Book Review – Basti by Intizar Husain (Translated by Frances Pritchett)

I’ve wanted to read Intizar Husain’s classic novel ‘Basti‘ for a long time. I finally got around to reading it.

The story starts in the early 1970s, sometime before the start of the war in Bangladesh. Zakir is a history teacher in college. He lives in Lahore. (The city is not named in the story but it looks like Lahore.) There is a kind of unrest in the streets. It takes Zakir’s mind back to an earlier time, to the early 1940s, when Zakir and his family were living in a small town in India. We get to see the story and history unfold through Zakir’s eyes, as the story moves back and forth between the 1940s and the 1970s and even moves further back to the 1850s. All these time periods had traumatic events which resulted in many innocent people getting killed and getting displaced from their homes, and we get an eerie feeling that history as tragedy just keeps repeating itself.

The contrast between the 1940s and the 1970s is so beautifully depicted – different time periods, different countries, separated by a traumatic event. The depiction of the 1940s is charming at the beginning till things turn dark because of the Partition and the ensuing violence.

I loved the way Intizar Husain blends literature and mythology from different cultures seamlessly into the story. The notes section and the glossary at the end of the book were very informative and were a pleasure to read. I learnt a lot from there.

I loved many of the characters in the book. Zakir’s father Abba Jan was one of my favourite characters in the book and he speaks some of my favourite lines from the story. Zakir’s cousin and beloved Sabirah who ends up in India while he moves to Pakistan was another of my favourite characters in the book.

Intizar Husain’s prose is beautiful and it was a pleasure to read. I couldn’t stop highlighting my favourite passages – there were so many.

The book has a brilliant introduction by Muhammad Umar Memon which discusses and analyzes the plot. It is best read after reading the book. There is also a beautiful interview with Intizar Husain at the end, which is a pleasure to read.

These days ‘Basti’ is published by NYRB. I personally feel that NYRB just buys the rights of pioneering editions and translations which came out earlier and puts them out at prohibitive prices. The edition of ‘Basti’ I read is by Oxford University Press. If you can get hold of this edition, it is much better than NYRB – hardback, thick paper, big font, and so an absolute pleasure to read.

‘Basti’ is one of the masterpieces of Pakistani Urdu literature. It was moving, haunting and heartbreaking. I loved it and I’m glad I finally read it though it took me a while to get to it. I’ve heard that Intizar Husain is famous for his short stories and so hoping to read one of his short story collections sometime.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

“Just then thunder rumbled in the clouds, scaring them both, and at once the rain came down so hard that before they got from the open roof to the staircase they were both drenched.

How forcefully the rainy season began! Inside, outside, everywhere was commotion; but when it went on raining at a steady pace, the atmosphere slowly filled with a kind of sadness and voices were gradually silenced. When evening fell, the stray call of a peacock came from deep in the forest, and mingled more sadness with the sad, rainy evening. Then night came, and the rain-soaked darkness grew deep and dense. If anyone woke in the night, the rain was falling as though it had been raining for an endless eternity, and would keep on raining for an endless eternity. But that night was so well-populated by voices.”

******

“The rain poured down all night inside him. The dense clouds of memory seemed to come from every direction. Now the sky was washed and soft. Here and there a cloud swam contentedly in it, like a bright face, a soft smile. How deeply self-absorbed he was! For him, the outer world had already lost its meaning.”

“Other people’s history can be read comfortably, the way a novel can be read comfortably. But my own history? I’m on the run from my own history, and catching my breath in the present. Escapist. But the merciless present pushes us back again toward our history. The mind keeps talking.”

“Zavvar was the youngest of us all, but he established himself among us as a learned scholar, and his brilliance and maturity of mind fully made up for his youthfully downy cheeks. At such an early age, after reading books of all types and descriptions, he announced that wisdom doesn’t come from books, but from passing through the experiences of life. Thus, in search of wisdom, he sat for a few days with Afzal, trying out liquor. Then, believing it inadequate, he tried marijuana, hashish, and opium. Taking baths, changing clothes, and shaving he considered to be a waste of time, and insofar as possible he avoided such extravagances. Partly because his shoes were rather old, and partly because they were unpolished and covered with dust and dirt, they looked ancient. He himself took out and threw away their inner soles, and contrived to leave the nails protruding. He used to walk for miles, and come back to the Shiraz with his heels covered with blood.

“Yar, why don’t you get a shoemaker to fix your shoes?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“To become a man, one ought to have the experience of torment; and great art is born only through suffering.”

Anisah watched this whole scene with sadness. She said, The Imperial has gone into a total decline. How did it happen? When I left, the Imperial was really at its peak. Who could have imagined then that such a fate would overtake it?’

“That’s the trouble with peaks. Those who are on them never even imagine that they could be brought down from such a height! And when the decline starts, it can’t be stopped halfway. The decline doesn’t stop even for a moment, until it reaches its limit.”

“You’ve started talking about the decline of nations. I was talking about the Imperial.”

“Whenever and wherever decline begins, it works in exactly the same way.”

“What’s happened to my walk today? He hesitated, then reflected that before today he’d never even paid attention to his walk. We keep on walking, and never pay attention to how we walk. Here I am, walking along. Immediately he was brought up short. When he observed his own non-human walk, the strange thought came to him that it was not he who was walking, but someone else in his place. But who? He fell into perplexity. Gradually he controlled his doubt. He walked in measured paces, and listened to the sound of his footsteps. No, I’m myself all right. I’m walking here on a paved sidewalk in my city, and this is the sound of my footsteps. But while he was reassuring himself like this, a sudden impression came to him that the sound of his footsteps was gradually drawing away from his footsteps. It’s a strange thing. I’m walking along here, and the sound of my footsteps is coming from over there – from where? Or perhaps I’m here, and I’m walking somewhere else? Where? Where am I walking? On what earth are my footsteps falling? He looked around him in surprise. Everything was silent and desolate. As though the town had emptied, the way a matchbox empties. “Houses and inns and places, all empty.” No noise, no voice, no sound of footsteps, no nothing…”

“Yesterday when I was drinking tea with Sabirah, my eyes fell on the part in her hair. How elegantly straight a part she had made. I saw that among the black hairs one hair was shining like silver. So, my friend, time is passing. We’re all in the power of time. So hurry and come here. Come and see the city of Delhi, and the realm of beauty, for both are waiting for you. Come and join them, before silver fills the part in her hair. and your head becomes a drift of snow, and our lives are merely a story. That’s all.”

“Well, listen now, where is the key to the storeroom?”

“Storeroom? What storeroom?”

“Ai hai, you’ve already forgotten! Was there not a storeroom in our mansion?”

“Oh, the storeroom in the mansion.” Abba Jan was silent, then said, “Zakir’s mother, twenty-five years have passed.”

“Well, I’m asking about the key to the storeroom, not the number of years.”

“When you asked about the key to the storeroom, I thought I ought to tell you how much time has passed.”

“Oh, what does time have to do with it time always goes on passing, but if the key to the storeroom’s been lost, it’s a disaster! All our old family heirlooms are shut up in there. All the things from my dowry are in there…”

******

“From somewhere deep within the bag, under some papers, he brought out a bunch of keys. He looked at them closely, and said, “That day you were thinking about the keys to the mansion, and here they are.”

Her lined face brightened. “Truly?” She looked longingly at the bunch of keys. “Well, you wouldn’t believe, that day when you said you didn’t know where they were, my heart almost stopped beating. I thought my soul had left my body.” She paused, then said, “And the rust hasn’t gotten to them?”

Abba Jan examined the keys once more. “No, I didn’t let them get rusty. From now on, it’s up to Zakir.” Then he addressed him : “Son, these are the keys of a house to which we no longer have any right. And when did we ever have any right? The world, as Hazrat Ali has said, is a guest-house. We and our desires are guests in it. Guests have no rights. Whatever the earth deigns to bestow on us guests, it’s a favor, and the earth has shown us great kindness indeed. These keys are a trust. Guard this trust, and remember the kindness shown by the earth we left, and this will be your greatest act of dutiful behavior.” As he spoke, suddenly his breath choked. He closed his eyes with the pain, and pressed his hand to his chest. Ammi at once jumped up anxiously, “Why, what’s happened?” She helped him to lie down. “Son, call the doctor!” Abba Jan opened his eyes. He made a sign to say no. Slowly, with the greatest difficulty, he said, “Hazrat Ali has come!”

“Afzal was right. This was indeed the time to have a long sleep. A man should go into a cave, apart from everyone, and sleep. And go on sleeping for seven hundred years. When he wakes up and comes out of the cave, then he’ll see that the times have changed. And he has not changed. It’s a good idea, it’s better than getting up every morning and looking in the mirror, suspecting that his face has changed, and being tormented all day by the thought that his face is changing! When a man sees people changing all around him, such suspicions arise. Or it also happens that no suspicions arise, and then a man changes. How? How have they gone on changing? Those people, every one of whom believed that the others were changing, while he himself looked the same as before. Everyone looked at everyone else and was stupefied. “My dear friend! What’s happened to you?”

“To me? Nothing’s happened to me. But I can see that something’s happened to you.”

“My dear friend, nothing’s happened to me But I do see that your face –”

One tangled with another, the second tangled with a third. One clawed at another, the second clawed at a third. They all clawed at each other and were injured and deformed. I was afraid that I too – I came away. I should go into my cave and sleep. And keep sleeping until the times have changed.”

Have you read ‘Basti’? What to you think about it?

Book Review – Come, Tell Me How You Live (an archaeological memoir) by Agatha Christie

After reading Elizabeth Peters’ archaeological adventure, I decided to read a book on an actual archaeological expedition. So I picked up Agatha Christie’s ‘Come, Tell Me How You Live‘.

Agatha Christie’s husband was an archaeologist and so Agatha Christie frequently accompanied him on his expeditions helping him out, and sometimes using the expedition as a backdrop for one of her novels. Some of her friends asked her once what her day-to-day life was when she was on an expedition and to answer their question, Agatha Christie wrote this book. The expedition that Agatha Christie describes in the book happened in the 1930s in Syria. She describes how they surveyed different places, how they decided on the place where they can dig, how they hired people to work there, how everyday life was, how they managed food and water and what happened when someone was sick. She also describes the life of the local people and their culture and customs. I found her description on how Arab people and Kurdish people are different, very fascinating. I also found her description of the Yezidi people very fascinating. Agatha Christie says that the Yezidi people are devil worshippers and I found that very fascinating. She also describes a Yezidi temple that she visited. I didn’t know about the Yezidi people before. I want to read more on them.

Agatha Christie describes a Syria and a Middle East which was very different compared to how it is today. It was a different time, a charming, innocent time, which will never come again. There is one particular passage that I found very interesting. It went like this.

“An old man comes and sits down beside us. There is the usual long silence after greetings have been given.

Then he enquires courteously if we are French. German? English?

English!

He nods his head. “Is it the English this country belongs to now? I cannot remember. I know it is no longer the Turks.”

“No,” we say, “the Turks have not been here since the war.”

“A war?” says the old man, puzzled.

“A war that was fought twenty years ago.”

He reflects. “I do not remember a war…. Ah yes, about the time you mention, many ‘asker went to and fro over the railway. That, then, was the war? We did not realize it was a war. It did not touch us here.”

Presently, after another long silence, he rises, bids us farewell politely, and is gone.”

This particular part was also very beautiful.

“There is a village there, and with Hamoudi as ambassador we try and obtain workmen. The men are doubtful and suspicious.

“We do not need money,” they say. “It has been a good harvest.”

For this is a simple and, I think, consequently a happy part of the world. Food is the only consideration. If the harvest is good, you are rich. For the rest of the year there is leisure and plenty, until the time comes to plough and sow once more.

“A little extra money,” says Hamoudi, like the serpent of Eden, “is always welcome.”

They answer simply : “But what can we buy with it? We have enough food until the harvest comes again.””

I found this passage also very beautiful.

“Accustomed as we are to our Western ideas of the importance of life, it is difficult to adjust our thoughts to a different scale of values. And yet to the Oriental mind it is simple enough. Death is bound to come – it is as inevitable as birth, whether it comes early or late is entirely at the will of Allah. And that belief, that acquiescence, does away with what has become the curse of our present-day world – anxiety. There may not be freedom from want, but there is certainly freedom from fear. And idleness is a blessed and natural state – work is the unnatural necessity.”

I loved ‘Come, Tell Me How You Live’. It was very different from what I expected. It brought back a bygone time and it was very beautiful. There might be an occasional sentence or passage here and there which might offend our 21st century sensibilities, but the book was beautiful and charming and it had a fascinating cast of characters who were all likeable. I loved Agatha Christie’s humour too.

Towards the end of the book, Agatha Christie says this –

“For after four years spent in London in war-time, I know what a very good life that was, and it has been a joy and refreshment to me to live those days again…. Writing this simple record has been not a task, but a labour of love. Not an escape to something that was, but the bringing into the hard work and sorrow of today of something imperishable that one not only had but still has!

For I love that gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life, who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible.

Inshallah, I shall go there again, and the things that I love shall not have perished from this earth….”

When we leave the book, we can’t help but echo the exact same sentiments…

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite pages from the book. It is long, and so I apologize in advance. Do make yourself a cup of coffee or hot tea and hope you enjoy reading it.

“I am struck as often before by the fundamental difference of race. Nothing could differ more widely than the attitude of our two chauffeurs to money. Abdullah lets hardly a day pass without clamouring for an advance of salary. If he had had his way he would have had the entire amount in advance, and it would, I rather imagine, have been dissipated before a week was out. With Arab prodigality Abdullah would have splashed it about in the coffee-house. He would have cut a figure! He would have ‘made a reputation for himself’.

Aristide, the Armenian, has displayed the greatest reluctance to have a penny of his salary paid him. “You will keep it for me, Khwaja, until the journey is finished. If I want money for some little expense I will come to you.” So far he has demanded only four pence of his salary – to purchase a pair of socks!

His chin is snow adorned by a sprouting beard, which makes him look quite a Biblical figure. It is cheaper, he explains, not to shave. One saves the money one might have to spend on a razor blade. And it does not matter here in the desert.

At the end of the trip Abdullah will be penniless once more, and will doubtless be again adorning the water-front of Beyrout, waiting with Arab fatalism for the goodness of God to provide him with another job. Aristide will have the money he has earned untouched. “And what will you do with it?” Max asks him.

“It will go towards buying a better taxi,” replies Aristide.

“And when you have a better taxi?”

“Then I shall earn more and have two taxis.”

I can quite easily foresee returning to Syria in twenty years’ time, and finding Aristide the immensely rich owner of a large garage, and probably living in a big house in Beyrout. And even then, I dare say, he will avoid shaving in the desert because it saves the price of a razor blade.

And yet, Aristide has not been brought up by his own people. One day, as we pass some Beduin, he is hailed by them, and cries back to them, waving and shouting affec- tionately.

“That,” he explains, “is the Anaizah tribe, of whom I am one.”

“How is that?” Max asks.

And then Aristide, in his gentle, happy voice, with his quiet, cheerful smile, tells the story. The story of a little boy of seven, who with his family and other Armenian families was thrown by the Turks alive into a deep pit. Tar was poured on them and set alight. His father and mother and two brothers and sisters were all burnt alive. But he, was below them all, was still alive when the Turks left, and he was found later by some of the Anaizah Arabs. They took the little boy with them and adopted him into the Anaizah tribe. He was brought up as an Arab, wandering with them over their pastures. But when he was eighteen he went into Mosul, and there demanded that papers be given him to show his nationality. He was an Armenian, not an Arab! Yet the blood brotherhood still holds, and to members of the Anaizah he still is one of them.”

Have you read ‘Come, Tell Me How You Live’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

I discovered ‘Crocodile on a Sandbank‘ by Elizabeth Peters many years back through a friend’s recommendation. I finally got around to reading it.

‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’ is an Egyptian adventure. The story is set  in the 1880s. Amelia Peabody is an independent woman. Her father has passed away recently and has left her all his money. Amelia loves history, archaeology and other interesting things. So she decides to travel and visit all the places she’d dreamt of, the places her dad had talked about. While in Rome she meets Evelyn who is having a tough time. Amelia takes Evelyn under her wing and these two friends decide to go to Egypt. What happens there and what adventures these two friends have forms the rest of the story.

‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’ is an old-fashioned Egyptian adventure. There are pyramids, tombs, excavations, mummies, mummies suddenly going missing and then coming back to life in the middle of the night and scaring people – it is all there. Amelia has a sharp sense of humour and it is fun listening to the story through her words. There is a character called Emerson whom Amelia meets in Egypt, who matches her in his sharp sense of humour. The verbal sparrings these two have were some of my favourite parts of the book and were an absolute pleasure to read. There is an underlying mystery in the story which is revealed in the end. Having read many mysteries, I guessed it halfway through the story. The book is still entertaining.

The title of the book seems to be inspired by an ancient Egyptian poem which goes like this –

“The love of my beloved is on yonder side

A width of water is between us

And a crocodile waiteth on the sandbank.”

Whether this is an actual ancient Egyptian poem, or whether this is a poem dreamt by Elizabeth Peters, I don’t know. But I liked that poem.

I enjoyed reading ‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’. It is the first book in the Amelia Peabody series. There are twenty books in the series, and so endless reading pleasure awaits 😊

Have you read ‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’ or any of the books in the Amelia Peabody series? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Food of Love by Anthony Capella

I still remember how I got this book. It happened many years back. I was at the bookshop during the weekend and I saw this book. It looked very interesting but I put it back. But after going back home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So the next time I was at the bookshop I looked for it but unfortunately it was not there. I was very disappointed but I decided not to give up. I started doing a search of the whole bookshop and finally found the book in a different place. The bookshop folks had done some reorganization and the book had been moved to a different place. This time I picked it up like I had found a lost treasure. But after that the book has been lying on my shelf gathering dust. I finally got to read it now.

The story happens in Rome. Tomasso is a waiter at a famous restaurant. He falls in love with Laura, a visiting student. But Laura will go out only with a man who cooks. So Tomasso takes the help of his friend Bruno, who is a brilliant chef. But Bruno himself falls in love with Laura. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

The story seems to be clearly inspired by the French classic ‘Cyrano de Bergerac‘. To remove any doubt, Bruno even talks about his big nose at one point in the story.

I loved some parts of the story. The parts about food were good. The book is a beautiful love letter to Italian food. I also loved some of the main characters in the story. Bruno is a beautiful character who loves food. Bruno’s boss, the head chef Alain Dufrais is very interesting too. Gennaro the barista is a cool guy too. Marie the waitress is a fascinating character too. But my favourite of the women characters was Benedetta who appears in the last third of the book. She is like Bruno, but better. Benedetta’s mom Gusto is also a beautiful character. I didn’t like the two main characters Tomasso and Laura much. Tomasso seemed mostly like a useless person, and I didn’t understand what Bruno saw in Laura, she was just another flaky tourist. Benedetta on the other hand – she was really one of the strongest characters in the story.

I liked some parts of the book, but overall it was underwhelming. I think I should have read the book as soon as I’d got it. I’d have liked it more. Unfortunately I’ve read it a long time later after the initial spark had died and so it was disappointing. The romance defied all logic. At one point I wanted to scream at Bruno – I wanted to tell him to nurture what he had at hand, to love the person who loved him and cared for him instead of chasing a fantasy. But unfortunately, Bruno wasn’t listening.

I also have a feeling that romantic novels written by women writers are much better. I loved Mary Stewart’s ‘Madam, Will You Talk?’ which I read last year. I also loved Katie Fforde’s ‘Love Letters’ and Sophie Kinsella’s ‘The Undomestic Goddess’. I can’t help thinking that if Joanne Harris or Sophie Kinsella had taken this plot and run with it, the book that came out would have been much better.

One of the things I loved about the book is the Italian swear words and the Italian proverbs. Many characters keep swearing at each other and it is always colourful and the author presents both the Italian version and the English translation for our enjoyment. I loved those parts.

I’m done with Anthony Capella, I think. But I’m hoping to read other romantic novels and novels centred on food.

Sharing one of my favourite passages from the book.

Laura : “I guess it’s hard work, following a recipe.”

Bruno : “Sometimes, yes, but there’s much more to being a chef than just assembling ingredients.”

Laura : “Really? Like what?”

Bruno : “It’s like the difference between a pianist and a composer. The pianist is creative, certainly, but he is only the mouthpiece of the person who dreamed the tunes into life. To be a cook, it’s enough to be a pianist – a performer of other people’s ideas. But to be a chef you have to be a composer as well. For example, the recipes you are going to eat tonight are all traditional dishes from old Rome – but if all we do is simply recreate the past, without trying to add to it, it stops being a living tradition and becomes history, something dead. Those dishes were refined over centuries, but only through people trying different things, different combinations, rejecting what didn’t work and passing on what did. So we owe it to the chefs of the past to continue doing as they did and experiment, even when we are dealing with the most hallowed traditions.”

Have you read ‘The Food of Love‘? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite novel which celebrates food?

Book Review – The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

I got ‘The Piano Tuner‘ by Daniel Mason many years back. I always hoped to read it at some point, but kept putting it off. But now I decided that I’d waited long enough and took it down and read it. It is a story set in Burma in the late 19th century. I’ve read only one story set in Burma before, and so I was very excited.

Edgar Drake is a piano tuner who lives and works in London. He is married to Katherine. It is the year 1886. One day he receives a meeting request from the War Office. They tell him at the meeting that there is a British doctor who serves in Burma who is involved in important activities to protect British interests. He has a piano which has gone out of tune. Can Edgar Drake travel to Burma and get it tuned? Edgar agrees. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

I loved ‘The Piano Tuner’. Edgar Drake’s journey from England to Burma, through the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and through Bombay and Calcutta and finally Rangoon in Burma to the deeper parts of Burma is so beautifully described in the first part of the book. The book transports us to the 19th century when the world was a different place and international travel was rare and we see the beauty of new places and new cultures and have new experiences vicariously through Edgar Drake. The second part of the book is set in Burma (called Myanmar these days) and we experience 19th century Burmese life and culture through Edgar’s and other characters’ experiences. There is a note at the end of the book in which the author Daniel Mason explains which part of the book is fact and which is fiction. It was beautiful to read. The ending of the book was haunting. I’ll never forget Edgar Drake, Katherine, Doctor Anthony Carroll, Khin Myo, and Nok Lek.

During the early 2000s, there was a sudden literary trend. College students suddenly started publishing books. I don’t know exactly how it started, but publishers suddenly started accepting manuscripts by college students and the books started coming out. Some of them got good reviews, others had their six minutes of fame, others sunk without a trace. Most of these new student writers were one book wonders. Some of them persisted and wrote a few more books. But at some point, the spirit of the time passed, and publishers went back to their old ways and started rejecting everything again. These days if you want to publish a poem in an online magazine, it is hard. You’ll get rejected 99 out of 100 times. Publishing a novel is almost next to impossible. (Even after you publish a novel, you won’t make any money out of it. That is a different story, of course, and we won’t go there.) There are 8 billion people in the world today, and nearly everyone is working on a novel now, and so these are hard times for novelists.

Daniel Mason was one of those student novelists. ‘The Piano Tuner’ was his first novel. It was well received when it first came out. But it is virtually unknown now. I don’t know anyone who has read it. It is a shame, because it is a really good story, and it is well researched. Daniel Mason studied biology at university and then spent sometime at the Thai-Myanmar border studying malaria. His time there inspired him to write this book. He later went to med school and became a doctor. He wrote ‘The Piano Tuner’ when he was in med school. These days he is a doctor and he also teaches creative writing. He is clearly an interesting person. He is no one-book wonder though. He has written five more books after ‘The Piano Tuner’. Which is nice. I don’t know how they are. Hoping to read more of his work.

One last thing. I love the cover of the book. It is one of the most beautiful covers in my collection. Do you like it?

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“Ever since he was a boy, he had the habit of attaching not only sentiment to song but song to sentiment. Katherine learned this in a letter he wrote to her soon after visiting her home for the first time, in which he described his emotions as being “like the allegro con brio of Haydn’s Sonata no. 50 in D Major.” At the time, she had laughed and wondered whether he was serious or if this were the sort of joke that only apprentice piano tuners enjoyed. Her friends, for their part, decided that surely it was a joke, if a strange one, and she found herself agreeing, until later she bought the music for the sonata and played it, and from the piano, newly tuned, came a song of giddy anticipation that made her think of butterflies, not the kind that follow spring, but rather the pale flittering shadows that live in the stomachs of those who are young and in love.

As they sat together, fragments of melodies played in Edgar’s head, like an orchestra warming up, until one tune slowly began to dominate and the others fell in line. He hummed. “Clementi, Sonata in F-sharp Minor,” Katherine said, and he nodded. He had once told her it reminded him of a sailor lost at sea. His love awaiting him onshore. In the notes hide the sound of the waves, gulls.

They sat and listened.

“Does he return?”

“In this version he does.”

You can find the music piece mentioned in the above quote, ‘Allegro con brio of Haydn’s Sonata no. 50 in D Major‘ (this version is played by Olga Scheps) here.

“I have never seen anything like the rain here. The drizzle that we call rain in England is nothing compared to the pounding of a monsoon. At once, the sky opens and soaks everything, everyone runs for shelter, the footpaths turn to mud, to rivers, the trees shake, and water pours off leaves as if out of a pitcher, there is nothing dry. Oh, Katherine, it is so strange: I could write for pages only about the rain, the way it falls, the different sizes of the drops and how they feel on your face, its taste and smell, its sound. Indeed, I could write for pages only on its sound, on thatch, on leaves, on tin, on willow.”

“His thoughts drifted to a memory of the old tuner he had once been apprenticed to, who used to sneak a bottle of wine from a wooden cabinet after they finished work in the afternoons. What a distant memory, he thought, and he wondered where it came from, and what it meant that now was the moment of its remembering. He thought of the room where he had learned to tune, and the cold afternoons when the old man would wax poetically about the role of a tuner, and Edgar would listen with amusement. As a young apprentice, his master’s words had seemed maudlin. Why do you want to tune pianos? asked the old man. Because I have good hands and I like music, the boy had answered, and his teacher laughed, Is that it? What more? replied the boy. More? And the man raised a glass and smiled. Don’t you know, he asked, that in every piano there lies a song, hidden? The boy shook his head. Just the mumblings of an old man perhaps, But you see, the movement of a pianist’s fingers are purely mechanical, an ordinary collection of muscles and tendons that know only a few simple rules of rate and rhythm. We must tune pianos, he said, so that something as mundane as muscles and tendons and keys and wire and wood can become song. And what is the name of the song that lies in this old piano? the boy had asked, pointing to a dusty upright. Song, said the man, It doesn’t have a name, Only song. And the boy had laughed because he hadn’t heard of a song without a name, and the old man laughed because he was drunk and happy.”

Have you read ‘The Piano Tuner’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – Peer-e-Kamil (The Perfect Mentor) by Umera Ahmed

I discovered Umera Ahmed’s ‘Peer-e-Kamil‘ (‘The Perfect Mentor’) through a friend’s recommendation. I’ve read many books by Pakistani writers written originally in English, but I’ve never read a full book by a Pakistani writer written originally in Urdu. I’ve read only Urdu short stories. So I decided to read Umera Ahmed’s book now.

Imama is a student in medical college. She is a good student and hopes to become a great ophthalmologist one day. But things don’t go according to plan. A friend tells her something and one thing leads to another and Imama has a huge religious crisis and loses faith in her parents’ religion. Her family is conservative and they are distinguished in their community and so there will be a huge earthquake at home if she shares this with her family. To complicate things further, Imama has been engaged to someone for a while, but now she falls in love with a new guy. Imama musters up courage and decides to tell these two things to her parents. As expected all hell breaks loose. What happens after that forms the rest of the story. (Not exactly. Imama’s neighbour is Salar. He is a brilliant, talented person, but he has a devil-may-care attitude. Imama’s and Salar’s paths cross and what happens after that forms the rest of the story 😊)

The whole book is the story of Imama and Salar and how their life paths cross and what happens after that. For the first half of the book, both their stories happen in parallel, but halfway through the book one of the main characters disappears from the story. Whether she or he comes back again – you have to read the book to find out.

Umera Ahmed’s writing is spare and moves along the plot nicely. Umera Ahmed doesn’t waste her time with long descriptions, monologues and sculpted sentences. There is no redundant sentence, there is no wasted word. The job of the prose is to move the plot at a good pace, and it does that effectively. The pages just fly and though the book is around 550 pages long, it doesn’t feel that way.

I loved Imama. She was a beautiful soul. Salar was such a huge contrast to Imama and he was more complex and in many ways the opposite to Imama. Sometimes he looked like a loveable rogue, at other times he was hard to like. But he was the character who evolved the most through the story. There were also many minor characters whom I liked very much, like Furqan the doctor, Saeeda Amma, Dr.Sibt-e-Ali who is the epitome of kindness, and many others.

The book has this legendary conversation –

“What is your question?”

“A very simple question, but everyone finds it hard to answer. What is next to ecstasy?” he asked Imama.

She looked at him for a while, then said, “Pain.”

“And what is next to pain?” he shot another question at her.

“Nothingness.”

“What is next to nothingness?” he asked in his typical style.

“Hell,” she replied.

“What is next to hell?” Imama watched him in silence. “What is next to hell?” he repeated.

“Aren’t you afraid?” He heard her query in an unfamiliar tone.

“Afraid of what?” he was surprised.

“Of hell – the place which has nothing ahead… everything is left behind. What remains after being condemned and destroyed that is worth your knowing?” she asked sadly.

“I fail to understand your argument – it’s gone over my head,” Salar declared.

“Don’t worry: there’ll come a time when all this will make sense to you. Then your laughter will end to be replaced by fear – fear of death, of hell too.”

I also loved this passage –

“Sometimes in our lives we do not know whether we have emerged from darkness into light or if we are entering into the dark – the direction is unknown. But one can differentiate, in any case, between the earth and the sky. When you raise your head, it is the sky above; and when you lower it, it is the earth below – whether or not it is visible. To move forward in life, you need just four points of direction – right and left, ahead and behind – the fifth is the ground under your feet. If that were not there, it would be an abyss, hell, and on arriving there one would have no need of direction.”

I loved ‘Peer-e-Kamil’. It is a beautiful story about faith. It is also a beautiful love story. Hope you like it if you decide to read it. It is a perfect read for the month of Ramadan. Hoping to read more books by Umera Ahmed.

Have you read ‘Peer-e-Kamil’? What to you think about it? Which is your favourite Umera Ahmed book?

Book Review – The Iliad by Homer (a prose translation called ‘The Siege of Troy’ by Greg Tobin)

After reading Francesca Petrizzo’s book about the story of the Trojan war from Helen’s perspective, I thought I’ll read the original book, Homer’s ‘The Iliad‘. I wondered which translation I should read. I’ve always wanted to read the Robert Fagles and the Richmond Lattimore translations. There is also the Alexander Pope translation which is highly rated. I have the Robert Fitzgerald translation somewhere but couldn’t find it now. So I was wondering what to do and was thinking whether I should buy one of these translations. Then I remembered this prose translation I had. I felt that I should read the book I had in hand rather than get a new one. So I went and read it.

Everyone knows what is the story told in ‘The Iliad’. It is simple. The Trojan war is on. Something happens on the Greek side. The Chief Commander of the Greeks, Agamemnon takes away a woman who is Achilles’ companion. Achilles is upset and angry and refuses to fight in the war and watches it from the sidelines, while he broods. The pendulum of war moves back and forth between the Greeks and the Trojans. At one point, it looks like the Trojans might win. They’ve injured most of the Greek heroes and are close to taking over the Greek ships. Achilles’ close friend Patroclus says that he can’t sit quietly anymore and he wants to go and fight. Achilles gives him his blessing. Patroclus does well and pushes the Trojans back. But he ends up against the Trojan crown prince, Hector, who kills him. When Achilles hears of his best friend’s death, he is heartbroken. He feels that he’s done enough of the brooding nonsense and goes to fight. This can end in only one way. Achilles is the greatest warrior on both the sides. He takes revenge and kills Hector. But he does the nasty stuff after that. He refuses to hand over Hector’s body to the Trojans. So Hector’s father, King Priam comes to Achilles’ tent and begs for his son’s body so that he can give him a proper funeral. Achilles’ heart melts, he feels that King Priam is like his own father, he treats him like a honoured guest and then later hands over Hector’s body. Hector gets a funeral as befits the crown prince.

So that’s it. This is the story. It can be told in a page. But the book I read was 340 pages long. What is it then that is told in the other 339 pages? Most of it is about war. About who killed whom. And how did they do it. It is violent and it is hard to read. I think that the German epic ‘The Nibelungenlied‘ is the most violent epic that I’ve ever read. I think ‘The Iliad’ will come a close second. After a point, the battle scenes and the violence and the killing are hard to read. I almost wanted to scream at Homer – “What is this, man? Why are you inflicting this on us?”

There are some nice, quiet, beautiful lines in the book in the middle of all the war and the violence. Like this one –

“…and many a noble pair of steeds drew an empty chariot along the highways of war, for lack of drivers who were lying on the plain, more useful now to vultures than to their wives.”

And this one –

“As when there is a heavy swell upon the sea – they keep their eyes on the watch for the quarter from where the fierce winds may spring upon them, but they stay where they are and set neither this way nor that till some particular wind sweeps down from heaven to determine them – even so did the old man ponder whether to make for the crowd of Greeks, or go in search of Agamemnon.”

And this one –

“Thus high in hope they sat through the livelong night by the highways of war, and many a watch fire did they kindle. As when the stars shine clear, and the moon is bright – there is not a breath of air, not a peak nor a glade nor a jutting headland but it stands out in the ineffable radiance that breaks from the serene of heaven; the stars can all of them be told and the heart of the shepherd is glad – even thus shone the watch fires of the Trojans before Ilium midway between the ships and the river Xanthus. A thousand campfires gleamed upon the plain, and in the glow of each there sat fifty men, while the horses, champing oats and corn beside their chariots, waited till dawn should come.”

I also had a sneaking suspicion that ‘The Iliad’ may not be a complete book. Maybe it is one part of a five-part or ten-part epic. Because I’ve never read an ancient epic like this. Epics always have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They always have something in the story for everyone – there will be some nice plot, some dialogue, some romance, some humour, some tragedy, some war. ‘The Iliad’ starts somewhere in the middle and ends somewhere in the middle. Maybe the whole book was available together once upon a time till some crazy guy like Savonarola burnt it. And now we have this incomplete thing which gets translated every decade by a new translator.

I can’t say that I enjoyed reading ‘The Iliad’. It was hard reading, and atleast two times, once when I’d reached around a 100 pages, and the second time when I’d reached around a 200 pages, I nearly DNFed it. But I hate DNF-ing books and so I ploughed on both times. After reaching 200 pages, I speed read and got through the book. I think I caught all the important scenes.

I’ve always hated Agamemnon and Achilles, but when I read this, I discovered that they are not as bad as I thought. Agamemnon, after his initial arrogance, realizes his mistake and apologizes for it and tries to make amends. He has a big heart. I didn’t expect that at all. Achilles, inspite of his brooding, is likeable. I was expecting to like Hector, but I found him okay. My favourite character was Nestor. He was old and wise and everyone listened to him. I’ve heard some people hypothesize that Achilles was gay and Patroclus was his boyfriend, but there is nothing to indicate that in the book. It seems to be 21st century imagination imposed on a 3000-year old story. Most of the women characters played only minor roles in the story. It was to be expected in a tale of war. Many Greek gods and goddesses appear in the story and they influence the events of the war. I didn’t like them much. Most of them were imperfect, flawed and crazy.

I’m glad I read ‘The Iliad’. I can’t say that I liked it, but I’m happy to check it off my list. I am wondering whether it would have been a better reading experience, if I had read a verse translation. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I feel that a verse translation wouldn’t have been able to improve the story, and so wouldn’t have made much of a difference. I want to read some of the other ancient classics too – The Odyssey, and the Roman epics, The Aeneid and Metamorphoses. I think they’ll be better because they have self-contained stories. But unless we read it, we can never tell. I hope and pray that they are better.

Have you read ‘The Iliad’? What to you think about it? Which translation did you read?

Book Review – Memoirs of a Bitch by Francesca Petrizzo (Translated by Silvester Mazzarella)

I got ‘Memoirs of a Bitch‘ by Francesca Petrizzo many years back when it first came out. It is the story of the events leading up to the Trojan War and what happened during the war. The special thing about the book is that it is told from Helen’s perspective. Once upon a time, there were not many books which retold the old Greek tales from a woman’s perspective. I knew of only three – Cassandra by Christa Wolf, Medea also by Christa Wolf, and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. I don’t exactly know why there weren’t more. I always wondered why there wasn’t a book from Helen’s perspective. So when I saw this book at the bookshop, I couldn’t resist getting it. But unfortunately, a period as long as the Trojan War has elapsed before I picked it up to read. It sounds like a cool thing and perfect timing, but I feel ashamed that I waited for so long to read the book.

It was very fascinating to read the story from Helen’s perspective. Helen comes through as a fascinating character, a normal woman who is swept by events beyond her control, and when she tries to do something that she likes and live her own life, it results in the Trojan War. I learnt many things through the book. For example, Helen was from Sparta and her parents were the king and queen of Sparta, and her husband Menelaus was not from Sparta but became the king because he married her. The book also says that Helen and Achilles were lovers and once Theseus kidnapped her and tried to rape her, but her brothers somehow managed to save her. I don’t know whether these two stories are true or they are part of the author’s imagination. I was also surprised to discover that Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife (who plays a major role in Aeschylus‘ play, ‘The Oresteia‘) was Helen’s sister. It was also interesting to discover that Helen’s daughter was called Hermione. I’m wondering now whether Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series is named after her. When I was a kid, I thought that Paris kidnapped Helen and that is why the Greeks went to war against the Trojans. I was later surprised when I discovered that Helen and Paris actually fell in love and they eloped. Totally different story from what I thought. Later in the story as told in this book, Helen and Paris breakup and Helen and Hector, Paris’ elder brother, fall in love. I don’t know whether that actually happened or whether it is Francesca Petrizzo’s imagination. But I loved the Helen–Hector love story. It was my favourite love story in the book. This book also gives a different version of Achilles’ death, a new story that I’ve not heard of before.

I loved Helen as she was portrayed in the book. My other favourite characters were Hector (loved him, he is such a beautiful soul), Callira Helen’s best friend, Cassandra, and an unknown soldier who comes at the beginning who is Helen’s first love. I’ve always hated Achilles (because he killed my favourite Amazon Penthesilea), but in this book he is very likeable.

The friendship between Helen and Callira is very beautifully depicted in the story and it was one of my favourite parts in the book. In one place, Helen says this about Callira –

“Callira smiled and allowed one single ornament for my arm, a silver bracelet shaped like a serpent. Callira, Callira; a princess among her own people, and if I had been able to bear losing her I would have sent her back to them. But I was selfish, and she was always smiling; not faithful in the normal manner of slaves, but close to me with a closeness I could not explain except by saying I responded to it. We had come together by strange oblique routes, but we belonged with one another.”

Towards the end of the story, when Troy is burning and everything is gone, this scene happens –

“I firmly detached Callira’s clinging hands. ‘If I am still your lady, you must do what I say. Just go.’

She was hesitating, I could see it in her face, but I too had the blood of kings in my veins and the throne had spoken through me. So Callira, slave and friend, my life companion, indeed the companion of all my many lives, let go of my arm, and with a desperation I knew only too well in myself, kissed my hand. ‘Please don’t die,’ she said.

‘We all die sooner or later. But you run off now.'”

I cried when I read that. I knew that they’d never meet again.

‘Memoirs of a Bitch’ is the story of a woman who was pushed along by people around her, and when she decided to do one thing that she liked, and live the life she wanted, two countries went to war and many people died. It was okay if a queen had affairs and a series of lovers. But if she wanted to leave her husband and start a new life with someone, all hell with break loose, and there’ll be war and people will die. That seems to be Helen’s story. If Helen had been an ordinary woman, it would have been easy for her to leave her husband and start a new life with her lover. But as she was a queen, it was hard. Still, she tried. Unfortunately, it ended in tragedy.

I loved ‘Memoirs of a Bitch’. It is one of my favourite reads of the year. When I finished the book, I cried.

Francesca Petrizzo’s writing is beautiful and flows smoothly like a river. Francesca Petrizzo was an undergraduate student when she wrote this book. Since then she has done her doctorate and has become a professor who teaches medieval history. ‘Memoirs of a Bitch’ appears to be her only novel, as she seems to have become a full-fledged academic now. I hope one day she writes another novel. It will be a shame if this is the only novel that she ever wrote.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“And so I would go riding, bribing the grooms with gold and jewellery, and calling at poverty-stricken hovels in the foothills of the Peloponnese, where I mingled with shepherds and peasants and women worn down by constant childbearing and hard work. They would offer me water and ask for nothing back. The gods they prayed to had no relation to the gods venerated in the temples. If I had been born like them, I would have died after an anonymous life of exhausting labour and been buried close to the door of my home. They had never expected anything else. It was the only destiny open to them. They had read it in their mothers’ wrinkles and sucked it in with their milk, accepting their destiny just as they accepted their own blood. But for me it had been otherwise. I had had the chance to live a different life, but it had been snatched out of my hands. Of course I was only flesh, bones and skin just like them, but I was also full of regret for what had so nearly happened for me.”

“Patroclus was very young, and like all young men was excited by war. Convinced that somewhere among the dust, spilt blood and entrails, could be found that scrap of straw, that useless bauble, that object of foolish desire : glory – an empty and sinister word to my ears.”

Have you read ‘Memoirs of a Bitch’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Sellout by Paul Beatty

I’ve wanted to read ‘The Sellout‘ by Paul Beatty ever since it won the Booker Prize. It was the first American winner of the Booker Prize and I wanted to find out how an American winner of the Booker Prize looked like. I finally got around to reading it.

The narrator of the story is a good person, a law-abiding citizen. As he says on the first page –

“This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I’ve never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly…But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, my car illegally and somewhat ironically parked on Constitution Avenue, my hands cuffed and crossed behind my back, my right to remain silent long since waived and said goodbye to as I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn’t quite as comfortable as it looks.”

So how does this good black man end up at the Supreme Court with his hands cuffed? The rest of the story tries explaining that.

There is good news and bad news. When I started reading the first page, I started laughing. I found it brilliant. I was expecting the next page to be like that. I was expecting every page after that to be like that. That is too much pressure on the writer. It is easy to write a brilliant first page. It is hard to replicate that through the rest of the book. At around page 11, I felt that the story wasn’t moving, the book was hard to read, it wasn’t as good as the first page. I wanted to DNF the book. But I went and took a nap and came back to the book after a few hours. I told myself that I’ll read till the end of the prologue, which was till page 24. If things don’t improve by then, I thought I’ll dump the book. Luckily for me, the book improved by that time. It became better and by around page 100, I was laughing after every page. The humour was sharp, dark, infectious. I got used to that while reading the second half, but it was still good. I wasn’t sure how the story ended. What judgement did the court pass in the end? Was the narrator innocent or guilty? I’m not sure. I’m sure the answer is hidden somewhere in the end, which a more intelligent reader will be able to discern. But I couldn’t.

This book is not for everyone though. It is not a typical Booker Prize winner. Many readers have complained that they couldn’t get the book and they felt that it was too American. It is definitely American. But if you are able to get into it, it will make you laugh aloud throughout. I don’t think a book which was filled with satire or dark humour has won the Booker Prize ever. Or atleast in recent years. The only book I know which came close was Steve Toltz’ ‘A Fraction of the Whole‘. The first part of that book which stretched to around 200 pages was filled with dark humour and was hilarious. Steve Toltz’ book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008, which was really a long time back. Otherwise humour and satire don’t find much favour with Booker Prize judges. So it is surprising that Paul Beatty’s book got in and it won.

So if you want to read the book but you’re also not sure, I’d suggest the same thing that I did. Read the prologue which stretches to 24 pages and see whether it works for you. It will take an hour or less and there are worse ways of spending your time. If the prologue is good and it is up your alley, you can enjoy the rest of the book. If it isn’t, you can dump the book and move on. There are other books to read and other things to do.

Paul Beatty has written three other novels before this. This is his last novel. It came out in 2015. So it has been nearly 10 years. So unless he is a writer like Donna Tartt or Jeffrey Eugenides, who comes out with a new book every 10 years, I think we can more or less assume that he has retired. It is sad, because his writing is really good. I don’t know whether he writes short pieces, essays and articles these days. I don’t keep in touch with the literary world that way, and so I don’t know. Paul Beatty has edited a book called ‘Hokum : An Anthology of African-American Humor’. I want to read that sometime.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“In neighborhoods like the one I grew up in, places that are poor in praxis but rich in rhetoric, the homies have a saying – I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. It’s a maxim, an oft-repeated rap lyric, a last-ditch rock and hard place algorithm that on the surface is about faith in the system but in reality means shoot first, put your trust in the public defender, and be thankful you still have your health.”

“…what little inspiration I have in life comes not from any sense of racial pride. It stems from the same age-old yearning that has produced great presidents and great pretenders, birthed captains of industry and captains of football; that Oedipal yen that makes men do all sorts of shit we’d rather not do, like try out for basketball and fistfight the kid next door because in this family we don’t start shit but we damn sure finish it. I speak only of that most basic of needs, the child’s need to please the father.”

“And why Wednesdays?”

“You don’t know? You don’t remember? It was the last talk your father gave at the Dum Dum Donuts meetin’. He said that the vast majority of slave revolts took place on Wednesdays because traditionally Thursday was whippin’ day. The New York Slave Revolt, the L.A. riots, the Amistad, all them shits,” Hominy said, grinning woodenly from ear to ear like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Been this way ever since we first set foot in this country. Someone’s getting whipped or stopped and frisked, whether or not anyone done anything wrong. So why not make it worthwhile and act a fool Wednesday if you gonna get beat on Thursday, right, massa?”

“One of the many sad ironies of African-American life is that every banal dysfunctional social gathering is called a “function.” And black functions never start on time, so it’s impossible to gauge how to arrive fashionably late without taking a chance of missing the event altogether.”

“His latest installment was a nonsensical race forum on public access called ‘Just the Blacks, Ma’am’. It aired at five o’clock Sunday mornings. Ain’t but two niggers in the world awake at five o’clock, and that’s Foy Cheshire and his make-up artist. It’s hard to describe a man wearing probably close to $5,000 in a suit, shoes, and accessories as disheveled, but up close in the streetlight that’s exactly what he was. All spit and no polish, his shirt wrinkled and losing its starch. The bottoms of his barely creased silk pants ringed brown with dirt and just starting to fray. His shoes were scuffed, and he reeked of crème de menthe. I once heard Mike Tyson say, “Only in America can you be bankrupt and live in a mansion.””

“I’ve always liked rote. The formulaic repetitiveness of filing and stuffing envelopes appeals to me in some fundamental life-affirming way. I would’ve made a good factory worker, supply-room clerk, or Hollywood scriptwriter. In school, whenever I had to do something like memorize the periodic table, my father would say the key to doing boring tasks is to think about not so much what you’re doing but the importance of why you’re doing it. Though when I asked him if slavery wouldn’t have been less psychologically damaging if they’d thought of it as “gardening,” I got a vicious beating that would’ve made Kunta Kinte wince.”

“…sometimes I’m jealous of Hominy’s obliviousness, because he, unlike America, has turned the page. That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

“If forced to sit next to someone, people violated the personal space of women first and black people last. If you were a black male, then no one, including other black males, sat next to you unless they absolutely had to.”

“After two hours of swapping stories about slum life in Dickens and what Hominy was up to, I’d find myself miles from home, surfing with seals and dolphins at increasingly remote spots like Topanga, Las Tunas, Amarillo, Blocker, Escondido, and Zuma. Drifting onto private beachfronts where, soaking wet, the billionaire locals would stare at me as if I were a talking walrus with a willow-tree Afro when I’d walk through their sandy backyards, knock on the glass sliding doors, and ask to use the phone and the bathroom. But for some reason nonsurfing white folk trust a barefoot nigger carrying a board. Maybe they thought to themselves, His arms are too full to make off with the TV, and besides, where’s he going to run to?”

“I’ve experienced direct discrimination based on race only once in my life. One day I foolishly said to my father that there was no racism in America. Only equal opportunity that black people kick aside because we don’t want to take responsibility for ourselves. Later that very same day, in the middle of the night, he snatched me up out of bed, and together we took an ill-prepared cross-country trip into deepest, whitest America. After three days of non-stop driving, we ended up in a nameless Mississippi town that was nothing more than a dusty intersection of searing heat, crows, cotton fields, and, judging by the excited look of anticipation on my father’s face, unadulterated racism.”

“Regardless of your income level, the old adage of having to be twice as good as the white man, half as good as the Chinese guy, and four times as good as the last Negro the supervisor hired before you still holds true.”

“Daddy never believed in closure. He said it was a false psychological concept. Something invented by therapists to assuage white Western guilt. In all his years of study and practice, he’d never heard a patient of color talk of needing “closure.” They needed revenge. They needed distance. Forgiveness and a good lawyer maybe, but never closure. He said people mistake suicide, murder, lap band surgery, interracial marriage, and overtipping for closure, when in reality what they’ve achieved is erasure.”

“Sometimes I forget how funny Hominy is. Back in the day, to avoid the succession of booby traps laid by the white man, black people had to constantly be on their feet. You had to be ready with an impromptu quip or a down-home bromide that would disarm and humble a white provocateur. Maybe if your sense of humor reminded him there was a semblance of humanity underneath that burrhead, you might avoid a beating, get some of that back pay you were owed. Shit, one day of being black in the forties was equal to three hundred years of improv training with the Groundlings and Second City. All it takes is fifteen minutes of Saturday-night television to see that there aren’t many funny black people left and that overt racism ain’t what it used to be.”

Have you read ‘The Sellout’? What do you think about it?

Book Review – The Awakening by Anita Agnihotri (Translated by Nandini Guha)

Arjun is a cobbler’s son. But he is not interested in pursuing the family business. He wants to make idols for worship during Puja time. But no one is going to buy an idol made by a cobbler’s son. So what happens to Arjun and the people who are a part of his life forms the rest of the story.

Arjun’s story and the impact of casteism on poor people is the main theme of the book. But there is also a parallel story in the book. It is about how young people went to war against the government in the ’60s and ’70s and how they were arrested and tortured and killed by the government and how this impacted their families.

Though events from both these parallel stories are interleaved through the book, they don’t intersect each other. Towards the end the two plots brush each other, but otherwise they are really two independent stories.

I loved both these stories but I found it strange that they didn’t come together and merge with each other. It looked to me like two novellas were merged to create this novel.

One of the things that I loved about the book was the way it describes how Puja idols are made. It was beautiful art, but it also looked like a very complicated process, and the life of the artisans who made it seems to be very hard.

The part of the book which was about parents losing their children to police violence in custody was very heartbreaking to read. I can’t imagine what parents went through during that time. It was a difficult period in contemporary Indian history.

I enjoyed reading ‘The Awakening‘. Anita Agnihotri has written a novel about a newly appointed civil servant and her challenges at work, which is based on her own experiences. I want to read that. She has also written a novel about the river Mahanadi, which is quite famous. I want to read that too.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“There was a time when lights from the windowpanes dazzled the boats midstream. At that time the town had honour and dignity. The grandeur of the wealthy was considered a reflection of the town’s well-being and health. The poor of course lived no differently than they do today. If a history of their survival were to be written it would be the same down the ages – they fought for survival either standing tall or crawling on all fours.”

“A big steamer would lead the way followed by four boats filled with straw. During the day they sailed down the river, dropped anchor at the onset of night. In this way with several halts, the two day journey was completed in four days. Gaur had been plying his boat for more than 15 years now. He carried an earthen barrel filled with drinking water and a porcelain jar containing lime pickle, crimson coloured rice and a fish curry. In the Bada area the paddy had long stalks so the straw from here was longer and there was great demand for it since it was used for all sorts of purposes. He’d been just 25 when he first sailed on the river, and his heart trembled. He could barely look at his wife when he took leave of her. The river pirates, the danger of fever and of course the great Master who with thunderbolts of yellow and black could take a life at will, without warning – all this was in his heart. And then there were the crocodiles and tortoises whose home was the river. Despite all this Gaur had gone. The river held a magnetic attraction for him. Every year at this time his blood was excited by the call of the river, the boundaries of home, fields all became confining. Gaur would become irritable, his appetite would diminish and sleep would evade him. Then his wife Kajli would scold him with a wry face, “Go on. Go now, leave for the outdoors. I can see home cooked food is not suiting you any more. There’s nothing for me to understand. So don’t make any excuses. A strange sickness is what you have, honestly!” On a cloudy afternoon, or on an evening when the sun had set, Kajli’s face would torment him to death as it floated up into the sky looming above the river.”

“Actually Swapnabha had never seen his mother at all. The name Swapnabha, meant that he was the dream that his mother had barely fulfilled on earth, and disappeared into thin air thereafter.”

“Possibly from the age of fourteen whenever anger and grief overwhelmed him, Arjun, with the scalpel in his hands and the artistry of his fingers, transformed his anger into pictures on clay. Next to the peaceful Lakshmi idol, would be created a storm-tossed owl its eye-brows crinkled up in a frown. Or the lion’s mane would embody the velocity of a tempest. Since the time Arjun could transform and mould beautiful shapes, he had never had to come home to the drudgery of cooking his own meals.”

“They carried on much like a tree whose heart had been emptied when the birds flew away but had still spread its branches in all directions. Even today, people came to sit in the shade of the tree and small plants dreamed of living and growing bigger by entwining themselves in the tree’s branches.”

“Dolls made out of unbaked clay got washed away during the monsoons. Of course they were more durable if they were fired. Then they lasted for a long time. But in what condition they survived, what they endured, only the doll could tell. Too much heat was also dangerous. If a vertical crack appeared anywhere, then one day it would shatter into smithereens. There were amazing similarities between man and clay idols. Man was born on this earth, and with its clay he created the image of a God, who could neither be touched nor held. However the image was not actually a God, it was more human really. Urmi was one such burnt-clay goddess-doll. Even before she could learn about life and start a family she had fallen into the fire…Yet Urmi, seemed to have walked on fire with ease. However, that a crack was gradually forming within her, thanks to her proximity and repeated encounters with fire, was something no one had realized. Much later, one day, Urmi suddenly cracked into pieces. In a household, people who suppressed their own traumatic feelings had a tough time. They looked fine, keeping calm in the face of other people’s troubles. However, if the pain in their hearts rose up in revolt, then what a sight that would be! No one would accept it. Every one would be irritated. They would say, what on earth is this! We never expected such an exhibition from her. If someone who drank regularly came home sober one day people would be pleased. But if somebody who never touched liquor was to imbibe a peg or two one day people would rise up in consternation. Urmi discovered that her situation was somewhat similar. The family members were so used to her never expressing herself verbally, that Urmi’s voice now sounded strange to their ears.”

Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it?