them but just showing us, in her perceptive way, exactly who they are by the way behave. So the philandering wife is lovely to look at, but instead of feeling sympathy for her isolation I could only feel a condescending disgust for her shallowness and self-absorption – even without a single negative word of description. And even the characters towards whom I felt the author’s craft building an empathy in me turned out to be human heroes and heroines, revealing their weakness and vulnerability when pushed into the kind of corners Manju Kapur’s books abound with.

However, this is a book with a very strong narrator's voice and at times I found this to be sneering, which I did not like. And at times it was brusque and grammarless – but that I quite liked, finding it stylish and suitable to a fast-paced style.
For conversations between two people, the author has employed an idiom rather different from the idiom in which living people like these would, but more appropriate to a book that will doubtless have an international readership. However, there are occasions on which some of the characters – usually one of the old folks – will say something from a traditional Indian-English idiom that pointedly reminds you precisely who they are.
Some of the transitions in this book are just single words, sometimes briefly indicating the month or place and often using that meanwhile, back at the ranch device which English teachers tend to frown upon. It works well when you’re reading fast, gripped with the longing to know what happens next – but can a serious writer who wants to continue being taken seriously really do that? I’m not sure! Maybe it’s a very “today” thing to do – or maybe it only shows that this writer, having made her mark, now assumes that she can get away with being lazy and taking her readers for granted. I wish I knew.

Once I had escaped the clutches of the gripping story I began thinking about what had fascinated me so much and my first thought was that perhaps it was only the type of voyeurism that keeps people glued to saas bahu serials on TV. And since Manju Kapur is so accomplished at getting under the skin of her characters, I had obviously found a lot more to gape and ogle.
A second possibility was that all this lifelike churning had put me in mind of similar intense – if long-ago – experiences of my own with custody and nascent stepmotherhood which had served to transport me into an altered state of consciousness.

One Little Finger by Malini Chib

A glamorous crusader

I saw Malini’s book at a friend’s place in Madras last month, read the first page, and was thoroughly captivated. And I was tickled by the title. I had met Malini in January 2009. She had told me about herself, and one of the things I remember her saying was that she has two separate Masters’ degrees and had typed both theses with just one little finger. So I knew what the title meant: it was a tribute to a certain very special finger, and quite characteristic of Malini’s wry sense of humour.
Malini has Cerebral Palsy. I enjoyed meeting her and found her to be an extremely emotional person – enthusiastic, independent, full of life, very good looking, a little impatient, and irrepressibly eager to try out new things. During the course of the day we spent together, her witty responses had me laughing a number of times. And she had a coy look on her face when her mother, Mithu Alur who founded Spastics Society of India, told me that Malini was presently working on her autobiography. Well – here it was, and I ordered a copy as soon as I got home.
One of the best things about this book is that it is the inside story of a struggle that many face – but very few are gifted with the ability to articulate. And Malini is not just telling us a personal story, she is also able to comment on the difficult situation she has faced all her life and conceptualize and analyze various facets of it. Not only that but she make jokes about it too. For instance, she tells us that as she was growing up, the world viewed disability through what is now known as the “medical model” which means that disabled people were considered as medical cases and isolated accordingly. The prevailing view, however, is the “social model” which applies a “rights-based approach” and considers disability as a social issue; that we are each dependent on others at some level – and that each of us must consider it a simple responsibility to include others of varying ability in our lives. But when her friend Varsha Hooja helps her onto a bus in London and a co-passenger gushes, “You are a wonderful person. God will bless you,” Malini and Varsha secretly laugh and define a new “medical charity model”: anyone helping the disabled will be blessed!

In this book, Malini tells us the story of her life, starting from her birth in Bombay to an educated family, privileged and well connected.
When her parents realize that their child has special needs which will not be satisfactorily met in India, they move to London. Over the years that follow, her life is divided between Bombay and London. Wherever she is, we observe that she has the intelligence to analyze her problems and look for solutions to them. When she joins college at St Xavier’s in Bombay, she agonizes:

Did I have my own personality? Was I just another disabled girl who needed things done for her? I knew that I was different and trapped in a dysfunctional body, but did others realise I had a spirit and a mind separate from this body? My body did not work like others, but did they realise that my mind was normal? Did they consider thinking that my desires were just the same as theirs?

When her classmates plan to go for a movie together, it doesn’t occur to them that Malini wants to go too. But instead of just sitting there feeling sore and left out, she invites herself along and soon enough they learn how to help her along and get used to involving her in their plans.
It struck me that by having the courage to maintain this approach, Malini has always been able to influence people around her towards inclusion, even before she became the activist that she now is. However, the environment was full of barriers. The classrooms at St Xavier’s had a raised strip at the doorway which made it a struggle for a wheelchair to cross. When she got a job at Bombay Times for a short period, the canteen was out of reach so she could never join her colleagues for a cup of coffee or lunch. In India, even toilets for people with disabilities were not accessible.

I liked Malini’s observations – for example her experience of the education system in India as one “which teaches students to be like sausage machines rather than thinkers of the future.”
At the special school she attended in Bombay, children were praised for no reason and not challenged or driven to learn and this proved to be a handicap too. She writes, “My writing was affected. I think one of the fundamental concerns for education for disabled people is the communication output.” This surprised me because it sounded like the most basic, simple common sense. Apparently not!
And she later comments, rather poetically, “To me, communication is like water, the essence of life. What could I do without fluent speech?”
Of her pain and isolation she philosophically remarks: “My experience is that most people cannot deal with other people’s trauma. One’s trauma is one’s own and should not be mentioned unnecessarily to others.”
As she got ready to bid goodbye to her parents as they set out for six weeks in India, leaving her in London, she writes,

‘Bye’, said dad as he kissed me, adding ‘this is what you wanted, so don’t cry’. Men do not understand why women cry.
...
A mixture of emotions passed through them. I was happy to be finally on my own, but sad that my mother and dad had left. We did so much together. We were more like friends.

Her struggle with inclusion and access reduces – though it does continue in different ways – in London where she has a series of happy stints. Here she experiences independence for the first time using technology to make her mobile and able to communicate with the world through different appliances. And at Berkeley, where she meets a large number of disabled people leading normal lives, it opens new worlds to her.

For Malini, a simple outing that most of us would take for granted becomes a grand expedition! We share her excitement and tremendous sense of achievement when she finally goes out all on her own for the first time. And we feel her joy when she travels with friends who enjoy her company. At Notre Dame in Paris, Malini is moved by the atmosphere and writes, “I felt a spiritual presence encircle me. I prayed, and thought about how lucky I had been in life.” And later, when she learns to give lectures using PowerPoint, she comments sardonically, “I absolutely abhor the sound of my monotonous voice. I wish I had a sexy, husky one with a clipped Oxonian accent, but I guess one cannot have everything in life.”

I found this book entertaining; I admired the writing style, enjoyed looking at the photographs and smiling at the humour. I was happy to have from this book the endorsement of the belief, implemented in my own life, that a professional attendant is more conducive to a life of independence and dignity than when the disabled person is cared for just by family members.
But there was something about this book that made me angry and that was its very large number of editing and proofreading mistakes. Malini, being disabled is deserving of more protection than people who have all their functions – and as a talented writer, her creative output deserves better housekeeping. On the very first page of her book she is delivered by a paediatrician! What a novelty! Then, mama is explained on page 29 as a term used for mother’s brother but mashi was used ten pages before and repeatedly through the book – but no one tells us what that means. Why do we have “Bakers” Street instead of Baker Street, “I regaled the incident” (instead of recounted); sooth instead of soothe; a sentence as meaningless as “pasta was considered to be a wholesome, student-friendly of meal”; any number of misplaced apostrophes as in “as other’s often tell me” and bumbling capital letters as in "university Bookshop"? Worse still, towards the end of the book, even the editing gets careless and leaves us with phrases like

As my mother and my aunt were getting older, mashi only suggested that I should have a separate carer

and

… she noticed a considerable amount of bags at the back of my chair.

This book is an excellent production, with good aesthetic values. It has a good story, a beautiful cover, and is well written. To be strewn with careless mistakes – I’ve listed here only a few that I noticed, and I wasn’t even looking – is inexcusable.

Many people would find Malini's book a source of hope and inspiration. But for me, the best thing about this book is what I learnt from it. For the majority of us who have little experience with disability – a situation resulting of course from that unfortunate “medical model” – Malini’s response to the different types of reactions she gets from the different types of people she meets shows us appropriate ways of behaving.

Third Best by Arjun Rao

Lord of the Bogs
Arjun Rao is a schoolmaster at Doon. He himself studied at the Lawrence School, Lovedale. So Third Best is definitely an insider’s version. I was eager to read it because I did time at Lawrence too, and had heard that this book was set in the school.
My initial reaction was a slight distaste at the sex scenes in the first few pages.
Well – I left school a full 22 years before Arjun did, and doubtless the relentless march of technology (to avoid the word “civilisation”) had provoked, um, advances in other spheres of life too. Or perhaps the author had just, um, inserted them to attract young readers.
Now it’s not that they were offensively explicit – in fact they were in the remote background, coy as a schoolboy’s fantasies, and perhaps a book about boarding school life without the hint of preoccupation with sex would be a book without virtue.

Compared with Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s or Mallory Towers books, to which I will admit being devoted as a child – or even with the (yawn) Harry Potter books, this one must be singled out as more than just escapist fiction because it is so firmly rooted in reality and includes ugly facets of boarding school life too.
While my distaste at the hint of sexual freedom lingered, it was eventually overcome by the gripping, well-written stories in this book which I found very relevant and interesting.

Shore Mount is different from Lovedale in geography but I found it emotionally very similar.
The author has drawn on a variety of situations and characters appealing to a young person – a stay in London, a holiday with a friend at his royal home in Rajasthan, a peek into the life of the most privileged person in a boarding school (the headboy) including meals at the headmaster’s house (where they serve pasta, which in my days had not yet been invented) and, for one who has spent years in a dormitory, not just a room of one’s own but the most amazing and desirable living quarters – and more.
But these were peripherals.
The book also has teacher stereotypes – posturing, petty minded, superannuated, socially compromised and other varieties. One teacher even has the maturity to frankly advise his students, “Listen to me. These exams are among the most useless things that you will ever have to do in your life. They do not matter in the greater scheme of things. In five years you’ll laugh that you ever had to do them and that you were even worried about them. But the fact is that the only way to get into a decent college in this country is through those marks.”
There are excellent descriptions of traditions such as the school dances, ceremonial sports rituals such as awarding colours, “Founders” and more. Listen to this:

A colour was Shore Mount’s most prestigious acknowledgement of its sporting heroes. Traditionally, it was awarded to the best player of the year in each sport, decided by the captain of the team and the teacher who was responsible for managing the sport that year. The Headmaster had the power to overrule and even withdraw a particular award, but this had been done so rarely in the history of the school that no one sitting in the Memorial Hall that morning even knew that such a rule existed.

However, these, too, are just background.
The real meat of the story is the constructed world of a particular boarding school steeped in conventions that go back a hundred and fifty years and more.
There are dynastic families which spawn star athletes and great leaders and if you come from one of these – the weight of expectation on you is tremendous. When your father and grandfather were headboys – but the headmaster doesn’t consider you up to the mark – could that be considered trauma that might mark one for life?
We learn that it’s an idyllic world – but isolated, and cut off from modern technology as it always was and doubtless always will be.
And these young kids spin out speeches with articulate passion. Even an un-glamorous sports captain has it in him to say, while listing people to whom he’s grateful:

Nathaniel Gomez who taught us the reason why we play this game: “Not to win but to show everyone we’re the best”.

Because language, to these students, is more than just a medium of expression – it’s a field in which your craft must continue to grow and grow. It was always like that at Lovedale and I enjoyed the propensity for dramatic and sweeping statements in this book that I remember well from my schooldays: “If you don’t switch off the fucking lights, you’ll all see nothing but darkness for the rest of your lives”. (Though I must permit myself a token objection to the easy use of the f word – oh dear.)
There is also insight into an innate childhood response to recognition, evident when you are made a prefect:

No one at Shore Mount knew how it happened but one minute you were just like everyone else, trying to get away with breaking the rules, and the next minute you were standing up for the system. It was as if a switch had been turned on that morning at assembly.

And childhood frustration culminating in violence features here, neatly and easily. You can get caned for misdemeanour, and this can happen in public. But more likely you’ll get beaten up, hit with hockey sticks, your bones will break and perhaps your face will be scarred for life:

No one ever tells you that your butt cheeks should be left loose. Clench hard and you won’t be able to shit for weeks. That, and to ensure you hands are way out in front. You don’t want a broken wrist adding to your pain.

An especially vicious cruelty is administered to teachers’ children.

What I didn’t like about this book (besides the implication of sexual freedom I mean :-)) was the easy assumption that the boy hero had to be much better than his girl. She studies harder but he scores higher. And when some girls begin to cry after seeing their marks, “everyone backed away lest they be blamed for the situation, and this included Mr Baweja, who should have been impervious to tears by now considering that the girls practically wept every time they encountered shares and debentures in his Accounts class."
Now this little bit of stereotyping may well be grounded in reality – but as a smug older woman, and one originally repressed by the very community this book is based in, it’s my duty to object – while praising the accuracy of detail. On the other hand, I did like it that these boys too cry at times – and even hug each other – and when they pull back after a while they say, “oh man – this is so GAY!” and laugh.

This book did a good job of drawing out the essence of singular self-importance that a contrived world is bound to engender. The boys and girls in it came alive for me. I could see them, physical features, personality traits and all – and, like real children, they grew before my eyes. Not just in inches but in maturity too. I admired this. But what I liked best about this book is the strong values it showcases. Nirvan is strong and reliable; he knows right from wrong and has the courage to always stand up for what he believes, regardless of any kind of social pressure. And I particularly liked the strong focus on mentoring and appreciation of it that this book quietly but effectively brings its readers.

On two feet and wings by Abbas Kazerooni

The diary of an unusually courageous child
I was reading another book, one which I had actually been waiting for for several months, when I received this one and happened to pick up and idly flip through it.
Before I knew it, the pages had flown by and when I realised, startled, that I was already on page 50 – well it was time to face the embarrassing reality that, despite any pretension, I’m nothing but a sucker for a fascinating story.

Abbas is nine years old and his family, once among the most prominent in Iran, has been a victim of the Ayatollahs. To save him from being recruited into the army – the age has been lowered to eight – his parents have no option but to take him out of the country.
A series of events leads to little Abbas finding himself living alone in a seedy hotel in Istanbul and proceeding to have a series of fascinating adventures. His goal is to get a British visa and go and live in safety in the very country that his great grandfather funded a guerrilla opposition against when the rulers of Persia would not fight them. Accordingly, this book has three sections which tell us, respectively, about Abbas's early life in Tehran, his struggle in Istanbul, and a little of what happens after he arrives in England.

When I mailed Abbas Kazerooni, the author, to ask him how much of this was actually his own story, he replied, “I would say about 70 to 80 percent. Obviously I have used a lot of artistic license but you would probably be surprised to know that some of the more shocking parts actually happened.”

When I read a book, I try my best to avoid preconceptions. This means not discussing it with anyone beforehand, not reading reviews or opinions, avoiding the publisher’s note and the text on the book jacket, or any supplementary text inside the book which usually tries to impress you with how wonderful the author is and what a great books this is. I’d really rather find out for myself. As I read, I also try my best to remain impervious to opinions formed by previous books by this author, or previous knowledge of the author’s reputation. In this particular case I had never heard of the book or author before, so it wasn’t difficult to form an objective opinion. I enjoyed the book very much and though there were many phrases and words that I felt could have been tweaked for a better flow, I was so engrossed that they didn’t upset me too much.

Going online, I now found that this book had been published in the US in 2008 under the title The Little Man and if you like you can read the first part of that book here though I must say I found this version rather self indulgent compared to the casual style of the Indian edition.
I did feel that Indian readers would enjoy this book more than western ones who might tend to exoticise it more than we would. And when, for instance, a dog called Barfy turns up in the story, we would know it just meant Snowy rather than looking around for a vomit bag.

What I liked best about this book is that it can be read and enjoyed as much by children as by adults. After I finished, I had noticed that the book was dedicated to the loving memory of the author’s mother. Seeing this, and having observed the depth of feeling little Abbas repeatedly expressed for his estranged mother made me very curious to know the circumstances in which he had lost her. But when I asked, the author replied, “This will all be revealed in the sequel!”
Well I was longing to know what happened next, after the book got over, and find out exactly how poor Abbas went on to become someone who worked in successful theatre productions in the West End in London – and now lives in California where he has his own law firm and practices law when he's not writing semi-autobiographical novels – wow! But he would only say, to my dismayed impatience, “I do not want to give away too much and I will only tell you that the story gets more and more interesting and the protagonist is going endure a lot more!”
This of course brought back to me what a very intelligent and clear-thinking person the nine-year old Abbas had been, and I felt happy to think that he had done justice to that early promise.

Not Just Cricket by Vikram Dravid

There's more to life than World Cups
When I reached page 97, I suddenly realized that this was a really good book.
I had been reading slowly, enjoying the story about a typical cricket-playing boy from a middle-class family in Bombay. There had been brief glimpses of a world beyond. At page 97 the world beyond shone through, clear and unmistakable, and I understood how and why this book really wasn’t just about cricket. Cricket is the fabric; it’s also the substance of the plot. However, Not Just Cricket also carries glimpses into rich, deep aspects of life that can be revealed to most of us only through fiction because they are so removed from our scheme of things.
Most of the books I read these days are just too long. They go on and on, invariably repeating themselves, aiming to thrill the reader with flourish after flourish. As you long for them to end, all you can do is stretch your eyebrows in exasperation at that fundamental horror creative people seem to consider themselves entitled to – of having the output of their genius savaged just for the user. So after a long time, I was happy to be reading a book which ended too soon. It simply did not do justice to all that the author has to say.
Vikram Dravid is a doctor. He grew up in Bombay and now lives and works in the US. He certainly has the knack of telling a story and his characters are developed with skill, but there were some things I felt were lacking and I emailed him with my questions.

I found the fake names really annoying. Why Suchen Chembulkar? Especially, why Dalmeinkuchkala?! These names are parodies and more fitted to a comic or satirical genre. I found that in your text, which has a quite serene context, they formed abrupt and jarring interruptions. Was there a reason why you did this? And how much of the Pakistan tour you’ve described is as real and thinly disguised? I’m afraid I don’t know cricket so you will have to tell me in case there was a specific series you were talking about. I did enjoy stepping in and getting glimpses of Pakistan along with the team, though.
I was going to use the real names of current cricketers but was told that using the real name, particularly of a celebrity, in a fictitious scenario required their permission. I wanted to give the cricket an aura of authenticity, and not seem make-believe. Using thinly-disguised versions of current day stars, that most of the readers would likely be familiar with, allowed me to extrapolate their real life characteristics into my book without having to flesh them out.
Interestingly, readers have either been turned off or extremely tickled by the names. Dalmeinkuchkala refers to a previous chairman of the board who had a reputation of many unsavoury deals. I must say there was a little inspiration from Rushdie's use of Rani of Cooch Nahin etc, although I recognize that my book is not of the same genre or calibre. The tour is all made up.

Your style is neat and simple and I also admired your frequent linguistic flourishes. But … I would have been a bit more careful with the editing.
Being a first-time author, I sought a lot of advice regarding this. The manuscript has been edited umpteen times. I do think some of the usage may reflect my own peculiarities of language.
I really believe that I am more of a storyteller than a writer. In fact I am better at narrating verbally and sometimes my prose is gushy and has to be chopped up on the second go around.

What I really would have liked is more details of the glimpses you’ve given us into the fascinating lives of Arjun’s parents. I kept thinking kept thinking that you have the seed of more good books in some of the areas you’ve touched on there – in particular the aspects of rural medicine. Maybe a collection of short stories?
The two stories about Arjun's parents have been liked the most by all readers. They did start off as short stories, but because they fitted in well I used them to add layers and dimensions to those two characters and to tie in the narrative.

How did you find a publisher? And how’s the distribution going?
Being removed from India, with no direct access to publishers, I sent out routine emails to the big publishing houses. They weren't quick to respond. I found Cinnamon Teal on the web. They have been very responsive. However, people have found it difficult to get their hands on the book. I guess distribution could be better. For instance, I would love for it to be available in a chain of stores such as Crosswords. Currently it will be made available in select bookstores, I don't know which ones. I would love to be more involved. However, distance and the lack of wherewithal are stumbling blocks. The book has done very well in North America where it is available on Amazon.

What are you working on next?
I do have a sequel in mind, but am currently working on a string of short stories that tie in together with a common thread.

Hickory Dickory Shock by Sundip Gorai

Superpower supercrime
This book is a murder mystery set in a software company. Since it’s written by a Business Intelligence and Analytics wiz, the plot is complicated and has any number of enjoyable twists and surprises. But Sundip Gorai writes simply and directly, and with frequent spurts of mildly giddy-headed humour which gave me the feeling that he was really enjoying himself. I have to regretfully point out that the idiom here is slightly below par – and for this I would blame the publisher’s editors for not doing a proper job.
As I read, a few things bothered me and I mailed Sundip Gorai with questions and I have reproduced our email conversation below – in tact, so as to give a sense of the idiom in the book – relaxed and easy, but fundamentally faulty.

Why did you use a cliché like Shivan when you have such strong, original characters and plot?
I believed that for a reader, at the point of purchase, the front and the back cover play a crucial role in deciding whether to buy or not to buy a book. This is especially true for a book whose name is not known to the reader – though my book is published by Rupa & Co, till the book was published, I was an unknown entity in the world of writing. I consciously used SHIVAN Computers as the name of the mega enterprise where the story is set so that readers can easily identify it with an IT scam and would be egged to read more. I believed that on reading the story synopsis the reader would peruse the table of contents which would egg them to read the first chapter, which in turn would make them buy the book. With the first print sold out I think the marketing strategy is working well. On a side note, the name was suggested by SHIVAN Mittal, my friend’s nephew.

What do you see in common with your book and Da Vinci Code?
The protagonists in Da Vinci Code are in trail of the Holy Grail, whereas in my book the protagonists are after a cutting edge software invention (called LoRD) that has been stolen. In both the books the lead characters are chasing cryptic clues, albeit of very different kind – my cryptic codes and clues are laced around Indian history and Indian heritage monuments, beyond this, the stories are very different.
I had to do a lot of research to formulate the cryptic codes - the book uses anagrams, substitution ciphers, math puzzles, Vedic math concepts and more. I would like to mention here that Edgar Allan Poe, Dan Brown, Umberto Eco, Dorothy Sayers , and Conan Doyle have had a significant influence in fashioning the cryptic codes in HICKORY DICKORY SHOCK!
Da Vinci Code is set against the backdrop of the one of the most controversial questions of Christianity –Christ’s bloodline, whereas my book is set around one of the most controversial scams in the history of computing – a billion dollar IT scam. My story has other subplots that are of a different kind, namely intriguing vanishing culprits, strange math puzzles inspired by Vedic math, LoRD – the cutting edge invention that has been sabotaged and stolen, LoRD’s accounting books that are used to perpetuate the crime, and LoRD’s software code that hold the fraudulent data related to the accounting fraud.

How much of the background of your book is based in reality – I mean floundering projects, mindless HR and so on?
The book brings out many triumphs and tribulations of the Indian IT Industry .The story draws a lot from my personal experience but characters are given shades of grey with the primary intent of storytelling – the book does not intent to preach that all people doing a certain kind of job in IT company are necessarily corrupt.

And how much is based in research (ciphers, American history and stuff like that) – or is this just stuff that you have always been interested in or came across by chance?
I have been an active participant in quiz programs during my school days and have always been the lookout for interesting trivia on almost anything. Over the last four five years, I had analyzed hundreds of plot devices which could form the core of my story. After a lot of deliberation I settled on eight or nine standard tricks used to craft a detective story. I also had to use anagram solvers, code programs to create some of the clues in the book. (A teaser for those who are yet to read the book - “BIG HAT VANISHED GAVE DATA” is an anagram. Can you crack it?) The research that went in the book, namely, ciphers, codes around Indian historic monuments, interesting trivia around mathematics, and world culture, required a scouting various sources. I have been fortunate to get support from Barry Perlus - art historian at Cornell University, Sam Loyd’s museum, Atlanta Fulton County libraries, and my learning from the seminal Indian historical and spiritual texts.

What are you working on now?
Given a demanding day job I did most of my writing on weekends, late nights, flights, airports, and hotels. I am planning to give writing a break for some time, though there are requests coming in for commissioning screenplays. I have a very interesting story in my head - a conspiracy theory related to a great modern day Indian invention, Invention of an airplane by an Indian (this is a true fact – this happened before the Wright brothers invented the plane), Hitler’s obsession with the Aryan race and the related expedition he sent to India, the myth surrounding modern day religions, UFOs and more – hopefully, someday this story will becomes a reality , either as a novel or a screenplay.

When I started reading this book I was thoroughly charmed by the description of the hero, Tuten, the explanation of why he had a name like Tuten, and the stark fact that even someone graduating from IIT cannot be guaranteed a campus placement – in a world where so many B and C grade institutes blithely assure their applicants of “cent-per-cent placement”.
As it progressed, I found my attention lag. The book is similar to Da Vinci Code – but I must say I felt sorry that Sundip does not have the compelling style of Dan Brown, which you just can’t stop reading even though his language is so cheesy. By the time I reached the end, I couldn’t help admiring all the thought that had gone into the book and the fact that, with all its layers and flourishes, it was a real murder mystery with a proper surprise ending. What I liked most about this book, however, is its setting. Sundip has done a great job of showing us what a software company is really like from the inside. Even though his reply to my pointed question was rather diplomatic, I did find many of his characters and situations familiar, and I’m sure people outside the prestigious industry will be interested to read how its Projects, Sales and HR actually function.

Show me a hero by Aditya Sudarshan

The slow thriller

I don’t like the expression “coming of age” to describe a book. It smacks to me of primitive, and suspiciously unhealthy, puberty rites. The publishers have used it here because, I suppose, it deals with a period in the life of a group of youngsters who experienced certain events that moved them from, say, one rung of maturity to another.

Instead, if this book must be labelled, I’d prefer to call it a slow thriller. Its plot builds up gradually, with sharp teasers that promise action ahead inserted at widespread intervals. The matter of suspense itself is plausible and carefully constructed, and when surprises happen it is with elegance - in fact, more elegance even than drama. I liked that.

Reading the simple dialogue and easy descriptions which don’t bother to contextualise situations for those unfamiliar with them, superimposed with the strong characters and the complexity of their thoughts, I started thinking fondly back to Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and emailed Aditya Sudarshan to ask whether he had perhaps been influenced in any way by the great Russian novelists.

He replied: “I've not read the classic Russian novels properly. I've read some short stories by Chekhov and a few by Gogol. I think I can see why Chekhov has the reputation he does, but that style of dealing in impressions and images doesn't feel that close to me personally. I like more ‘narrative’ oriented short story writers, like Roald Dahl or Daphne Du Maurier.”

When I asked him to tell me something about himself and his influences as a writer, Aditya mentioned that two of his favourite writers were G K Chesterton and Scott Fitzgerald – and that the quote show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy is Fitzgerald's.
He also said that he had studied law at the National Law School in Bangalore, and then worked with a criminal lawyer but took up writing full time and has been doing so for nearly four years.

When I heard that Aditya could have easily been a highly-paid and eventually high-profile lawyer instead of a writer, it made me wonder (as any overbearing Mummy might) what his parents had made of this switch. It also reminded me that Vaibhav, the hero of this book, lives in Delhi, away from home, and works for a wildlife organisation, a niche sort of occupation reasonably well indulged by his well-off parents though I must admit my sense – perhaps imagined – of a certain amount of forehead slapping on both sides.
So I asked Aditya how much of this book’s hero Vaibhav was actually him, and he replied that he had used different aspects of himself for all the three main male characters in the book.

What I liked best about this book is that it is occupied by a population of highly intelligent people.
Reading it, I tried to think about when I had last met so many people together, making the kind of perceptive and thought-provoking remarks I came across here and, honestly – I don’t know if it’s ever happened. Perhaps back when I was school? Or perhaps occasionally, with some of my (grownup) children’s friends. But it’s not that common in daily life. After all, most of us adults are nothing but lazy and mediocre whether in ability or sensitivity or wit.

Tender hooks by Moni Mohsin

P.G. Wodehouse reporting from Lahore
This book is a sequel to Diary of a Social Butterfly, the 2008 novel derived from Moni Mohsin’s popular column of the same name which ran in Pakistan’s Friday Times from January 2001 to December 2007.
I hadn’t been too sure whether I really wanted to read more about Butterfly’s vapid life and the preoccupations of people with wealth but no culture that Moni Mohsin pokes fun at so well. But I spent some time with Namita Devidayal at the Jaipur Literature Festival and she mentioned more than once how “fab” Moni was and for a bit we even exchanged a few witticisms a la Butterfly,

Janoo – it was so good, na

and so on. Janoo being Butterfly’s long-suffering husband who happens to be an Oxen, having being educated in Oxford and all.

So while others on the flight home from the festival had their noses buried in Chimamanda Adichie, Junot Diaz, Irvine Welsh and others, I was rather diffidently reading Tender Hooks, glancing around furtively every now and again to make sure that no had spotted me for a bogus. But when we landed, and I spied a P.G. Wodehouse tucked under the arm of someone at the luggage belt I had a moment of appeasement – which soon turned to wonder that I had never before seen the similarity.
Both Moni Mohsin and P.G. Wodehouse base their stories in small, rather comical communities preoccupied with lineage, inheritance, suitable marriages and so on, and speak in quaint dialects all their own. Even the names resound – key characters in this book are Butterfly’s Aunt Pussy and her son Jonkers.
So I rushed home and dashed off the following email to Moni Mohsin:

Dear Moni,
I’ve just finished reading Tender Hooks and had a few questions – I hope you’ll have time to reply?

• I tau found so much resemblance to that fellow, what’s his name, PJ Woodhouse, na? So I was wondering, were you inspired by him in any way?
• I also got quite digressed, arre baba felt sad na, about Butterfly and Janoo’s relationship and was thinking ke in this book till nearly the end, so many bad bad things were happening between them. There was total no communication and so much quarrels, na? Also I was feeling sad about things in Pakistan – you were showing downslide na? Then in the end Butterfly and Janoo get all lovedovey so it donned on me that maybe you feel optimistic about Pakistan?
• And: Your Butterfly has a bit of a split personality Moni – she’s scheming and greedy and shallow. Yet there’s a smart, sensible side to her. And a brave, honourable side too. How does that happen? Is it there in all those bitchy socialites you are parodying?
  

Waiting to hear.
Regards,
Saaz

To which she replied deadpan:

Dear Saaz,
Thank you for reading my book. The Butterfly is a character like us, with good and bad in her. That's what makes her fun. If she was just mean and shallow and greedy you wouldn't want to read about her. She would be unidimensional, predictable and hence boring. I know that I can be frivolous and serious, generous and mean and fun and dull depending on the time, place and situation, without necessarily being schizophrenic.
And yes the book shows you what living in Pakistan on a daily basis is like and that was part of my purpose in writing it. But people try and wrest what is positive and redemptive even in these grim days and that too is what I wanted to show in my book.
And no, I haven't been influenced by P G Wodehouse though I do love his books.
All best,
Moni

About her first book I had written in a Sunday Mid-day column:

It has a compelling similarity with Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist! It’s not just the authors’ shared name, city of residence (London) or affiliation with Gulberg, Lahore’s ultra-posh reserve of the city’s most affluent and influential. Each one’s main character narrates the entire novel in a conversational first person monologue with almost no intrusion. Butterfly picks up at 9/11, where Changez winds down. And while Hamid’s Changez is suave, genteel, highly cerebral and Princeton-educated, Moni Mohsin’s Butterfly is an astonishingly accomplished woman herself!

In this book I found another reason to admire the author’s craft in the sharp voice of reason that the Oxen Janoo brings to it, which you can spot in Moni's response to my email, and which allows Butterfly's giddy-headed narrative to step aside briefly for perceptive sentences like this one to be inserted: “From my experience, even bleeding heart liberals revert pretty quick to colonial sahibs and memsahibs when they find themselves in places where help is cheap and has no rights.”

Jaipur Literature Festival 2011

Disneyland for the reader – again
Why am I posting this four full days after the fabulous Jaipur Literature Festival ended? I suppose it’s because this year I was there on holiday, not work. As a result, I attended very few sessions and didn’t interview anyone. Still, there were precious moments in abundance and this one was one of my favourites. It also shows you what the festival is really like – a place with quiet corners too, and here we sat and chatted – my mother and my daughter and a very close friend who we hadn’t met for several months. And yes – that’s my knitting on the seat and I was going to pick it up the minute I finished taking this photograph and go clackety-clackety-clack once I sat down again. Because, and pardon me for bragging, particularly because this is nothing to do with Jaipur or literature or festivals: I can knit pretty much as fast as I can type. Ahem.
Well – I think I’ve proved how much I love this event and admire the way it is organized and written endlessly about how grand it is and made everyone I know want to go too by praising it without cease. In fact, to me it’s pretty much perfect – it has a true festival atmosphere; the participants and spectators are relaxed and friendly; the setting is beautiful and exotic; you get to hear writers whose books you’ve enjoyed tell you about themselves, their work and their ideas and often even to meet them one to one; everyone has special encounters and hears special people say special things that they can put in their memoirs. Best of all, the Jaipur Literature Festival is completely democratic and everyone there is equal in their aspiration to a Life of the Mind!
Having said all this so many times, there’s only one thing I can do that would be different, and that is to list here what I would wish for to make perfect even better:

• More space. This year, as anticipated, the festival venue was badly overcrowded with people from all over the country and many from abroad who had heard about this wonderful event and naturally wanted to be part of it too. Over the weekend it was apparently claustrophobic.

• More security. In a crowd, even in a place where everyone’s heard of Baudelaire, nasty things can happen. My friend the poet, novelist and journalist CP Surendran was hit on the face by someone he asked for a light. More here

• Better interviewers. Most of the people the festival authorities invite to conduct sessions are intellectuals with doubtless a great deal of reading and teaching experience. However, they are not performers. Many of them have a diffident stage presence. Many of them miss question cues that even the audience wants to jump on. This is one of the biggest differences I’ve found between Jaipur and the Hay Festival where every single event is entertainment of the highest quality. Naturally everyone can’t be as compelling and articulate as William Dalrymple – but most, barring a few professionals, are really rather mediocre.
  

Back from the festival, the only thing I ever want to do is read and read and read. And write and write and write. And I’m waiting eagerly for next year …