Category: Books

  • Once Upon a Timezone

    Neelesh Misra

    Bollywood style romance with a Hollywood heroine, that’s probably how I’d describe the book, not just because of the story and the characters, who seem perfect for a movie version, but also because of the pace of the book and the turns within.

    Neel Pandey, obsessed with America, but whose visa application gets rejected, settles for a vicarious experience – at a call centre, where he gets transformed into Neil Patterson, and falls in love with a customer, in far away America, even as his father tries to get him married to a girl of the right caste, and his mother, whose own dreams have been stifled thanks to her husband, looks on helplessly.

    Angela Cruz, fresh out of college and building a new life as a journalist, away from her race-obsessed father, is smitten by Neil Patterson, thanks to a phone call she makes to fix her computer. She is led to believe that he’s American, while she herself cooks up a story of her being a model.

    Their turbulent love life is what makes up the remainder of the book. In addition to the parents, there are also a couple of characters who play important roles – Neel’s friend Meenal, whom his dad wants him to marry, and Rocky Randhawa, a con artist who runs a business of supplying fake visas.

    The story itself is quite predictable, but is breezy enough to make for a non-boring read. The author does have a sense of humour, though cliches have been employed at regular intervals, mostly as devices to portray a stereotypical Indian middle class family. In essence, reading it won’t do you any irreparable damage.

  • The Inheritance of Loss

    Kiran Desai

    With two main narratives set in Kalimpong and New York, Kiran Desai’s second book is an excellent read which can be viewed from many prisms – the effect of a contact with the ‘west’ on a person used to his Indian-ness, the mess we make of our relationships, our inner conflicts, the way we see ourselves and the reality we choose to accept for ourselves.

    One of the narratives is of Sai, a teen-aged orphan who comes to live with a grandfather who barely knew of her existence, but manages to uncharacteristically accept her presence in his life. The author manages to describe situations and behaviour as seen by her, in a very convincing manner, and I found that a very endearing characteristic of the book. Sai’s grandfather is a retired judge, who after his education in England, developed a contempt for everything Indian, and became a ‘stranger to himself’. His sole companion is Mutt, a dog for whom he has a great affection. The last resident of the household is the cook, whose existence revolves around his son, Biju, who he believes to be in a ‘very good job’ in America.

    The second narrative is of Biju – an illegal alien in New York, forced to move jobs, and live in the worst conditions possible, a far cry from the rosy picture his father imagines. He fights his own conflicts – from cooking beef to interacting with Pakistanis and has a yearning to go back home, where he feels, he can belong. In between, there is also a smaller narrative of the judge’s life before retirement.

    Kiran Desai has an amazing way words – from the way she describes routine household jobs to the view of Kanchenjunga and the mountain foliage, and most importantly, human feelings. She moves seamlessly between places, and even time, and shows a deep understanding of human emotions. Her prose is such that it somehow evokes vivid visuals, and characters you can identify with at a fundamental level. The best part is how she manages to keep the prose flexible enough to accommodate its view from the character involved.

    The book is still and dynamic at the same time, as though mirroring its characters, and it seems as though the author is trying to make a point of the importance of things we choose to disregard as mundane. It is about journeys and our notion of destinations.

    Mixing a backdrop of Gorkhaland militancy with hopeful teen infatuation and managing to convey the facile nature of how we view ourselves – through the main characters, as well as the lives and perceived realities of minor characters like Lola, Noni and Father Booty, and the desperation in them due to the events that surround them, this book seems seeped in misery and unacknowledged yearning, but still manages to give some vague notion of hope, as though there is a basic version of the self that connects all of us, and keeps us ticking.

  • A Far Horizon: A Novel

    Meira Chand

    Meira Chand mixes recorded history with fiction – her own interpretation of events, to create an interesting tale. Set in 1756, the book deals with the events that led to the Black Hole of Calcutta, and suggests that the official numbers and incidents might have been exaggerated by John Holwell, whose account has been debated on. In addition to people who have been mentioned in that account, Meira Chand has added several characters which manage to give the story multiple perspectives.

    It also manages to give the reader a view of the conditions that existed during the time that the East India Company traded in Bengal, and at a time when its relations with native rulers as well as other nationals were still to evolve into a concrete form. But the divide between the British and Indians had been well set and is represented by ‘White Town’ and ‘Black Town’. The book also shows the contempt with which both sides held each other.

    But a siege by the new ruler of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah changes the scenario completely as the inhabitants of Black Town stop serving the Britishers but are soon forced to take refuge in the Fort they’d earlier abandoned.

    In addition to the Nawab, his courtiers and the intrigue involved, and the Company men – Governor Drake, his wife and Chief Magistrate Holwell, there are many characters of mixed breed, most important of whom are three generations of women – Jaya, her daughter Rita and Rita’s daughter -Sati, through whom the goddess Durga/Kali manifests herself.

    Though the premise is interesting, the pace seems to sag towards the middle. Meira Chand’s vivid descriptions of the towns, their inhabitants and the Hoogly river that witnesses them all, are worth a mention.

  • The Veteran

    Frederick Forsyth

    The book is quite a departure from the regular thrillers that Forsyth is famous for, but that doesn’t take away anything from the quality of the work. It consists of five stories, which showcase the research that characterises Forsyth’s works. I’d actually have taken these for Jeffrey Archer’s work for the quality of the ‘twists’, and sometimes, even the wit.

    ‘The Veteran’ and ‘The Art of the Matter’ are renditions of the concept of justice, with the latter giving us quite a few insights about the art world and its inhabitants. ‘The Veteran’ would seem an open-and-shut mugging case and the trial that follows, but develops layers as it proceeds. There is something very satisfying about this story as well as the last one. In ‘The Miracle’, a tourist couple on their way to experience the Palio horse race in Siena, come across a stranger and his tale of the supernatural. ‘The Citizen’ involves a drug enforcement officer and a range of characters who are involved in a drug trafficking episode.

    ‘Whispering Wind’, the last story is considerably larger than others, and while the average ‘Bollywood’ viewer would find the concept familiar, it is still a great story based on ‘The Battle of the Little Bighorn’, the amount of detailing takes it up several notches.

    ‘The Veteran’ might be named after the first story or perhaps the expertise that key characters in all five stories exhibit. The most endearing aspect of this book is how it marries clinical descriptions and detailing with stories that exude warmth and humanity. That, and the excellent endings make this a great read.

  • The Curious Case of 221B: The Secret Notebooks

    Partha Basu

    Partha Basu takes Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective Sherlock Holmes and shows him as well as many of the cases that Baker Street fans are familiar with, in a wholly different light.

    The primary narrator is Jit, who comes across the secret diaries of Dr.Watson, the original chronicler of Holmes’ adventures. One one hand, the diaries recount the stories that were never formally published, with ‘mid-words’ from one Emma Hudson, whose identity is also a little mystery, and which add multiple layers to the official adventures, and on the other, we have Jit’s story and that of his parents, and how they happened to be in possession of the diaries.

    Partha Basu seems to have done quite some decent research, though whether the tales he has chosen were the best possible for this exercise would always be debatable according to personal Holmes favourites. But the concept itself is very interesting and adds multiple perspectives to the iconic character of Holmes, and to a certain extent to Watson’s too. This is more so because Holmes has always been the one on whom the focus has been on, while Watson has been content playing the foil to the superb skills of Holmes’ mind. Here, they seem to share the stage almost equally in terms of focus with Watson even outwitting Holmes in one case.

    So ‘The Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘The Illustrious Client’, ‘The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax’, ‘The Speckled Band’, ‘The Three Students’, ‘The Solitary Cyclist’, ‘Abbey Grange’ are all taken apart and reset in terms of either characters or circumstances as events that happened either before or after the case was published are brought to light, Characters and their motives are suddenly shown differently, thereby revealing that all may not have ended well. The book also gives a hat tip to the unofficial Holmes work – written by one Seamus Hyde.

    I also like the expressed aim of the author – to get more people to read the original works of Sir Conan Doyle. Its not very easy for a Holmes fan to be told that the master detective may have been wrong more than once – either in the specific context, or for failing to grasp the larger picture, and that he may have had character flaws that were significantly worse than portrayed in the published works, but if you can live with that, this book is a very interesting read for Holmes fans. I quite liked the touch of Holmes (once) corresponding with Arthur Conan Doyle.