Category: Books

  • Murder in Mahim

    Jerry Pinto

    “Em and the Big Hoom” is a favourite book largely thanks to how sensitively Jerry Pinto deals with the issue of a person’s mental health and its impact on their near and dear. Murder in Mahim, in terms of premise, is vastly different and as the title would suggest, a murder mystery. But once again, it is the sensitivity that the author displays in treating both the subject and the subjects that takes it beyond other fare in the genre.

    It would be unfair to compare this to his previous work simply because of the massive genre shift. I also feel that it might not have worked simply as a murder mystery because once the plot progresses, second guessing becomes rather easy. Two things worked in its favour. The pace of the narrative is tight. The author doesn’t stretch any suspenseful plot points beyond its worth, and in that sense, respects the reader’s smarts. The other part is the nuanced detailing. A subculture of Bombay truly comes to life in the book. (yes, I recognise the irony here) The author makes the effort to get the reader to empathise with the characters and their complexities. That goes for the city too – as represented by its people and places, and even the time of the day when it is seen.  (more…)

  • The Association of Small Bombs

    Karan Mahajan

    Not that I read a lot of fiction that can be called optimistic in subject or outlook, but this one was particularly depressing. I would even call it cruel because the insights on human behaviour are sharp and used effectively.. Ironically, I am not being negative about it, it’s just the way it is.

    The book begins with an explosion, and then it simmers, before boiling towards another. That’s as much as I will spoil it for you. The explosion was not even something major, on a relative scale – “the death toll would be only thirteen dead with thirty injured — a small bomb. A typical bomb. A bomb of small consequences.”

    But think about it, after the media makes a few meal tickets out of it in the next few days, after the government has done their song and dance, and after the NGOs have raised their point (again) what happens to the lives of the thirty injured, the families of the thirteen dead, and what goes on in the minds of the those who planted the bomb? This book is exactly that.  (more…)

  • Arrow of the Blue Skinned God

    Jonah Blank

    If you read the book solely for the connection to mythology, you might come away disappointed. It happened to me for most of the book until I framed it as a travelogue which happened to connect to the Ramayana and its principal characters in quite a few ways. In that frame, barring a couple of questionable occurrences, (“feni in Kerala” made me wonder whether calling Bruce Lee a cricketer was actually sarcasm) it does a wonderfully lucid job.

    The book was published in 1992 and it is always a pleasure to travel in time through books because, to quote the author, it “presents a picture of a certain place at a certain time, as seen by a certain person at a certain stage of his own life”. It is quite an interesting time to read this because 1992 was a landmark year for the powers that govern the country now. I’m referring to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. That’s where this journey starts.

    I think the problem was in my expectations. I thought this would be a linear journey – both in terms of the chronology of the events in the Ramayana, as well as in terms of covering the geography featured in the epic. It doesn’t work that way. While there are definitely quite a few interesting explorations of the geography, the book is more a study on the deep impact that the epic has even today in the life of an Indian. Not just at an individual level, but the societal, cultural, and political aspects as well.  (more…)

  • Stories of your Life and Others

    Ted Chiang

    I’m a fan!
    One of the reasons I like science fiction as a genre is because of its ability to broaden thinking horizons. This is speculative fiction at its best! Each of the eight stories is different yet wonderful in their own right, because they explore realms not just with imagination but with humaneness.

    What makes it even more fascinating is that unlike the usual hits in the genre, none of the stories are set in the future. In fact one is based on the Tower of Babel, another is more aligned to steampunk and the others seem more an alternate present than an alternate future. What is common among all these though is that the reader doesn’t really feel the temporal shift. Somehow the author normalises it in the first page itself! (more…)

  • Travelling In, Travelling Out

    edited by Namita Gokhale

    I haven’t read a travel book in a while, and there couldn’t have been a better book to welcome me back into the genre. I think it was the mention of Mishi Saran, whose Chasing The Monk’s Shadow I really liked, that made me aware of this book.

    What I loved about the book is its exploration of what travel could mean. That takes the book far beyond the standard travelogue writing. Journeys can be of different kinds – the simple physical movement from one place to another, to the exploration of the self within, “thought to thought”, to seeing things in a different light and so on. This book has all that, and more.

    Devdutt Pattanaik sets the tone well with the exploration of the idea of travel seen through the lens of Hindu mythology and civilisation and brings up the concept of parikrama – returning to the point from where we started. Ashok Ferrey throws in a fantastic light touch immediately after that – fortunes changing with time. This humour finds a neat continuation in Marie Brenner’s take on holy India for the 5 star set. The tinge of cynicism is given full throttle in Mayank Austen Soofi’s time travel in Nainital, but balanced beautifully with nostalgia and wistfulness.
    Bulbul Sharma’s journey to the hills is as much a journey within, and it talks of a place that almost stands still in time. This theme resonates in the detailing of Nobgang by Bhutan’s Queen Mother. A darker turn of places where light does not enter is Ipsita Roy Chakraverti’s exploration of the haunted fort of Bhangarh, and her writing forces one to acknowledge the limited understanding of forces unseen. Both MJ Akbar and Rahul Pandita throw light on yet another nuance of places in India that have remained outside of time, and people who continue to be exploited.
    Mishi Saran’s “A House for Mr.Tata” is a poignant tale of a place changing even as its memories remain firm in the minds of those who inhabited it. The closure missing in this is exactly what happens in Urvashi Butalia’s partition based “The Persistence of Memory”. Indeed, some journeys are for exploration, and some others, for closure. (more…)