Bedbugs by Ben Winters

Cimex lectularius 

Being away from work for anything more than a week is bad idea. I am completely inundated with stuff to do so I am going to keep the reading light and reviewing even lighter. The current edition of The Economist includes an article titled A New Debugger, which you could easily mistake for a piece on finding errors in programming code. It is however about a different sort of bug, a real live vampire that grew and prospered with the rise of humanity. Bedbugs did exceedingly well until the early 20th century when a host of chemical insecticides largely eliminated them in the developed world that is until their current resurgence. They have become increasingly resistant to insecticides and worldwide airline travel is fueling their rise. Hotels in New York are apparently badly affected. I don't think people in India are as jumpy about the critters (they smell like raspberries - which other insect sucks your blood and makes your house smell pleasant?) . They probably have enough of other kinds blood-sucking vermin to worry about. I remember that a year ago, we had a bedbug scare in my house (it was a false alarm). But, our mislaid apprehensions probably came from a healthy exposure to American attitudes towards pests.  

Which brings me to the book, Winters shouldn't have called it Bedbugs. It gives the game away. The minute the Wendt family, Susan, Alex and their four year old daughter move into their dream apartment in Brooklyn, the countdown to the inevitable appearance of bedbugs begins. The plot is somewhat simplistic but Winters manages to effectively capture Susan's ever increasing paranoia about the presence of bedbugs in her new home and despite the subject, the book is mildly creepy (or was that just revulsion?). Everything goes pear-shaped when a really silly supernatural twist is introduced. Thankfully the book ends soon after. 

Bedbugs is definitely not a novel for those who dislike parasitic insects or are creeped out easily. 

Note: the image of the bedbug used in this post is in the public domain and is sourced from CDC/ Harvard University (http://phil.cdc.gov/phil).

The City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

This is going to be a really brief post. Where the first book in this tetralogy (I'd thought it was a trilogy) was okay, the second - The City of Ruin - is a real drag. The action moves from the imperial capital of Villjamur to to the city of Villiren on an island along the northern frontier of the empire. The city is like a concentrated version of today's Russia in terms of both climate and criminality. Vampiric gangs run underground trades, hand in glove with the city's ruler. The city faces an imminent attack from the Okun, the inter-dimensional invaders introduced in the Nights of Villjamur.  The inter-dimensional invasion is strongly reminiscent of Ian Irvine's Well of Echoes quartet. But, it's all very predictable. Newton makes use of some strange references; an otherworldly being arrives in a spaceship to rescue some of the protagonists in a perfect example of deus ex machina and her ship is coincidentally named 'Exmachina' and she refers to an ancient saviour named Frater Mercury (Freddy Mercury?). The author also has a tendency to use obscure words like panjadrum and febrile unnecessarily and inappropriately. The City of Ruin just doesn't work. 

The Unconquered by Scott Wallace

I have always been fascinated by the Sentinelese - an indigenous tribe that've held out against the might of the British empire and then the empire of the Indian republic. These ancient people who probably number less than 250 live on a tiny, roughly circular island in the Andaman archipelago. We don't know what they call themselves so they've been named after their island home's colonial name, Sentinel. It is, perhaps, an apt name because the Sentinelese who are openly hostile to outsiders (their terribly sharp wooden arrows make no distinction between anthropologists and poachers) are symbolic of a now dying autarkic notion that cultures don't need to be plugged in to the rest of the world to live and indeed thrive. Unfortunately, governments (along with more malevolent groups like missionaries, loggers, drug smugglers and poachers) are convinced that these tribes need to be contacted and brought into the loving folds of civilization. The largest number of uncontacted tribes are in the Amazon and one of these - the Flecheiros or the Arrow People in the Brazilian interior is the subject of The Unconquered. 

Wallace, on assignment from National Geographic, is attached to a large and motley group led by Sydney Possuelo, a crusader for indigenous rights and formerly a key member of FUNAI, the Brazilian government organization charged with protected Amerindian interests. Possuelo keenly believes in letting los indios bravos or the wild Indians be. The purpose of the mission into a remote and thickly forested part of the Amazon is to find evidence for an uncontacted and hostile tribe.and thus prove to lawmakers in Brasilia the need for delineating land for the exclusive use of the natives. 

My existing interest in uncontacted tribes and the allure of the Amazon meant that I was really excited at the beginning of The Unconquered before becoming progressively disappointed. I can't quite pin down why I didn't enjoy this book. Wallace does a fairly decent job of documenting the epic three month long journey through difficult and demotivating terrain. I think the reason it doesn't work is that his strength probably lies in writing features for magazine. The whole book feels sort of like an endless magazine article. He faithfully recounts everything that happens and things that he observes but there's no central thread tying everything together. He gathers insightful anecdotes but he's just not able to place them effectively. 

"When I asked a Kanamari elder in one village to tell me about the origins of his people, he recited a creation story that was part Christian, part animist. It began with Adam and Eve, then moved on to Noah, who at God’s command had built a huge canoe from a towering itaúba tree, loaded it with animals, and set out on the river as the deluge began. But God did not allow the Kanamari on board. Instead, they fled to higher ground, atop the riverbanks, where their settlements remained to this day. In a way, the hybrid legend seemed to capture the Kanamari’s larger quandary, caught in a kind of nether zone between two worlds, belonging to neither. They’d been evicted from their Eden and banished as well to the margins of the whites’ civilized universe. The part about God not allowing them on the boat seemed particularly fitting" 

I also feel that he probably didn't know what he was getting into and this seems to weigh heavily on his experience and contributes to a detached writing style (majboori as we say in Hindi). Possuelo's a controversial figure with an erratic and authoritarian style. The expedition group is fraught with tension between Amerindians and whites and infighting between those for and against Possuelo. In an attempt to avoid getting enmeshed in these intrigues, Wallace remains an impassive outsider for the most part.

The Unconquered, unfortunately, is a missed opportunity.   

Munshiji Ki Gudgudiyan 2

This was a montage of three plays adapted by Nadira Babbar's theatre group Ekjute from short stories by celebrated Hindi/Urdu writer, Munshi Premchand (1880 - 1936). Naya Vivah is the clichéd tale of a cuckold husband. A rich merchant remarries  far too quickly  after his dutiful first wife dies. The perky young thing he brings into his home seems more interested in the cook's son. Bhade Bhaisaab is about the strained relationship between two brothers who live away from home. The elder of the two is gravely serious and perpetually studying, the younger a gadabout. And yet the younger brother passes exam after exam while the older one keeps failing. The final play, Deeksha, describes the moral turpitude of a young lawyer who resists the temptation of alcohol for years before finally succumbing to it, to the detriment of his career and his family. 

The performance was completely unremarkable. Naya Vivah was especially dull, dragged down both by an unoriginal plot and mediocre acting. The satire in all three plays was very unsophisticated. The actors made use of stereotypically Indian dramatic practices mirroring a poorly produced television soap. Bhade Bhaisaab redeemed the production to a certain extent. The actor playing the elder brother was particularly skilled and the piece was marked by sharp dialogues (although I must admit a lot of the idioms flew over my head). Deeksha lacked direction and was full of unnecessary scenes. The tendency to moralize in Hindi and Urdu literature is very off-putting and all three plays toe this line although Naya Vivah and Deeksha do so more crudely. The two narrators with their faux innocence were not endearing as much as annoying. I don't understand why Indian theatre doesn't dispense with narrators when they are clearly unnecessary. 

Lackluster acting and unoriginal plots contributed to a largely unexceptional performance.