Category: Books

  • The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

    William Dalrymple

    Once, during a trip to Delhi, seeing the way history seemed to come ‘alive’ in the old city at various corners, I asked my friend whether anyone had tracked what had happened to the descendants of the Mughals, and how they saw their legacy . In this book, William Dalrymple does shed some light on it, though a sad one. More than the last Mughal emperor, the book belongs to the First War of Indian Independence to which he was unwittingly bound. Bahadur Shah 2 or Bahadur Shah Zafar as we were taught in history classes, born in 1775, whose pen name meant ‘Victory’, and was depicted as the face of the revolution that almost threw out the British. A hapless man who was pulled by a desire to ensure that he did justice to his legacy, when all he wanted to do was write his poetry and live in the company of like-minded souls. A spiritual man who was even considered a sufi saint, and still is, at his grave in Rangoon.

    It is now history, but at some point it was the life lived by people like us. 1857 seems like tangible history, an era that can still be felt by its influence, even if minimal. Using records from all kinds of people – common men and chroniclers across Indian and British nationalities, the author creates a vivid portrait of Delhi, before, during, and after the uprising. Characters such as Ghalib sometimes add philosophical layers to this narration, and help us understand the cultural high point that was regained in Zafar’s court. It also shows Zafar as a normal human being of his era – with his own superstitions and insecurities, a subject of court intrigue courtesy his wife Zinat Mahal, his son Mirza Mughaal, Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, General Bakht Khan and others, despite being hailed as Padshah, the Lord of the World.

    The book also makes a point to showcase the relationship between religious communities before the event, and as the author reinforces many a time, Zafar deserves quite some credit in understanding the fabric that held his city together and maintaining the harmony there. He also points out that the real reason for the uprising was not political, but religious. What started as a fight between Hindu sepoys and the British ended as a fight between a rebel force that was made mostly of Muslim jehadis and British mercenaries made of Sikh, Muslim Punjabi, and Pathans. And it was a war that could have gone wither way.

    Late in the book, there is also a mention of a royal survivor – Zafar Sultan, Zafar’s brother’s son, who refused government pension, and made his living with a brick cart. Once, many years later, in his old age, he was abused and beaten up by a businessman. After quietly taking the first few blows, he hit the businessman hard enough to break his nose. He told the court that sixty years earlier, the man’s forefathers would have been his slaves and that he had not forgotten his lineage. Dressed in dirty suits, made to get up and salaam the British (when he used to consider it an insult for anyone to sit in his presence), and verbally abused regularly, Zafar himself was the recipient of several injustices at the hands of the British, who did not even give any consideration for his old age after they ‘captured’ him.

    What remains with me, and this is something I went back to, almost every time I picked up the book to continue, is the photo of Zafar, lying with his face to the camera – the face of a broken old man who through his life saw the dominion of his ancestors taken away from him until all he had was his city and an empty title, who had just been made to undergo a trial and many humiliations before it, eyes expressing melancholy, and resigned to his destiny.

  • Window Seat

    Janhavi Acharekar 

    There couldn’t have been a more apt title for the book than ‘Window Seat’. If you were told that most of the characters in the book are people you happened to see from a window seat while traveling within a metro, chances are that you’d probably believe it.

    The book consists of 30 stories, and though the blurb would have you believe that it’s mostly Mumbai-centric, it’s only in Part 2 that the city actually becomes a veritable character. The first part, with 20 stories, wins you over with the simplicity in narration, and the tales themselves. Stories and characters I could identify with, regardless of their ethnicity, connected only by the humanness. The author’s ease with Malayalam (thanks to the husband) and the subtle use of Bengali in ‘China’ is worth a mention. The copywriting skills come to the fore in several anecdotes and witticisms, which add to the characters.

    The amazing part is that each story in the first part is completely different from each other – not just in terms of settings (slum, advertising agency, Kerala, Banaras, Goa….) and characters, (from a newspaper vendor to a ‘freedom fighter’) but also in the way each story is made to work (for me) – a twist in the end, melancholy, subtle wordplay, events that one can identify, humour, nostalgia, the human emotions portrayed and so on. Each card is a different trick. Several stories are rich with layers, a few words here and there that speaks volumes about the character. Each story has something that I could connect with. I could go on and on about the characters, but I wouldn’t want to spoil your experience. It’s better you meet them yourself. 🙂

    The second part has 3 sections, each with a setting that’s probably quintessentially Bombay – the local train, a beauty salon, and a Page 3 crowd. (featuring the epic Rajkumar song “If you come today, it’s too early”) The stories within each section are connected. I liked this a little lesser than the first part. It almost seemed that the author wrote this as a preparation.

    This one goes into my favourites list – not just because of the stories themselves, but also for the craft that’s displayed superbly in the telling of each story. Must-read!

  • The Non Fiction Collection: Twenty Years Of Penguin India

    Celebrating Penguin’s twenty years in India, this book has a collection of 46 non-fiction works, (chapters from published works) and since there’s no specific theme that links every one of them, I’ll just list my favourites. Devdutt Pattanaik’s Myth = Mithya is probably the best way to begin the book with its premise of creation (as per Hindu mythology) and its take on the complementary forces at play in the universe. Gita Piramal’s “the old fox” gives us the ringside view of the Ambani – Goenka war that played out in the eighties. Humra Quraishi’s “from Kashmir” offers us a glimpse of today’s Kashmir, and the life of the people there, a far cry from the times when Kashmir was described as heaven on earth. Vikram Seth’s “From Heaven Lake”, in addition to its vivid description of travel in China, shows in its last page a snapshot of the human condition that remains unchanged across the globe. Amrita Shah’s “Launching Into Space” is one of those reads that take across time, and space, with its chronicling of the early days of India’s space research programme. Khushwant Singh’s “Village in the Desert” is a very personal recollection of the author’s own childhood in a village that now stands in Pakistan, and shows how people across the line really can go beyond the lines drawn on a map. Sanjay Suri’s “Near Mrs.” (that title is a good example of the humour involved) is a brilliantly funny respite from the serious content in the rest of the book, involving a bride-search in London.

    Roopa Swaminathan’s “Extras” is a poignant piece of writing on the life of extras who come to Mumbai/Chennai with the hopes of becoming the next star, but who find that their life has passed them by even as they clung on to hope. Giles Tillotson’s Jaipur Nama has an account of the East India Company’s activities in the context of Rajasthan. Even as Mark Tully’s “No Full Stops in India” gives an excellent perspective on ‘development’ in India, Pavan K Varma’s “Being Indian” has a fantastic take on how India’s own way of getting things done still survives. Abraham Verghese’ “My Own Country”, while set in the US, touches upon, among other things, the idea of a home.

    Pinki Virani’s “Home as hell” informs us about sickening cases of child abuse in India. John Wright’s “Indian Summers” gives us a behind-the-scenes look as well as a non-Indian’s perspective on the game that unites India, even as S. Hussain Zaidi’s “Black Friday” shows how communal forces and the merchants of terrorism try to break this unity.

    There are also very interesting pieces like the Veerappan based “Face to Face” by Sunaad Raghuram, former PM Narasimha’s Rao’s version of what happened at Ayodhya in 1992.

    The book also had quite a few excerpts from works that are already my favouries – Mishi Saran’s “Chasing the Monk’s Shadow”, Shashi Tharoor’s “India: from Midnight to the Millennium” and Arundhati Roy’s “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”.

    The book is a few years old, and some of the works, even more so, but they are in some ways, timeless pieces too. I read them because they not only give me clues on interesting books to read, but also offer me a glimpse of worlds that I probably might not travel to in the course of my normal reading journey.

  • Evening Is the Whole Day

    Preeta Samarasan

    Preeta Samarasan’s debut novel begins with the kind of prose that actually seems like poetry in disguise – with a description of a part of Malaysian geography. The narrative begins in 1980, on Kingfisher Lane in Ipoh, in the Big House, owned by the Rajasekharans – Raju (Appa) a leading lawyer and a pillar of the community, erstwhile socialist; Vasanthi, his wife, from circumstances far below his; their children Uma, Suresh and Aasha in that order; Paati, the matriarch whose disapproval of her daughter-in-law endures time, and the servant girl Chellam brought in to take care of her. A wealthy, dysfunctional family, with each member fighting their own demons.

    We see a lot of the story through Aasha’s eyes in the beginning. Aasha, who talks to ghosts and will do anything to get back the affections of Uma. Uma, whose sole desire is to escape to the US. And in between, Suresh, who tries to make sense of the world with humour. The narrative then sets out to unravel layer by layer, not just digging deeper into what happened earlier, but also wider, giving the reader, through characters and events, a view of Malayan society, with its own undercurrents, ethnicity issues and rules that attempt harmony between the Chinese, Indians and the natives. A brief glimpse of a country coming to terms with its freedom, and the responsibilities therein.

    As the layers unfold, the perceptions of characters and their behaviour that the reader has built up slowly begin to undergo changes, as the past – from a few days earlier to half a lifetime away – shows its influence on the present and future. We also see how the relationships between people change with time, sometimes over years and sometimes in a few minutes. There are some very interesting secondary characters too, like Uncle Ballroom who evokes a sense of poignancy, Vasanthi’s mother whose sudden turn to asceticism makes you wonder about the nature of the human psyche, or Kooky Rooky, whose variations of her own past points us to stories that we build for ourselves. And then there’s Chellam, whose past, and lack of future brings a lump to the throat.

    Somewhere in the book and its use of words and the wit employed (brotheROARsister, Stopping At Nothing…) I could see Arundhati Roy. Somewhere in the way the human condition is expressed I could see Kiran Desai. But neither takes away from a distinctive style – vivid prose, edgy humour, and an ability to draw the reader right in. This one goes into my favourites.

  • The Small House

    Timeri N. Murari 

    The Small House, in terms of name as well as the overarching premise of the book is based on a socially accepted norm in Tamil Nadu – the ‘chinnaveedu’, where the husband houses his mistress. Though the back cover blurb would indicate that the novel is about two friends, both of whose spouses they suspect to be straying, the focus is very much on Roopmati Malhotra than her friend Tazneem.

    Roopmati, the sole surviving heir of the Krishnarangam royals, is shown as a history-obsessed character who is only mildly curious about her husband’s infidelity. She is convinced that she only represents a trophy for her husband, a suave businessman, who finds solace in the arms of Maya, a television anchor. On the other hand, Tazneem, an art filmmaker finds it difficult to handle the fact that her husband is cheating on her, and that he is a bisexual.

    Many narratives make up the novel. Roopmati’s conversations with her (almost) namesake and confidante Rupmati, a historical character who charmed Sultan Baz Bahadur and finally swallowed poison when she was captured. Her relationship with her dead brother Tommy, who supposedly drowned much earlier. Though friends, the two characters’ situations do offer contrast. While Tazneem’s marriage was her own choice (though she is still close to her father to whom she turns to for comfort), Roopmati’s seems almost like Khris bought her from her father, who died later. The author also unfolds layers from the perspectives of different characters as the story moves forward. This gives the reader a peek into why they are the way they are, but sometimes these narratives are like a cul de sac, with abrupt endings that force the author and the reader to pick up the thread from a principal character.

    In the end, it almost seems like the author was in a hurry to close the loose ends, and as a reader, I was forced to wonder whether many characters suffered from a compromised ‘end’ that has the author hinting that one must make peace with the past and choices made, and move on. I also wondered why the Rupmati character existed, unless it was a ploy to make the reader imagine a different ending. But the book has a fair share of things that make it a good read – the author’s keen eye for detail, especially of society and its players, manifests itself in the manner in which he has built and portrayed his characters – there are subtle traits that one can easily identify in all the characters, especially the supporting ones. Brief glimpses of Chennai also show the author’s interest in history. The pace is good and there are many nuanced conversations – between Khris and Roopmati’s father, Roopmati and Rupmati that offer food for thought. In essence, not stellar, but worth a read.