The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A gem of a book – a poignant and heart-rending story of two strong-willed and proud women, buffeted by the inequities thrown at them by society and the adversities they face consequently. Despite their grinding poverty, cast aside by family and friends, homeless, friendless, physically weak and tormented by diseases, they are still spiritually undefeated and seek comfort in small delights and in the friendship with one another.
There are some very telling descriptions in the book. Here is a glimpse of life in the slums

everyday sounds of misery that circle the basti like satellites: crazed-with-worry mothers loudly berating their idle, unemployed sons; the screams of women protecting their last rupee from their violent, hashish-addicted husbands; the high-pitched squealing of dogs being kicked and maimed by bored children; the vile, steady stream of curses muttered by mothers-in-law towards women their sons have married; the loud demands of slumlords threatening eviction and moneylenders threatening injury.

On poverty

everyone in this city is chasing his or her fortune and to get at it, they will stand on and crush the heads of their own mothers. There is only one unforgivable sin in this city, and that is the sin of poverty. Everything else is taken in stride – corruption at the highest and lowest levels, disloyalty, betrayal.
There is only one true evil. And that is being poor. With money, a sinner can be worshipped as a saint. A murderer can be elected chief minister. A rapist can become a respectable family man. And the owner of a brothel can be a Principal.

The apt title of the book

It isn’t the words we speak that make us who we are. Or even the deeds we do. It is the secrets buried in our hearts…People think that the ocean is made up of waves and things that float on the top. But they forget – the ocean is also what lies at the bottom, all the broken things stuck in the sand. That, too, is the ocean.

On seeing the minuscule amount of ashes left after a cremation, the protagonist observes

It is hard enough to accept that this is what the physical body amounts to. But what about a person’s anger? What about her voice? Her laughter? Her arrogance? Her irreverence? Her humour, her ego, her honour, her character? Do these fingerprints of an individual life simply evaporate and disappear with the last exhale?...

City dwellers on seeing the open countryside for the first time

It is the green that confuses them, shocks them, that makes bubbles of delighted laughter spurt involuntarily from their mouths. It is its lushness, its promiscuity, like a woman sitting with her lags splayed, that makes their city blink in astonishment, as they contrast the browns and blacks of their lives with this lavish fertile green.

A wonderful book!

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Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India by Akshaya Mukul

Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India by Akshaya Mukul
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After wading through Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya by the author, I was looking forward to this book and can happily aver that I was not disappointed. It is an extensively researched scholarly work that is unbiased and non-judgemental, by and large. It is essentially centred around the towering and influential personality of one of the co-founders and editor – Hanuman Prasad Poddar (after whom a cancer hospital is named in Gorakhpur). It is an indispensable and monumental reference work (83 pages out of 539 comprise the Bibliography and Notes) for scholars on Hinduism (specifically sanatana dharma), adherents of Hindutva, and the present governing political dispensation in India – although the obscurantist philosophy of Gita Press may not appeal to people against casteism and patriarchy. The author has clarified

…the idea behind the book is not to sing paens of Gita Press but to place it within the larger canvas of Hindu nationalism in colonial and post-colonial India.

It would be interesting to determine any correlation between the slow rise over the eight decades of Gita Press and Kalyan (200,000 subscribers and 100,00 subscribers for the English edition – Kalyan Kalptaru) and the dissemination of its Hindutva teachings with the assertiveness and strident nationalism of Hindus and the consequent rise of the saffron power of the BJP from political wilderness to the ruling corridors of power.
While talking about the content of the Kalyan and other publications of Gita Press there are some outrageous examples. There is a bizarre comparison of communism with the egalitarianism preached in Bhagvadgita.

Gita Press realized the need to provide an alternative to the new ideology, something that would not threaten the tenets of sanatan Hindu dharma yet celebrate the concept of equality. The alternative was discovered in the Bhagvadgita – an Indian version of communism, divinely ordained.

An almost Talibanesque attitude towards women prevailed

In all Gita Press publications on women, the language used is reformative in tone and prescriptive in nature. Poddar and others made it clear that a woman’s non-adherence to the set rules could affect the broader Hindu society. The onus was on the woman to be the flag bearer of morality, purity and chastity. Only then could an ideal family – and by extension an ideal nation – be formed.

And

In 1936 Poddar regretted the new wave of modernity that aimed to put men and women on an equal educational footing, so much so that even were becoming ‘teachers, clerks, lawyers, barristers, writers, politicians, and members of municipalities and councils. Such ideas of progress, Poddar said, were turning women anti-God and anti-religion.

Moreover,

It is a different matter that the burden of these rituals with shastric sanction fell more on women who usually had very little or no say in matters concerning their space. The ideal world of a Hindu nari followed the narrow path of daughter, wife and mother. It was a task Gita Press took extremely seriously, as expressed not only through the pages of Kalyan but also in scores of pamphlets on women.

Goyandka, the other co-founder of Gita Press, was even more regressive

To educate and build the character, strength and mental purity of girls and women, Goyandka laid stress on hard physical labour. Even harsh words and rebukes by elders were to be considered by a woman as a form of education.

Something out of Calvin and Hobbes!
The author observes

Drawing from Hitler’s Germany was not an innocuous act, but Gita Press’s affirmation of its regard for the fascist ruler. In fact, when it comes to the ‘women’s question’, there is a great deal of similarity between Nazi Germany, Gita Press and other Hindu nationalist organizations like the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and others; in particular, the ‘hysterical protective anxiety about numbers’ vis-à-vis the Muslims shown by Gita Press and the entire Hindu right owes a lot to Hitler.

Besides his hectic schedule at Gita Press, Poddar had the time, energy, determination for other related activities – he was the probable initiator of the Ram Janambhoomi and Krishna Janambhoomi revival; he led a spirited and tireless campaign against cow slaughter (the fruition of those efforts is evident now). His messianic campaign to protect cows was one of the factors leading to the going of separate ways from Gandhi. He was one of the founder members of the radical VHP.
The author concludes ominously

Its numerous moral tracts continue to attract readers in schools and homes, and its journals and books carry its ideology across India and overseas, propagating the dream of a time when Hindu and India will become synonymous

A great book! An unusual look at Indian history through the fortunes of an Indian Publishing House.

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गबन by Premchand

गबन by Munshi Premchand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A gem of a story – how a woman’s vanity and greed for jewellery leads to her husband’s ruin. It shows how a wimpy man’s milquetoast life is impacted by three strong women in his life – Jalpa, Ratan and Zohra. The narrative never slackens. Despite the title of the book being गबन – embezzlement – the epic also looks at police venality and corruption, bureaucratic red-tape, caste and untouchability in pre-Independent India.
I found Premchand’s use of Persian, Arabic and Turkish words rather tiresome e.g. बिसाती मकदूर मुलम्मे माजून मीज़ान नालिश ग़ाफिल मुदा महसूल तहसील हलफ ज़हीन इजलास अहलमद शोहदा दोज़ख मुचलका महरूम दरोग़-बयानी, but I suppose, that was the lingua franca at that time, before Hindi/Devnagri become the national language.
Some aphorisms that are used, I could not comprehend

मियां की जूती मियां की चांद, तबेले की बला बदंर के सिर गई।
दमड़ी की हंडिया खोकर कुत्तों की जात तो पहचान ली जायगी

I found this term hilarious and apt: चपर-गट्टू
Some of his lyrical descriptions

शिवलिंग के ऊपर रखे हुए घट में क्या वह प्रवाह है, तरंग है, नाद है, जो सरिता में है?
भादों का महीना था। पृथ्वी और जल में रण छिडाहुआ था। जल की सेनाएं वायुयान पर चढ़कर आकाश से जल-शरों की वर्षा कर रही थीं। उसकी थल-सेनाओं ने पृथ्वी पर उत्पात मचा रक्खा था।
मानो प्रभात की सुनहरी ज्योति उसके रोम-रोम में व्याप्त हो रही है।
रमा की दशा इस समय उस शिकारी की-सी थी, जो हिरनी को अपने शावकों के साथ किलोल करते देखकर तनी हुई बंदूक कंधो पर रख लेता है,और वह वात्सल्य और प्रेम की क्रीडा देखने में तल्लीन हो जाता है।
भादों का महीना था। पृथ्वी और जल में रण छिडा हुआ था। जल की सेनाएं वायुयान पर चढ़कर आकाश से जल-शरों की वर्षा कर रही थीं।

What was irritating in the Kindle version were the innumerable typographic errors – To the extent I was not sure whether they were errors or some Persian word; even the context they were found in did not elucidate the meaning.

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The Greatest Odia Stories Ever Told translated by Leelawati Mohapatra, Paul St-Pierre, K.K. Mohapatra

THE GREATEST ODIA STORIES EVER TOLD by Leelawati Mohapatra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The collection is lovingly translated by three authors. They set the tone with a chatty introduction and then carry on with accurately rendered translations of each story. Stories that are funny, sad, mystical, poignant, inspiring – in short, stories displaying the full gamut of the human condition. Mostly located in the rural setting, some encompass the urban milieu also.
The book is part of a big anthology of regional Indian languages, each book is a gem and worthy of inclusion in every Indian’s bookshelf.

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Full Spectrum: India's Wars, 1972-2020

Full Spectrum: India's Wars, 1972-2020 by Arjun Subramaniam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Intensely researched scholarly work, brilliantly executed – an apt sequel to India's Wars: A Military History 1947-1971.
There is no jingoism, it is factual, unbiased and balanced, giving the enemy their due when called for. There are gripping descriptions of action on the battlefield and adequate representations to the three arms of the Armed Forces. This is comprehensive coverage of the Naga and Mizo insurgency, UN assignments, Siachen, Kargil, IPKF in Sri Lanka, Operation Bluestar, J&K and LOC, China and LAC, but without too much detail – that is left for the end in the form of a list of recommended reading for a more complete picture.
The armed forces have performed creditably with the limited resources at their disposal; it is the venal, vacillating, pusillanimous politicians down the years that have let them down – time and time again.
A must read for every Indian.

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The Dismantling of India by TJS George

The Dismantling of India: In 35 Portraits by T.J.S. George
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One may disagree with the author, but TJS George does offer some probing questions to the present ruling dispensation, although, conversely, he appears to have a single point agendum – criticise Modi. Whether he is talking about JRD Tata, Rahul Gandhi etc, the arguments veer back to Modi – Modi is an autocrat, tyrant, megalomanic, intolerant, etc etc.
However, there are some really thought provoking articles.
At times the title seems to be at odds with the contents – how have JRD Tata, AB Vajpayee, APK Abdul Kalam P Lal contributed to the ‘dismantling’ of India? Why include Ustad Vilayat Khan and why has he subsumed Pandit Ravi Shankar. The antics of the anti-Hindu MF Hussain are justified in the name of art. The dismantler-in-chief Lalu Yadav (the shameless guzzler of cattle-fodder of millions of ruminants) is conspicuous by his absence, as is Mamta Banerjee.
If Amitabh Bachchan is included why are Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, JP, Sachin Tendulkar excluded?
To redeem the narrative and justify the title of the book, the real dismantlers of India the cadre of the secessionist ‘tukde-tukde gang’ are included – Rana Ayyub, Umar Khalid, Varavara Rao. Also, other dismantlers like Veerappan, Harshad Mehta, Dawood Ibrahim, Raja Bhaiya are rightly included.
I loved this quote from JRD Tata

‘While I usually come back from meeting Gandhiji elated and inspired but always a bit sceptical, and from talks with Jawarharlal, fired with emotional zeal but often confused and unconvinced, meetings with Vallabhbai were a joy from which I returned with renewed confidence in the future of our country. I have often thought that if fate had decreed that he, instead of Jawaharlal, would be younger of the two, India would have followed a very different path and would be in better economic shape than it is today.’

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Land Guns Caste Women by Gita Ramaswamy

Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary by Gita Ramaswamy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An engaging book – a peep into the world of Indian communists and their indigenous avataars – Naxalites (and their urban versions) and the militant PWG, from a woman’s perspective – a ‘high caste’ one at that.

When I was in the party, communism seemed to have the answer to society’s political problems and feminism had the answers to social and personal issues.

I laud her efforts at Dalit and rural upliftment, at the cost of her health and safety. However, I do not support her methods. Her communist credentials and hypocrisy stand exposed. She claims to work within the framework of the democratic setup of India, yet

For those with other entitlements, especially the urban rich, casting their vote may mean nothing. (I for one have never voted despite trying to do all my work within the frame of law and democracy.) But to the village poor, it is a sign of one’s worth. ‘Am I a corpse that I cannot vote,’ was the unfailingly constant answer when I asked people why they voted when all it brought them was a few rupees and a bottle of liquor.

How does she expect to be “within the frame of law and democracy” without exercising her franchise? This is her approach to achieve her ends

Coming as I did from the ML movement, I saw agitational and ‘developmental’ (or constructive) activities as two separate entities. The terminology is certainly disturbing – as if there is a dichotomy between agitational and constructive work, as if agitation is destructive. As I perceived it, agitational activity was taken up by those who wanted to bring about a total change, and constructive activities by those who wished to reform and tinker with bits and pieces of the system, but did not see the immediate and vital need for a systemic overhaul.

Destruction of public property going on strikes, blocking roads, ‘gheraoing’ public servants and disturbing peace and other forms of agitation, etc is not destructive? It certainly is not constructive, in my opinion! All this despite communism being discredited all around the world.
She calls the reformist Arya Samaj “known to be a Hindu communal organization.” How much Hindu bashing goes on in India in the name of freedom of expression! That she renounced the communist and Naxalite philosophy and adopted her own brand of “agitational development,” thus winning her plaudits, redeems her.

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The Medusa Frequency by RUssel Hoban

The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Clearly the inspiration for China Miéville’s cephalopodic leviathan, the goulash being garnished with the Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridyce.

After his death, the Muses collected the fragments of Orpheus’s body, and buried them at Leibethra at the foot of Olympus, where the nightingale sang sweetly over his grave. The subsequent transference of his bones to Dium is evidently a local legend. His head was thrown upon the Hebrus, down which it rolled to the sea, and was borne across to Lesbos, where the grave in which it was interred was shown at Antissa.

Added to this hallucinogenic novel are names like - Nnvsnu the Tsrungh, the great Snyukh, the Blug of Nexo Vollma, Nabilca (the thing of darkness).

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The Competent Authority by Shovon Chowdhury

The Competent Authority by Shovon Chowdhury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A hilarious and whimsically satirical book on present day India. Set in a moribund future dystopian India, nuked by the Chinese, it pokes fun at all the holy cows – bureaucrats, religious gurus, the police, politicians, doctors, historical figures, the army, caste arrogance and parochialism etc. The convoluted plot takes recourse to the handy tool of time-travel and is too long, hence the four stars. There are some genuinely comical bits

The bananas were bright purple, and perfectly straight. Robbed of their curvature, glistening purply, they looked like tanned and fit brinjals. Each had a little sticker on it. Banani picked one up and examined the fine print. ‘Hanuman Brand Super Banana,’ it read.
If he actually met one too many people who were affected by his decisions, it would affect his decisions.

Fish has to be mentioned if the author is a Bengali

Rich, pungent and briny – with a hint of decay. This was not the mild, innocent fish that was tandooried every evening by his neighbourhood kebab vendor. This was formidable fish, fish that boldly declared its presence, fish that once consumed, would stamp itself on you at a cellular level and define your character in strange, unpredictable ways. This was fish whose odour could transform, cleanse and purify you.

Slums and another Bengali meme - poets

…odd gentleman of leisure with no particular goal in life. Most of them were poets. They were painfully thin, with concave chests, thin, scrawny necks, and disproportionally large heads. It was like living in the middle of a lollipop convention. Ennui was rampant. Eyesight was poor. Tuberculosis was widespread.

The Shakahari Sena (SS) – a playful but morbid reference to the Nazi SS or the indigenous Shiv Sena)

The organization was able to do all this because it was a religio-poliitcal organization, and hence the normal principles of law and order did not apply.

At the risk of nit-picking, there are two inaccuracies that I would like to point out: It is potassium iodide (for the iodine moiety) that is administered as a prophylactic for thyroid cancer in case of a nuclear fallout and not potassium; it is imperforate anus and not unperforated anus.
Entertaining and hysterical, just wish it was shorter.

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Replubic of Hindutva by Badri Narayan

Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh Is Reshaping Indian Democracy by Badri Narayan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Badri Narayan generally writes well-researched and insightful articles. This book, disappointingly, though promising a lot, delivers nothing.
The author bases his knowledge of the ‘machinations’ of the RSS on his tenuous connection to the organization in his childhood. His ‘field-work’ reveals nothing new. The modern tech-savvy, brown-pant clad avatar of the RSS is known to all, through posts on the ‘little blue bird.’ Most of the book is about the BJP and the Modi/Shah election winning duo – this is common knowledge.
The inner workings of the RSS still remain wrapped in an enigma despite this over-priced book.
Unrelated to the substance of the book, the epilogue offers a glimpse of the breaking down of cast-barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic - hence one more star added to the rating.

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An incredulous and interminable LSD fuelled Tolkienesque sanguineous quest of the olfactory-blessed, seemingly invincible protagonist. He battles monsters like the Zogbanu (trolls), blood-thirsty ogres, zombies, cannibals, witches and antiwitches, the Ipundulu, the Aesi, the Adze, Bad Ibeyi, the ravenous arboreal brothers Bonsam and Sasabonsam, a mind-reading teratoma, the rapacious roof-dwelling Omoluzu, and other voracious nightmarish entities.
The mystical and macabre landscape is ‘peopled’ with alchemists and necromancers as if China Miéville has shifted base from the cold and clammy London to the torrid African savannah.
There are dimension-twisting portals suited for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass on a bad drug-trip.
Te protagonist's allies are an Ogo, an albino swordsman, a shapeshifting leopard with its protector/sex-partner Fumeli. His one weakness is the mingi – a bunch of deformed, yet psychically gifted children protected by yumboes.
Other characters include the shape-shifting mermaid Bunshi/Popele, the mercenary Nsaka Ne Vampi, the lightening-powered Nooya, Ghommids, the riverine Chipfalambula, the vicious cousins Ewele/Egbere, Anjonu, the gremlin Tokoloshe,Eloko and on and on ad nauseum.
The absence of a glossary leaves the meaning of these obscure terms an enigma

tokoloshe, nkisi nkond, obayifo, phuungu, kaphoonda, moondu, matuumba, tarabu; musical instruments called kora, djembe; sukusuku, masubu, abuka

Then there is the Umomowomowomowo River.
Awarding it three stars for its inordinate length and never-ending fighting and a surplus of blood and gore. Not looking forward to the sequels.

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Meditiations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A book shorn of religious overtones but imparting simple wisdom for living a happy and fruitful life

Body, soul, mind. To the body belong sense perceptions, to the soul impulses, to the mind judgements.
So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth.
Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker’s profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly, the ears of corn nodding down to the ground, the lion’s puckered brow, the foam gushing from the bear’s mouth, and much besides – looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequence on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction.
Love the art which you have learnt, and take comfort in it. Go through the remainder of your life in the sincere commitment of all your beings to the gods, and ever making yourself tyrant or salve to any man.
Gladly surrender yourself to Clotho: let her spin your thread into whatever web she wills.
All is ephemeral, both memory and the object of the memory.
You are a soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

Just what the Bhagvadgita says

If you are doing you proper duty let it not matter to you whether you are cold or warm. Whether you are sleepy or well-slept, whether men speak badly or well of you, even whether you are on the point of death or doing something else: because even this, the act in which we die, is one of the acts of life, and so here too it suffices to ‘make the best move you can’.
Revere the ultimate power in the universe: this is what makes use of all things and directs all things. But similarly revere the ultimate power in yourself: this is akin to that other power. In you too this is what makes use of all else, and your life is governed by it.
Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence….When you have done good and another has benefited, why do you still look, as fools , for a third thing besides – credit for good works, or a return?

A book to be kept by the bedside and dipped into everyday on getting up in the morning, or when one is inordinately euphoric or down in the dumps.

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Valli by Sheela Tomy

Valli: A Novel [SHORTLISTED FOR THE JCB PRIZE 2022] by Sheela Tomy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book suffers from poor translation – the amount of suffixes pertaining to relatives – achchis, attans – is a big irritant for non-Malayalam readers. The temporal jumps in the narrative add to the disorientation.
This is an account of the exploitation of the aadivasi (aboriginal) tribes living harmoniously with their surroundings since antiquity in the hills of Kerala. Their forests were cut down by greedy rapacious timber merchants – thus ruining a finely balanced ecological niche, leading to either catastrophic flooding or droughts. Large scale building of tourist resorts, blasting of mountains for roads and bridges, introducing alien cash crops like coffee and rubber further contributed to the degradation in the lives of the tribals. Their culture, folk-lore, language, traditional food crops were destroyed. Migrants from other parts of the country added insult to injury. Communists exploited the natives for their political gains.
All this is mentioned in the book, but what is glaring in its omission is mention of the reprehensible role of Christian missionaries in destroying the benevolent and affable animistic/natural religious beliefs of the natives and imposing an alien creed, out of sync with the hills, rives, trees, animals, plants etc.

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Shekhar Ke Jiwani: Part 1 by सच्चिदानंद हीरानंद वात्स्यायन 'अज्ञेय'

Shekhar Ek Jeevani: Part-1 by सच्चिदानंद हीरानंद वात्स्यायन 'अज्ञेय'
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

यह हिन्दी साहित्य की उत्कृष्ट रचनाओं में से एक मानी जाती है। हालाँकि, मैं थोड़ा अभिभूत रह गया था। शायद यह थोड़ा बहुत लंबा-घुमावदार और धीमी गति से चलने वाला था। शायद मैं उपन्यास की सेटिंग के ऐतिहासिक संदर्भ से अपनी पहचान नहीं बना पाया। बहरहाल, गेय भाषा और शुद्ध हिंदी शब्दों का प्रयोग पढ़कर अच्छा लगा। अब मैं दूसरा भाग शुरू करूँगा। वर्णन तेज गति से प्रतीत होता है।

एक प्रकम्पमय दीप्ती, शरत्काल में सेंकी हुई आग की मीठी गरमाई, उसमें है बेला के स्वर-सा घनत्व, उसमें है उषा के समय दूर पहाड़ पे बजती हुई बीन की खींची हुई वेदना, उसमें है बरसात की घोर अँधेरी रात में सुनी हुई वंशी का मर्मभेदी आग्रह और इन सब के साथ-साथ है यौवन के गहरे और टूटने की सीमा तक आकर न टूटने वाले स्वर की ललकार-सी।

A murder scene

तट पर छोटी झाड़ियां और ठूँठे वृक्षों का घना जंगल। खींची हुई आह की तरह गर्म और निस्तब्ध रात। ऊपर पेड़ों की सूखी शाखा में उलझा हुआ एकाध तारा, नीचे मरे हुए और धूल हुए पत्तों की सूखी आहों की भाफ और सामने .... एक बिखरा हुआ शव। उसके दोनों हाथ कटे हुए हैं। एक पैर कटा हुआ है, पेट खुल-सा गया है और उसमे से अँतड़ियाँ बाहर गिरी पड़ी हैं। फटी-फटी आँखें, ऊपर शाखा के जाल को भेदकर देख रहीं हैं किसी तारे को, और मुँह एक बिगड़ी हुई दर्द भरी मुसकुराहट लिए हुए हैं

Were Pink Floyd’s lyrics inspired by this

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave the kids alone
Hey! Teacher, leave us kids alone
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
शिक्षा देना संसार अपना सबसे बड़ा कर्त्तव्य समझता है, किन्तु शिक्षा अपने मन की, शिष्य के मन की नहीं। क्योंकि संसार का 'आदर्श व्यक्ति' व्यक्ति नहीं एक 'टाइप' है, और संसार चाहता है की सर्वप्रथम अवसर पर ही प्रत्येक व्यक्ति को थोक-पीटकर, उसका व्यक्तित्व कुचलकर, उसे उस टाइप में सम्मलित कर लिया जाय. उसे मूल रचना न रहने देकर एक प्रतिलिपि-मात्र बना दिया जाय।

Death

मृत्यु के पंख उस पर से बीत जाते हैं, लेकिन उनकी छाया उसे नहीं ग्रसती, वैसा ही उद्दीप्त छोड़ जाती है मृत्यु के पंखों में बसा है निशीथ का अन्धकार, लेकिन मुक्ति है एक असह्य देदीप्यमान ज्वाला

A new lease of life

इसमे बहुत शक्ति और स्फूर्ति आ गयी है, उसे लगता, उसे जीवन की एक नई क़िस्त मिलने वाली है … वह अपने ही मद में उन्मद कस्तूरी मृग की तरह या प्लेग से आक्रांत चूहे के तरह या अपनी दुम का पीछा करते हुए कुत्ते की तरह, अपने ही आस पास चक्कर काट कर रह जाता …

An encounter with the caste system on joining a boarding school

उनका भोजनागार सब ओर से घिरा हुआ था, ताकि किसी आते जाते व्यक्ति के कारण उनके भोजन में 'दृष्टिदोष' न हो जाए, वह छोटी जाति देखा जाकर भ्रष्ट न हो जाए। कभी ऐसा हो जाता, तो वह भोजन उतना ही अखाद्य हो जाता जैसे किसी कुत्ते ने उसे झूठा कर दिया। यद्यपि कुत्ते कई बार भोजनाघर में घुस आते थे और उन्हें 'हिश' करके भगा देना पर्याप्त होता था.

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Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya by Akshaya Mukul

Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya by Akshaya Mukul
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Despite wading through more than 500 pages, ‘Agyeya’ remains just that – an enigmatic figure. Of all his avataars he comes across most as a serial philanderer and a controversial poet, an author and an editor of various literary journals – most of which succumbed to the vagaries of time. His most famous book Shekhar Ek Jivani, Part-1 is a reflection of his own life

“It seems that if a low caste man looks at your food it is defiled, almost as if a dog had come and eaten part of it,” Sachchidanand noted. “Though dogs sometimes do come into the hall and are shooed out without making any difference.”
उनका भोजनागार सब ओर से घिरा हुआ था, ताकि किसी आते जाते व्यक्ति के कारण उनके भोजन में 'दृष्टिदोष' न हो जाए, वह छोटी जाति देखा जाकर भ्रष्ट न हो जाए। कभी ऐसा हो जाता, तो वह भोजन उतना ही अखाद्य हो जाता जैसे किसी कुत्ते ने उसे झूठा कर दिया। यद्यपि कुत्ते कई बार भोजनाघर में घुस आते थे और उन्हें 'हिश' करके भगा देना पर्याप्त होता था.
…how certain roads were not open to low-caste travellers, how a low-caste man had to cross a river by ferry as bridges were mostly reserved for high castes, how an untouchable could not buy land in a Brahmin neighbourhood. He noted that an untouchable had to raise his hand and shout ‘unclean’ like a “leper when he came in sight of any Brahmin so that the latter might not be defiled by coming too near.”
ब्राह्मणों के लिए अलग सड़कें हैं जिन पर अछूत 'पंचम' नहीं चल सकते, पंचमों को नदियाँ नांव में बैठकर या किसी प्रकार पार करनी होती हैं क्योंकि पुल ऊँची जातियों के लिए सुरक्षित होते हैं …

With 200 pages of bibliography and notes, this book is meant more for a research scholar.

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The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction

The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction by Tarun K. Saint
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gratifying to read SF with a South Asian flavour – where else will one come across Keo Karpin hair oil, Old Monk rum, FabIndia?
The Gandhi story could have been titled “The Metamorphosis” – a bitter satire on the present-day political scenario.
In another vignette from bureaucratic realms, before Senior Inspector Matadeen sets off to solve police related problems on the Moon

He had placed one foot inside the earth-ship’s door when Havildar Ram Sanjivan came running. “Pect-sab,” he said, “the house of the SP sa’ab asks you to bring her a heel-scrubbing stone from the moon.”

In the future too the renaming culture persists e.g., Ghera Road, Sardar Patel International Airport, Bombain, Maratharashtra etc. However, it is IAF’s Sukhoi-30 taking on alien craft with indigenous Astra Air to Air missiles and not US F-16s.
There is a brilliant juxtaposition of animal extinction with a biting satirical take on the present vainglorious PM with his ‘broad chest’. The author grudgingly prognosticates that Mr Modi remains PM till 2034.
While dwelling on extinctions, it is 2087 and Parsis are extinct, according to the dying declaration of the last Parsi

The small causes courts and the High Court in Mumbai breathed the proverbial sigh of relief…When the famous case of Cawas Navroz Parsi Whiskeywallah versus the Soli Henahgir Single Malt Whiskywallah came up before the court…The vultures had come back to Mumbai in 2080, but the Parsis had disappeared.

There is a sharp tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Hindu right, squirmingly accurate in all details. The author cocks a snook at the Gandhis.

The Congress, in these 70 years, had not remained idle. The party was now headed now by the Vadrites. Like the Parsis, the Gandhis had vanished, the bestowers of patronage, propounders of the doctrine of the divine right od the dynasty had disappeared.

The collection ends with the inevitable future dystopian story due to climate change with the inevitable unrequited love

He’s lying in the sand, in the relentless heat. The sand half buries his old home in Lajpat Nagar

and

they’d aim a rocket at the moon and name it Chandrayan, they’d tap strange machines called EVMs full of symbols like lotuses, palms and cycles to bring other humans in whose ideas they believed to power, even when they had good reason to suspect that these humans were far from trustworthy

Immensely readable collection.

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संपूर्ण कहानियाँ : फणीश्वरनाथ रेणु

संपूर्ण कहानियाँ : फणीश्वरनाथ रेणु by फणीश्वर नाथ रेणु
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful anthology of stories ranging from the pre-independence times to the late sixties. Beautifully printed book, bound with an attractive cover. Each story is graced at the beginning and end with an icon of Madhubani art.
The tone of the stories is like that of Munshi Premchand but on a more optimistic note. The chronological order reflects the evolution of the author’s style and content. Initially, restricted to rural life talking about people from the bottom of the socioeconomic layer like Dalits, farmers, iron-smiths, carpenters, cobblers, cattle, Naxalites etc.

बाबू नाम तो मेरा करमा ही है। वैसे लोगों के हज़ार मुहँ हैं, हज़ार नाम कहते हैं। निताय बाबू कोरमा कहते थे, घोस बाबू करीमा कहकर बुलाते थे, सिंघजी ने सब दिन कामा ही कहा और असगर बाबू तो हमेशा करम-करम कहते थे। खुश रहने पर दिल्लगी करते थे - हाय मेरे करम ! नाम में क्या है, बाबू? जो मन में आये, कहिये। हज़ार नाम।

There is a gradual shift to a more urbanised milieu as writers, workers in banks and offices, charlatans, quacks, doctors, railway employees take the centre stage. Issues like war, romance and love, adultery (and cuckolds), communism are tackled with skill.
Lord Krishna's leela features in one story, a valiant buffalo takes on the goons of exploitative landlords in another, and a crow is a protagonist in one story - dispelling its reputation as a bird of ill omen.
In the final story the author goes back to his roots, paying homage to his cultural background and Madhubani art, specifially.

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Crimson Spring by Navtej Sarna

Crimson Spring: A Novel by Navtej Sarna
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An engrossing narrative, part fictional, but based on historical fact – the despicable episode of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the subsequent brutalization of the populace of Punjab by the British.
The author succeeds in capturing the evocative beauty of rural Punjab, the ethos of Sikhism and valorous Sikhs and Punjabis, whilst describing the duplicity and tyranny of the colonial rule.

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Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A searingly vivid description of the dismal underbelly of Mexico peopled by degenerates of various kinds – pimps, druggies, thieves, rapists, transgenders, faggots, paedophiles, murderers – in sort, the kind of rascally reprobates found in similar semi-urban regions around the world.

they made their way back home in the darkness that was growing thicker by the minute, swallowing all the colours around them, transforming the crowns of the trees and the shrubs in the cane fields and the canvas of the night into one solid mass of schist, against which the bare bulbs from the houses in town shone like tiny red carbuncles in the distance … when they were drunk as skunks and high as kites on the weed that the Witch grew in her garden and those mushrooms that flourished under cow pats in the rainy season and that the freak collected and preserved in syrup to get her visitors off their tits, properly spaced out and tripping all kinds of shit, their eyes like Japanese anime characters and their mouths agape because of all the things they were hallucinating

Add corrupt cops, poverty and witchcraft to this unholy brew, and you have a humdinger of a book.

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Stories of the True by Jeyamohan translated by Priyamvada

Stories of the True : Translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada by ஜெயமோகன் [Jeyamohan]
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating stories and the translation is par excellence. Many of the tales are based on real persons – both local as well as foreign.
As a Palliative Care Physician, I have been dealing with cancer patients with intractable pain and spiritual suffering and existential issues. Thus, pain perception is a subject that fascinates me.

‘To observe pain is a great practice. No meditation can equal it. Pain reveals everything – who we are, how our mind and intellect function, all of it. What is pain? It’s a state that’s just a little different from our normal state of being. But our mind yearns to go back to that erstwhile normalcy … that’s the problem with being in pain. Half the pain will disappear if we begin to observe it. Of course, there are severe pains too. Of the kind that goes to show that man isn’t so great after all and he is just another animal.’ ...
‘Jeyamohan, the pain’s like an infant, now. It squats on the hip, its nose dripping with snot and wails non-stop. It wakes up suddenly at night and troubles the life out of me. But it is my pain. It has emerged from my body. So, isn’t it natural that I will feel affection for it? Let the wretched thing be. We will make a fine human being of it, all right?’

About suffering

The curd’s being churned in a pot with a churner. The pot is our body. The curd is the life within. And the churning rod is the suffering. Suffering throws life about every which way. Have you seen how curd looks when it’s being churned? It will gather to one side, froth and rise, and threaten to leap out any second. At once the churner will chase after the curd. Afraid that it’ll be kicked out, the curd will rush to the other side. Not moment’s rest can it afford. Foaming and frothing, huffing and puffing … the great suffering man is put through is much the same. The turbulence of it all- that is torment...
When you churn suffering, you get clarity.

His searingly vivid description of the caste-based brutality and inequality

…to be given a name was a luxury in itself. Since his father was born dark-skinned, he was called Karuthaan. His younger brother had prominent lips like the sundeli mouse, and so he was named Sundan. The younger sister was somewhat fair-skinned, therefore, she was Vellakutty. It was indeed like naming dogs. Not the ones that belonged to caste landowners. They were well named. I am talking about stray dogs...
Each such worker-caste group had a leader of its own. Within his egg-sized dominion the leader was king, with unassailable authority to kill and bury too. As for the rest, they ranked lower than even the mud beneath his feet...
Every person on the estate was assigned a place in its descending chain of command. Spit wove its way through, adding definition to the rungs of hierarchy. If the overseer spat on the wage slave, the slave could not wipe the spit off until the overseer was out of sight. If the juice from chewed betel leaf found its way from the infuriated Kariyastha on to the newcomer he had to beat it with a submissive smile. The Kariyastha had to be ready to offer a spittoon to the Karainairs if they so much as pursed their lips with a mouthful of betel leaves. And the royalty may pay a visit to his home, the Karianair himself had to follow them with a spittoon in hand.

The yeoman work done by Christian missionaries in colonial India (for that matter, even in the present day) in the field of health and education is nullified in their zest for conversion of Hindus to their faith. They will especially target the vulnerable – whether due to caste exclusion, poverty or illness – and offer inducements of money, housing, jobs or spiritual salvation. I have encountered numerous such cases where terminally ill cancer patients are tempted with salvation and even freedom from pain and suffering if they convert to Christianity; patients gasping for breath or in a delirium are not spared! Here is a poor woman saddled with multiple children and whose husband is on his deathbed in a Mission hospital after a fall from a palm tree

Then why don’t all of you convert? If you convert, you will find a way through life. I will recommend this boy to the London Missionary Society. I will ask them to give him a job here, at the hospital…The nurse-amma spoke up now. ‘Look here, Sayyib’s saying that if you convert and join the vedham – the way of Christ – Sayyib will have this fellow admitted in a school and get him an education. He’ll also make some arrangement for your well-being. You and your children will have kanji to drink. What do you say?’ she asked loudly.

Elephant Doctor and The Meal Tally are the best stories.

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The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy by Stanisław Lem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whimsical, quirky stories set in ridiculous and alien scenarios – just like Gulliver’s travels but on a galactic scale, with a generous dose of absurd alien neologisms in the vein of Lewis Carroll or Anthony Burgess, achieving Joycean levels

the enigmatic monsters were known under the following names: prucks, borkers,nuffits, gnuttles, garrugulas, malomorps, zops, yots, yuts, batats, rifflers, thycandorines, closh, flibbage and morchmell.

In the General Assembly of United Planets, here is how the utterly insignificant humans (Monstroteratum Furiosum aka the Stinking Meemy) stand in the Galactic scheme of things

In accordance with the accepted systems of taxonomy and nomenclature, all anomalous forms found in our Galaxy are contained within the phylum Abberentia (Deviates, Freaks), which is divided into the subphyla Debilitales (Boobs) and Antisapientinales (Screwheads). To the latter subphylum belong the classes Canaliacaea (Thuglies) and Necroludentia (Corpselovers). Among the Corpselovers we distinguish, in turn, the orders Particidiaceae (Fatherbeaters), Matriphagideae (Mothereaters) and Lasciviaceae (Abominites, or Scumberbutts. The Abominites, highly degenerate forms, we divide into Cretininae (Clenchpoops viz. Cadaverium Mordans or the Chewcarcass Addlepate) and Horrorsrissimae (Howlmouths, with the classic example of the Outchested Backshouldered Dullard, Idiontus Erectus Gzeemsi). A few of the Howlmouths have actually been known to create their own pseudo-cultures; among these are the species as Anophilus Belligerens, the Bungford Tuff, which calls itself Genius Pulcherrimus Mundanus, or that most curious specimen, possessing an entirely bald body and observed by Grammpluss in the darkest corner of our Galaxy - Monstroteratum Furiosum (the Stinking Meemy), which has given itself the name of Homo Sapiens… the separate order Degeneratores, to which belonged the Fouljowls, Upgluts, Necrovores and Stifflickers: the application of the term ‘Monstroteratus’ to humans, was incorrect – instead one should follow the nomenclature of the Aquarian School, employing the more consistent term of Bug-eyed Bogus (Artefactum Abhorrens)

This is the ignominious origin of life on Earth

…these miscreants then emptied on the rocks of lifeless Earth six barrels of gelatinous glue, rancid, plus two cans of albuminous paste, spoiled, and that to this ooze they added some curdled ribose, pentose and levulose, and – as that filth was not enough – they poured upon it three large jugs of a mildewed solution of amino acids, then stirred the seething swill with a coal shovel twisted to the left… wilfully and knowingly sneeze into that protoplasmal matter, and, infected it thereby with the most virulent viruses, guffawed that he had thus breathed “the fucking breath of life” into those miserable evolutionary beginnings.

Here is a description of the inhabitants of the planet Enteropia

…dominant race – the Ardrites, intelligent beings, polydiaphanohedral, nonbisymmetrical and pelissobrachial, belongling to the genus Siliconoidea, order Polytheria, class Luminifera. Like all Polytheria the Artrites are subject to periodic discretional splitting. They form families of the spherical type … Fauna of the siliconoidal var., prin. species: slebs, autochial, dendernifts, gruncheons, squamp and whispering octopockles. Aquatic fauns: constitute the raw material of the food industry. Prin. species: infernalia (hellwinders), chungheads, frinkuses and opthropularies. Unique to Enteropia is the torg, with its bollical fauna and flora. In our Galaxy that only thing analogous to it are the hii in the frothless sump bosks of Jupiter

Alas! At times it does tend to get tiresome and repetitious.

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Vultures of Paradise by Atulya Misra

Vultures of Paradise by Atulya Misra
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Peurile pap!
If an IAS officer – an alumnus of Scindia School, Hindu College and TERI, to boot – the crème de la crème, can dish out such drivel, then God save India! Such a dismal book in sharp contrast to the work of other bureaucrats like the erudite Navtej Sarna, the suave Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikas Swarup etc. The book is the product of someone living in La La Land, given the flat two dimensional characters and an implausible plot. Moreover, the book is littered with glaring factual errors and inexcusable howlers:

1. Diclofenac, responsible for the extinction of vultures, is used as an antipyretic and not as a galactogogue. It is oxytocin that is administered to milch cows and buffaloes by unscrupulous dairy owners to stimulate milk secretion.
2. There is no such thing as ‘radons’ – radon is a radioactive gas.
3. Karnaprayag and Rudraprayag do NOT fall on the way to Gangotri – they are on the banks of Alaknanda on the way to Badrinath and Kedarnath.
4. He has coined a term ‘mango people’ (a literal translation of aam aadmi, something more appropriate as a meme on Twitter) for the hoi polloi.

Rather than peddle such unadulterated twaddle in the name of literature, he should get back to his job of governing – or whatever passes for governing, amidst files and red tape!
Unabridged swill!

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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A gem of a book.
It explores a slice of India’s history – from the imposition of the horrific Emergency, in the name of maintaining security, to the equally reprehensible Sikh riots – both the handiwork of Indira Gandhi and her Congress party - which is deservedly visibly dissipating into insignificance at present. Here is how the perpetrator-in-chief of the Emergency is described

It was a quintessential specimen of the face that was proliferating on posters throughout the city. Her cheeks were executed in the lurid pink of cinema posters. Other aspects of the portrait had suffered greater infelicities. Her eyes evoked the discomfort of a violent itch somewhere upon the ministerial corpus, begging to be scratched. The artist’s ambition of a benignant smile had also gone awry – a cross between a sneer and the vinegary sternness of a drill-mistress had crept across the mouth. And that familiar swatch of white hair over her forehead, imposing amid the black, had plopped across the scalp like the strategic droppings of a very large bird.

The book explores the excesses committed by a sycophantic bureaucracy and police during this dismal period: like forcible sterilizations (almost genocidal in intensity), relocation of beggars and other ‘undesirables’ to labour camps, in the guise of beautification of cities (echoes of Nazi pogroms), deification of the Nehru/Gandhi family (sadly persisting till the present day)

‘Oh, we are twice blessed today in this meeting!’ the man sang into the microphone. The Prime Minister on the stage with us, and her son in the sky above us! What more could we ask for!’…When the slogan coined by a Congress obsequious toady proclaimed “Indira is India and India is Indira” ‘Yes my brothers and sisters, Mother India sits on the stage with us, and the Son of India shines from the sky upon us. The glorious present, here, now, and the golden future, up there, waiting to descend and embrace our lives! What a blessed nation we are!’

The societal sanction of exploitation of the so-called lower castes by the higher castes and the stark brutality of the punishments is portrayed scrupulously. There are charlatans of various hues, snake-oil vendors, erstwhile murderers turned into ‘godmen’ etc. There are detailed accounts of the beggar industry – beggaring belief

Also, Beggarmaster has to very imaginative. If all beggars have the same injury, public gets used to it and feels no pity. Public likes to see variety. Some wounds are so common, they don’t work anymore. For example, putting out a baby’s eyes will not automatically earn money. Blind beggars are everywhere. But blind with eyeballs missing, face showing empty sockets, plus nose chopped off – now anyone will give money for that. A big growth on the neck or face, oozing yellow pus. That works well.

The unrelenting and grinding poverty does start to grate on the nerves, but then that is the harsh reality of millions of the underprivileged, while we derive vicarious pleasure reading all about it – unfortunately! It deserves to be re-read.

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Pigs Have Wings

Pigs Have Wings by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Did the title inspire Pink Floyd’s Animals?
P G Wodehouse is guaranteed to raise a smile in one’s darkest moments – a form of ‘comfort reading.’ His scintillating prose and whacky humour is still as fresh as when I first read his books more than four decades ago.

For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.

Many extracts will be politically incorrect today, but for high quality writing, Wodehouse is nonpareil.


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Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Autobiographical, the author accurately describes a life of extreme poverty in the Rhodesian homesteads

…rooms where people slept exuded peculiarly human smells just as the goat pen smelt goaty and the cattle kraal bovine.

Yet, for all their, tribulations, the extended clan happily share their meagre rations and revel in each other's company. But I really wish there was a glossary. The following have no meaning, even in the context of the narrative:

msasa, mopani, matamba, matunduru, mhunga, dara, covo, pada, shumba, masese, mutwiwa, mahewu, mbodza, chikuwa, dagga, tsapi, koya, rukweza, nhengeni, hena, roora, koya, mukwambo, hute, muroora, mwaramu, Hari, ‘Mauya wekuchirungu.

It was very surprising that the author glosses over inter-racial relationships. And this was during the time of apartheid! Here is a young African girl going to study in an exclusive white girls’ convent and the only indication of any disharmony is when all the six African girls (in a school of 300) are put together in one dormitory with space enough for just four students! The protagonist accepts the situation without a murmur. The only oblique comment is

‘It’s bad enough,’ she said severely, ‘when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.’

Slow moving at times, the narrative gets galvanized with family crises at intervals. Is there a sequel?

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Hungry Humans by Karichan Kunju

Hungry Humans by Karichan Kunju
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In my career of four decades, I came across just about a couple of cases of Hansen’s Disease – and that too in the initial stages; and never had the opportunity of treating this chronic disease.
This book has all the elements of a rollicking good story – hedonism, ascetism, incest, cretinous offspring as a result of inbreeding (marrying one’s sister's daughters!), paedophilia, unbridled lust, polygamy, births, sickness, deaths, spirituality. If there is a message or moral in the story, it bypassed me.
For non-Tamilian readers like me, I wish the glossary was more comprehensive.


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The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet

The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A gem of a book, with most of the stories being startlingly original, Delhi based and rooted in Indianness.

Biharis are not very common on the moon…Sinha Auntie’s boardinghouse, one of the oldest structures in Luna City…Saturday afternoons Sinha Auntie does a huge old-fashioned Bihari-style tea, complete with suji halwa, litti, pakoras, matar-ki-gugni, crisp-fried chura with sev and roasted peanuts, and the best tamarind chutney on the moon.

Memorable stories are Delhi, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, Thirst, Aesop fable-like Three Tales from the Sky River, The Tetrahedron. The tales are part feminine angst, part fantasy, occasionally hard-core SF and sometimes mythical.
A refreshing change from SF's, as the author concludes, "white, male, techno-fantasies - Westerns and the White Man's Burden in Outer Space..."

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An American Girl in India

An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections by Wendy Doniger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Her patronizing tone may be excused, given that her reminiscences are written in the Sixties. However, she does have some startling observations

Well, Delhi is a Muslim town anyway, and being a Hindu I was glad to leave it.

Her quirky take on the contrast between Islamic architecture and Hindu temples

The Taj, for instance, is marvellous, but it belongs in a Persian garden, not in the irregular splendour of the plains of Agra…In photographs, the Hindu temples look a little silly and sort of bulgy, but in India they are breath-taking. They melt into the land like tigers in the jungles, grasshoppers on leaves. They are the colour of land, and the shape of the land, sandstone and granite, not perilously imported marble…They are made of gods, as well as being the houses of gods.

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The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe

The Silent Cry by Kenzaburō Ōe
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Such a gloomy and morbid tale of a family of degenerate characters. A bulimic caretaker gorging away at the cost of her family who get progressively malnourished; a suicidal friend; a child with a meningomyelocele turned into a vegetable, post-surgery; the sociopathic masochistic protagonist with low self-esteem; a scheming brother who is an incestuous rebel without a cause, a rabble rouser, murderer, philanderer and rapist, to boot; a clinically depressed mother; an adulterous wife; a cretinous sister who suffered sexual abuse as a child, and the father – a good-for-nothing, involved in grandiose schemes that invariably failed.
Not one redeeming feature, and yet I ploughed on till the miserable end, hoping for a ray of hope…

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Anthology of Humorous Sanskrit Verses

Anthology of Humorous Sanskrit Verses by A Haksar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The excerpts in this slim volume may be witty or satirical but not certainly not guffaw-inducing humorous. There are biting observations on caste peculiarities and social ills – not funny but painfully true. Fun is poked at ascetics, whores, bureaucrats, doctors and even the Gods. Warning: There is some explicit stuff.
Doctors

He cannot read what others write,/ his own script no one can read:/ the curious thing about him is/ that he himself cannot decipher/ that of which he is the writer.

These six live on the following six,/ no seventh one is there;/ thieves subsist on careless people,/ doctors on those who are ill, women on libidinous men,/ priests on folk who come for prayers,/ and on litigants do the rulers live,/ as learned pandits do on fools.

He looks at it with sympathy –/ the face of a girl from a good family/ who does sigh with trembling eyes./ He feels the plump and bristling limbs,/ shyly exposed by a whore/ and removes, with heated water,/ a eunuch’s wealth long gathered,/ Such are a doctor’s arts and learning/ that are the store of all his pleasure,/ and deserve to be saluted.

They see the sun in a lotus blossom,/ in a blooming lily, the golden moon,/ and peacock in a clouded sky;/ but rich doctors, like the hunters,/ mostly have no joy within.

They farm their lands in timely rains,/ but rain untimely pleases physicians –/ the first increases crops of grain,/ but the second spreads disease.

Bureaucrats

The clerk is like a serpent/ in the puddle which is the court; he kills folk with his fangs, the pen/ dipped in the poison of his ink.

Kayastha means ‘government official’ –/ who could have this word invented/ with first syllables of three others:/ kaka or a greedy crow,/ yama or the pitiless God of Death,/ and sthapaka or maker of things?

With no meat or liquor,/ nor robbery from others,/ or causing them injury,/ that official weeps all day.

The goddess of the state’s prosperity/ sadly weeps, tears darkened by/ ink drops trickling from the pen/ of that clerk who plundered her.

Flatulence and matters sexual and scatological are other favourite targets

My night was like a terrible death,/ in pretending to make love/ with a young and artless brahman,/ his body rough with constant labour, and for whom a girl is hard to get.

It’s a common saying, but quite untrue,/ that cracks or holes cause many problems:/ for sensual women they do not,/ but can rewards of pleasure.

When the dental consonants/ cannot be properly pronounced,/ always, when that person speaks,/ the only difference that there is/ between the mouth and his nether hole/ is that the second has no teeth.

Whores love a client praising them,/ or one for his cash and treasure,/ another for service or protection,/And yet another just for pleasure.

That guru had practiced breath control,/ also on scriptures commented,/ and at the time of his demise,/ his blessing did come out like a fart.

Her breasts stand out,/ the middle is sunken,/ the hips are very prominent:/ who indeed on such a body/ of that girl with fawn-like eyes,/ will not trip and slip?

You are soft, but they are hard,/ big and round, while you are slim;/ you are shy, but they look bold:/ such are the breasts outside your heart.

The humble folk who go to awaken/ one who sleeps like Kumbhakarna/ may get blown off by the wind/ discharged from his bottom.

The tinkle of her anklet bells/ is silent; what is now heard/ is that of the girdle on her hips/ as her husband seeks some rest/ and the girl now acts the man.

Her hair is white, like a horde of cotton,/ the breasts droop, touching Kama’s abode,/ and cheeks are marked with age-old wrinkles;/ but even then, the courtesan/ does not give up sex

Hypocrisy

My lips have been purified/ by singing a Vedic hymn;/ do not, dear girl, dirty them,/ but eager for some enjoyment,/ then do nibble my left ear!

Hairy body, piercing eyes,/ crooked eyebrows on the forehead,/ in huge gulps that hungry brahman,/ swallows large mouthfuls of rice.

It is not fit to carry weight/ or in the field to pull a plough,/ but this bull in the temple courtyard/ can still eat very well.

Having bathed in the sea,/ he sits on the shore before the people –/ that ascetic, his body draped/ in a saffron-coloured robe,/ thinking where to get alms/ some broth mixed with honey and butter,/ in the houses of young women/ whose husbands have gone away.

The royalty

Childhood spent getting educated,/ youth in hunting, wealth amassing,/ then the role of royal folk does turn/ just to enjoy the bums of beauties.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

The breasts are merely knots of flesh,/ but are compared to golden bowls;/ the mouth is just the abode of spit,/ but like the moon is seen to be;/ and thighs, made wet by urination,/ and compared to elephants’ trunks –/ thus do clever poets make them special/ things that are condemnable.

Even the Gods are not spared

Lakshmi sleeps on a lotus blossom,/ Shiva on a hill of snow,/ and Vishnu sleeps on a sea of milk./ I think this is because they are all worried/ about the bed bugs where they lie.

Here is a facet of Sanskrit I never knew about. The original Sanskrit should have been included along with some line drawings to add a bit of masala to the text.

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The First World War Adventures of Nariman Karkaria

The First World War Adventures Of Nariman Karkaria : A Memoir by Nariman Karkaria


The artistic style of the cover reminds one a Tintin comic.
This is an extraordinary travelogue of an inveterate wanderer. His meanderings from Navsari to London via Bombay, Hong Kong, Peking, Manchuria, frozen Siberia, Petrogard, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries way back at the beginning of the twentieth century are inconceivable today. He is quite an engaging raconteur narrating his adventures in a chatty humorous style. He was an astute observer of his surroundings and the people he encountered while satisfying his wanderlust.
He mentions his harrowing experiences in the muddy trenches of Somme, the sandy wastes of Egypt, and the horrors of the Balkan war with equal elan as his awe of the Caucasian mountains, the beauty and spirituality of churches and mosques in Jerusalem and what was then known as Constantinople and the women he encounters.
His persistence in getting drafted into the British Army rather than the native Indian Army shows his feelings of superiority as a Parsi. This was most evident when he entered Jerusalem and gloated over the exploits of Persian invaders in the past.

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Wolves and Other Stories by Bhuwanshwar

Wolves and Other Stories by Bhuwaneshwar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Towards the end of his life, the author fell into a psychotic state and died a pauper’s death – all alone, sick and neglected by family and friends. Similarly in his stories, death, suffering, melancholia, despair pervade the lives of ordinary people like teachers, doctors, postmen, housewives in dismal, dark, desolate, desperate but, dreamy landscapes.
At the risk of losing your sanity, it is advisable not to read all the stories in a single sitting. However, it’s a profound book, plumbing the depths of human despair and hope. If one is feeling inordinately euphoric, one just has to read one of the stories to come crashing back to reality.
The only drawback is that there are a mere twelve stories in the collection - wish there had been more.

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Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was written around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the threat of a nuclear holocaust is ever present in today’s world with anally-retentive mad mullahs, hyper-libidinal but microcephalic dicktators waving their I see bee ems as defiant compensatory gestures. However, rather than the nuclear peril, this book describes the end not with a bang, but with an eternal freeze brought on by an isomer of water - ICE-9.
Here is a glossary as a ready reckoner for terms used by Bokonon:

Boko-maru - the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.
Borasisi – Sun.
Busy, busy, busy - words Bokononists whisper upon witnessing an example of how interconnected everything is.
Duffle - the destiny of thousands of people placed on one stuppa.
Duprass - a karass that consists of only two people, who always die within a week of each other.
Foma - harmless untruths; lies that bring one comfort.
Granfalloon - a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist.
Karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as like the fingers that support a Cat's Cradle.
Now I will destroy the whole world... - What a Bokononist says before committing suicide.
Pabu – Moon
Pool-pah - wrath of God or "shit storm"
Saroon - to acquiesce to a vin-dit
Sin-wat - a person who wants all of somebody's love for him/herself
Stuppa - a fogbound child (i.e. an idiot)
Vin-dit - a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
Wampeter - the central, perhaps unknown, motivation of a karass
Wrang-wrang - Someone who steers a Bokononist away from their line of perception

Whereas the neologisms in A Clockwork Orange have lexical origins from Russian or have a sort of perverse logic about them (devotchka, the old in and out appy polly logies, bruiseboys, chepooka, guttiwuts, lubbilubbing), the terms of Bokonoism are Carrollian – whimsical, poetic, nonsensical yet imbued with a sublime beauty and depth. However, with the incomprehensible dialect of San Lorenzo – the spiritual home of Bokononism – in translating “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. surpasses both Anthony Burgess and Lewis Carroll

Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store,
Ko jy tsvantoor bat voo yore,
Put-shinik on lo shee zo brath,
Kam oon teetron on lo nath,
Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store,
Ko jy tsvantoor bat voo yore.

Nonetheless, for all its weirdness, the language is not a patch on the neologistic portmanteau words of Finnegans Wake.
Archetypal vintage Vonnegut - both thought provoking, as well as enjoyable.

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Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The ironic tale of human devolution to furry seal-like creatures plays out on the very islands that were instrumental in explaining evolution. Vonnegut foresaw viral zoonoses like the present-day HIV, SARS-CoV2, Monkey Pox, Zika etc wiping out humanity. Dismissive of humans and their puny lives despite possessing ‘a big brain’, his curt, abrupt, sardonic style is really engaging.

…people enjoy in their heads events which hadn’t happened yet and which might never occur. My mother was good at that. Someday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot wanted to read instead. And we would get a new house in a beautiful city, and nice clothes, and so on. She used to make me wonder why God had ever gone to all the trouble of creating reality.

His message, still unheard by humankind, is to stop polluting our planet, preserving nature, live harmoniously atop wars and strife... He lived in his own private utopia!

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The Machine is Learning

 

The Machine is Learning by Tanuj Solanki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A modern-day fable showing the power of WhatsApp groups; though the long WhatsApp chats could have been done away with.
The author rakes up philosophical issues like the moral struggle of machines replacing humans, capitalism vs faux communism, small town boy stuck in the quagmire of India’s financial capital with the dilemma of devilish choices between ambition and integrity. There is a detailed minutiae of the Insurance industry
Immensely readable.

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Painted Stork

Open-billed Storks

 

Clash of the Titans

 

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In order to prove your existence you have to be sick or pathologically inclined. There is nausea and there is Nausea. This is from We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in int, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self-consciousness is just a disease.

It was a sort of sweet disgust. How pleasant it was! And it came from the pebble, I’m sure of that, it passed from the pebble into my hands. Yes, that’s it, that’s exactly it: a sort of nausea in the hands.
His blue cotton shirt stands out cheerfully against a chocolate-coloured wall. That too brings on the Nausea. Or rather it is the Nausea. The Nausea isn’t inside me; I can feel it over there on the wall, on the braces, everywhere around me.
Never have I felt as strongly as today that I was devoid of secret dimensions, limited to my body, to the airy thoughts which float up from it like bubbles, I build my memories with my present, I am rejected, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape from myself.
Nauseating to read!


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A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here is an unusual propulsion system for space craft

“What are ‘back-rays’?”
“Light which goes back to its source,” muttered Nightspore.
“And what kind of light that may be?”
…
“Unless light pulled, as well as pushed, how would flowers contrive to twist their heads round after the sun?”

A book that needs a lot patience, as it tends to meander and get repetitive. But some wonderful poetic bits every now and then – just rewards for all the travails of the protagonist

For him, in his sullen purity of nature, all the world was a snare, a limed twig. Knowing that pleasure was everywhere, a fierce, mocking enemy, crouching and waiting at every corner of the road of life, in order to kill with its sweet sting the naked grandeur of the soul, he shielded himself behind pain…
‘What is the Trifork?’
‘The stem, Maskull, is hatred of pleasure. The first fork is disentanglement from the sweetness of the world. The second fork is power over those who still writhe in the nets of illusion. The third fork is the healthy glow of one who steps into ice-cold water.’

and

Life breeds passion, passion breeds suffering, suffering breeds the yearning for relief from suffering.

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