Ajaya by Anand Neelakantan

Ajaya: Duryodhana's Mahabharata - Collector's Edition by Anand Neelakantan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

History is written by the victors – but what of the viewpoint of the vanquished? This is a brilliantly narrated interpretation of the epic Mahabharata by the Kaurav prince Suyodhan (disdainfully called Duryodhan by his arch-rivals – the illegitimately begotten Pandavs who changed the prefix सु to the derogative दुर्).
Unknown to most Hindus, there is a temple dedicated to Suyodhan in Kerala (where there is no presiding deity)

The author writes about the beauty of secular Hinduism

This demonstrates how critical thinking is the basis of all our philosophy. We have no concept of blasphemy. This openness to criticism is what makes the Hindu religion and its traditions unique. Vyasa did not hide Krishna’s faults, nor did Valmiki remain silent on Rama’s shortcomings. This openness to debate and discussion had helped us evolve over time and withstand thousands of years of foreign rule, reforming as the times demanded. Otherwise, Hinduism would long have dead, like the ancient religions of Greece and Egypt.

It is said that for every village there is a Ramayana and for every person there is Gita. Lord Krishna says

इति ते ज्ञानमाख्यातं गुह्याद्गुह्यतरं मया |
विमृश्यैतदशेषेण यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु || १८:६३
(I have given you the most confidential of all knowledge.
Analyze it critically and act as per your wish and understanding. The Bhagwadgita 18:63)

The book is essentially a vituperative indictment of the caste system. Take the examples of Eklavya and Karna – how they were unfairly denied all that was rightfully theirs – Eklavya an archer as good, if not better, as Arjuna and Karna, also, denied the chance to prove his prowess as an archer, the hand of Draupadi, and, being the first-born, the rightful heir to the kingdom.
The characters have been shorn of divinity and there are no magical arms and flying chariots – just valorous, ambitious, treacherous, exploited and scheming individuals.
The author also dwells on the overreaching Brahminism and the North/South divide in India.
An extract from the book

Suyodhana was a good man and Eklavya was happy for him. But he knew such joy and real life rarely went together. No self-respecting God would allow a good man to be happy for long. God has relevance only in the unhappiness of good people.

One of the best books of this year; now plan to read the author’s Asura: Tale Of The Vanquished, The Story of Ravana and His People.

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Ilium by Dan Simmons

Ilium by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A rollicking and hilarious yarn, after the relatively staid Hyperion. There are three parallel narratives that intersect – and how they intersect – ripping apart the very fabric of space-time! After a surfeit of John Keats in the The Hyperion Omnibus Cantos, here there are other literary references – Homer and William Shakespeare, even a Marcel Proust spouting sentient robot, Samuel Beckett and H G Wells’ Time Machine

Here is the favourite swear-word of Zeus

“ENOUGH!!” bellows Zeus and not only stops Ares’ diatribe, but freezes every god and robot in the place. “I’ll hear no more whining prattle from you, Ares, you lying, two-faced, treacherous sparrowfart, you miserable excuse for a man, much less for a god.”
“Hah! Diomedes – made you run! You coward! You girly girl! You glittering little puppet! You quavering sparrowfart]!”

The humour never flags, even if it is scatological

Agamemnon had been angry at the Calchas’ interpretation. “He shit square goat turds,” whispered the captain with a wine-scented laugh…
“At that point Lord Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, began shitting whole goats,” laughs Orus, speaking loudly enough that several captains turn to frown at us.

“You idiot,” thunders Apollo in ultrasonic frequencies audible only to the gods and scholics and the dogs in Troy, who set up a fearsome howling in response.

I loved the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo – the bread and butter, the essence, so to say, of ‘hard’ SF

If you’ve never seen a god or goddess, all I can tell do is tell you that they are larger than life – literally, since Athena must be seven feet tall – and more beautiful and striking than any mortal. I presume their nanotechnology and recombinant DNA labs made them that way. Athena combines qualities of feminine beauty, divine command, and sheer power that I didn’t even know could exist before I found myself returned to existence in the shadow of Olympos.

Ada stepped out of the water, dried herself, slipped into a thin robe, and told the servitors to leave her. They exited via one of their osmotic wall membranes.

“It’s some sort of squirt communicator,” said Mahnmut. “It’s all folded in on itself, but I can see that if I activate it, it’ll unfurl onto its own tripod, aim a large dish toward the sky, and fire a serious burst of … something. Encoded energy in tightband k-maser or perhaps even modulated gravity.”

“That’s Chevkovian felschenmass, artificial anti matter of the kind the Consortium used to fuel the first interstellar probe. There’s enough energy there to keep us alive and kicking foe another several earth centuries if there were a way for us to tap into it.”

…they discovered that the human mind – not the brain, but the mind – wasn’t like a computer, it wasn’t like a chemical memory machine, but was exactly like …” “A quantum-state standing wave-front,” said Orphu. “Human consciousness exists primarily as a quantum state waveform, just like the rest of the universe.”

“Exceptional types of consciousness that are like naked singularities in that they can bend space-time, affect the organization of space-time, and collapse probability waves into discrete alternatives. I’m talking Shakespeare here. Proust. Homer

Juxtapositioning absurd anachronisms and malapropisms e.g., a philosopher with a canine Disney character

“Plato,” mused Harman. “I’ve come across references to him in books I’ve read. And an odd drawing I saw once. A dog.”
Savi nodded. “A lot of the meaning of the Lost Age iconography has been lost forever.”
“What’s a dog?”

Waiting for Achilles to get dressed for war reminds me of the times I waited for my wife, Susan, to get dressed when we were late for a dinner party somewhere. There’s nothing to do to hurry up the process – all one can do is wait.

Swinging his heavy sword in a two-handed backhand that reminds me of Andre Agassi in his prime, Hector slices off Apollo’s right arm in a spray of golden ichor.

According to Homer, sent Orphu, “Attendants” are sort of androids created in Hephaestus’ forge from human parts and used like robots by the gods and some mortals.
Are you telling me that the Iliad has androids and moravecs in it? demanded Mahnmut.
The Iliad, has everything in it, said Orphu.

The mayhem never stops

I don’t believe in God with a capital G, despite their obvious solidity, I don’t believe in the gods with their small g’s. Not as real forces in the universe. But I believe in the bitch-goddess Irony. She crosses all time. She rules men and gods and God alike.
And She has a wicked sense of humor.

“PULL, GODDAM YOU!” howls Zeus. “PULL OR BE DRAGGED INTO STINKING TRARTARUS UNTIL TIME ITSELF ROTS AWAY FROM THE BONES OF THE UNIVERSE!”

Riotous! The New Year sees me starting the sequel

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फणीश्वरनाथ रेणु कृत कितने चौराहे

कितने चौराहे by फणीश्वर नाथ रेणु
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Renu captures rural ethos, the small-town atmosphere and the dialect spoken so accurately. Here are some extracts:

मौसी ऐसी ही बोलती है। बोर्डिंग को बोटिन, विराटनगर को विलासनगर, रामनगर को लामनगर !

नया कोट-जूता पहनकर बाहर जरा निकलो -'जंटूलमन-इश्टूडन्ट' बनकर।

मोहरील मां के घर में मच्छरों और खटमलों के अलावा छछून्दरों और चमगादड़ों का भी बड़ा भारी अड्डा था। ... रात में रह-रहकर ट्रेजरी-कचहरी की ओर से एक खौफनाक आवाज आती। .. शहर के चौकीदारों की करकर्ष और डरावनी बोली, की छटपटाहट, की कचर-कचर और हजारों- हजार मच्छरों के सूइयां गड़ानेवाले गीत ! सामने वाले घर में बँधा हुआ बीमार घोड़ा नाक झाड़ता - फड़ररर !

कभी 'झोंक' में आकर तुम भी पड़ना-लिखना मत छोड़ बैठना। अभी सीधे बढ़े चलो। राह में छाँव में कहीं बैठना नहीं। कितने चौराहे आएँगे। न दाएँ मुड़ना, न बाएँ, सीधे चलते जाना।

The period described in the novella is before Independence and the patriotic fervour perfusing the youngsters of that time.

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उषा प्रियम्वदा कृत अर्कदीप्त

 

Arkadipt by Usha Priyamvada
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An enchanting yarn about a brilliant but shy, introverted youth. The book describes Arkdipt's life and the love of his life, while he seeks existential answers from the works of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard

A transcontinental story that begins in a lower-middle-class cramped neighbourhood of Delhi and continues on to Munich, Copenhagen, New York, San Francisco and a small anonymous town in Kerala. The warm and loving domesticity of a joint Indian family, a lasting friendship, the aspirations of young Indians and the wealth and success achieved in the promised land of USA. albeit with a cold impersonal touch is beautifully depicted.

कितनी बरसातें आईं, फूल खिले, मुरझा गए। त्यौहार, उत्सव, सब अपने समय से आये और रीते चले गए। परिवार ने खुशियां मनाना छोड़ दिया था। पृथ्वी अपनी धुरी पर घूमती रही, पेड़ कटते रहे, कूड़ा बढ़ता गया, जंगल आग से जलते रहे, पक्षी लम्बी तादाद में मरते गए, अमीर और-और अमीर होते गए, ग़रीब - और ग़रीब।

The angst of a lovelorn couple tends to go on and on interminably in the middle of the book (hence the four stars), but the concluding part is engrossing – overall unputdownable.

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Catch 22 Quote 5

“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.”

“It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”

Catch 22 Quote 4

 “He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it”

Fire On The Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banaras by Radhika Iyengar

 

Fire On The Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banaras by Radhika Iyengar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Begins on a promising note with echoes of Cyrus Mistry's Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer. But then runs out of steam and appears as if she has just added some garnishing to her meticulously researched PhD dissertation.
Some searingly raw images

Akash picks up a bamboo stick and stabs the bone into subservience. The corpse encased with the hand-built structure of wood and straw shifts limply. Flakes of ash, disturbed by his nudge, take flight. They sting his eyes and settle on his lips. Akash cough and turns away to spit. His ashy saliva land on the ground. Splat. The afternoon suns burns his back, His mahogany skin is covered in ant-sized heat boils.

Akash has seen ‘all sorts of bodies – deformed, mutilated, broken’: corpses with smashed skulls, severed limbs, gunshot wounds, knife torn torsos with guts spilling out. He has cremated those who died by suicide, either by hanging or self-immolation.

The personal accounts of the members from the Dom community tend to wander into needless details. A more succinct narrative could have been more readable.

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Catch 22 Quote 3

 “They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
“They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
“And what difference does that make?”