The perceptive, plotless story of the Facebook generation

http://scroll.in/article/755567/the-perceptive-plotless-story-of-the-facebook-generation
At first sight, what absolutely fascinated me about Kaushik Barua’s No Direction Rome was a tastefully conceptualised and designed book cover – understated, subtle, symbolic and stylish. Sombre and dark, it embraced a patina of lost time. Little did I know that this beautiful cover housed a carefully crafted plotless narrative of love, loss, longing and life, enmeshed in the ageless chaos of time – almost as a curse on our incidental birth. What began as a reading meant to satiate my thirst for good literature ended up as food for thought for many days to come.

While undertaking the journey with the protagonist, Krantik, No Direction Rome reminds one of Amit Chaudhuri’s Ananda in Odyssesus Abroad. Undertaking a plotless rumination on an expatriate experience – dealing with questions of identity, meandering in the ennui of a modernist creation – they are similar but not congruent.

Chaudhuri’s Ananda is different from Barua’s Krantik in the sense that Ananda has a vision for his redemption – he craves for an idyllic situation in life, seeped in nostalgia and family camaraderie. Barua’s Krantik, on the other hand, rebels (kranti) without reason, asks directions to fancy places without any intention of a visit.

Krantik hates his job, imagines he has a severe medical condition, attempts to love out of boredom, destroys every shred of stability that his life seems to offer him and embraces a condition where he is forever hanging on with a deeply vacant, grim and glum mindspace. However seedy the narrative appears, Barua’s mastery of an exquisite prose, cultured in the inconsequential details of everydayness, architectured by the banality of ambitions, introduces a beautifully and artfully crafted piece.

All the while, a causal hangover and/or a “high” from this borrowed experience from Krantik belies the intense interiority of the protagonist’s mindspace. In fact, the long drawn, sleepy description that Barua sketches while narrating Krantik’s scatological fascination of observing his shit-pot and imagining the crimson of blood painting this scene for him, the writer touches something very deep in a very profound yet offhand way – that which is the running ‘theme’ in the novel.

Going somewhere while going nowhere

The purposelessness of this “Facebook generation”, as Barua prefers to call this frenzied madness, is a subject of intense introspection in No Direction Rome. There is scatology, invective, violence, love, sex, boredom, romance, weed, alcohol. There is life, meaninglessness, repetition, circularity – all making a heady cocktail of something which cannot be missed. It is right there staring at our faces – something that all of us have faced at some point in time or the other. This book offers that which is real, in the most unquestioning yet unbelieving of ways.

Cocooned in the comforting capsules of our timelines, tweeting and dubsmashing fragments of our lives – moments, thoughts, feelings – this book is a quiet refuge for us, “this generation”.  One can identify with the pictures of that lady with Somalian kids, inviting the observer into her intimate world. At the same time it also acts like the other lady in the book who slashes her wrists and never lets anyone in beyond physical penetration – the unreconciled dualism of human experiences. One can identify with Krantik, who meets Pooja, cannot muster up the courage to say no to her, but finds release and mystery in Chiara – the unresolved binaries of a singular identity.

This generation which is the raison d’etre  for Kaushik’s creation, has nothing to grasp and clasp – no ground, not twig. It is a generation lost in the ever dynamic whirlpool of transition and change, bereft of an ideal to decide, whether “to be or not to be”. This is a book which while dealing with existential questions of this generation, generates a steep flip in readers’ consciousness. It is similar to the rise or the fall of a trip the reader undertakes – curled within a smoked-up journey with Krantik, in the alleys of a directionless Rome.

Consuming the reader without a plot

It is remarkable how despite the seeming half incompleteness of the directionless plot, Barua manages to keep the scattered narrative tightly snug and “held up” in peculiar ways. The uselessness of everyday existence and its repetition like Sisyphus, the purposelessness behind a full knowledge that “nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes”, like in Waiting for Godot, keeps a consistent hold over the narrative.

It is, as if by embracing the essence of postmodernism, Barua rejects the very idea of postmodernity in a strange structural symmetry. While merging the twin demands of form and formlessness of style, he audaciously challenges the discussed and the accepted “norms” of a postmodern craft.

The book is a self-conscious narrative struggling to remain unexposed behind a plotless plot.  By a seemingly maverick rumination on issues so disjointed yet connected, Barua tickles the faculty of imagination, perception, appreciation and analyses, establishing a “method to the madness”. Its effect is so deep yet unnoticed that all through this fascinating trip, the reader feels consumed with sensations of an artfully articulated cursive craft.

It is this daring experiment that makes Barua noticed among the many writers who slip in and out of today’s literary limelight. No Direction Rome is Kaushik Barua’s second book. Markedly different from his debutant novel, Windhorse, which fetched him the Sahitya Akademi award, this book adds another dimension of discussion on “ways of seeing” the world.  While Windhorse was about research and analyses, No Direction Rome is about feeling and becoming.
http://scroll.in/article/755567/the-perceptive-plotless-story-of-the-facebook-generation

The Aarushi case receives a timely, thrilling investigation

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/the-aarushi-case-receives-a-timely-thrilling-investigation Journalism has undergone massive changes after the digital boom in India. Video journalism, backed up by social media, has created a space where the relevance of the old rules is slowly diminishing. The old model had journalists focusing on careful, research-base chronicling and the patient chasing of stories. This has gradually been replaced by a culture of real time, breaking news stories coupled with aggressive analyses in the form of opinion-based content. While one may argue that this has, to an extent, diluted the quality of journalism, it cannot be denied that it has also resulted in a democratisation of media space that has gripped the national consciousness. It is in this context, especially, that I feel Aarushi, Avirook Sen's second book, is an important and timely one: to an extent, it combines the virtues of both the old and the new models of journalism. Sen's gaze is that of a seasoned and perceptive researcher. He patiently sifts through the documents of the case, a significant volume of criminal files, by any standard. The book raises a series of questions on the investigation. By the end of the narrative, one realises that the manner in which the Aarushi case was hastily finished by the police is unfortunately representative of the police and the legal system of our country. Perhaps the most admirable thing about Sen's endeavour is his never-say-never approach, a must when you have to chase a story set in the murky suburbs of Noida. It is as enthralling for readers as it is inspiring for budding journalists. Aarushi is written in a gripping style, quite reminiscent of a crime thriller. Sen maintains a remarkable restraint throughout: he does not overly dramatise the story, which is the right call because of the highly volatile media attention that this case has received. At the same time, not a single page in this book compromises readability. This is easier said than done. Here, for instance, he provides us with a small but revealing sketch of Dr B.K. Mohapatra, one of the CFSL scientists who conducted DNA tests on the evidence collected from the crime scene. "At lunchtime one day I found Mohapatra sitting unaccompanied in the courtroom, minding two large folders on a table in front. He was a short, spectacled man, with a thick Odiya accent that sometimes confused people from the north ('blood', for instance, would become 'blawed'). He looked simple, and so were his concerns. As I sat next to him, he complained about the unpleasant extended summer, and the long waits in court. He then said it must be very hard work for reporters as well. He had seen us standing at the courtroom's door all day because we weren't allowed in. I mumbled something about everyone having to do a job, when he asked me: 'Do you get TA/DA?' I told him we didn't, but he was entitled to allowances, surely. He nodded, and I thought how the government had taken over the scientist in Mohapatra." In recent years, books like Dilip D'Souza's The Curious Case of Binayak Sen, Chander Suta Dogra's Manoj and Babli: A Hate Story and Ritu Sarin's The Assassination of India Gandhihave given Indian investigative writing a shot in the arm. These books aim to provide some kind of closure to the respective criminal cases they tackle, while pointing a finger at the system. However, books like these also run the risk of losing objectivity due to ideological fervor, in some cases. Aarushi, when seen within this larger trend, appears as a text striving to make a statement by not just telling an untold story but also trying to establish readers' connection with this kind of writing. So while the book bares the futility and the exasperation of a grimly ambitious legal and social system in India, it is also highly conscious of its literary ambitions; at places, the overall tenor of the book approaches Agatha Christie territory. By doing so, Sen walks a tightrope. But Sen is no stranger to this style: even his debut book, Looking For America, took quite a few risks with its all-or-nothing style. It had its share of detractors that criticised it for its alleged sensationalism. The uniqueness of Aarushi lies in engaging with this concern headlong. Sen rebukes the insensitive reportage of the Aarushi murder by most mainstream media houses. And he does it like an old school journalist should: by not offering judgment or analysis but leaving enough cues and facts to build an argument. For instance, the section about the narco-analysis (commonly known as the "lie detector" tests) speaks volumes. "As the story panned out, the Talwars' undisputed presence in the flat that night burdened them with having to not just plead their innocence, but also answer the question 'If you didn't do it, who did?' They did not know. In fact, investigators knew much more than them; the CBI had enough material to, at the very least, form a plausible alternative hypothesis. This is the material they hid from the Talwars, and prevented from being brought on the record in court. This material was gathered by investigators in the months of June and July 2008. They are the reports of the scientific tests on the three servants. A few fragments were leaked in 2008, but once AGL Kaul took over, they were just buried." While chronicling the various gaps in the CBI's final narrative of the case, while explaining the profile of the households which interrogate the case — Talwar's family, relatives and friends, household helps and the government machinery, which ought to help in dire situations — the author all but accomplishes what sociologists and social scientists would aim for in a detailed academic paper. Barring a few editorial overlooks, Aarushi is a highly recommended read. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/the-aarushi-case-receives-a-timely-thrilling-investigation

Many Indias

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/many-indias/article7039316.ece

Indian literature and the short story are literary terms that are highly contested, theorised and yet have shifty definitions. A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces, edited by David Davidar, is an attempt to bring both these literary terms into the lexicon of modern reading. A collection of 39 stories, this book endeavours to chronicle and curate an introduction to the modern Indian short story practice.

The anthology begins with a story by Rabindranath Tagore and ends with one by Kanishk Tharoor — thereby charting the entire course of the modern Indian short story tradition in its temporal reality. In the fairly extensive introduction, Davidar explains the process of shortlisting these 39 stories from the larger oeuvre of the Indian writing tradition.

He talks about the challenges of curating the contents of this ‘clutch’, including problems of claiming stories from the oral to the written form, issues of translation and the loss therein, re-translation of some stories, choosing what to include and what to discard. The introduction is a primary component of the book, before one begins to make sense of the stories and what they are trying to say.

Davidar has carefully picked those Indian stories that have stayed with him through years of reading.

The collection includes popular heavyweights like RK Narayan, Sadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh, the controversial Ismat Chughtai, Amrita Pritam, the budding Kanishk Tharoor, and other writers such as Shashi Tharoor, Upmanyu Chatterjee and Githa Hariharan. This book covers a wide range of literary writing and themes.

While Tagore’s and Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s stories touch upon supernatural experiences, Premchand, Gopinath Mohanty and Anna Bhau Sathe give a glimpse into poverty. UR Ananthamurthy, Vijaydan Detha and Mahasweta Devi speak of the rural, tribal and indigenous experience through their stories. At the same time, Amrita Pritam and Nisha Da Cunha talk of infidelity.

Simultaneously, stories of Ismat Chughtai and Amrita Narayanan give an insight into homosexuality and explore women’s sexuality. Stories like that of Vikram Chandra and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai detail the craft of writing and reveal the delight in expanding an experience into words.

The anthology includes stories that have been translated from numerous Indian languages, including Malayalam, Urdu, Oriya and Marathi apart from, of course, stories written in English.

However, inclusions of literature from the north-east region, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Gujarat would have made the anthology more comprehensive. Nevertheless, with its wide array of themes and the ability to capture the universal struggles within India, the collection serves as a guide to Indian consciousness.

While dealing with supernatural experiences in Tagore’s The Hunger of Stones and Basheer’s The Blue Light, the reader learns how susceptible we can be to hearsay and rumours. In Anita Desai’s Games at Twilight, nostalgia gently runs through a reader’s mind. Similarly, there is an ache and longing for the old world in Sundara Ramaswamy’s Reflowering and the romanticisation of a simple tribal life in Ruskin Bond’s The Blue Umbrella.

Premchand’s The Shroud and Anna Bhau Sathe’s Gold from the Grave, while dealing with issues of poverty and religion, also tell of the starkness between the haves and have-nots. Mahasweta Devi’sDraupadi complicates this struggle by introducing the gender factor into a battle between tribes and the administration. Hari Shankar Parsai’s Inspector Matadeen on the Moon satirises the political and administrative system and launches a scathing attack on corrupt governance in a fictional world through the introduction of police reforms on the moon.

The book is sensitive to the pulse of realism and, at the same time, it offers moments of introspection, romance and nostalgia. Just like India, the book too is eclectic, varied and wide-ranging. Each of the stories is a representation of an Indian reality. Therefore, there are many Indias created in the book — each one unique and different from the others. Each story gives a sense and flavour of its rootedness, which no book of history or anthropology could.

The stories encourage the reader to explore the authors and writings from their respective regions. For example, after reading the Oriya story in the book, a reader will be tempted to read other Oriya writers, such as Tapan Kumar Pradhan’s award-winning Kalahandi.

A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces prises open the entire world for a reader interested in Indian writing. It gives a snapshot into the various worlds India inhabits within it and encourages readers to read more. Davidar’s painstaking curation has the potential of defining India’s literary canon.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/many-indias/article7039316.ece

Tenduf-La gently probes the racism of East & West

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/tenduf-la-gently-probes-the-racism-of-east-a-west

Chhimi Tenduf-La's debut novel The Amazing Racistoffers a straight-up, charming and funny story that is concerned less with intellectual razzle-dazzle than with being intelligent and endearing in its own simple way. A realistic portrayal of how the Sri Lankan society reacts to the socially odd phenomenon of a native and a white foreigner in a relationship, this is a book that glides past your eyes even as it is being supremely witty. Indian readers, in particular, will probably resonate with a lot of it.

The novel explores the intricacies and complications of a mixed marriage between an English man and a Sri Lankan woman. The awkwardness of Eddie, the rebellion of Menaka, the uptight relentlessness of her uncle Thilak; all of them create a reality that is so typically Sri Lankan that one cannot but remember the author's own story. Tenduf-La is half Tibetan and half English. Having married Samantha and stayed in Sri Lanka over the years, the author has had ample opportunity to explore the culture that he manages to reflect in his debut novel. This novel, then, is primarily about Eddie trying to negotiate the space Sri Lanka is; politically, geographically and culturally.

What is striking about the book is the ease with which Tenduf-la makes Sri Lanka available to the reader. As an "outsider" writing about the world he has now made his home, it is interesting to see how he has inverted racism. As a white (or "yellow", as he calls himself in the book) man in Sri Lanka talking about Sri Lankan reality, Chimmi is expected to have a racially superior voice; to try, in a way, to dislodge the white man's burden in a geographically decolonised space. He is expected to romanticise the land, the people and the culture; to give voice to the voiceless, the formerly colonised. What Tenduf-La does superbly is to invert this scenario.

The Amazing Racist is also remarkable because despite having a white narrative voice (Eddie Trusted) who explores an ex- colony through his personalised story, a major chunk of this novel is devoted to the personality of Thilak. Thilak's towering presence and his maneuvering with Eddie's personality to make him a subject of Sri Lankan reality rather than vice versa, strips the entire discourse around colonialism and decolonisation bare and immediately reverts it.

Eddie, trying to digest a spicy Sri Lankan curry or exploring the beauties and culture of Sri Lankan architecture, is the perfect foil to a native Sri Lankan who studies in an English medium school and tries to be as western as possible, so he can make peace with development and the sort of thing that could be considered material success.

A native dominating a white man and asserting racial superiority of the former over the latter is a rare sight. Tenduf-La has achieved this through what one could call "awkward racism". It is this dissection of racism that steers the plot of this novel. However, this novel is also about love and families and how one reacts to familial ties and relationships while trying to assert and safeguard a self-respecting individuality. In that sense, though set up in Sri Lanka, The Amazing Racist is as much a story about Sri Lanka as it is about India or Afghanistan or Iran or any other country or society seeped in cultural nostalgia and the inherent feeling of superiority that comes with cultural chauvinism. The story, thus, has a more universal appeal: it tells us that societies reluctant to shed the baggage of their cultural mores are confusing their obstinacy with ideas of "purity" and "superiority". On the whole, Tenduf-La's book is a delightful read. It is entertaining and meaningful in its portrayal of subtle politics; within families, personal equations and, of course, statecraft. In the words of the author, "The book is a combination of my journey and various people, me included. Certainly the love of my daughter is in that book." Though the book does not delve deep into the war or the other nuances of Sri Lankan politics, it does brush upon questions that have haunted the Sri Lankan reality for so long. In fact, come to think of it, these sporadic comments may well be a trailer to the next book Tenduf-La is working on, which will investigate deeper into the political milieu of Sri Lanka, through its child soldiers. If you are a South Asian reader (if there exists a definite definition of South Asian-ness, that is), this book spells rib-tickling fun. If you're not, you'll still find plenty to chuckle about. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/tenduf-la-gently-probes-the-racism-of-east-a-west

A refreshing take on Karma, the consummate outsider

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/a-refreshing-take-on-karma-the-consummate-outsider

A gynecologist by profession, Sayantan Gupta has written 11 books; eight in English and three in Bangla. The Karna Pages is Gupta's latest, a mythological thriller. Karna, of course, is the unsung hero in the Mahabharata. Here, his story is a subtext to that of an Indologist who learns of a rare ancient manuscript and starts working on translating the same. The book traces this journey of translation and therein retells Karna's story. The choice of genre is not new to Gupta. In his previous novel, The Flames Burnt Dark, too, he chose a mythological theme. Moreover, such classics like Ramdhari Singh's Rashmirathihave, in the past, retold Karna's side of the story. However, what The Karna Pages does well is use the mythological aspects of his plot in the manner of a well-oiled thriller.

The character of Karna, which is primarily what the book is about, is very well fleshed out. The preface to the book gives a much-needed introduction to The Karna Pages. It offers a structured analysis of why the book needed to be written and how the book "got itself written". Karna is represented as a counter, not just to Arjuna (as done in many other novels), but to the entire Pandava clan. This is very much an outsider smack in the middle of two royal clans competing in terms of virtues, valour and riches. And all the while, Karna is depicted as a very human and humane character. Just as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata invoke gods and goddesses in an endeavor to exercise humility, the novel ends with one such invocation. The Krishna-Yudhishthira and Krishna-Karna samvaad play out like a sequence from the age-old tradition ofshastraartha (debate based on the scriptures).

The Karna Pages has the quality of binding the readers, much like a tightly-knit stage performance. The thriller plotline is a hunt involving Max (the aforementioned Indologist) and a mafia that operates to smuggle and sell manuscripts. The parts involving Max and Madhuri (our hero's love interest) read a little bit too much like a movie screenplay, but manage to hold one's interest nevertheless.

All this while, the parallel plot never loses track. Karna's battle, a life-long one for him, shapes up like a massive operatic finale and the reader is gradually drawn into his struggle. One begins to feel Karna's pain, his successes, his decisions and his failures as one's own. Karna's decisions to not participate in the ill deeds of the Kauravas like dragging Draupadi and undressing her in the middle of the Kaurava sabha, his immense self-control in letting Draupadi, the love of his life go even after being called on a meeting with her, define and expand on Karna's virtue in the book; almost tethering the eponymous character to a state of idealism. But the very next moment, the book makes him prone to human weaknesses, so that one maintains the ambiguity that Karna typically provokes. Karna's burning desire, then, to avenge the accident of his destiny, his desire to prove his worth as an archer, his ambition to fight against Arjuna and meet the much hailed "greatest archer of the world" eye-to-eye; all of these are profoundly human impulses.

The book details Karna's interactions with Kunti, his relationship with his wife, the reasons for his discomfort with the Pandava brothers and his nascent, "half-requited" romance with intense and well fleshed-out episodes. The intensity of the Karna-Draupadi meeting, the futility of Bhishma's life, the dialogue between Arjuna and Karna and the poignant war scene where Karna succumbs to death, are brilliant snapshots that work well as standalone bits. It is in these moments that The Karna Pages gains a cinematic quality, something that makes this novel a delightful read.

The Karna Pages is a book recommended for anyone who wants to unravel a hidden layer embedded in the Mahabharata. By choosing a character and his story from the beej kavya(source poem), it is able to patiently go back and forth among the various versions of the epic available, to tell a story. This telling is, in more than one way, similar to the Greek tragic tradition. With a beginning, middle and an end, the bildungsroman in Karna's story is parallel to Max's vocation and his mission to translate the manuscript. This balance is what makes The Karna Pages a unique exercise.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/a-refreshing-take-on-karma-the-consummate-outsider

The queer case of memory ‘in the middle of things’

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/the-queer-case-of-memory-in-the-middle-of-things

Janice Pariat's Seahorse is the second book by the author, following her Sahitya Akademi-winning debut collection Boats on Land. Unfolding the story of a young boy, Nehemiah, in a non-linear narrative, Seahorse interrogates the complex forces of sexuality, art and love; their symbiotic relationship with the lives of its characters. The beauty of this novel lies in its delicate storytelling and the successful experiment it carries out in trying to intersperse various literary forms in this bildungsroman.

Seahorse begins in media res, a decision that reflects how "in the middle of things" is exactly the way a slice of life presents itself. This philosophy is part of a larger avenue of expositions on art, storytelling, life and experiences that Pariat employs frequently in the novel. Right at the outset, the author gives the book a density and depth quite inimical to the popular works — and increasingly, even literary fiction — of the day.

The novel takes the readers on a romantic and deliciously surreal journey built on the act of memorialisation. Through the protagonist Nehemiah, intrigued and torn as he is in the beginning, the novel launches a long journey. With Nehemiah's self-exploratory chase for his lost friend, the novel traverses geographies and nationalities, scuttling from page to page, agreeing to give the readers a detailed insight into Nehemiah's consciousness.

The book heralds a completely new, revolutionary age of writing around LGBT themes. It is concerned with the eternal search for belongingness and love amidst tender moments of self discovery. (The titular story in Boats on Land was also remarkable in striking this balance.) The novel refuses to titillate the readers with graphic details, yet creates a sensual experience made richer by the maturity with which the author goes about her job.

Somewhere in the middle of the novel, Seahorse introduces the eponymous creature in a very symbolic format. In his love — perhaps unrequited — for various people, Nehemiah moves with a slow pace, trying hard to keep up with life. Just like the poor swimmer a seahorse is, Nehemiah struggles to swim with his emotional baggage of loss, longing and desires to own and be owned. In a way, Pariat's book is an ode to the tragic hero, the description of a life where all of us are afflicted and diseased by loss; each one us look for hope — slowly, wearily trudging along each day of our lives. This excerpt from the novel captures this sombre mood aptly:

"The day passed as all others do, with relentless silence. In my room, I worked through my unpacking slowly — a pair of socks in the drawer, a book on the shelf, slippers under the bed — charged not with anger or despair, but faint, lingering anticipation. Something else had to happen, this couldn't be all. This wasn't the end. I'd receive a letter. Nicholas would return. Someone would come knocking on my door, saying there's a phone call. A message. Some sort of sign. An explanation. That night I went to bed in hope."

In long-winded paragraphs of incidents collated from memory, Seahorse attempts to create a pastiche of the modern-day novel's memory mischief. It has the art of absorbing new layers into the main story (like Myra's) as if they were always a part of the larger plan (which, of course, they were). This organic assimilation and unity of seemingly separate lives, is no mean feat for a novelist. All the while, Pariat's felicity with form shines through. Each literary style that she utilises, she excels in; stream-of-consciousness, detective fiction, poetry, free verse. My personal favourites, however, are the passages where Pariat slips into pure stream-of-consciousness mode.

"At first, I was gripped by nothing less than wild exhilaration. The clutch of excitement at inexplicably arbitrary times. While paying for oranges at Tesco's, or waiting to cross the street. Questions hastening like small sharp arrows — Why? How? What did he mean? What would happen now? And then it faded. The note transformed into a paperweight. While I wasn't looking, it changed shape. We are perpetually chained. Compelled to want and not want. To conclude and leave incomplete. Eventually, the note conjured annoyance. Somehow, even a trace of fear. By meeting Nicholas at the concert, I'd finally acquire what was called a verifiable outcome. It could be changed from the poetic to the quotidian. The lushly imagined to disappointingly real. There would be a continuation. Possibly even an ending. Quod erat demonstrandum."

The follow-up is always a writer's most perilous moment. If your debut effort sank without a trace, the pressure is on: another failure and your confidence will hit rock bottom. If your debut was super-successful (like Pariat), the expectations are that much more unrealistic.

Seahorse is as worthy a follow-up as Pariat could have hoped for, and a cracking read.

Mirza Waheed’s ‘The Book of Gold Leaves'

Mirza Waheed’s The Book of Gold Leaves is the second novel by the author. Both of his works – The Collaborator and The Book of Gold Leaves – retell the story of Kashmir. However, the architecture of the re-memorizing of Kashmir is different in both.

The Book of Gold Leaves is a novel with the skeleton of a love story . While a passionate romance blossoms between Roohi, the sunni heroine and Faiz, the Shia paper machie artist – and perhaps the protagonist, on this skeleton, Mirza creates his art. He retells the story of Kashmir in the 1990s and recounts, through the personal narratives of Roohi, Faiz, Farhat, Khan Sahab, Mr. Koul, a tale of sorrow and pain that Kashmir was forced to become. Sometimes, in the middle of the novel, one would actually be forced to ask – is Kashmir the protagonist in this book?

Mirza questions the Manichean dualities of propaganda and ‘truth’ by incorporating voices and stories that are shouted, muted, heard and discarded. The sheer intensity with which each episode and event in the lives of the  two main characters unfold, makes the novel a clenched fist for any reader. One just does not want to let go till the tension eases and some nerves are frayed. It is this overwhelming feeling that makes this book so deeply political and passionately poetic at the same time.

While Mir Zafar’s household, Khan Sahab’s household recount the horrors of those who stayed in the valley, Professor Koul’s story resurrects, albeit in minority, of those who left. Perhaps, the author should have fleshed out a lot more on the Kashmiri pundits fleeing the valley. Perhaps, because the beautiful craft increases the expectation of a reader, the novel could have taken a step further and talked about the struggles of a pundit in a little more detail. However,  in conversations between Professor Koul and the army officer, Mirza narrates the futility of the word ‘choice’. Later, as the novel progresses and Faiz gets irrevocably sucked in by the ‘other’ side of Kashmir, ‘choice’ seems more as a mockery than anything else. It is then that perhaps one would want to forgive Mirza and redeem him of a slightly unfinished, left-out retelling.

What is absolutely striking about the novel is that while Mirza navigates through the tough historical realities of the 1990s Kashmir, he never loses perspective of a Kashmiri tale. The culture, art, way of life, geography, society, human interactions and beauty of the valley is explained and recreated as beautifully as a painting.

By showing a rebellious love affair solemnized, albeit silently – in the bonds of matrimony – between two radical Muslim groups, by portraying women smoking with men, by etching that fraught landscape when Roohi walks right in the middle of the sanctum, prohibited for women, in the full glare of male eyes, Mirza does something that is difficult to articulate in words and too poignant to just let it seep in sans expression.

It is this ethereal and dream like – yet real – quality of Mirza’s book, that makes it so political and so literary at the same time.

The dreamy ideal of ‘falaknuma’ that Faiz always wanted to paint is the ideal that brings in hope each time it begins to escape the reader. While with themujahids and familiarizing himself with guns and bombs, Faiz thinks offalaknuma, while his half painting punctuates Farhat’s, Faiz’s sister’s life, in his absence – the painting, this art, this half, unfinished project – makes the journey for the reader a little hopeful, as if in a dark tunnel guided by that one sliver of faint light. Falaknuma becomes symptomatic of the hope that allows one to wade through the violent history and the traps of ‘zaal’ that the novel talks about.

The Book of Gold Leaves has all the makings of a literary artefact. The nuances of the tale, the making of the teller, the layers and layers of said and unsaid and the equally silent layers of half muted histories and stories are what make this book a must read for anyone who wants to understand Kashmir in totality. It is one of those unputdownable emotional tales which come with an unfinished project like that of Kashmir.

Will the pundits return? Will those who died and picked up arms fulfil their individual falaknumas? Will ‘the book of gold leaves’ preserve all that needs to be chronicled and painted and created – with the same delicacy as perhaps the book, how Mirza has done?

You might not get all the answers, but this book overwhelms with the very idea that there is are infinite possibilities in questions.

Amit Chaudhuri’s ‘Odysseus Abroad’- Review

Ananda is an aspiring poet and a young college going student in London. Ananda’s uncle, Rangamama, is an early, retired bachelor who lives-off a comfortable pension at Belsize Park. Both are bound in a relationship barely happy and far from perfect but simultaneously, necessary for both of them. In his recent book, Odysseus Abroad, Amit Chaudhuri, narrates the story of these two characters spread across a day in London.

The immigrant experience of Indians in London; the sense of un-belongingness in a by and large alien place – its alien-ness amplified by cultural and sensibility barriers, the strong desire and need to claim a certain sense of belongingness in that space and the struggle punctuating this existential exercise; form the thematic thread of Amit Chaudhuri’s recent book. The plot centers around a day in the lives of these two characters – Ananda and Rangamama – where they meet, they brood, they discuss, they talk, they eat and they part ways. Between this apparently  mundane and ordinary tale lies Chaudhuri’s craft of story telling, interspersed with the literary brilliance of mastering the Proustian moment.

The book is an exploration of various themes – literary and otherwise – narrated in a third person’s voice but beautifully capturing the mind of its protagonist, Ananda, as if the tale unfolds from his pen. The novel goes back and forth in time capturing moments from the past and jolting the rhythm with the present flow of events.

A typical Bengali middle class family’s product, Rangamama – with signature stereotypes of love for a certain kind of food, certain kind of literature, certain way of life – is pitted against the character of Ananda who wants to own and belong to all these but do much more – immortalise himself as a poet in a slightly Anglicized sense though conscious and proud of his past and ‘real’ belongingness, at the same time.

Besides this layer in the narrative, which opens to us during the various events of day this novel unfolds, is also another layer of story – that of Rangamama’s predicament – the life of an eccentric bachelor who loves and dotes on Rabindranath Tagore’s legacy and Bengali music and is reluctant to move out of his created shell of specific traits, peculiar habits and typical tastes. He reveals himself as someone who does not like change in any form, especially if it means dragging himself out of his comfort zone and limits of convenience. In a struggle to maintain a stable and loving  relationship with his sister, Ananda’s mother, his brother-in-law, Ananda’s father, his brother and others, Rangamama’s life unfolds as a lonely man’s life devoid of real and sustaining relationships and well, marred by his idiosyncratic beliefs(like not to have sex to prevent yourself from catching syphilis).

Apart from the depth Odysseus Abroad achieves in detailing the plot and interacting with existential and real themes, the literary brilliance lies in the craft of story telling. Cutting across the over-hyped incandescence and trap of using first person narration in unfolding the mysteries of mind, Chaudhuri has married Woolf’s and Proust’s brilliance by staying with a third person narrative form but crafting a detailed and focused prose using stream of consciousness style to capture a very small moment of time in its detailed dissection over leaps in memories, opinions and remembrances.

The literary richness of the novel is defined by various influences of, references to, comparisons between and expositions on classical literary texts and milestones.

Chaudhuri’s latest book is indeed his best, by far, as commented by many.

Family matters and the unreliable maps of memory

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/family-matters-and-the-unreliable-maps-of-memory

Ira Singh's The Surveyor is a coming-of-age narrative trying to negotiate the realities of a recently decolonised nation. Weaving a panoramic view of social, political, literary and personal histories of the mid-20th century India through the characters of Ravinder and his daughter Natasha, Singh tries to grapple with the contradictions and binaries overriding generational shifts in the novel.

Ravinder joins the Survey of India as a cartographer at the historical junction of India's independence and the subcontinent's partition in 1947. Much against the wishes of his father, Ravinder marries an Anglo-Indian, Jennifer Robbins, and is blessed with two daughters, Anushka and Natasha. Natasha, the protagonist of The Surveyor, inherits the passion for cartography and reading from her father, Ravinder. In The Surveyor, she creates a cinematic portrait of her life, from households scattered in small towns, to the larger world of the city. The novel in that sense is Natasha's cartographic exploration of freedom and a search for her identity.

The almost sombre existential questions in the worlds of Ravinder's parents, Ravinder and Natasha, are negotiated in violently contradictory fashions. There is a fiercely savage grip on tradition and religion on the part of Ravinder's parents, Ravinder's own absolute rejection of ritualistic tradition and unstinting love for cartography and finally, a calmness shown by Natasha as she makes her peace with the bits and pieces of these previous lives that she encounters. And through the novel, one begins to gradually align oneself with the natural simplicity of being.

Memory and the act of surveying, remembering and chronicling form the essence of the book, in terms of plot, structure and form. A free narrative shift of physical location from Punjab to Dehradun to Delhi is akin to cartographic curating. It denotes moving on as a snap from one world to the other. Indeed, the strength of the narration lies in the organic tectonic shifts that Natasha's story takes. While lost in the rich dream-like narrative sequence of Dehradun and its hills, a reader reaches the end of a chapter. The very next moment, a chapter starts off in an upmarket Delhi space, jolting the reader as it quickly absorbs her into its enchanting fold. From one chapter to the other, one feels the narrative sliding away into wistful pasts, transporting the readers into a world of sharp images and moments punctuated by elegiac pangs.

The moments of lengthy, lisping almost relaxed recounting of details — as simple as remembering the almost forgotten Cherry Blossom shoe polish and Pears soap — have the ability to transport a reader to the real world of lost fantasies and memories fast fading into oblivion. The Coleridgean Kubla Khan experience of imagining and feeling a part of that makeshift dream which The Surveyor creates is so sensuous, delightful and rich that one genuinely wants that imagery to continue — without even a punctuation marring the effect.

Long, well knit, carefully carved and chiseled phrases and sentences mark the length and breadth of the novel. The preciseness of each word, the force of each phrase and the sensibility of each sentence is indicative of a careful craft.

Perhaps it's the conscious decision of the author to use memory as a trope to interrogate various themes. Memory builds up the story. Memory constructs characters. Memory conjures up historical and political details of Emergency years. Memory constructs and deconstructs the larger notions of nation formation, re-formation and deformation. This flirtation with memory glosses over a few important details of events in history, but one can see that this is mostly by design.

The novel could have said a little more about the time it encapsulates. Just as each character in the novel is well rounded and well formed, so could each moment in history and politics have been crafted. Perhaps, that is the limitation of memory or this kind of memorisation. Through cartography, memory, fleeting landscapes, polyphonic voices and a language rich in historical allegory, The Surveyor provides a dream-like experience. But like a lot of dreams, it also ends up being vague at certain places.

Dreamy, brimming with lingering memories, intense, rich and fleetingly sensuous, Ira Singh'sThe Surveyor is a recommendation for anyone who lives life with simplicity, honesty and adaptability. It's a book that seeks resonance in (and provides nourishment to) all those who search for their identities in their homes, families, work, solitude, desire and freedom. Ultimately, though, it's also about the price one pays for these things.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/family-matters-and-the-unreliable-maps-of-memory