Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

I wish I’d read (or heard since I listened to the audiobook) Waiting for Godot sooner. It isn’t mere embellishment that it’s considered one of the twentieth century’s greatest plays. Vladimir and Estragon, perhaps tramps or travellers (we can’t be sure), are waiting under a tree in some wasteland for someone named Godot. Although they claim to know him, they seem to know little about him but his name, even that they become unsure of in the second act. The relationship between Vladimir and Estragon is peculiar, perhaps sexual. They call each other Didi and Gogo and bicker in an altogether domestic manner. After one such bout, Estragon offers reconciliation 

“You're angry? (Silence. Step forward). Forgive me. (Silence. Step forward. Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir's shoulder.) Come, Didi. (Silence.) Give me your hand. (Vladimir half turns.) Embrace me! (Vladimir stiffens.) Don't be stubborn! (Vladimir softens. They embrace...).” 

But this is an absurdist masterpiece so the affection professed quickly dissolves into disgust as Estragon recoils and says “You stink of garlic!” 

They are intensely bored and they try everything possible to pass the time including contemplating suicide. At one point, Estragon suggests that they contradict each other to kill time. 

Estragon: You think all the same. 
Vladimir: No no, it's impossible. 
Estragon: That's the idea, let's contradict each another. 
Vladimir: Impossible

A classic example of the intricate semantic play Beckett populates Waiting for Godot with. Just as Vladimir refuses to accept the premise of the game, he contradicts Estragon, thereby playing into its rules. Towards the end of act 1 when Godot sends word that he wouldn’t be able to come but would surely come the next day, we realise that this routine has been repeated infinitely.  

Estragon: Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.

It’s strange that they should shackle themselves to waiting for Godot as if there were no other choice and yet it would seem that waiting for Godot is in itself a choice. One that they limit themselves endlessly and when faced with option of doing something else: 

Vladimir: Well? What do we do?
Estragon: Don't let's do anything. It's safer.

They try to assert that doing nothing at all is safer, that “if you never act, you can never act wrongly, and if you never choose, you can never choose incorrectly.” But, in fact, they choose by not choosing and nothing is as dangerous as doing something. And where possible, they shift responsibility of choice on another: 

Vladimir: We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes. 
Estragon: And if he comes? 
Vladimir: We'll be saved. 

By eliminating the onus of choice from oneself and heaping it on another, Vladimir escapes the responsibility of dealing with his own future.  

In presenting dialogue which often makes no sense at all, Beckett gives us a work that is startlingly and profoundly full of meaning. The play is minimalist such that there’s room for a range of interpretations from humanity’s relationship with God to psychological and philosophical themes. I don’t have to skill to analyse Waiting for Godot beyond my own personal reflections on it. It seemed to offer me a motif for my own life, about choice, inaction and fate. But, perhaps making sense from the absurd is meant to be a private act and we infer different meanings from the play because we are all waiting for our own Godots.  

You can read Waiting for Godot online here.   

Kraken by China Miéville

“Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep the Kraken sleepeth.”

Miéville’s latest offering could be a detour of sorts from Tennyson’s famous sonnet. Billy Harrow, a museum curator in London, helps preserve the carcass of a specimen of an Architeuthis dux, a bottom dwelling giant squid. On a routine tour where he chaperones nerdy boys and cultists around preserved cadavers, the squid vanishes. This event plunges Billy headlong into a London he didn’t know existed. He’s questioned by an outlandish cell of the Metropolitan Police who suspect a squid cult called the Church of the God Kraken to be responsible. Whilst Billy ponders over the events of the preceding days with his pal Leon at home, a man and a boy in a suit emerge from a small brown package, eating Leon and spiriting Billy away. Goss and Subby, centuries old, unchanging in their criminal ways, are in the pay of a crimarch, the Tattoo – an animated ink figurine on the back of an unwilling host. The Tattoo wants the kraken and thinks Billy knows where it is. Just as Billy is about to be dismembered in the Tattoo’s workshop, he’s rescued by Dane, a boorish guard from the museum who turns out to be a Krakenist. The Krakenists believe Billy to be some sort of Messiah and this is where things start going horribly pear shaped for our spectacled hero as he is compelled to confront cults and creatures, each more bizarre than the last; Chaos Nazis, Jesus Buddhists, loonies who worship a pole cat, Fist Men, Gun Farmers, Londonmancers who predict the future by reading the entrails of the city and the list is endless. Through all of this, Billy and Dane must race to find the Kraken and stop the world from the ending and stop whoever’s put these actions into motion.  

When I started reading Kraken earlier this week, I couldn’t put it down. I thought about it all day whilst working on some mindless presentations at work. I have always been a clandestine fan of Architeuthis dux, in fact I am even more enamoured by its larger cousin Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid and can remember being very excited when they captured a live one off New Zealand in 2007. I must admit though that Architeuthis does look cooler with its otherworldly tentacles, like an alien or even a god (I can completely empathise with the Krakenists)! My daggy preoccupations aside, as exciting as Kraken is with Miéville’s ever more fantastical creations crowded into this book’s voluminous pages, the intensity and density of his ideas are also his greatest drawbacks. Listen to this: 

“Bad for whom? Mutation saves, apparently.” Perhaps it was because of the careful grooming husbandry necessary for a flintlock, that fussy lead-barking animal; perhaps repressed resentment at life: whatever, it became only their firearms they made alive, in quieter, less motile ways—what weapons they wielded became selfish-gene machines. “The bullets are gun-eggs,” Collingswood said to Baron, looking at Vardy. Farmers squeezing their holy metal beasts to percussive climax, fertilisation by cordite expulsion, violent ovipositors. Seeking warm places full of nutrients, protecting baby guns deep in the bone cages, until they hatched. “What I never got’s why all that makes them all badass.

I’m as flummoxed as you and that despite having read what came before. You’d be overwhelmed if you were to read Kraken in one sitting and it’s a challenge to be attentive when you read it over many days or weeks. There’s just too much and like a giant squid lunging at its prey with its hunting arms, the ideas and characters hurtle at you at break neck speed, delivered into your brain chaotically in London dialect. It’s hard to keep up. Still, this is after all Miéville, and he's not about to yield to convention simply because readers find it hard to keep up. “It’s ain’t my fucking fault you’re so slow, yer bloody wank toaster”, could possibly be his retort.

 

You can read my earlier posts on Miéville' books at the following links: 

• Un Lun Dun
• Iron Council
• The Scar
• Perdido Street Station

The Wind From the Hills by Sethu

The Wind from the Hills was first published in Malayalam as Niyogam which I am told loosely translates as fate. Despite being a relatively new publishing house, Tranquebar seems to be doing a good job in bringing non-English Indian fiction to a wider audience. Sethu is apparently celebrated as a writer of some repute in his native Kerala and his novel Pandavapuram is described as path-breaking.  

In The Wind from the Hills, Kamalakshi and her husband Damodaran live in a small village in Kerala. The time frame is not mentioned but is perhaps sometime in the first half of the 20th century. After being childless for many years, Kamalakshi gives birth to a large and ugly child, Viswam, who bears no resemblance to his father. Her own explanation for it is that the wind from the hills violated her and planted in her its seed. A few years later, she delivers another boy, a handsome comely child named Santhan who seems nothing like his unremarkable father. Turning a blind ear to village gossip about her morals, Kamalakshi dotes on her children, particularly Viswam, fast becoming the village bully, on who she bestows excessive affection. She coddles them from their father who she accuses of wanting to give her boys the evil eye. This strange situation plays out over many years as each of the characters becomes increasingly distant, none more so than Damodaran who passes a decade contemplating whether he has fathered his supposed progeny. An outsider, a woman named Ammuedathi moves into the village, buying and renovating a house in which she lives alone, an act unheard of amongst the villagers. She and Viswam strike an odd friendship, where filial threads intersect with blades of lust. Suddenly, the story which has up till this point, been sluggish at best comes to a fatalistic end. 

I don’t know what to make of this book. The book’s blurb celebrates its lyricism and non-realistic narrative. If those qualities are the novel’s hallmarks, then I am afraid it was a poor show. There’s nothing exceptional about Sethu’s writing or perhaps his genius is lost in translation. But, there is something remarkable about the story. I just can’t seem to put my finger on it. I think it’s because it defies conventions of story-telling that we are habituated to. Far be it from me to praise magical realism, but there is a strangely hypnotic element in the narrative. I believe that this is a book that not many will enjoy. An acquaintance once watched an Adoor Gopalakrishnan film and remarked “was that meant to be movie?” You could substitute the word movie for book to reflect what could be general sentiment about The Wind from the Hills and that’s a pity because there’s oddly something to this book.  

Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

I own (except one which I lent to someone and I can’t ask for it to be returned) and have enjoyed all  of Dalrymple’s books. But, one grievance that I have always held against him is his limited interest (Islamic India) and hence the limited, but by no means biased, view (Islamic history) of India represented in his books. The White Mughals and the Last Mughal were overwhelming, rapturous and all sorts of other associated synonyms. But, I couldn’t help feeling a little let down that his intense, scholarly but affable writing hadn’t covered India beyond his pet subject (except for that dreadful documentary ‘The Matted Locks of Shiva’). I read somewhere that many people had voiced similar complaints to him and Nine Lives was his response.  

Dalrymple marches across the green, brown and blue of our land and finds in obscure corners, nine individuals who he interviews and presents as nine short non-fictional stories. Nine Lives is very different from his earlier work. There is no dense research, asides or commentary. There’s none of his wry and characteristic humour. In his introduction, he commits to letting his stories and the individuals who told them speak directly to the readers. And besides setting some context, he doesn’t renege on this promise.

The stories are deeply affecting and at times distressing. A Jain nun in Sravanabelagola describes how her companion, another nun, starved herself to death in a ritualised fast called sallekhana. She is torn between grieving for the loss of her friend and shame about feeling this emotion because her faith asks her to control and overcome attachment which tethers the soul to this world. When Dalrymple paraphrases sallekhana as suicide:

“No, no: sallekhana is not suicide,” she said emphatically. “It is quite different. Suicide is a great sin, the result of despair. But sallekhana is a triumph over death, an expression of hope.” 

“I don’t understand,” I said. “If you starve yourself to death, then surely you are committing suicide?” 

“Not at all. We believe that death is not the end, and that life and death are complementary. So when you embrace sallekhana you are embracing a whole new life — it’s no more than going through from one room to another.”

Hari Das, a dalit from Northern Kerala digs wells during the week and works at a prison at the weekend. But, for two months of the year, he is transformed through the ritualised art-form of Theyyam into a divinity. Once he wears the make-up and headdress, he becomes the Goddess Chamundi. High caste villagers who wouldn’t let him enter their houses during the rest of the year, fall at his feet in supplication and seek his benediction.  

The story of Rani Bai, a devadasi, dedicated to the Goddess Yellamma as a child and pressed into prostitution at puberty is particularly moving. Despite her anger at her own parents for putting her up for sale, she dedicates both her daughters. When Dalrymple questions her, she responds “I didn’t like it... but there was no alternative.” Both daughters died of AIDS, one was 15 and the other was 17. Nevertheless, it would appear as if Rani Bai is making a break in the fatalistic cycle the devadasis are caught in. She had saved enough money and bought herself some land and livestock. She tells Dalrymple that she plans to retire soon. We are buoyed by her optimism and pragmatism. A conversation with an NGO worker however reveals a different picture. Rani Bai is HIV positive. “Either way it’s highly unlikely she’ll ever retire to that farm... it’s the same as her daughters. It’s too late to save her.” 

Even though the central characters of each of these stories recount their lives at their own pace if not languidly, once senses an urgency in Dalrymple’s writing. An urgency to capture what has been lost elsewhere in the world and only now fraying in India, for long the repository of the old. The storytellers know this and each is witness to different pressures. Lal Peri Mastani (the ecstatic red fairy), the fat female Sufi dances joyously at the tomb of the Lal Shabaz Qalandar at Sehwan in Sindh, a shrine of syncretic worship in what was once an ancient cult centre of Shiva. But as Islam in Pakistan is being scrubbed clean of its heterodox practices, of its Hinduness, even Sehwan is not stranger to Wahabi style madrassas. The maulana of one such school admits that the destruction of the Sufi shrines and tombs including the one at Sehwan is a religious duty. 

On the other side of India, Manisha Ma Bhairavi, a tantric yogini who lives with her companions on a charnel ground (drinking from and offering food to skulls) faces the pressures of modernity and compulsion to assimilate and accept conventional forms of Hindu practice. Mohan Bhopa, a Rajasthani hereditary minstrel of a medieval poem, The Tale of Pabuji, whose greatest obstacles include television, changing lifestyles and its related retrenchment of minor gods (like the god who took care of herders). But it is Srikanda Stapthy who summarises change most poignantly. Srikanda, a sculptor of bronze images of gods and goddesses comes from an unbroken 700 year old line of craftsmen from a special Brahmin claim ordained to create the idols worshipped in Tamil temples. He bemoans his son’s interest in computers and the uncertain future of his ancient craft. “It’s all a part of the world opening up. After all, as my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I might want otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster.” 
  
To some it may seem as if Dalrymple has collected a bunch of freaks, little representative of the buoyant India that is portrayed everywhere. But I think Dalrymple in his own strange way has captured and bottled a whiff of the real India. The India of paradoxes, irony, tragedy, deviancy, eccentricity and above all, a curious sort of splendour. 

A Gamine's Got my Ear

I am astonished to find that my French hasn't degenerated to the point of solely greetings and other trivial words.  When I spotted this album cover, I knew that gamine meant lass.  Didn't have to ponder, dig into the recesses of my schemata; the word was just there ready for cognition.  It was a  portent.  I had to get myself this album despite its completely unappetising cover and I am so glad I did.  Chic Gamine are a Canadian band formed by 4 girls (Alexa, Arianne, Annick & Andrina) whose names all coincidentally start with A and one bloke, Sacha.  It's hard to categorise their music.  They sing in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.   Some of the songs aren't accompanied by any instruments, only the whoops and wheezes of the girls. Others like the beautifully baroque Juste un Moment have minimalist arrangements, mostly percussion.   Absolutely brilliant! 

Anjali Joseph

After being terribly irked by Pachauri's erotic spiritual odyssey, I went online to see if most people felt the same way as me. That's how I found Anjali Joseph's TOI review on the book. Yesterday, I was reading this fortnight's TimeOut Mumbai, when I happened upon a full page article on Anjali Joseph and her recently released first novel Saraswati Park, a tale of middle class existence in suburban Bombay. Her review of Return to Almora aside, Saraswati Park sounds pretty interesting and dare I say, competent. But, reviews at the end of the day are only reviews. Likewise with awards (Anjali has got herself into the Telegraph's list of best novellists under 40). The proof of the pudding is in the reading. Incidentally, Anjali recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia; the creating writing degree path seems to be what every one's taking these days to get published.

You can read the Timeout Review of Saraswati Park here.

Post.script: You can read my thoughts on Saraswati Park here. 

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

The strange thing about Murakami is that his novels start amateurishly and build themselves into something that is simultaneously mundane, unexpected and wholly sophisticated. There’s nothing remarkable about the story of Hajime who grows up in a middle class non-descript Japanese town and has a sweetheart named Shimamoto who’s got a limp from a childhood bout of polio. Hajime moves away and makes no effort to contact his friend. Years pass and he’s in his mid-thirties running a jazz bar in Tokyo. He’s contentedly married with two children. And then, Shimamoto happens to come to his bar after reading a review in a local magazine. She’s cryptic about what she’s been up to all these years. All he finds out is that her father is dead and that she no longer speaks to her mother. She wears expensive clothes, a surgery has fixed her limp and she claims never to have worked a single day. She visits the bar sporadically and sometimes she disappears for long periods of time. Hajime does not ask why and what because he knows he won’t get a response.  

Out of the blue, Shimamoto asks him to accompany her to a river near the Sea of Japan. He arranges it as a day trip so as not to arouse his wife’s suspicions. At the frozen river, Shimamoto empties the ashes of her dead baby from an urn. Her sporadic visits continue but she does not yield until one night she agrees to accompany him to his cottage in the resort town of Hakone. On the way there, she tells him “When I look at you driving, sometimes I want to grab the steering wheel and give it a yank. It would kill us, wouldn’t it?” At the cottage, she asks him “Are you sure you want to throw away everything for my sake?” She questions his affirmation, “But if you’d never met me, you could have had a peaceful life. With no doubts or dissatisfactions.” Hajime does not relent and they make love for the very first time in the 25 odd years that they’ve known each other. In the morning, Hajime wakes to find Shimamoto gone.  

Could they only have been together in death, is that what she meant? And by leaving, did she give up the surety of happiness or death for Hajime’s own good? We’ll never know because Murakami doesn’t explain. He isn’t that sort of a writer. I like Murakami. His plots are deceptively simple. They draw you into a construct with its own rules where ordinary becomes extraordinary. Distant and yet stirring.  

The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha

A nameless man receives a phone call from the police who inform him that his long estranged sister is dead. She has delivered a baby girl who they entrust to him for the night before she can be given up for adoption. As the baby sleeps on the linen that is the book’s namesake, the man writes to her about his memories. He savours the time he spent with his sister on the blue bedspread and their illicit intimacy. But, not all of his reminiscences are pleasant such as his father who sexually abuses both him and his sister. And there are other stories which seem detached from the main narrative. But, you can’t really be sure, Jha’s writing is so moody, dreamlike and Spartan that there’s no certitude of whether what you’re reading is congruent to its preceding chapters or whether you have lost the thread of the narrative in the ethereal prose.  

It’s an artfully written book. But like a lot of art, it reflects a high degree of self-consciousness. I don’t know if I am using the phrase correctly but I reckon that self-awareness is different from self-consciousness. A self-aware writer is one who is deeply in touch with the characters she has created, with the world she has fashioned and the thoughts that form her work’s themes. A self-aware writer acknowledges the parts of her being and life which are hidden, unpleasant and traumatic. She draws on these parts of herself to write and you identify this in the honesty and unpretentiousness of her writing. A self-conscious writer pens down words he knows will impress, which are poetic perhaps only for receiving accolades for their poetry. There’s beauty but no authenticity in that kind of writing. And despite its discomforting subject matter which in the hands of another writer may take on a different sort of poignancy, The Blue Bedspread leaves you feeling cold and impassive. Perhaps, this is what Jha intended.  

I-Day Rangoli

The office boys did a really good job with this year' s Independence Day Rangoli.

Return to Almora by R.K. Pachauri

When I find that a book is poorly written, I can be somewhat caustic when I review it. But, on the whole I am not intrinsically evil. Sometimes after I post a review, I feel a little guilty about attacking a writer or a book like poor Kankana Basu and her ridiculous novel Cappuccino Dusk about whom and which I wrote some pretty nasty stuff. A week later, I regretted what I wrote. I recalled the words of Amy Tan “mature writers know that mean spiritedness is wearying and limited in its one dimensional point of view.” So, I amended my post... slightly.

But, here I am trying to be Bodhisattva-like in dispensing compassion and along comes an opportunity for raw castigation that I just can’t pass up on. Return to Almora is – I apologise for my crassness but no other word can covey my sentiment more effectively – fucking pathetic.

Pachauri, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for his work on climate change in 2007 has apparently written many books but this is his first work of fiction and what a work it is. Evidently, Pachauri (who turns 70 next week) is one horny old man. I could still persevere through the terribly stilted writing but oh man I didn’t have the willpower to make it through the sex scenes, surely drawn from the author’s personal repertoire of fantasies like kissing someone with a mouth full of the sweet taste of jalebis. The story is so dull that I can summarise it in just a sentence – a sexual cum spiritual (no pun intended) journey of an Indian returning to his roots in Uttarakhand.

Pachauri has obviously written this piece of drivel for his friends in the west because he stops the narrative midway to explain who Shiva and Parvati are and highlights native words in italics since the book brims with the pseudo-spiritual. You half expect to come across commentary that tells readers how the organ of the Indian male waxes and wanes with the moon and is at its most potent during purnima, which is what the full moon is known as, when the member is washed in saffron water and holy basil. I read about a hundred pages before I started skimming. On page 179, I said to myself, “must go on, must finish this crap” but I just couldn’t do it. I am very pleased to report that I prematurely, well let me report it in Pachauri’s own words “He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts. He felt very excited, but wanted to enjoy exploring her body, before he attempted to enter her. But, suddenly, it was all over. The excitement got the better of him, even before he could get started.”

No prizes for guessing that Return to Almora gets a thumbs-up from that most despicable Indian institution, the media. The Times of India’s Anjali Joseph notes “Pachauri is engagingly candid about his protagonist's urges; Sanjay is always noticing breasts and masturbating (once into a red silk hanky purloined from a train co-passenger.” But, that doesn’t stop Ms. Joseph from concluding that the novel is in fact a spiritual pot boiler (She also remarks that “the subplot of Sanjay's sexual life, at first solitary, then involving other people, provides rich and frequent diversion”). I wonder how much Pachauri’s publisher paid The Times to get this ambiguously glowing review.

There’s one thing Mr. Pachauri can be sure of though, his scenes of the carnal aren’t about to melt any glaciers.

You can read the mindless review from The Times of India here.

A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities by J.C. McKeown

We are always told that we owe much to the Romans from legislation to plumbing. But beyond their contributions to civilisation, the Romans were seriously debauched and pretty friggin weird. So, a book that catalogues their oddities has to be at least mildly entertaining, a conjecture that A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities fulfils. The book orders different facts into chapters with titles like Family Life, Slaves and Decadence. Under Medicine, we discover that Pliny in Natural History recommends “touching the nostrils of a she-mule with one’s lips” to arrest sneezing and hiccoughs. He also suggests that “if a person whispers in a donkey’s ear that he has been stung by a scorpion, the affliction is immediately transferred to the donkey.” Interestingly, there are many cures for common ailments which involve the use of a donkey. I wonder if this is the origin of the phrase ‘to make an ass out of someone’.  

In the enlightening section on Toilets, we find out that toilet going was a communal affair and twenty five seat latrinae were commonplace and many latrines could seat up to 80 people. “Public toilets had a social function quite alien to modern life. Martial (a Roman poet) teases an acquaintance for sitting around there all day in the hope of cadging an invitation to dinner.” In Ostia, the ancient port of Rome, gravestones were ironically reused as toilet seats in latrinae. This was ironic because the “standard inscriptions on gravestones implore or threaten those who might disturb the sanctity of the grave: 
Anyone who pisses or shits here, may the gods above and the gods below be angry with him.
Stranger, my bones beg you not to piss at my grave. If you want to be nicer, have a shit. This is the grave of Urtica (“Nettle”). Go away, shitter! It’s not safe to expose your ass here.”

The subject of excrement was at the very top of people’s minds since it was routine for the inhabitants of insulae (Roman apartment blocks) to empty their chamber pots from their windows. Also, going by this bit of frequently appearing graffiti from Pompei, the Romans must have suffered from the indignities of a lack of toilets (which by the way reeks of a similar problem in my own backyard); “the warning cacator, cave malum (Shitter, watch out!). How absolutely riveting that we continue to use the Latin word, caca, for shit! But even in the faecal realm, the Latin poets are able to weave magic with words. “In his parodic account of the deification of the stuttering emperor Claudius, Seneca says of him: After he had made rather a loud noise from that part of his body with which he expressed himself more readily, his last words among mortals were “Oh, dear me, I think I’ve made a mess of myself ” (vae me, puto, concacavi me). I don’t know if he actually did so, but he certainly made a mess of everything else (omnia certe concacavi).”

Intriguing as these facts are, they tend to get a little dull because they have been collected and published in a dry, encyclopaedic manner sans a narrative thread. At the end of the day, it’s just a book of facts and quotes and McKeown could have done much more with the material. The Romans were pretty impressed by people who could fittingly render classical quotes contextually so much so that one Patrician who couldn’t for the life of him memorise a single quote had a bunch of slaves commit to memory the works of famous poets and orators so that they could cue him at appropriate moments. So, it’s only fitting that I too end with a quote I particularly enjoyed from the book. In fact two quotes, one divine and one profane.

It is convenient that the gods should exist, and, since it is convenient, let’s suppose that they do exist. Ovid in The Art of Love
When your slave’s cock and your ass are sore, Naevolus, I’m no clairvoyant, but I know what you’re doing. An Epigram by Martial. 

Latrinae Publicae at Ostia

I am in love... with Cesaria Evora

This past week, the strangely hypnotic voice of Cesaria Evora has been making my commutes a little more bearable.   They call her the barefoot diva because that's how she prefers to sing.  She comes from a place that's marked by penury in all things but music.  Cape Verde is a group of small arid islands off the coast of West Africa.  Cesaria Evora wasn't discovered until the late 80s when she was almost 50.  But, in no time, she became a legend.  Her manner of singing is a folk style from her home islands called Morna (cognate with the English word mourn).  The songs are in Portuguese or in a local creole.  But, you don't need to understand the lyrics to hear the nostalgia, suffering, joy and love in her voice.   The more I listen to her, the more I feel I haven't listened enough.  The sodade (longing) that marks her songs is contagious.  

My Friend Sancho by Amit Varma

Even if you are determined to write a novel for mass consumption in an Indian context; even if you have no hang-ups about eliding the term ‘literary’ from descriptions of your book; and even if you have no delusions about your work provoking profound comments from the occidental literati, surely you would still not deliberately write a tome that is as thin as it is trite. But, this is what Amit Varma has accomplished in My Friend Sancho. Varma who is celebrated in blog chatter as India’s most famous blogger with his site India Uncut (I never did understand what all hoo-haw was about, more like hee-haw really) is described in reviews everywhere as making the allegedly natural leap from blogging to writing.  

In his maiden offering, Varma gives us a character, Abir Ganguly, who is surely modelled on himself. Abir, a crime reporter with a Bombay tabloid, is asked by his boss to write a feature on a terrorist killed in the city, in what is known in Bombay argot as an ‘encounter’. Incidentally, Abir, tipped by a cop, was standing outside the building where the encounter took place. He hears a gunshot and then a woman’s scream. The cops come out of the building and tell Abir that the terrorist tried to shoot them so they had to kill him. Although he doesn’t question the situation at the time, he realises that the cops have shot an innocent man only when he begins to conduct a series of interviews with Muneeza, the dead man’s daughter. Muneeza, whose nickname is Sancho (because her father’s favourite book was Don Quixote) meets Abir at a suburban mall with alarming regularity and predictably Abir falls in love with her.  

That’s all folks and that ain’t a hyperbole. Varma’s much lauded wit presents itself in the form of cutesy asides from Abir and Ally McBealish (yuck talk about regressive) little scenes that don’t really happen. And oh yes, he has conversations with geckos, pillows and some other inanimate objects (also very Ally McBealish mind you). Varma populates his book with what I can only guess are his haunts from Bombay. What I don’t understand is why rename Infiniti Mall and Landmark Bookstore as Eterniti Mall and Bookends when you deemed to retain the names of Kailash Parbat and Little Italy across the road. And Amit, you don’t seriously hold the view that Little Italy – the Olive Garden of the Indian gastronomic world – is the best Italian restaurant in the city? But, I do agree that finding restrooms at Infiniti, I mean Eterniti Mall can be a kind of difficult the first time you need to relieve yourself at the food court. And yes, the fat book browsers and snogging teenagers are severely annoying.  But, did you have to shamelessly propagate your blog not once but thrice?  

Thankfully, Varma avoids dwelling on the more weighty issues that his novel skims over like the marginalisation of Muslims or the state of Indian journalism. “Non-literary writers are looked down upon and people are intimidated by literary works… I want to bridge that gap” declares Varma. By all means, but don’t bridge gaps with more of the idiotic dribble that’s already selling at traffic lights (that ironic barometer of popularity).  

Writers and Their Tall Tales by Tracey Turner

A friend gave me this book. Maybe she intended to read it to her three year old daughter and only realised too late that it might be a wee bit difficult for her to understand. Maybe she really intended it for me. Intention aside, gratification was instant. It might be meant for a 10 year old but I found out some interesting and wacky information about  writers of classic works. That Geoffrey Chaucer was a wealthy merchant. That Shakespeare invented 2000 new words (I knew he invented many but 2k?). That Jane Austen never married (how out of character). That Dickens was forced to toil in a factory because his father was in debtor’s prison and when his pop came into an inheritance which secured him an early release, Dickens’ mother strangely decided that little Charlie should stay on at the factory. That the Bronte sisters’ lives were deeply tragic. It was unexpectedly a lot of fun. I particularly liked the illustrations and the semi-fictional secret diary entries.  

In the past year, I have read so many fantastic books meant for children and young adults; and far superior to some of their adult counterparts. Honestly, one should never pooh-pooh books merely because they are not intended for one’s age group.  

Around the World in 80 Dinners by Cheryl & Bill Jamison

The authors are apparently cookbook writers of some repute in the US. Gastronomic travel writers, they unfortunately aren’t. This husband-wife couple travel (using their frequent flier miles mind you) to Bali, Australia, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, China, South Africa and Brazil with the objective of enacting as their subtitle suggests, the ultimate culinary adventure. This is definitely not an Anthony Bourdain travelogue. There’s nothing ultimate about the Jamisons’ around the world trip. They mostly go to well worn restaurants or eateries suggested by others. In Singapore, they go to hawker centre stalls listed by Makansutra. In Bombay, they go to Masala Kraft at the Taj! For fuck’s sake! Their lack of originality and level of naiveté are absolutely priceless. At a gourmet restaurant in the Barossa Valley, after a satiating meal, Bill remarks, “I don’t know why more places in the states can’t offer this kind of affordable but refined food in such a relaxing setting.” After berating their compatriots for spoiling Thai cuisine and hankering after hot dogs whilst abroad, our dynamic duo proceed to eat Popeyes for breakfast at a regional airport in China. “Not bad at all for airport fare this far from roots” they write. Incidentally, it’s on this page that I found a melon seed stuck in a corona of the stain of its own juice with splodges across the facing page. Could it be that the previous reader of this book (it’s from librarywala.com) was disgusted enough to spew his half eaten fruit across the book? We’ll never know.  

How anyone could appreciate two yanks plodding along in an awkward mixture of first person plural and third person is beyond me. Still, they seem to have enjoyed India more than any of the other countries they visited and for that they receive my kudos. Dear American gastronomes, thank you for spending your dollars in our economy, we hope you will return soon and consume more idlys and fish moilles and pay for them with those lovely greenbacks. Jai Hind. 

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville

I think I have become obsessed with Miéville. This one’s a little different than the three I have read so far because it’s not set in Bas Lag and it’s intended to be a children’s book or young adult fiction. Call it what you will, it’s a whole lot of fun. Best friends, Zanna and Deeba live on a Council Estate in contemporary London when all sorts of strange things start happening to Zanna. One night they follow a seemingly animated umbrella through a door into a parallel world – an abcity named Un Lun Dun run on MOIL technology. MOIL stands for mildly obsolete in London. Garbage thrown out in London ends up in this parallel realm where it’s collated into houses or takes on a mind of its own. Instead of dogs and cats, the streets of the abcity are populated by yelping and yowling plastic bags, milk cartons and blood thirsty giraffes. Zanna has been prophesied by an ancient book to be the Shwazzy (as in le choisi – the chosen one), the tall blond girl who delivers Un Lun Dun from the virulent smog – not a patch of pollution, but effluence with a demonic bent of mind. Zanna however gets knocked out of the race pretty early and is sent back to London along with Deeba (who in contrast to her friend is short, dark with a round face), a tag-along who everyone’s been ignoring thus far. But, a concerned Deeba suspects something’s not quite right and returns to Un Lun Dun to set things straight inadvertently becoming the Unchosen one. Along the way, no one really believes her even they are witness to the feats she pulls off. Towards the end, her half-ghost companion, Hemi remarks, “Yeah, but where’s the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it? “You impress me a lot more.” This is essentially Miéville’s message and it’s a nice message, not earth shattering but inspiring nonetheless (there’s also the eco thing but the less said about that, the better). The plot is strong, the characters however are patchy. Perhaps, that’s intentional, this is a children’s book at the end of the day, although it often doesn’t feel like one. Like all his books, Miéville populates Un Lun Dun with a bevy of elements and ideas. Sometimes, it’s difficult to keep up, but it’s certainly worth the effort.  

An Acre of Barren Ground by Jeremy Gavron

The best books are often the ones that you have the fewest expectations of. You read them because something about their covers lures you or perhaps you find the title appealing. Regardless, these are books you know virtually nothing about until they fan themselves open between your digits. An Acre of Barren Ground belongs to this category of books. It’s a completely startling fictional account or series of accounts about the history of a single street in London – Brick Lane. The address is synonymous with Bangladeshi migrants made famous in the novel by Monica Ali which carries the street’s name. Even the street sign is annotated below with a Bengali transliteration. But Brick Lane wasn’t always Bangladeshi. Gavron takes the reader on a flight through a series of vignettes on the communities and characters who’ve inhabited the area, from Bangladeshis to French Huguenots and Saxons to Eastern European Jews. In doing so, he pays no attention to chronology or consistency.  

Some stories intersect across members of a family or generations or events like the yuppie entrepreneur who wants to set up his dot.com in an old brewery whose vicinity was once home to his Jewish immigrant grandparents who eked a meagre existence on Brick Lane. Others seem disconnected from the street like the account of Roman soldiers in ancient Britain posted in Vindolanda, a fortress in Northumbria. At this site, hundreds of half burnt wooden tablets were excavated, covered with everything from laundry lists to birthday invitations. By pleasant coincidence, I happen to read about the Vindolanda tablets just the day before in A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities. One morbid tale set in the middle ages describes a young girl pregnant with her father’s baby. After the baby is born, whilst the girl is asleep, the father feeds it to their hog. There is one intriguing entry narrated from the perspective of a much abused bear used in bear baiting. Some are based loosely on real events or people like the story of Shakespeare’s sister and her expunged ambitions or a Jack the Ripper style serial killer of whores. Other stories are as real as they come like the account of Gunther von Hagens who invented plastination where body fluids & tissue are replaced by plastic to allow for the display of preserved corpses. Some years ago, he exhibited his ‘work’ at the very same brewery on Brick Lane which figures in so many of Gavron’s stories.  

An astonishing and wholly original work.  

You can view and read the translations of the Vindolanda tablets here.  

Iron Council by China Miéville

Talk about an overdose of Miéville. This is the third in the Bas-Lag series and several decades after the events in The Scar. This is also an overtly political book. Miéville’s left leanings and political views come through in Perdido Street Station and The Scar. For instance, in the former, the Garudas operate a classless society whose only crime is choice-theft, to deprive another of his right choose his own fate. In Iron Council, Miéville deals with a slew of issues from globalisation and imperialism to xenophobia and homophobia. You witness his most astonishing fantasy imagery like a giant tortoise on whose back rides a fortified village and the darkest descriptions of slums, labour camps and oppression. Judah, Cutter and Ori, the protagonists of Iron Council are nothing like the heroes of fantasy fiction. They have faults, failings and misgivings. The unassuming bisexuality of many of its characters is bracing given the genre. The Iron Council itself is a utopian train, laying tracks wherever it goes and picking them once it’s passed through but its purpose is non-existent and its existence vague. One senses that Miéville is not in fact writing about a fantasy realm, but the severity and injustice of our own world. An excellent book if weighed a little too heavily by its political themes.  

The Scar by China Miéville

Well, I did say I wouldn’t be reading anymore of Miéville’s work but I wanted to cleanse my palate with something unconventional and only Miéville’s weird fiction came to mind. The Scar like its predecessor Perdido Street Station is set in an alternate steampunk reality but it’s shorter and has a tighter plot. At the end of Perdido Street Station, Grimnebulin, a rogue scientist goes into hiding. In The Scar, we learn that the Militia have been tracking down all of his friends who’ve been disappearing at an alarming pace. Bellis Coldwine, an expert in an arcane language and a former lover of Grimnebulin, fears the Militia is also coming for her. Hawking her skills as a translator, she gets herself passage on a ship bound for a penal colony on a distant continent. On the way there, the ship is commandeered by pirates who absorb its passengers and prisoners into Armada, a floating pirate city of ships and boats. In Armada, Bellis’ linguistic skills are pressed into use for a secret plan hatched by the Lovers, the rulers of a part of the floating city and Uther Doul, their right hand man, a strange migrant from High Cromlech, a caste society ruled by the Thanati, zombies with sewn shut mouths. Bellis had never intended her exile to be permanent and yearns to go home to New Crobuzon. But, the Lovers plan to take the city and its denizens to the very ends of their world. I read The Scar at a feverish pace; it’s a good story and it’s well written. The best part about Miéville’s work it that he realises the need for fantasy writing to be able to laugh at itself with characters like the Anophelli, the hyper intelligent mosquito men who have sphincters for mouths and ravenously hungry female counterparts who suck the life out of anything with blood (literally) and once ruled the southern lands in a dominion called the Malarial Queendom. You never know what you can expect from fantasy writers, but from Miéville, you have the certitude of reading the most outrageously absurd and insane.  

You can read my post on Perdido Street Station here.  

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

I knew a simple soldier boy.....
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
And no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon’s poem, Suicide in the Trenches, captures the mood of Birdsong, a sobering work of the misery of trench warfare during the First World War. Birdsong’s reputation precedes it. It’s an enormously popular book and one that I’d heard a lot about. But, now that I’ve read it, my feelings towards it are mixed. The book is episodic going back and forth between periods before, after and during the war. The romantic lead-in where Wraysford, Faulks’ protagonist runs off with a married French woman is a crude juxtaposition on the brutality of war in subsequent chapters. Or section where Wraysford’s granddaughter in more contemporary times attempts to track down information about her grandfather – a completely unnecessary device. But, the sections on the war and conditions in the trenches are truly heart rending. In of the final scenes, Wraysford has been stuck underground for many hours; his own death looms near as surely as it’s crept up on the tunneler who’s stuck with him. He’s finally rescued by a German officer, a Jewish doctor who finds the corpse of his own brother in the tunnel above. The scene is inspired by Wilfred Owen’s poem, Strange Meeting. 

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said that other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."

I found Birdsong affecting but exhausting.