A Book to Cool Us Down

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was hot, way too hot and I wanted some respite. There was no option of going out in the mountains and looking at snow-capped peaks. And then I started reading this book in which the central character is an area called Kalimpong in Lesser Himalayas ranges with a majestic view of Kanchanjunga. Too Misty, severally cold and quite inconvenient for those who live there during winters but I was feeling relaxed in snug sweater of words Kiran Desai weaves so dexterously and effortlessly. Her mother is also a master story teller and it seems she is carrying the legacy in a way. Often I wonder about a better way to lessen our carbon footprints , travelling without travelling. This book is a perfect vehicle to take you to the mountains from the sweatiness of your terribly hot bedroom without many traces of those footprints. Amid mountains, there is a grumpy grandfather too conscious about his position and too finicky about his anglicized manner: position has long back left him anyway; his innocent anglicized prematurely out of a boarding school granddaughter; a tutor aptly named Gyan and Biju who is an immigrant labourer in the US from this side of the world. But this landscape is not only covered with snow and mist and trees. Many a times blood spills over for asserting the rights over land. A hotch-potch of characters living their life, even dying in the background of statehood violence fanned by the disgruntled inhabitants. Though not everything is gloomy. A young tender love story is also growing like fresh tendrils of pumpkin leaves but only to wither away. Take this book if you feel you can do meditation amid the chaos and travelling is not an option because of the hurly burly of life. A postcolonial novel if you tell me to categorize. And profuse praise for Ms. Desai from Salman Rushdi reinforces my belief. And yes if not bothered too much by such mundane affairs like getting rid of heat, you may find much more to relish and ruminate over: multiculturism, past and present, loss and near absence of redemption!


View all my reviews

Read More

Food for Love

1

“Are you not afraid of seeing me every weekend? What would your wife think about you if ever she comes to know what you are up to during your working weekends”: she said playing with his thin salt and pepper hair. “Tell me don’t you love me or who else keeps meeting the same girl for such a long time. It’s going to be full three years this 31st December night and I still can’t forget your first message on tinder: I wanna eat you. Who comes up with such a cheap pick-up line! I can’t even correctly recall why I had swiped right on your profile in the first place. Maybe you looked so innocent in your pic and your intro was way too gentlemanly to be on a dating site. Maybe you were too honest there too. Who else professes about his married status! Maybe I was too desperate and thought like going with a married guy was a safer option despite you clearly communicating that you were just yearning for some casual stuff. Now I feel like our association is too long to be called fleeting friendship” and she started giggling with the air of an old friend. The guy grew uncomfortable and wanted to change the topic of conversation. “Are you not getting late? It’s already evening.”

“I have told my parents that I would be late. There is too much study to do”: She winked.

“Yaar, I will have to freshen up. My wife is reaching tonight.”

“Aha! So finally she is coming back. Was she not supposed to go to your parent’s place just for a week?”: she prodded.

“Even I am wondering what held her up. This time even Ma had a great time with her: eighth wonder of the world. Otherwise it is always two or three days and she will come back fuming and my mom will release a barrage of complaints against her over phone. These saas-bahu ke jhagde! I really get tired. Anyway you should be happy there was no one to interrupt you and me.”

“My parents are bigger interrupter than your wife baba. Even today I had a tough time explaining where I am going and what time I will get back.” Some thoughts crossed her mind and all of sudden she stopped stroking his hair and sat up.

“What happened to you, is everything alright?”

“No, no..I just feel like having some food. Where you wanna go? Treat will be from my side. Just to prepare you to face your wife”. She giggled and started tidying up her hair and clothes.

Guy was still lying lazily. Even he was feeling the pangs of hunger but didn’t feel like going outside and having anything. He had tried almost all restaurants, streetfood and dhabas in the city and nothing excited him now. He wanted to go back to his village and taste dishes cooked by his Naani and Daadi and of course his mother. He missed them so sorely. No restaurant was there to serve that kind of foods.

“Chalo, lets order something online. I don’t wanna take risk going outside and being seen by some gossipy auntie or who knows even my own mom.”

“Achha tell me what you wanna have?”

“You choose. It’s always me who orders. I am not gonna do this time.” She feigned anger while applying lipstick on her thin baby-like lips. The guy rose up to pick up mobile and started scrolling to find something interesting. As always, nothing appealed him and frustrated he looked at her pleadingly.

“Achha Janab. I will do” as she flung stole over her shoulder.

The bell rang. The guy put on his pullover and proceeded to open the door. As expected, the delivery boy was standing. He made the payment and took the package

“Look treat is from my side, I will transfer the amount ”: she screamed.

They both ate together. It lasted more than the duration of their physical intimacy. Guy was just trying hard to swallow his morsel. If he was not exhausted and hungry, there was no chance he would have agreed to eat. She was tired of ghar-ka-khana and even mediocre outside food gave her far more pleasure than such casual physical intimacy she had just a little while ago.

“We are poles apart, don’t you think so”: he blurted suddenly in between his bites.

“So what, we are not going to get married anyway. And by the way I am less “poles apart” than your wife. She is malyali and you are Bihari. If you can manage with her, you can manage with me too as well for god sake.”

He started thinking: is he just managing with his wife! Wasn’t it a love marriage! She was the most sophisticated girl in the batch and I was the one who had least knowledge of manners with the accent people found amusing. I have not understood till date what she saw in me and we ended up as a couple. But I did love her. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that such a beautiful girl would one day be with me and sacrifice her bright career to raise our babies.

“If you don’t wanna eat anymore, just leave”: She yelled. He came back to present. How much things had changed. Despite his great love for his wife, he ended up on Tinder, met Diya and started going with her every weekend like a ritual.

2

Weekend filled Diya with much anticipation. Her body used to ache and she felt like something was tormenting her. She grew even more uncomfortable in this new black body-hugging dress and heels she had put on just now- gifted by him. His call was about to come today but it didn’t. She tried to ring him many times but his phone was unreachable. She grew impatient. It was not that she could not get a suitable boy but perhaps she had grown fond of him. She looked forward to spending weekends with him and mere thought of staying alone during the weekend was killing her. She texted him on his phone and waited impatiently to get the reply. Nothing seemed to work. Frustrated, she logged into her insta account and started scrolling random pictures: a muscled guy here, a beautiful bride there. She clicked his insta page. Just a few hours back, he had posted pictures of some food she could not figure out. The caption of the pictures read: the most awesome food I had today made by my wife and it tasted just like my mother’s food! Love you Shrimatiji.

3

Diya never heard from him. Only consolation for her was his insta pages which got updated almost every day with strange-looking dishes captioned with “the most awesome food I had today made by my wife and it tasted just like my mother’s food! Love you Shrimatiji”.

Read More

Mrs Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading few articles of hers, I got interested and thought like giving this book a try. It’s a light reading and gives an insider view of the Bollywood family routine life but it is also more than that. This narrates funny affairs and not so funny incidents from the perspective of a modern hands-on working Mom who used to be a glamorous heroine and refused to dance around the trees (understandably so with the string of dud she delivered). She takes on various events and gives funny twist with a universal philosophical learning out of them. Very much like “Sex and the City”. Only the characters are very much Indian with few foreign ones thrown in here and there. The first person narrator sounds self-effacing, funny, ruminative, irreverent, angry, feminist, traditional, avant-garde, etc. etc. all at same time. As a lower middle class Angrezi book reading public, I loved getting to know what happens inside the mind and house and society of these high class public (though I highly doubt the authenticity). And perhaps that’s the reason many other people read this book and so we know why it’s a bestseller. Personally, I enjoyed reading this book and also took up her second book but had to put it down after going through only few lines. It appears, she is meant to pull off certain topics and certain styles of narrative!

View all my reviews

Read More

Milkman on a Dating App

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A chance introduction to Milkman on a dating app is what brought me to “Song of Solomon”. Now for our regular families, a milkman is one who brings milk to them every day. For me and many like me, it is Mr. Veghese Kurien. And then one who has read this Toni Morrison novel knows Milkman as a character who is so intense and realistically portrayed that he stays with us for a long long time, longer than he was breastfed by his mother Ruth. Milkman is a character who reminds me of my own younger brother who gave a tough time to my mother to wean him. It was opposite in the case of Ruth. She wanted to keep Milkman on her milk only as long as possible and so his son got this name. But this is not only what makes Ruth a different character. There are many shades and more added by her husband and her father and her sister-in-law Pilate. I kept wondering would it be possible for a male writer to delve so deep in a female psyche and illuminate that space so bright you could spot even a needle! No doubt this is a story of strong women despite their vulnerabilities and Toni Morrison has narrated in a way that makes it forceful and delicate, personal and universal, local and global! As I turned the pages ( many times back and forth and dwelling extra time on several pages to grasp the narrative and feel the intensity of an event!), trials and tribulations of the black existence in white America kept coming to me in its brutal form. But there are moments of celebration and rejoice, hope and nostalgia, magic and adventure. After all life is like that and it depends on us how we take it, how we give it. And this is also true about dating apps, isn’t it?

View all my reviews

Read More

Educating the Oppressed

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pedagogy of the Oppressed begins with the process of humanization and dehumanization and in turn humanizes the left ideology fraught with not-so-occasional violent revolutions. Actually, it turns the epistemology of whole education/development/revolution discourse upside down and gives an insight which is more humane and understanding and at the same time not entirely inimical to the oppressor class. But more significantly, it critiques the prevailing scenario of education which he calls “banking model “and proposes a “problem-posing” approach. However strange it sounds but despite the establishment of the authority of what Paulo Freire asserted in such a vivid clear terms, it appears it has not been turned into praxis. The area of education still remains largely driven by rote-learning, information sharing and promises of making money. The student- teacher dynamics has remained still unchanged and has not graduated to what Paulo envisages teacher student-student teacher. It has much to do with a reluctance to relinquish a position of power and undue authority. Same can be told about the oppressor class who are responsible for creating, managing and perpetuating an unjust social order which dehumanizes the oppressed class and stop them from realizing the potential of a full human being. Due to their comfortable position of authority, the oppressor class cannot be expected to destroy such order and organically it should come from the oppressed class. But the centuries of exploitation of the mind and the body has rendered the oppressed unwilling to take up the cause of revolution. A fear of freedom has gripped them. They have inculcated few traits of the oppressor themselves and this duality is hindering them to initiate the process of development. So, from where to start transformation which will lead to development? Paulo suggest cooperation, organization and cultural synthesis to start the revolution. But this revolution does not intend to be violent or retaliatory against the oppressor. Rather, it must be informed by the love for humanity and nourished by the fruits of true education. In a world which is growing more and more materialistic, mechanical and self-centred, Paulo takes us to an ontological inquiry and shows path for a deeper engagement with society at large. Personally, I feel that the categories of the oppressor and the oppressed is very fluid and one may become both simultaneously. However, there is no denial of the fact that there are few absolute oppressed lots (tribals, Dalits, females, minorities to name a few) who are victim of a world order which is not conducive to them. And to inquire why it is so, maybe we will have to introspect ourselves whether an oppressor is situated deep within us without our own awareness! Undoubtedly, a true education will help in this self-inquiry.

View all my reviews

Read More

Serious Stuff and Some Gossips

Durbar by Tavleen Singh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tavleen Singh, the writer of Durbar, emerges as a brave journalist with high contacts and privileged access to high profile drawing rooms and she generously used these capabilities to make the book an interesting chronicle of the time when Indira and Rajeev ruled the country and strengthened the root of dynastic politics. Many of the events described in the book had already taken place when I was born and many of them happened when I was too young to make any sense of them. So, there has always been a curiosity to get some first-hand account of incidents like emergency, operation blue star, sikh riots, assassination of Mr. Gandhi, Bofors scandal and of course gossips of those times. The book offers them all and even more. It is her memoir of political events and being a political journalist of vast experience, her portrayal of the characters of those times appears quite authentic and believable. She does not shy away from putting Mr. Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi in dock for the extremities of emergency, holding Rajiv Gandhi responsible for not being able to contain the riots post the assassination of his mother. Few gossips like - Sonia Gandhi was fond of fur coat and used to purchase them from Soviet Union but did not like the stitching and used to send them to fashion house Fendi to get it re-stitched- and many such juicy drawing room discussions provide comic relief in the book and give an insight into the human frailties of the high and mighty of Delhi Dynasty. But it does not mean that author spares herself. On the contrary, she is brutally honest about her own ignorance of the Indian society and how she was part of the same high-class social circles but her journalistic engagements enabled her to see the real India long hidden by the high-walled building of Lutyen’s Delhi. On the expense of sounding hyperbolic, let me tell it anyway, Tavleen Singh appears to be a character from the novel Midnight Children, her fate and presence always crossing the epoch making moments of her time. Incidentally, her own personal story is very interesting especially her relation with irresistible suave Mr. Salman Taseer ( our own charming Simi Garewal also dated him) and a very well-known author came to this world thanks to this brief affair- Atish Taseer who later based his bestselling memoir cum travelogue on this personal story.

View all my reviews

Read More

A Rebellious Heart

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“’The reluctant fundamentalist” is everything except about a fundamentalist. I have read first time a book written by a Pakistani about a Pakistani in America. Only reading few pages was sufficient to take it off from the shelf and get it issued on my name and it did keep its promises till the last page. Narrated by the central character, entire novel revolves around him, his love interest, his American job and even American dream which gets fulfilled only to get unravelled afterwards due to that atrocious-notorious-whatever-you-call event in at least the American history: 9-11 attack. How the attack subconsciously and consciously affect an individual is what Mr. Mohsin Hamid, the author of the novel, strives to depict through his work and in such a believable manner. Changez, the central character, is a brilliant guy who has come to America to realize all those dreams he cannot do being in his own country or if I may say so in his own continent. American official stance of either-you-are-with-me-or-with-terrorists alienated many of his liberal supporters and planted the seed of mistrust among youths like Changez. As an Indian, I empathize with him when he invokes Asia, the mother continent and he ruffles few feather when he appears to be a bit more biased against India. But as a neutral literary reader, the novel provides enough moments to entertain us, educate us, engage us and above all help us grow neutral or even more positive views towards Pakistan, a country we are taught to loathe.

View all my reviews

Read More