प्रभा खेतान कृत अन्या से अनन्या

Anya Se Ananya by Prabha Khetan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating account of a girl from an orthodox Marwari family who rebels against her community, caste, laws, scruples to fall in love with an older married man – without being tamed by patriarchy – and becoming self-reliant by starting her own business. That the man is insecure, manipulative, pathologically promiscuous does not seem of significance to her. All this, during the bloody unrest and chaos unleashed by the communists during the Seventies in Bengal – strikes, closure of factories and extortion of industrialists and entrepreneurs.

She also reflects on the Emergency and the “License Raj” and the geo-political situation e.g. the effect of the Iraqi war on her export business. There is a deep analysis of her insular Marwari community and the inimical parochial Bengalis.

However, as a doctor, I was profoundly mortified by the unethical conduct of the doctor behaving lewdly with his patient, violating this tenet of the Hippocratic oath

ἃ δ᾽ ἂν ἐνθεραπείῃ ἴδω ἢ ἀκούσω, ἢ καὶ ἄνευ θεραπείης κατὰ βίον ἀνθρώπων, ἃ μὴ χρή ποτε ἐκλαλεῖσθαι ἔξω, σιγήσομαι, ἄρρητα ἡγεύμενος εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα.
Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free.

This is inexcusable behaviour for an ophthalmologist on examining a patient – and that too on her first visit

पेंटास्कोप (she probably meant ‘opthalmoscope’) की सहायता से मेरी आँखों में झांकते हुए वे और गहरे उतर गए तथा कहने लगे - "इतनी सुन्दर आँखें मैंने आज तक नहीं देखीं।" लाज से आरक्त चेहरा उनके सीने से लग गया। उनकी यह पहली छुअन भीतर तक सहला गयी। पहली बार किसी पुरुष ने मुझे अपनी हथेलियों में भरा और पहली बार कोई पुरुष मुझसे कह रहा था की 'तुम कितनी आकर्षक हो' पहली बार किसी की बाँहों में मैंने खुद को सुरक्षित महसूस किया। ...
उन्होंने वापस मेरी पलकों को हलके से चूमा। फिर गालों पर, होंटो, कानों के पीछे - में आग का दरिया थी।…

All this lascivious activity in the clinic! He was a known serial offender, his promiscuous tendencies known to colleagues, friends and family. He found the author to be vulnerable – she had been sexually abused by a family member during childhood.
She does offer insights to the status of women in the Indian social context

अजीब समाज है। यहाँ सिर्फ कुँवारी कन्याओं और पत्निओं की जरूरत है। बाकी कौन बचीं? विधवाएँ और वृद्धाएँ तो तीरथ में रहती हैं या बड़े दिन की छुट्टियों में जब कलकत्ता क्रिकेट और पिकनिक से गुलज़ार रहता है तो ये औरतें मुरारी बापू एवं आशाराम बापू का प्रवचन सुनने जाती हैं। लेकिन परित्यक्ताएँ, वंचिताएँ, तलाकशुदा स्त्रियों को कहाँ रखा जाये? उनकी उपस्थिति से माँ-बाप को असमंजस होती है। क्या करें वे? जवान लड़की को लिए-लिए कहाँ-कहाँ जाएँ? इसलिए या तो लड़की अपने काम में व्यस्त है या फिर उसे पढ़ने के लिए विदेश भेज दिया जाता है। समाज की मुख्यधारा में उनका क्या काम? शादी-ब्याह और अन्य उत्सवों में ऐसी लड़कियों का क्या काम? समाज को उनकी जरूरत नहीं। विदेश में उनका जो मन आये सो करें, कौन देखने जाता है। मानो मुख्यधारा से उनका पृथकीकरण एक सामाजिक आवश्यकता है। इससे माँ-बाप और लड़की सबको राहत मिलती है।

An engrossing autobiography, undoubtedly.

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A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A slow perambulating tale set in London and Paris during the time of the French Revolution – there is intrigue, espionage, betrayal a misplaced sense of loyalty, human cruelty and blood-lust and humour.

Cramped in all kinds of dun cupboards and hutches at Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he was permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.

(Mr Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who Ishad bestowed her name upon it.)

That they could never their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off.

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive sips of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to a solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.

…the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.

“Where shall I commence?”
“Commence,” was Monsieur Defarge’s not unreasonable reply, “at the commencement.”

There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into tall the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!

The convoluted and archaic language makes comprehension difficult, at times.

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Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa

Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A graphic viewpoint of the Partition of India engineered by the British from the other side, from the point of view of a child and someone not a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim. Is the description of her encounter with Gandhi funny or blasphemous?

Gandhijee visits Lahore. I’m surprised he exists. I almost thought he was a mythic figure. Someone we’d only hear about and never see.
He is knitting. Sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a palatial veranda, he is surrounded by women. He is small, dark, shrivelled, old… He is certainly ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world.
He declaims, “Sluggish stomachs are the scrouge of the Punjabis … too much rich food and too little exercise. The cause of India’s ailments lies in our clogged alimentary canals. The hungry stomach is the scrouge of the poor – and the full stomach of the rich.” At which the protagonists’s mother<>furnishes him with the odour, consistency, time and frequency of her bowel movements. ‘Flush your system with an enema, daughter,’ says Gandhijee, directing his sage counsel at my mother. Do it for thirty days … every morning. You will feel like a new woman. Look at these girls,’ indicating the lean women flanking him. ‘I give them enemas myself – there is no shame in it – I am like their mother. You can see how smooth and moist their skin is. Look at their shining eyes.’

Another passage

I try not to inhale, but I must; the charged air about our table distils poisonous insights. Blue envy: green avidity: the grey and black stirrings of predators and the incipient distillation of fear in their prey. A slimy grey-green balloon forms behind my shut lids. There is something so dangerous about the tangible colours the passions around me have assumed that I blink open my eyes and sit up.

Also a self-deprecatory and humourous take on the foibles of the carefree Parsees.

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फणीश्वरनाथ 'रेणु' कृत परती: परिकथा

परती : परिकथा by फणीश्वर नाथ रेणु
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A classic of Hindi literature – it begins and ends on an allegorical note of a dove trying to awaken its son जित्तू. The lyrical dehati prose garnished with subtle Maithili graphics evokes a microcosm of Indian village life.

The book lovingly portrays the personal, cultural, socio-economic lives of the villagers, along with their political aspirations, their petty jealousies and rivalries. The author conveys accurately the village lore and myths, casteism, issues of land-possession and -redistribution; landlords and their interactions with farmers, tenants, ryots – and the use of bullies and mercenaries to carry out their nefarious designs.
There are some unforgettable characters – the ever-scheming and venal लुत्तो, the opportunist, conniving and corrupt lanky गरुड़ध्वज झा, the gossipy साम्बत्ति पीसी, the learned botanist Dr Roychowdhury, the educated rustic beauty मलारी whose rebellious and aspirational activities tear apart the village, the silent love-lorn ताजमनी, the besotted Mrs Rosewood aka गीता मिश्रा from an earlier generation, the lecherous railway official Barker with his repellent halitosis and, of course, the memorable and eccentric भिम्मन मामा with his sassy malapropisms, neologisms and repartee bring in doses of irreverent humour to the breathless narrative.

बुद्धि भ्रष्ट होने से आदमी सबकुछ कर सकता है। - जित्तन बाबू इज़ सफ्रिंग फ्रॉम सेक्सोलॉजीआ। मलेरा, फ़ाइलेरिया, डायरिया, पायरिया आदि रोगों से भी मारात्मक रोग है यह सेक्सोलौजिआ।
दुखांत नहीं दुखदाएंड। सुखान्त नहीं, सुखदायक। टेलीग्राम शब्द से बहुत चिढ़ते हैं - " नो-नो, इतना बड़ा नाम नहीं चेलगा। इसके लिए उपयुक्त है - ट्रा। टक्वा ट्रा, ट्रा-ट्रा !
मामा हर पोर्टेबल मशीन के लिए ढकनकल शब्द दे रहे हैं और टेप-रिकॉर्डर के लिए धुनफीताबंद!

This is how he gets his name

सही नाम - विजयमल्लसिंह। सिंह को मामा ने सन उन्नीस सौ बीस में कतरकर फेंक दिया। तब लिखने लगे - व्ही. मल्ल .,म.म.। चूँकि भिम्मलकृत भानुमति पेटिका के एक भी प्रश्न के उत्तर नहीं दे सका कोई, एक साल तक प्रतीक्षा करने के बाद भिम्मल मामा ने अपने नाम के साथ महामहोपाध्याय जोड़ना शुरू कर दिया। संक्षेप में म.म.! व्ही. मल्ल .,म.म.। कालांतर में भिम्मल मां। वे किसी के मामा नहीं, कोई उनका भांजा नहीं।

At the police station he has a prompt rejoinder

थाना के दारोगा साहब अंग्रज़ी में बोले - "प्लीज! टर्न हिम आउट जित्तन बाबू !"
"दारोगा साहब, में टर्नेबल नहीं।"

Here, in a moment of existential angst he has a question

"हू मेड कोकोनट ! जहाँ पवन का गमन नहीं, रवि-शशि उगे न भानु - जो फल ब्रह्मा रचे नहीं सो अबला माँगत दान। व्हाट्स देट फ्रूट ? जायफल, काफल, श्रीफल, कटहल, कटहल-बड़हल, कटहल-बड़हल! हेक्सागन प्लस पेंटागन !"

This example is of casteism overcoming benefits provided by Govt

डिस्टिरक्ट बोर्ड ने प्रस्ताव पास कर परानपुर अस्पताल को बंद करा दिया है। भूमिहार डॉक्टर को राजपूतों ने मिलकर धमकी दी। कायस्थ डॉक्टर के खिलाफ दरखास्त दे गई है - पैसा लेकर भी दूसरी जातिवालों को बढ़िया दवा नहीं देता, और कायस्थों को मुफ्त में दवा और सुई देकर इलाज करता है।

These are some more extract from this wonderful book

गाओं की दाल बंदी के ऊपर चढ़े करेले की भुजिया कमिटी के कढ़ाई में भूंजी जाती है न।
लुत्तो भी आजकल फर्स्ट बुक पढ़ता है, अर्जुनलाल के यहां जाकर -अ फैट कैट सैट ऑन दैट मैट। एक मोटी बिल्ली बैठी है उस चटाई पर।
लीला के मामू लीला को एक अंग्रज़ी बालबर की दुकान में ले गए। वहां सोडावाटर-लेमलेट से केश को धोया, बालबर ने।
"क्या, इसके पहले भी, किसी काल या युग में, आज की तरह अभाव-अभियोग और व्यर्थता के विलाप से सामाजिक वायुमंडल परिव्याप्त हुआ था?"

Finally, meet the endearing Cocker Spaniel named मीत,

ताजमनी से पहले ही प्रफुल्ल मीत चुलबुलाता हुआ आया। ... निश्चय हे आज चाय के साथ पकोड़े आ रहे हैं। पकोड़े के लिए भी चोरी कर लेता है मीत, कभी-कभी।

He has to face the ire of the villagers for his master’s perceived sins

पोसा कुत्ता सुवंशलाल को हल्का दिया! पूंछकट्टा गीदड़ कहीं का।

I wonder why this book is not better known, its English translation is Tale of a Wasteland. I consider “Renu” to be superior to Premchand or any other Hindi writer…

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The Book Hunters of Katpadi

The Book Hunters of Katpadi: A Bibliomystery by Pradeep Sebastian
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Not a mystery as such, but more of a pedantic discourse on matters pertaining to the rather arcane hobby of book collecting; there’s a lot repetitive trivia on Richard Burton. The only redeeming features are the quaint and evocative illustrations.

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The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Just goes on and on about an American family – getting tiresome at times - echoes of his better known On the Road.
Nothing like the classic A Tale of Two Cities or the para-dimensional The City & the City.
There is an occasional flash of brilliance

…drinking a coke at the corner drugstore in absorbed melancholy, but all the time he is balancing life and death, stumbling through a thousand moods of horror and hate, watching himself step discreetly through all the philosophies, sects, factions and cults of a hundred books, living the despondencies of many heroes – Jean Valjean, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, Anna Karenina, Greta Garbo, Byron, Tristan, Hedda Gabler.

Then, as the sun came up in full brilliant array far off over the hills, fanning light all over the sky and gilding little dawn-clouds that were regimented beautifully overhead, the boys fell silent, in awe, and stood on the two hills watching…

Thus spake Doc Daneeka to Yossarian

Like you say they’d have to prove you’re nuts for not wanting to fight their silly wars. Well, that’s one way of putting it.

Getting back to Jack Kerouac from Joseph Heller

It’s the great molecular comedown. It’s really an atomic disease. It’s death finally reclaiming life, the scurvy of the soul at last, a kind of universal cancer. It’s got a real medieval ghastliness, like the plague, only this time it will ruin everything.

I said to myself, cockroaches are human too, just as much as us human beings. Reason for that is this: I’ve watched them long enough to realize their sense of discretion, their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts, see.

‘Oh him? He’s a disgruntled Chicagoan who loves Bach, spaghetti, Cris-craft cruises, tubercular women, and pains at Carmel in the summer.’

He was that all struggles of life were incessant, labourious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labour, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings – all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavour.

One needs a lot of patience to complete the book.

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सुभद्रा कुमारी चौहान की संपूर्ण कहानियाँ

(Subhadrakumari Chauhan Ki Sampoorna Kahaniyan) by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

सिंहासन हिल उठे राजवंशों ने भृकुटी तानी थी,
बूढ़े भारत में आई फिर से नयी जवानी थी,
गुमी हुई आज़ादी की कीमत सबने पहचानी थी,
दूर फिरंगी को करने की सबने मन में ठानी थी।
चमक उठी सन सत्तावन में, वह तलवार पुरानी थी,
बुंदेले हरबोलों के मुँह हमने सुनी कहानी थी,
खूब लड़ी मर्दानी वह तो झाँसी वाली रानी थी।।

ये अमर और प्रेरक पंक्तियाँ प्रसिद्ध कवयित्री सुभद्रा कुमारी चौहान द्वारा लिखी गई थीं।
पद्य की अपनी अन्य रचनाओं के अतिरिक्त, उन्होंने गद्य भी लिखा है। उनकी कहानियाँ का यह संकलन वीरता और देशभक्ति की इतनी ऊंचाइयों की आकांक्षा नहीं करता है - बल्कि ये मार्मिक कहानियाँ भारत के स्वतंत्रता-पूर्व व -पश्चात काल के पितृसत्तात्मक और जातिवादी समाज में जीवित रहने की कोशिश करने वाली सामान्य महिलाओं के बारे में हैं।

एक उदहारण:

चैती पूर्णिमा ने संध्या होते-होते धरित्री को दूध से नहला डाला। बसंती हवा के मधुर स्पर्श से सारा संसार एक प्रकार के सुख की आत्म-विस्मृति में बेसुध-सा हो गया। आम की किसी डाल पर छिपी हुए मतवाली कोयल पंचम स्वर में कोई मादक रागिनी अलाप उठी। वृक्षों के झुरमुट के साथ चांदनी के तड़के अठखेलियां करने लगे; परन्तु मेरे जीवन में न सुख था और न शान्ति।

यदा-कदा कथा अपेक्षाकृत सरल और विचित्र व् असमान्य सी है और कहीं-कहीं नैतिकता कुछ अधिक ही झलकती है...

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Homage to Catalonia by Geroge Orwell

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As raw as Matterhorn and as savage a take on war as Catch-22, this is a true account of Orwell’s (as a starry-eyed idealist) experience in the Spanish Civil War – where no one seemed to know who was fighting who

I had accepted the News Chronicle – New Statesman version of the war as the defence of civilisation against a maniacal outbreak by an army of Colonel Blimps in the pay of Hitler. The revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona had attracted me deeply, but I had made no attempt to understand it. As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names – PSUC, POUM, FAI, CNT, UGT, JCI, JASU, AIT – they merely exasperated me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the POUM. (I had only joined the POUM militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with ILP papers)…

In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish-war have had any publicity to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian patriots versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.

(POUM: Partido Obero de Unificans Marxista; in Catalan – Partit Ober d’Unificano Marxista – Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification).
His experience with poverty and privation as experienced in Down and Out in Paris and London and this book are stark and vividly described in simple prose with no flowery language and dramatic verbal calisthenics – akin to another Master - Ernst Hemingway. He writes about the futility of war and the dehumanising, disillusionment that eventually sets in with the political and military leadership. His Kafkaesque experience in a Police Station, while attempting to get his friend freed by the authorities

Inside, the place was a huge complicated warren running round a central courtyard, with hundreds of offices on each floor; and, as this was Spain, nobody had the vaguest idea where the office I was looking for was… People smiled and shrugged their shoulders gracefully. Everyone who had an opinion sent me in a different direction; up these stairs, down those, along interminable passages which turned out to be blind alleys. And time was slipping away. I had the strangest sensation of being in a nightmare: the rushing up and down flights of stairs, the mysterious people coming and going, the glimpses through open doors of chaotic offices with papers strewn everywhere and typewriters clicking; and time slipping away and a life perhaps in balance.

Here are some extracts from his war-time experiences

We were near the front line now, near enough to smell the characteristic smell of war – in experience a smell of excrement and decaying food…

In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy. In winter on the Saragossa front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last. Except at night, when a surprise attack was always conceivable, nobody bothered about the enemy. They were simply remote black insects whom one occasionally saw hopping to and fro. The real preoccupation of moth armies was trying to keep warm…

In stationary warfare there are three things that all soldiers long for: a battle, more cigarettes, and a week’s leave…

I have had a big experience of body vermin of various kinds, and for sheer beastliness the louse beats everything I have encountered. Other insects, mosquitoes for instance, make you suffer more, but at least they aren’t resident vermin. The human louse somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is known way of getting rid of them. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of their own at horrible speed… In war all soldiers are lousy, at least when it is warm enough. The men who fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermpylae – every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles. We kept the brutes down to some extent by burning out the eggs and by bathing as often as we could face it. Nothing short of lice could have driven me into that ice-cold river.

There are rats, rats,
Rats as big as cats,
In the quartermaster’s store!
The ones at La Granja itself really were as big as cats, or nearly; great bloated brutes that waddled over the beds of muck, too impudent even to run away unless you shot at them…

When you are taking part in events like these you are, I suppose, in a small way, making history, and you ought by rights to feel like an historical character. But you never do, because at such times the physical details always outweigh everything else…

– it was more difficult to think about this war in quite the same naively idealistic manner as before…

The reader is remineded of the entrepreneurial spirit of Joseph Heller’s Milo Minderbinder

“This war is a racket the same as any other.”

On a more philosophical note

The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency…

A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one’s heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that was is glorious after all.

Here is rather objective take on being shot

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail…

Suddenly, in the middle of saying something, I felt – it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness.

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock – no pain, only a violent shock. Such as you get from an electrical terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash thought it was a rifle nearby that had done off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

The pain would come later and last for a long time as he had suffered nerve-damage – his experience in the makeshift hospitals is another horror story. He goes on

“The artery is gone,” I though. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not may minutes presumably. Everything was blurry. There must have been two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting – I mean it is interesting to know what your thought would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle, but in this stale corner of the trenches…

This seems to be the period when his hate for Communism became obvious and his defining books Animal Farm and 1984 started to gestate.

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