Category: Fiction

  • The Elephant and the Maruti: Stories

    Radhika Jha

    Radhika Jha is perhaps one of the most unique authors I’ve ever read, even if I had to judge only from this book. There is a vividness in the prose that I’ve rarely experienced before. The book consists of 6 stories. ‘The Wedding’ gives us a peek into Delhi’s high society, as portrayed by a wedding that stops just short of bizarre. This would be my least favourite. ‘Hope’ uses two characters – the narrator, who represents a typical middle class migrant to the big city (Delhi) and Shibu Mondal, a roadside beggar with a cruel past, and their experiences, to describe facets of the city’s relationship with its inhabitants.

    3 characters and their unique relationships with ‘Beauty’. This one is set in Bangalore and features Koshy’s. ‘The Elephant and the Maruti’, is a chain of events set in motion after an elephant steps on a Maruti in a busy Delhi traffic junction. The story takes us through a cross section of social layers, and seems a hat tip the ‘circle of life’ as well as the ‘butterfly effect’. ‘Sleepers’ is set in the remote village of Mangladi, and the narrator’s experience with the role of blind faith and religion in individual lives and the community. ‘The Cook’ is the story of a chef whose family realises that he has lost his skills. The chef feels that his family is plotting against him. What follows is a maze of betrayal and counters, which ends in a neat twist.

    The stories are all a mix of vivid explanations and layered mysteries, often leaving a lot to the reader to imagine, and fill. Worth a read.

  • Four Steps from Paradise

    Timeri N Murari

    In the years immediately following India’s independence, the Naidu family retains its glory and wealth, and the traditional joint family ways of living. The narrator is Krishna Naidu, the youngest member of the clan, eight years old and the darling of everyone in the family. Having lost his mother at an early age, his father means everything to him, though he is very loyal to his siblings and grandparents too.

    The story begins with his father introducing Krishna, his favourite, to his, and his siblings’ new governess – an Englishwoman, Victoria Greene. Krishna’s father Bharat is an Oxford returned Indian bureaucrat, whose years in England have made him more British than Indian in his lifestyle and outlook.

    The entry of Victoria into the traditional Indian family serves as an allegory on the impact of the British. Victoria’s status change from governess to stepmother, much to the disapproval of the rest of the family and even the eldest of Krishna’s siblings – Anjali, also marks the first sign of dissension in the family as it is seen as a failure on the part of the head of the family- Krishna’s maternal grandfather, to maintain control over the family’s affairs.

    What follows is a sea change in Krishna’s conditions and within a few years he is forced to leave his ancestral home, his cousins and aunts and uncles, and live in conditions totally unfamiliar and uncomfortable to him. With age also comes the understanding that not all relationships last forever, and not all perspectives last the test of time. As he watches everything that he held sacred crumble before his eyes, he realises that even his gods have clay feet. Laying more emphasis on the early part of his life, the novel ends in 1993, when Krishna is 50.

    The novel also shows us glimpses of the conditions that probably broke the fragile bonds of large families, and forced the disintegration of a traditional joint family structure, which had survived despite the jealousies and intrigues, for generations. It is an enjoyable read, especially since it captures a range of human conditions and personalities and keeps a few tiny secrets till the end.

  • The Wish Maker

    Ali Sethi

    Ali Sethi’s debut novel would have been just another coming of age novel, if it were not for the milieu it is set in, and the characters that make up the narrative. Zaki Shirazi lands in Lahore for the marriage of his childhood companion Samar. As the house is caught up in the wedding, the book goes through the life of three generations of women – each layer peeled back to reveal another.

    Samar, who lives with her Daadi, away from her own parents, and in the company of her cousin’s son, Zaki, though they are close enough in age to be cousins themselves. The adventures, and misadventures of childhood, fleeting friendships soon forgotten, adolescence, crushes, rivalries, booze and hash have all been well captured and the generation that has grown up with video cassettes, ‘dedication’ audio tapes, the beginning of cable television – Kevin Arnold etc will be able to identify with this.

    Zaki’s mother, forced to bring up her son on her own, after her fighter pilot husband dies in a crash, has an uneasy relationship with her mother in law and tries to balance the needs of her young son with her own need of having an identity, as a journalist (who staunchly supported Benazir Bhutto only to feel let down and then become pragmatic) and magazine editor.

    And finally Zaki’s grandmother (Daadi) who has a strong influence on everyone who lives in the house, and her relationship with her sister, and the people who live with her.

    In the course of their lives, we get to see glimpses of Pakistan’s turbulent history, and present – from Partition to the hanging of Zulfikar Bhutto to the reigns of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf. Through different characters, the author also manages to give us snapshots of the cultural/religious/social landscape.

    Ali Sethi lets Zaki and a few other characters meander a little outside of the structure he has built, but much of it adds to their depth, a reason for why they are the way they are. There is clearly an element of autobiography in the book, and what I would have really liked is for the author to dwell on the relationship between Samar and Zaki in the present and if/how it has changed with time. Perhaps the only glimpse he offers is in the last line of the book, and that was a bit disappointing especially since the author has created many interactions between Zaki and the other characters to portray the changes/constant nature of bonds.

    Poignant at times, wistful a bit, and humorous once in a while, this is a good read if only to show how similar we are in many ways to those across the border.

    Psst, a small milestone, this happens to be post #900 Thanks for reading 🙂

  • Neti, Neti Not This, Not This

    Anjum Hasan

    Before anything else, the summary on the back of the book does not really do justice to what the book is about. That’s just a perspective. Though indeed, it is about Sophie, a girl from Shillong who came to Bangalore to work with a book publishing company and ended up in a US-based company that outsources the subtitling of DVDs and her increasing sense of being out-of-place in the growing metropolis, I thought it did dwell a lot on what the idea of home is to a person, and how time and situations change the idea and affect this relationship.

    The other facet of the book is how the author uses Sophie’s Shillong origin to portray just how different the North East is from the rest of the country. So this becomes a layer that goes beyond the stereotyped small to big town transition angst.

    The paradox, however is that Sophie is someone many people can identify with – someone who contemplates what this entire game of living is all about. And it is through these eyes that the author zips through the age old debates of culture/modernisation, young/old, east/west etc, the cliches of the modern Indian metro – malls, new age spiritual gurus, midnight parties in high rise apartments, work relationships, pubs, the influx of quick money, changing lifestyles and so on – the drama in the daily grind. The disenchantment with her new and old ‘homes’ is something I could completely relate to.

    Anjum Hasan is a prose artist. While I’ve not been to Shillong, the way she has captured Bangalore makes me feel that when I land up in Shillong, I’ll get a sense of deja vu. When you add to this some superb wit, and a penchant for subtlety, you get a book that’s quite easily worth a read.

    I read in a few reviews that Sophie’s character is from Hasan’s earlier work “Lunatic In My head”. Couple that with the fact that she has opted for quite an unconventional ending, and I begin to hope that there is another book in the making, in which Sophie gets out of her disillusionment. That’ll be a journey worth waiting for.

  • Quarantine Papers

    Kalpish Ratna

    This book was an impulse purchase, a rare thing for me. The ‘trailer’ (not a synopsis) on the jacket hooked me, and thankfully, unlike a couple of cases earlier, this book didn’t disappoint.

    I think what takes it beyond a ‘thriller’ set in two ages is the layering and detailing, and that starts right from the author name. The book is credited to ‘Kalpish Ratna’, which is actually an “almost anagram” of the two original authors – Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan. This layering is present across the book and so forced me to pay attention to each line because of the nuances. I wondered why they had to use different fonts but a few pages showed me how sensible they were in doing it.

    The story too is interesting in itself and has Ratan Oak as a protagonist who leads a ‘double life’. Ratan has a submerged identity, that of his great grandfather Ramratan Oak, and is able to recall his life – events and people.

    The book proceeds to juxtapose the 1992 Bombay riots following the Babri Masjid demolition with the plague that first appeared in Bombay in 1896-97. And not just juxtapose but create a plot that links the two events and show how the attitude and behaviour of society are just different manifestations of the same basic feelings.

    The narrative pace never slackens. The detailing of characters is excellent, and the different pieces of the puzzle are made to fit, with attention to details. From characters in history like the Kiplings, Bal Gangadhar Tilak etc to Urdu poetry, and the amount of research that has obviously been done, this is a very unique book and a must read. It has been mentioned that this is their first Ratan/Ramratan Oak novel, and if they’re planning more historical juxtapositions, I’ll certainly be waiting to grab a copy.