Book Review - Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A poignant glimpse into the little known ‘brotherhood of death’ within the chthonic Parsi community. Here is an example of the touching juxtaposition of morbidity with the appreciation of nature’s radiance

Carrion work...the constant consanguinity with corpses... the smell of sickness endures; the reek of extinction never leaves the nostril.
Outside the wire-meshed window, a sprig of pale orange bougainvillea swayed slightly. As I climbed out of bed, the rays of a fledgling sun touched the treetops lightly with a golden brush. The sky was deep blue and softly luminous, without a speck of cloud.

It is puzzling that despite the mind-boggling wealth of the Parsis and their well-known charitable deeds, there are still indigent members of the community – living and suffering in squalor.
Humanity has polluted Earth in many ways. Diclofenac - a pain relieving, anti-inflammatory medicine is used both in humans as well as in animals. Animal carcasses with traces of the drug in their bodies were consumed by vultures, causing liver toxicity in these scavenging birds, leading to the eventual extinction of vultures - so crucial for the disposal of Parsi corpses.
Spoiler alert: There is a segment that could well be the script of the farcical Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron.

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Book Review - The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The 39 Steps was the first spy story I read. Alistair MacLean’s thrillers, Ian Fleming’s suave Bond, Ken Follett – no other author can thrill like le Carre’s inimitable cryptic and breathless style of writing.
In this brilliant book his propensity of changing tenses is in full display. He narrates an event that took place in the past and suddenly the tense changes to the present continuous...

The most rigorous instruction in prose writing that I ever received came, not from any schoolteacher or university tutor, least of all from a writing school. It came from the classically educated senior officers on the top floor of MI5’s headquarters in Curzon Street, Mayfair, who seized on my reports with gleeful pedantry, heaping contempt on my dangling clauses and gratuitous adverbs, scouring the margins of my deathless prose with such comments as redundant – omit – justify – sloppy – do you really mean this? No editor I have since encountered was so exacting, or so right.

Some mysteries remain – is the beautiful Ann and the tumultuous marital life of George Smiley based on the author’s life? After all, Alison Ann Veronica Sharp was the author’s first wife’s name. The origin of his nom de plume remains a mystery.
John ‘the Square’ died a month ago – was it COVID-19 that took him or was it a “natural” death?
Like his convoluted spy stories there is nothing linear or straightforward in this auto-biographical novel. It is a collection of vignettes from his writing career, incidents of how he transformed interesting people he encountered into characters for his books, research for plot settings, droll bits about famous film makers – including interactions with Richard Burton (Alec Leamas) and Alec Guinness (George Smiley). However, except for the last chapter where he talks about his errant father (the inspiration for Magnus Pym’s father - A Perfect Spy), there is nothing much about his personal life. Although he does reveal the rather morbid provenance of the enigmatic title of the book.
I found it interesting that a vowel separates the author's name and place of residence - Cornwell and Cornwall - material for conspiracy theorists?

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Book Review - Lockdown Tales by Neal Asher

Lockdown Tales by Neal Asher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pandemics, quarantine, lockdowns are normal fare for SF writers. As usual Neal Ascher doesn’t disappoint, his stories are “peopled” by

giant fish-like heirodonts and ocean-going leeches the size of blue whales

and

leeches with their plug-cutting mouths and the snappy claws and other sharp limbs of glisters and prill

from the fearsome planet Spatterjay. Gorst-vaankle engines power warplanes in the war involving Meeps, Loobers Cheevers Groogers etc. However, an sfional Pygmalion and Robinson Crusoe amalgam rambles on and on, it could have been pruned and made more gripping.

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Book Review - PLASSEY by Sudip Chakravarti

Plassey: The Battle that Changed the Course of Indian History by Sudeep Chakravarti
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Undue emphasis is placed on a skirmish outside a mango orchard on the banks of a distributary of the Ganges, as a pivotal event in the histories of England and India. The subsequent battle of Buxar, where the remnants of the moghul army and its allies were comprehensively routed by the British (in Clive’s absence, without recourse to subterfuge, treason and conniving), or the 1857 uprising were more momentous events.
I am no historian but this is how I see it – it was a rainy day, most of the forces chose not to fight, the French had an axe to grind with the English and were the most enthusiastic fighters, the fight barely lasted a few hours with the loss of less than six hundred men.
Page 274

The first shot was fired at 8 a.m.

Page 289

It was 8 p.m.
And just like that, the Battle of Plassey was over.

Fifteen pages of "battle" in a book of 392 pages.
The downfall of the cruel and dissolute Siraj-ud-Dawla was inevitable, given his unpopularity and the Machiavellian intrigues of the declining incestuous moghul empire. The greedy and rapacious, albeit disciplined, English just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Altogether, the book is interesting to read, cryptic and chatty at times, rambling occasionally into superfluous trivia.

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