Embassytown by China Mieville

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An allegorical, if convoluted, account of Humans interfering with the natural order of things, as usual, messing up, and then vainly struggling to undo their mistakes – never really achieving status quo ante.
Although Mieville excels at fantasy and bizarre tales if he is grounded in his favourite milieu of London, however, he fails to inspire with this attempt at extra-terrestrial SF/“weird fiction.” There are flashes of his brilliance

where the airs mixed – past what was not quite a hard border but was still remarkably abrupt, a gaseous transition, breezes sculpted with nanotech particle-machines and consummate atmosphere artistry

while describing the interface between oxygen-rich breathable air and the toxic alien atmosphere.
The author brings in many fascinating concepts like an extradimensional travelling subspace, alien biotech and xenocs to whom the notions of mendacity are incomprehensible and who consider humans to be figures of speech

“Hello,” said one. He smiled enthusiastically and I did not smile back. “I’m Hasser: I’m an example. Davyn’s a topic… You’re a simile.”

Some terms are not clarified e.g., yawl, immer, aeoli, altoysterman, immer, sopor, encomia, manchmal, floaking, to mention a few; although miab turns out to be nothing more prosaic than “Message In A Bottle!”

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Book Review: Funeral Nights by Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih

Funeral Nights by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Morose to reach the end of the book – feels like a vacuum inside. I will miss the cantankerous characters of the book, Raji, the irascible Bah Kynsai, Bah Su, Bah Kit, the sceptical Donald (spoiler alert: who finds love with the only female of the group), the nay-saying Evening and Ap the omniscient narrator – the alter ego of the author. Their squabbles, and occasional fisticuffs aside, the narration is immensely readable without becoming dry and scholarly.

Five-star rating for the colossal effort of compiling this magnum opus. It smartly encapsulates the Khasi (known colloquially as Ri Hynniew Trep) ethos – if a tome of 1000+ pages can be called encapsulation. This includes various facets of culture, religion, social set-up (matrilineal amongst the tribals but fading away amongst the converts to Christianity), politics, folk-lore, history, culinary practices (pork, beef, mutton – all is kosher only dogs are taboo) geography of Meghalaya, conflicts. Almost encyclopaedic in scope, it details their linguistic quirks in naming, their foibles, the effects of British invasion, Christianity and non-tribal immigration leading to a loss of their cultural heritage, including their extant grassroots political system with the king as a titular head without executive powers being replaced by the corrupt Indian Panchayati Raj.

Indigenous people feel strongly about the name of their state imposed on them

What has this stupid name - Meghalaya, Abode of the Clouds, given by some academic thug from nowhere - got to do with us? Are you a cloud, Hamkom? Does the name connect you with the land, as Nagaland or Mizoram does? Are we a people with no roots in the land? Were they so dim-witted, your heroes, that they couldn't think of a name for their state?

I learnt about Extispicy (also Splanchomancy, Haruspicy, Aruspicy, Hieroscopia, and Hieroscopy) - the practice of using anomalies in animal entrails to predict or divine future events; the difference between Matriarchy - a postulated gynocentric form of society, in which power is with the women and especially with the mothers of a community and Matrilineality - a system in which one belongs to one's mother's lineage, where children are identified in terms of their mother rather than their father, and extended families and tribal alliances form along female blood-lines; cromlechs, ossuaries and other funeral practices. Various aspects of their traditional sport of archery was covered comprehensively.

I really loved the description of the Khasi religion - a beautiful message of spirituality for living in harmony with nature and fellow humans with the blessings of God - U Blei Nong-thaw. No prophet, no jihad, no prosetylization, no caste, no exploitative priests. Who knows? This form of worship may have existed during the Vedic times in our hoary past before it was hijacked by Hindutva votaries and turned into a combative religion.

Khublei! Bah Kynpham!! Following the quaint practice of naming offspring after celestial objects, you could name your child FiveStar. Just joking…

A question: Where can one see the film Ka Phor Sorat by Raphael Warjri?

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Book Review: How to be a Literary Sensation by Krishna Shastri Devulapillai

How to Be a Literary Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family and Facebook for Artistic Gain by Krishna Shastri Devulapalli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A laugh riot of flippant self-deprecating humour, to begin with. But tends to get monotonous and stale towards the end of the book. Here is an example of his wit

The Town That Wouldn’t Change by Arunima Kurkure
The year is 1979, the place Kakinada. The year is 1989, the place is still Kakinada. The year is 1999, the place is somehow still Kakinada. The poignant tale of a village idiot who finds out that it will remain Kakinada even in 2029. This is an allegorical tale of epic proportions about the ever-changing nature of the mind, the unchanging nature of life and the loose change in your pocket. A Groundhog Day meets Fountainhead. In an advance review, The Kakinada Times has called the book ‘at once sensuous, hilarious and digestive.’

This is a preview of one of the imaginary books supposedly to be released that year.

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