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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