Words Uttered in Haste

Bedbugs by Ben Winters

2012-01-15T07:30:00.002+05:30

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

2012-01-06T08:24:00.001+05:30

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

2012-01-06T07:21:00.000+05:30

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

2012-01-05T11:27:00.001+05:30

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.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russel

2011-12-30T16:56:00.000+05:30

Some years ago, a popular and macabre forward of an encounter between an alligator and a Burmese python found its way into my inbox. The python had overwhelmed a medium sized alligator and swallowed it whole, only to have the ancient reptile claw at the snake's stomach from the inside. The image in the mail captured an enormous dead python with a ruptured belly, out of which hung a deader alligator. Rarely do we know the name of a swamp but the scene of this inter-species battle is famed. The south-eastern portion of Florida holds some of the largest wetlands in the world - the Everglades. Here, quixotic natives fight daily with invasive species to protect their turf or in this case, marsh. The people who call the Everglades home are just as intriguing. The Seminoles, a pastiche of Native American tribes fleeing European colonization once found refuge in the deep dark of the gator infested swamps. The Everglades have always been an 'away place' where the known world ends and the realm of the primeval begins.

Swamplandia! is about a tribe of sorts. The Bigtrees run an alligator themed amusement park called Swamplandia! on a small coastal island of the same name. The park's museum and gift shop stock gatorish merchandise alongside faux tribal artifacts purchased by pasty mainlanders attracted by the promise and danger of gator wrestling. Their grandfather, Sawtooth Bigtree, was born Ernest Schedrach, the white son of a coal miner from Ohio. "He changed his name to outwit his boss to whom he owed debts. He picked "Sawtooth" in homage to the sedge that surrounded his island; "Bigtree" because he liked its root-strong sound." Life is predictable if isolated on Swamplandia. I couldn't even deduce which time frame the story was set in. I thought it could have been the 1950s. Only later do you realize that its probably set in times much closer to our own. It is perhaps appropriate because the Bigtree children are completely cut-off from the rest of the world and the death of their mother (the famous Hilola Bigtree who'd dive into a pool full of seths as gators are called on the islands) precipitates events that lead to the heart of what this charming novel is about, the end of innocence.

Swamplandia! alternates between the beguiling voice of thirteen year old Ava Bigtree (narrated in the first person) who is being groomed to become the next big alligator wrestler and her seventeen year old brother Kiwi, a socially inept genius (narrated in the third person). Kiwi summarizes the family best when he (for the first time in his life) fills out a medical form that seeks information about his family history; "Well, for starters, my sixteen-year-old sister is crazy, she has aural and visual hallucinations ... my youngest sister is an equestrian of Mesozoic lizards ... my father wears a headdress ... my grandfather bites men now ..." The other Bigtree sibling, Osceola, named for an 18th century Seminole chief becomes infatuated with the spirit world after finding a book that instructs readers how to commune with the dead. Her father doesn't seem very worried about this, remarking that it's probably just a phase despite his other children's best efforts to underscore the seriousness of Ossie's leisure pursuit. "It's a book for witches, Dad" says Ava. "And the underworld isn't a heaven or hell, it's like a whole separate country. Like a Germany under the world." Kiwi supports this concern for their enigmatic sister, taking a shot at her choice of boyfriends; "Did you hear us, Dad? These guys she's dating-they're dead." "Yes," the Chief sighed. "Yes, I'll admit, that is a little peculiar." The fact that we never hear the story from Ossie's perspective accentuates the enigma of her alleged interactions with the spirit world. Russel's approach to magical realism is clever and original like pushing someone into a pool full of alligators only have to be pulled back before hitting the water.

Ava's voice, simultaneously childlike and adult in its disjointed but profound pensiveness turns this great book into something wonderful. She observes the tourists at her family's parks and confesses "I came to hate the complainers, with their dry and crumbly lipsticks and their wrinkled rage and their stupid, flaccid, old-people sun hats with brims the breadth of Saturn's rings. I whispered to Ossie that I wanted to see the register for Death's aeroplane. Who was boarding the plane in such a stupid order?" Kiwi's experience (he runs away to the mainland and gets a dead-end janitorial job the World of Darkness, a hell-themed amusement park where patrons called lost souls) satirically flogs modern, especially corporate, life. His horrible boss "had a master's degree in some undisclosed discipline - he'd offer these facts to anyone who approached him, like a caterer with a tray of bitter hors d'oeuvres." Kiwi, whose home-schooling and lack of contact with others of his age, makes him both intelligent and incompetent. This weedy boy whose idea of a comeback is the word "troglodyte" quickly learns what the world of the mainland expects of him, swallowing his erudite observations and impressive (if mispronounced) command of English lexicon. His consternation at how the world rewards the stupid and the superficial is a wider comment about the state of American society. Thoughts like Oh my God, you are not even an original asshole! You are a plagiarist of assholes" Kiwi keeps to himself. Thankfully, his thoughts do not not become any less articulate or insightful. We are informed that he " considered himself a grammarian of human emotion, knew that anger required a direct object. (I am angry at ______. I hate ________.) "To hate" was a transitive verb. Anger needed an anchor, a plug, a wall. (I am angry because of ________.) Otherwise you had a beam of red feeling searching vainly through the universe. You had a heart that shot red light into space."

Swamplandia! is an exceptionally well-written book about characters and settings that are alien and disquieting and yet endearing and enthralling. What a wonderful last read for the year!

Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

2011-12-28T08:43:00.000+05:30

Mark Charan Newton is British writer who edited a science fiction magazine before turning to novels. Nights of Villjamur is his second novel and the first in the Legends of the Red Sun series. The book draws heavily from elements and themes in existing fantasy books, particularly China Mieville and maybe Stephen Hunt. At the centre of this epic is the city of Villjamur, ethereally Gothic with its bridges and arches, built into a large rock whose summit is the realm of its rulers and its underside home to the city's disenfranchised. Villjamur is the capital of an empire that rules the Boreal Archipelago. Significant changes are coming to this world. The days are growing colder, heralding an imminent ice age. Mysterious tribesmen launch attacks on the empire's home island. From the far north come tales of massacres and other-worldly interlopers. On this stage, Newton follows a number of eclectic characters. His protagonists come in all sorts of colours, genders and sexualities, perhaps a happy side-effect of Newton's own multicultural origins (his mother is Indian, thus explaining his middle name). The most interesting character is Brynd, a gay albino military commander whose competency on the battlefield wouldn't save him from the gallows if his sexual preferences were disclosed. And being a true albino with red-tinted eyes implies that he is different both on the inside and out. There is a prostitute-painter named Tuya and Jeryd, an investigator who belongs to the rumel, a hominid species with think skin and tails; both are well-fleshed out. The other characters aren't developed so well; Eyr, a princess and Randur, a professional philanderer are quite superficial and come across as very silly, which I don't think was intended.

Villjamur is well drawn creating a dark, moody neo-medieval metropolis. However, the plot is not just about the city. There are those who wield paranormal powers - the cultists - subscribing to a range of rival sects and using bizarre technology to bend nature. One of these cultists is about to set a dangerous plan in motion. Newton doesn't spend too much time on these curious cults or their technology. Maybe, he intends to do that in his next book. There is a bit of a struggle within the plot between urban fantasy and epic fantasy. I think he manages that okay although his bias is clearly towards the former. However, I felt that he could have made the story progress a wee bit faster. It has interesting elements but it's not gripping. One way is to perhaps to cut down on the rumination (his characters love to brood). Another way could be to make outcomes less predictable and not fear killing off characters.

These trilogies are so bloody addictive; they're going to be the death of me.

Hayavadana by Girish Karnad

2011-12-27T19:15:00.001+05:30

Girish Karnad's Hayavadana is supposed to be a classic of modern Indian theatre. It's based on Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads which in turn is inspired by a narrative out of an eleventh century anthology of Indian legends - Kathasaritsagara; which means that it's a reinterpretation by an Indian playwright of a work by a Western writer which itself is a reworking of an Indian legend. The play is bookended by the story of a horse-headed man Hayavadana (who although important to the play's themes, is not its subject). At the beginning of the play, Hayavadana seeks out advice from the other actors about becoming somewhat complete. He then only reappears at the end, having become 'complete'.

The central narrative is about two friends, Kapila and Devdutta who live in classical times. The two are like chalk and cheese. Devdutta is a brahmin, a waif of a man who devotes his time to intellectual pursuits. Kapila is unlettered but his muscular body is renowned from the numerous wrestling events he's won. Devdutta becomes besotted by Padmini, a local lass and with Kapila's help the two get married. Padmini, however, secretly fantasizes about Kapila's Adonis-like physique and spends what seems to her husband, far too much time with him. On the road to Ujjain, Devdutta is overcome with a sense of his own inadequacy and makes his way to a ruined Kali temple where he kills himself. When Kapila finds Devdutta dead, he mourns the loss of his friend by killing himself as well. Padmni, left alone in the forest, finds the path to the temple where she beseeches the goddess to bring them back to life. Kali orders Padmini to put the heads back (they decapitated themselves, don't know how that's possible) on their body. In the dark, Padmini switches heads so Kapila's body gets Devdutta's head. She claims to have to done this inadvertently although later it's hinted that she did exactly what she desired. A struggle breaks out between the resurrected friends. Who gets the girl? Who is the father of the child growing inside Padmini? Is the real husband the one with Devdutta's head or his body? A sage rules in favour of the head ruling the body so Devdutta's head + Kapila's body turns out to be the winning combination; tragically to Kapila's loss who's compelled to stay in the forest with the soft, useless body of a brahmin. Nevertheless, the happily ever after isn't found so easily because each body seems to possess a mind of its own and Padmini retains her polyandrous bent of mind.

Hayavadana was an involving evening. I haven't see other versions of it so I can't really comment on this interpretation by the Industrial Theatre Co. and Black Boxers. It was surprisingly sprightly though and the actors constantly lightened the mood talking directly to the audience and making real-world jokes (Hayavadana, in search of a divine remedy for his horse head, claims to have approached the church - the actual church of St.Andrew and St.Columba at Lion's Gate - next door but complains that it's never open).

The hall at the K.R. Cama Oriental institute made for an interesting venue. The clean lines of this austere white art deco space compensate for its small size. The stage was set in the middle of the hall bordered by cushions. A red canopy with Chinese paper lanterns over this stage lent it the look of a dohyo - a sumo wrestling ring. The overall effect was very intimate as if you were within the scene, among the actors. But, at the same time, I didn't experience the sort of verisimilitude one feels in Privthi - where you become one with the space and the play becomes much more than a performance. Maybe it was because whenever you looked at the 'stage' n the K.R. Cama hall, you'd see a backdrop of faces, chairs and air-conditioning units.

The two strongest actors in this performance, Neil Bhoopalam and Dilnaz Irani, regrettably had marginal roles as narrators. There is a strong tradition of the sutradhar or narrator in Indian drama. I've never quite liked this partiality to explaining rather than acting but it seemed to suit Hayavadana. Irani at least got to briefly show off her incredible talent as the goddess Kali. Each word and movement attested to her sense of control and experience. The others put in a good effort but they were all missing something. Prashant Prakash who played Devdutta had a tendency to be overly dramatic, articulating his lines in a very affected way. Vivek Gomber, as Kapila, had an earnestness that was both a strength and a disadvantage in this role. Preetika Chawla was brilliant at first as the alluring and playful Padmini. But, later as her character develops, becoming increasingly complex - Chawla seemed unable to project herself in any other way than the lissome girl that's second nature to her. All three were missing the maturity and skill that was so palpable in Irani's performance. BTW, Hayavadana's alleged homo-erotic undercurrent doesn't amount to more than some bare-bodied wrestling moves. The play had interesting themes but wasn't as arresting as I thought it would be.

Dilnaz Irani as the Goddess Kali (Image from http://tossedsalad.com)

Shenzen - A Travelogue from China by Guy Delisle

2011-12-26T09:56:00.003+05:30

After having thoroughly enjoyed Pyongyang - A Journey in North Korea and Burma Chronicles, I've been on the lookout for Delisle's graphical commentary on his time in China for a while now. Where bookstores have increasing number of shelves dedicated to comics and manga, really good quality graphic novels are hard to find. Delisle, a Canadian cartoonist who lives in France has often travelled all over the world to supervise outsourced animation projects even in a place as unlikely as Pyongyang. Delisle is asked to work on a similar project in Shenzen, China's first special economic zone and certified dragon city. There is no narrative in this book; only vignettes with Delisle's trademark wry but insightful observations. He too recognizes this and remarks in one frame, "If I draw all these anecdotes, one day, it will probablylook like I had a great time here. Take out of context, even boredom canprobably sublimate itself and seem entertaining. It’s a bit like memory." Much of what he does or doesn't do is spurred on by boredom. Shenzen seems an artificial city with little to do beyond going to the gym or to a restaurant (an adventure in itself where the nature of a dish doesn't reveal itself until you pick out the dripping rooster head from the communal bowl). He contrasts life in Shenzen with excursions to Hong Kong and Canton (Guangdong), the latter he claims he could get used to.

Like Delisle's other works, Shenzen's key strength is his perceptiveness; the way in which he notices and ruminates over things that we would let pass, whether it's a hotel room or a public lavatory.

His inability to communicate and connect with people around him drives him up the wall. He wants to desperately to crack the Chinese mind which he finds inscrutable. During his first few days in Shenzen, he resorts to pictorial conversations with colleagues from the animation firm.

So frustrated that he initiates a patter in his head to pass the time. Unlike Pyongyang and Burma Chronicles, Shenzen avoids commenting on China's political situation, for the most part. This is one of the few panels (at a restaurant that serves dog meat) in the book with overt political commentary and what an image it is!

I love his ability to use literary allusions to frame his reality like Dante's descent to hell transposed to China!

Delisle's latest work recounts his time in Jerusalem. This sneak peak drips deliciously with irony. Can't wait to read it.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin

2011-12-25T09:36:00.001+05:30

I’ve become a proper little fantasy whore to the lamentabledetriment of all other types of fiction. I just don’t feel like reading the sober,reality-bound stuff. I can’t bring myself to finish Amitav Ghosh’s River ofSmoke, once claimed among my pantheon of favourite writers. An excursion intoany of these ‘normal’ books currently gives me the sensation of sticking myhead into a miasma of mind-numbing emotions and the dreadful tedium of reality.I want to be like (bourgeois remark coming up) those people who watch senselessBollywood films to vicariously to see the world through the eyes of otherswhose lives they deem exciting but out of reach. I too want to escape themiasma. Thankfully, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s was a breath of fresh air. TheseNigerian writers are remarkably talented; I’ve blogged about how much I love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work. Lola Shoneyin comes from illustrious pedigree.Her father-in-law is the Nobel Prize winning writer, Wole Soyinka (I vaguely rememberreading Season of Anomy in school although I never thought Soyinka as good asChinua Achebe).

The subject of Shoneyin’s first novel is simultaneously contentiousand curious. Bolanle, a university graduate in her twenties marries Baba Segi,a prosperous businessman, casting aside criticism from her ever-acerbic mother.The problem is that Baba Segi is an impervious polygamist, already married tothree other women, all living under one roof with their seven children in theNigerian city of Ibadan. His first and third wife, Iya Segi and Iya Femi, drawout daggers to welcome their husband’s newest acquisition. The status quo isvery dear to them and the viciousness with which they attack Bolanle would puta Hindi soap opera mother-in-law to shame. The second wife, Iya Tope, beatsBolanle in stoic passivity. It’s perplexing to see someone as intelligent asBolanle inertly subject herself to Baga Segi’s chauvinism and the other wives’cruelty. We find out later that she has phantoms to deal with and she explainsthat Baba Segi’s household gives her some kind of refuge although it’s stillhard for me to understand how the caustic environment she finds herself in,could be anything but healing.

The way in which Shoneyin breaks up the story and presentsit to us through the perspectives of all the wives, Baba Segi and even the driverTaju, is key to this novel’s success. The wives who we first see as monsterstransform into ordinary women with wretched pasts, foregone ambitions, presentinsecurities and of course their secret lives. Iya Femi is a particularlycomplex character who finds solace in Evangelical Christianity which she laudsfor offering damnation to those who have wronged her. “I have suffered too muchin my life to let that rat (Bolanle) spoil it all for me. So what if she is agraduate? When we stand before God on the last day, will He ask whether we wentto university? No! But He will want to know if we were as wise as serpentsbecause that’s what the Bible says we should be.” I only wish Shoneyin clarified in whose voice each chapter was narrated because this is not always madeexplicit. Only two pages in would you, for example, infer that this was the ever-submissivetone of Iya Tope. It’s fascinating how, besides Bolanle, we don’t even know thenames of these women and that they are simply named after their first-born. Theiridentities become subsumed into those of their children although this is alsotrue for Baba Segi (father of Segi) but I think that appellation has differentimplications for women.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives seems so light andeffortless that you almost forget that the gravity of its subject. You beginreading with an image of the oppression of African women and you conclude thebook, surprised at their ingenuity and dynamism. Shoneyin proves herextraordinary skill in the details, in the simplicity of perceptive turns ofphrase like when Iya Tope remarks on her first (and last) trip out of hervillage, “So this was Ibadan – the big city where all our secondhand clothesenjoyed their first outings.” This was a wonderful detour from all the fantasyand science fiction I’ve been reading and a great segue into Nigerian fantasywriter, Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death which I’ve just started reading.

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

2011-12-24T07:02:00.004+05:30

Stations of the Tide is set in the distant future on aplanet named Miranda, specifically in an area called the Tidewater. Miranda’sthree moons exert a tidal force that causes the oceans move with infrequent butcatastrophic consequences. Once inseveral centuries, the jubilee tide threatens to submerge all land except thePiedmont. In the midst of this disorderly time, an official from the Bureau ofProscribed Technologies is sent to the planet to investigate whether a formeroff-planet worker brought back some contraband technology. It’s difficult to understand the crime whenwe are introduced to it. Only later when the history of Miranda’s and itsstruggles against its off-planet rulers become clearer do we understand thatthe planet has been technologically regressed to keep it weak and poor.

The man who the bureaucrat is searching for, Gregorian, is aself-proclaimed wizard. He features on recurring television commercials where(for a price) he claims to morph people into a form that will let them liveunder the sea, thus beating the tides. The idea of transformation is arecurrent theme in Stations of the Tide and for the residents of Miranda,reflects continuity from the haunts, the indigenous sentient beings who theydisplaced. The haunts had the ability to change form, to live on land and in water.They were driven to extinction by human colonisation but people continue tobelieve that they exist in small numbers, clandestinely living in the landsmarked by the tide. The bureaucrat’schallenging quest to find Gregorian isn’t made any easier by the Mirandans whoseem to mechanically conspire against outsiders. And there is a deeper questionof what Gregorian intends to do and the scope of the assignment progresses beyondmerely the retrieval of technology.

Stations of the Tide was published in 1991, the year that italso won the Nebula Award. In 1992, the book was nominated for the Hugo Award. Thenovel represents a fascinating, esoteric approach to science fiction. However, it’schallenging to keep up with the plot. I didn’t understand much of thetechnology. At times, I had no idea what was going on like the bureaucrat’sencounter with Earth’s agent, a giant naked robotic (I think) woman (prettysure) and then the bureaucrat walks into her mouth and somewhere inside her, theyhave an odd, hallucinogenic conversation. I liked the concept of the haunts,the extinct native species of the planet but that theme is not followed throughperhaps because they were meant to be a red herring. I also found the Tantricsex encounters between the aging bureaucrat and a local ‘witch’ somewhat incongruous.Was it really necessary in the overall scheme of things? In fact, many allusions and outright referencesto Hindu themes find their way into Stations of the Tide. Jehovah has no placein a world where ‘Krishna!’ is the script of exclamations. Moreover, the ideas of transformation,destruction and creating anew sound like they’ve come straight out of dharmicdoctrine.

Aside from the obfuscation that we could have done without, Stationsof the Tide is an oddly involving work.

The City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer

2011-12-23T09:56:00.001+05:30

Fans of fantasy frequently rate The City of Saints andMadmen at the top of their lists of favourite books from the genre. I startedreading it without realizing that it wasn’t a novel. The City of Saints andMadmen is a collection stories, novellas and even a bibliography, an appendixand a glossary about or set in a fictional city called Ambergris, named for themuch-desired substance that comes from the stomachs of whales. The first story, Dradin in Love plunges youinto the world of Ambergris without giving you much context. A missionary comesto the city for the first time and falls in love with a woman he spots at awindow. He puts his own life at risk with his ridiculous attempts at getting intouch with her end before getting sucked into the madness of the Festival ofthe Fresh Water Squid. The city, its outlandish customs and bizarre religiousinstitutions astound and confuse. Theglossary (which you ought to refer to throughout the book, instead of readingit at the very end like I did) is informative and descriptive, written inVandermeer’s characteristic style composed of erudition and flippancy inequally parts. I particularly enjoyed the entry for the Living Saints, possiblyinspired by the Stylites and early Christian orders.

“Living Saints. The long history of the Living Saintspredates the Truffidian religion, which embraced the saints for their ownpurposes. Based on the premise that bodily functions are the most sacred signsof God in human beings, Living Saints endure solitary lives of poverty. Thereare four orders: the order of Flatulence, the Order of Ejaculation, the Orderof Defecations, and the Order of Urination. The saints spend years perfectingtheir particular speciality and thus honouring “the God that made us mortal” asthe scriptures read.”

In case you don’t bother referring to the glossary, thenext piece, An Early History of Ambergris fills some of the gaps in yourunderstanding. Written in the style of a historical narrative, it describes howa group of loutish whalers led by a Cappan or chief named John Manzikert fleean adversary up the Moth River and land at an inviting site. This place isalready occupied by a wondrous ancient city peopled by the enigmatic Grey Caps,a hominid race whose civilization is based around the cultivation of fungusi.e. the pejorative, mushroom men. Aftergaping at the city’s sights for some time, Manzikert and his men massacre theGrey Caps and destroy their monuments in a scene surely inspired by Cortez’ssacking of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. Manzikert himself disappears intoan underground opening, appearing the very next day, blinded and insane butmysteriously silent about what happened to him in the subterranean city of theGrey Caps. Several generations later, the ruling Cappan and his army returnfrom a two week long hunt of the fresh water squid to discover that every livingbeing in the city had disappeared. The Grey Caps, it seems, subscribed to thatold adage about revenge.

The anthology contains eclectic illustrations done by a
number of artists. This one portrays a fireworks festival
where participants don masks.

The stories are not chronologically ordered but the GreyCaps make an appearance in almost all of them. It would seem that some sort oftruce is worked out between the residents of Ambergris and the mushroom men. Insome stories like The Cage, people live with the alarming prospect of beingmurdered and mutilated for no apparent reason by the indigenes. In otherstories set in what would appear to be more contemporary times, the Grey Capsemerge at night to scrounge the roads clean of garbage. The only signs theleave behind are clean streets, red flags and a fungal fecundity. The unfathomable,sinister and lingering presence of the Grey Caps throughout all the stories isan interesting counterweight to the flippancy that dominates most of the book.

My favourite novella was King Squid which best epitomizesVandermeer’s playful, rambling style. I supposethe mating habits of squid are fertile ground for whimsical fax-intellectualism. Vandermeer references implausibly named bookslike “Squidologist Enoch Sighly’s and Doctor Bernard Povel’s Journey Up theRiver Moth by Way of Native Canoe and Indigenous Ingenuity, Culminating in aBoat Wreck, a Near Escape, Alcoholism, and Some Unfortunate Negotiations withthe Aforementioned Natives.” The extensiveby which I mean truly extensive bibliography that follows this piece containssome snarky commentary.

“Breitenback, Joseph A., Mating Rituals of the FreshwaterSquid (Illustrated Edition), Hoegbotton & Sons. (As debauched a book as oneis likely to own. Salacious and steamy – complete with hard to follow diagrams.)”

Another is followed by this remark:

“(I include this misshapen and monstrous text only toprovide a balanced biography. Not a word of this book, except for someconjunctions and prepositions, contains any truth.)”

Vandermeer is often like a child who is pleased with thequantity of words available at his disposable and with which he can do as hebloody well pleases. In his writing, daughters are “farctated” simply becauseit is quite possible for them to be farctated. Sometimes, his style results inrobust images like “the ruined aqueduct that divided the two sides of thestreet like the giant fossilized spine of a long, lean shark.” At other timesit turns into a game, “Bibble stank of beets. Lake could not get over it.Bibble stank of beets. He had difficulty not saying Bibble imbibes bottledbeets beautifully …” In another of the stories, a woman teases her boyfriendfor looking like he’d just had a miscarriage. In response to which, he thinks to himself, “I wonder if there issomething wrong with our relationship; it seems as blanks as my life as anorphan. Besides, ‘miscarriage’ is not the appropriate logic leap to describethe looks on my face. Granted, I cannot myself think of the appropriate hoopfor this dog of syntax to leap through.”

In addition to illustrations, there are advertisements,
cartoons, excerpts from fictional works from the fictional
world of Ambergris, artwork and book covers.

A dominant theme across many of these stories is that of thecreation becoming the master, the writer transforming into the written. We seethis in The Strange Case of X, which lulled me into the complacency of thinkingthat I was on the ball until that very last sentence jerked me awake. Othercharacters in the book reiterate this transaction between the writer and thewritten. The protagonist in The Release of Belacqua proclaims, “Although he wouldhave liked to be a writer, he had always been written.” So much so that inLearning to Leave the Flesh, the creation takes the form of a manta ray thatthe writer regurgitates. The manta ray lingers on the ceiling behind thewriter, feeding him and in turn being fed by him. “He looked up again at themanta ray. He looked up at the little darkness and he said, “You are dark, andall writers have a little darkness inside them, but not all writers have alittle darkness outside them? What are you? Who are you?” But the darkness didnot answer. The darkness could only writer. And edit. As if it too were awriter.” Vandermeer describes a strange cycle where the writer becomes acharacter in his own work. To live on, he must write and by writing he sustainsthe illusion of having become the written. “Being a writer is addictive. Beinga writer is an addiction. All those words. The act of writing is addictive. Butthe writer didn’t feel like a writer anymore. He felt like a drug addict. Hefelt like a drug addict in constant need of a fix.”

I wouldn’t rate The City of Saints and Madmen as the bestwork of fantasy that I’ve ever read. But, it is undoubtedly original and intriguing.

Some of the shorter stories from the book are availableonline. In the Hours After Death is particularly fine.

The Water Station by Shogo Ohta

2011-12-22T10:06:00.001+05:30

I was at Prithvi last night, watching what TimeOut Mumbaihighlighted as its theatre pick for the fortnight. The Water Station is a non-verbalplay written by Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta. This Indian production wasstaged by Theatre Roots & Wings, a Kerala based group in collaboration withThe Japan Foundation.

Here’s a synopsis out of the playbill.

“The Water Station is a two-hour, wordless performance.Walking through a barren landscape, eighteen travellers stop by at a drippingwater faucet. They drink, soak, meet, love, fight, weep, separate and in theend, leave, while a man living in junk pile observes their action from above.Abounding in images of fragmentation and decay, the play depicts the declineand fall of human civilization. The play is about loneliness, the need forsustenance and the fragility of love.”

The play begins quite abruptly when you spy a woman taking agonizinglyslow and measured steps down a ramp which makes up much of the set. Halfwaydown the ramp is the water station, a metal pipe, a foot and a half tall whichends in one of those taps you see outside temples in Bombay, the kind that looklike the wind-up key from the back of an old clock. From the tap flows a steady trickleof water that falls into a drum set into the floor of the stage. The woman isstill making her laconic way down the ramp. The audience hasn’t settled downyet and why should they? The lights are still on them. People continue walkingin. The woman has made more progress down the ramp. You can see her moreclearly as the spotlight on her grows brighter (or is it that lights on theaudience are growing dimmer?), but like all things in this play – agonizingly slowly.She wears an old-fashioned knee length white dress; the sort that you’d expectto see on a turn-of-the-century doll. A satchel is slung around her person andin her left hand, she holds a wickerwork basket. The lights over your head aredimming more rapidly. Your eyes have a hard time readjusting but the momentaryblackness you experience is immaterial because the woman on the ramp hasn’tmoved much. She makes her way down to the water station. Her contorted footmovements are a weird pastiche of Noh, Zen and a Japanese tea ceremony. It’s been 10 minutes, maybe even 15 since youbegan watching her. The audience around you shift uneasily in their seats.Uncomfortable coughs disturb the silence. Well, the near-silence really but theconstancy of the trickling water fades after a while. When she finally makes itto the water station, she takes out a mug, fills it and quenches what appears toa deeply repressed thirst.

She moves off and in ones and twos and at times in largerprocessions, other characters appear and make their way to the water station. Someattempt to make love, others die. They all share an itinerant, hoboish lookwith layers of overused clothes, rolled beddings and possessions that cling totheir backs. Two tramps who come in early on reminded me of Samuel Beckett’s Vladimirand Estragon from Waiting for Godot. In what is perhaps the only light momentin The Water Station, they inadvertently kiss while trying to slurp water fromthe tap. All share a predilection for excruciatinglyslow movements (that we may disingenuously term exquisite if performed byJapanese artists but seemingly awkward and graceless by this group) andconvoluted facial expressions that generally involve opening the mouth aswidely as possible like a stereotypical slow-motion sequence before a timed bombgoes off.

In the playbill is a note by Otha which articulates his thoughtson silence and loneliness. He tells us that “a cloudy day is, in essence, alight with its mouth closed. Therefore, (Cezanne’s) expression ‘we can seethings better on a cloudy day’ leads us to thoughts which utter words thatcannot be told by mouths that are free.” He goes on to say that “silence may be an absolute affirmation in theend, and may possess self-sufficiency” and that the “use of the word ‘silence’tends to create a special atmosphere that is at once mystic, awesome andmeaningful because of its unique distance from reality and the commonplace."Otha claims, “We utter words for about 2 hours a day ... the remaining 22 hoursof the day are spent in silence.” He concludes, “We spend 90% of our lives insilence.” The Water Station is Otha’sattempt at exploring “the depths of the silence that occupies 90% of all ourlives.” Noble thoughts and beautiful words but poorly translated on stage. Eventhe silence Otha promises to explore is not committed to fully. About 20minutes into the play, we hear the mournful sound of the duduk, a celebratedArmenian wind instrument. I was so surprised at hearing background music thatfor a moment I thought the music was coming from outside the theatre. Later, wehear a piano piece, then a baroque arrangement (was it Bach?) and even anEgyptian orchestral number.

In Michael Swanwick’s Stations of the Tide which I’ve just finishedreading, two characters debate the difference between conjuring and theatre. “Conjuringis like teaching, engineering, or theatre in that it’s a form of datamanipulation, a means of making reality do what one desires. Like theatre,however, it is also an art of illusion. Both aim to convince an audience thatwhat is false is so. Meaning heightens this illusion. In a drama meaning ismanipulated by the plot, but normally conjuring has no added meaning. It isperformed openly as a series of agile distractions. When a context and meaningare provided, the effect changes.” Thisspiel was running through my mind as I watched the play. The absence of context and meaning producebeautiful but empty visual imagery. How I would have loved to take pictures ofsome of the scenes. The bare-chested man and his lover embracing, halfsubmerged in the tank of the water station while the tap continues to tricklewater over their heads. The three erratically and eclectically dressed womenholding a clothes line between them. But, it is an illusion and like conjuringhas no added meaning. What interpretation we layer on these surreal scenes are formedby the playwright’s own views expressed in that matt brochure
.

It’s difficult not to conclude that The Water Station wasn’tprofound as much as it was pretentious.

Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson

2011-12-22T08:32:00.001+05:30

A mysterious object is found on an archaeological dig on an aridAnatolian plain. After several American archaeologists working on the site fallsick and die from radiation poisoning, the object is whisked away by the USmilitary and installed in a purpose-built research lab on the outskirts of TwoRivers, a small town in Michigan. The town’s residents are negligibly affectedby the military installation which sits on land leased from an impoverished NativeAmerican tribe. The lab’s workers hardly come into town and when they do, avoidmixing with the locals. Everyone goes about their own business until one nightwhen a disastrous explosion takes place at the lab. The people of Two Riversawake the next day to find that things are not as they ought to be. Electricityis cut off and battery operated radios relay radio plays spoken in an Englishfull of peculiar pronunciation and news broadcasts speak of a war in the west withNew Spain. More oddly, all roads into the town are cut-off as if sliced by adiamond cutter. Where the roads end, old growth forest begins as does themystery at the centre of this novel.

Mysterium is an interesting take on the concept of paralleluniverses mixing speculative science with metaphysics. The world that TwoRivers finds itself transplanted into isn’t all that different from our worldbut it seems to have deviated from our own history in the early centuries ofthe Christian era. Much of North America is ruled by a theocratic bilingual Anglo-Frenchrepublic, almost like a Canada gone mad. The religion of the republic is Gnosticism,a complicated and esoteric form of Christianity with a pantheon of gods, angelsand lesser beings. Charity and compassion are foreign words to the Proctors andCenseurs who govern the land in the name of faith with a Stalinist fervour. Therepublic is also technologically behind our world by many decades. Thediscovery of Two Rivers poses a bizarre quandary as the Proctors loot itslibraries and shops for knowledge and technology while fearing the town’spopulation for their deviant ways and the town’s very existence, whichjeopardizes their religious set-up.

Wilson’s central theme about the ubiquity of violence,fascist religion and repression is interesting; that the peremptory need tocontrol the thoughts and actions of others is true in this reality as it wouldbe in all other realities. However, the story doesn’t really work as well as itought to. I think this could be theresult of the clichéd way in which Wilson portrays both villains andcollaborators. One of the proctorsreminded me of a nasty clerical character out of a Spanish Inquisition themedsexploitation film. Also, the explanations for the existence of the parallelreality based on Gnostic beliefs seemed for the lack of a better word, lame.What does work is the ominous atmosphere in Two Rivers and the insecurity ofits people. If only the author had explored these aspects more thoroughly insteadof rushing towards an evasive denouement.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter

2011-12-21T09:04:00.000+05:30

This is, by far, the most peculiarly written book that I’veever read about linguistics. McWorther wants to upend existing notions aboutthe origins of English best represented by that standard encyclopaedic graphicof a wide river and its tributaries. He brands us naive for believing thepleasant story of how a guttural tongue called Anglo-Saxon came under theinfluence of French after one Monsieur Guillaume conquered English in 1066, transformingthe language’s pronunciation and bloating its lexicon, with healthy injections forLatin, Greek and a range of other languages giving rise to the English oftoday. His take on it involves far moreconvoluted, bastard origins.

Much of his argument rests on the underestimated Celticinfluence on English. English comprisesvery few words (mostly toponyms) of Celtic Brythonic origin i.e. from theCeltic dialects that were spoken in Britain (as opposed modern Celtic languageslike Welsh and Scottish Gaelic) before the invasion by Germanic tribesmen. Thisis surprising because the process of displacing these Celtic languages ought tohave resulted in a stronger influence on Anglo-Saxon through assimilation. As aresult, most experts believe for whatever reason that English is not at allaffected by its Celtic predecessors. McWorther rues this view and offers us ananalogy from India where Indic languages contain a Dravidian substratum despitenegligible lexical influence. “It’s interesting – the work that argued thatDravidian languages decisively shaped Indo-Aryan grammar is today cherished assage, classic, and incontrovertible. Yet a very similar argument about Celticand English is received as quirky, marginal and eternally tentative.” Therefore,McWorther takes up this cause by portraying English as some sort of uppity transvestite;“English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welshon lonely nights.” He goes on to explain how English sustains the impact ofCeltic syntactic structures particularly with what he calls the meaningless “do”(as in Did you reach on time? vs. Had you reached on time? which is the way mostEuropean languages including Old English would have expressed it) and the useof the present progressive in the noun form. These two examples he does to death and to the detriment of his overallargument. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is unexpectedly concise but McWortherrambles (or is it nags?) on and on, often about the same things, perhaps in thehope that repetition would reinforce and convince us of his views.

McWorther also theorizes that the Viking influence onEnglish facilitated the simplification of its grammar. “To wit, the pathwayfrom Beowulf to The Economist has involved as much transformation in grammar asin words, more so, in fact, than in any of English’s close relatives. Englishis more peculiar among its relatives, and even the world’s languages as awhole, in what has happened to its grammar than in what has happened to itsvocabulary.” I think this idea is valid. When people complain about thecomplexity (and more often the irregularity) of English grammar, I am always quickto point its relative simplicity when compared with other languages. He alsocautious us against celebrating English as the acme of linguistic opennessbecause according to him “throughout the world, languages have been exchangingwords rampantly forever. Languages, as it were, like sex.” He goes on to tell us that there is nothingspecial about English. “Over half of Japanese words are from Chinese, and nevermind how eagerly the language now inhales English words. Almost half of Urdu’swords are Persian and Arabic. Albanian is about 60 percent Greek, Latin,Romanian, Turkish, Serbian and Macedonian, and yet it is not celebrated forbeing markedly “open” to new words.” Iaccept that English is not unique in the way that it has borrowed vocabulary butI think it is relatively more open than other languages (like French) because it’snot policed. We see this most explicitly since the early 20^thcentury because of socio-economic and technological changes when languages havebeen under immense pressure to adopt new words to describe things that areforeign to their culture. The Academic Française banned the word e-mail usedwidely among native French speakers and replaced it with the Gallic sounding “courriel”.Standard Hindi is particularly obnoxious in this respect producing Sanskritisedneologisms to avoid incorporating foreign words including lohpath gamini (ironpath vehicle) for train and a range of obscure words for computer. I thinkEnglish has less of an issue adopting foreigners into its standard form.

McWorther also has an opinion about standard Englishgrammar. “Perhaps the contained disorder of an ideal English garden, where itis considered proper to allow certain plants to ramble here and there, certainflowers to spread, drip, dot, dapple. Call them marks of character.” So, heconsiders the idea of good vs. bad grammar farcical. “English is shot throughwith things that don’t really follow. I’m the only one, amn’t I? Shouldn’t itbe amn’t after all? Aren’t, note, is “wrong” since are is used with you, we andthey, not I. There’s no “I are.” Aren’t I? Is thoroughly illogical – and yet ifyou decided to start saying amn’t all the time, you would lose most of yourfriends and never get promotions. Except, actually, in parts of Scotland andIreland where people actually do say amn’t- in which case the rest of us thinkof them as “quaint” rather than correct!”

In the rest of the book, McWorther attacks the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis(which I am quite partial to). This theory proposes that language affects theway we think. McWorther pooh-poohs the whole idea by saying that the “idea thatthe world’s six thousand languages condition six thousand different pairs ofcultural glasses simply does not hold water.” He provides the following examplefrom French to illustrate his opinion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

“Journalist Mark Abley, engaging writer though he is, fallsinto this trap in his enthusiasm for Whorfianism. In French and many otherWestern European languages, there are two words for know: savoir means to knowa fact; connaître means to know a personor to be familiar with something. Abley has it that: My language allows me, somewhat clumsily, to get thedistinction across: on the one hand, factual knowledge; on the other,acquaintanceship and understanding. But to a French speaker, that distinctionis central to how the mind interacts with the world.

Really? Is Ableyreally so sure that the difference between knowing the capital of Nebraska andknowing a friend is more immediate to Gérard Depardieu than to Judi Dench? It’sa cute idea, yes—but does Abley actually have any grounds for supposing that itis true?

How does it sound when it’s French that has one word whereEnglish has more, and when it isn’t something as immediately evident as theEuropean know verbs? In French, sortir means “go out,” but also covers whatEnglish would express with come out (in the earthquake, le tiroir est sorti dela commode, “the drawer came out of the dresser”), get out (someone is in ahole and says, “Sors-moi d’ici!” “Get me out of here!”), and stick out as inone’s tongue (“Sors la langue,” “Stick out your tongue”).

So—are we English speakers more attuned than French speakersto the difference between leaving home, something slipping out of place, beingyanked out of a hole, and sticking out our tongues? I would venture that theanswer is no. To be a reasoning representative of Homo sapiens is to understandthose four processes as radically different, whether or not your languagehappens to have the same word for them. The same applies to how your languagehappens to mark knowing.”

I have to admit that he presents a very persuasive argumentbut I am not convinced. I still think that language alters perception in someway. This idea is gaining currency again after being out of vogue for decadesprimarily due to the potential for a chauvinistic or xenophobic interpretation.McWorther too sings this tune, “It’s just so wonderful that people who aren’tlike us can think and process reality as richly as we do!” The original hypothesis had many flaws and tosuggest that it’s motivated by a sinister need for ranking languages based ontheir perception of the world is crude and simplistic. I think languagestrigger unique emotional responses best summarized in this New York Times articleand I feel that McWorther comes across as unprofessional in demonizing the ideain an effort to discredit it.

Lastly, what I found really peculiar about Our MagnificentBastard Tongue is its language. In a bid to be accessible to the lay reader,McWorther uses a disagreeably conversational style, which informs and annoys inequal parts. I understand his rationale but it was a case of too much of anallegedly good thing. He starts sentences with “but check this out”. The oddestbit is his penchant for what can only be described analogies for the common man.

“Treating scripture as the only valid or interestingevidence in studying how English changed in ancient centuries risks leavinguntold forever an interesting chapter in the saga of English. This isespecially unsavory in that treating the peculiarity of Modern English as amatter of chance is like walking past cars parked along a street and happeningupon one with the windshield broken in, three hubcaps gone, and no licenseplates, and deciding that all of this must have happened via ordinary wear andtear.

Maybe lightning did in the windshield. The hubcaps couldhave fallen off of their own accord and been picked up by trash collectors. Butwhat about the other cars sitting intact? Okay, one car up the street ismissing one hubcap. Another one has a hairline crack in its back window. Butobviously, someone broke into this particularly smashed-up car. Somethinghappened to it. Attention must be paid. We should report this car. Especiallysince this happens to be a neighborhood well known as a favored haunt of—oh,let’s just toss the analogy and say Vikings!

Those who are uninterested in reporting this car are playingMonopoly, while those who are interested in reporting the attack on it are theones bringing in a game of Clue and finding little interest. The Monopolyplayers like Monopoly; Clue just doesn’t happen to be their bag. But as withthe Celtic case, the Clue players happen to be in a better position to identifythe truth than the ones enjoying Monopoly.

The Monopoly players are, to bring back the car analogy,like municipal photographers assigned to make snapshots of each street in thecity every five years. They have no way of explaining why this particular caris so banged up, and really, they don’t care. They have done their job todepict this car’s state from one moment to the next and that’s all.Photographers document—but historians explain.”

For Pete’s sake! We get it. At times, I felt like I was onlyreading on to discover what new analogies McWorther’d used to illustrate hisdiatribe.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is an interesting ifidiosyncratic work.

Lost Empire of Atlantis by Gavin Menzies

2011-12-20T09:58:00.003+05:30

1421: The Year China Discovered the World topped bestsellerlists when it was released. I confessthat I was one of those gullible readers who contributed to its financial success. I still have the book somewhere at the backof my shelf. The great Chinese eunuch admiral Zheng He’s epic voyages aroundthe Indian Ocean make for the kind of history that excites and electrifies.Menzies takes it one giant step further by postulating that the Chinese alsovisited Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, pretty much theentire world. He presents all sorts of spurious archaeological evidence asproof for his runaway theories. You canread all about it at this site – set up wholly to discredit Menzies. A couple of years later, he wrote a sequel to1421 about how he believed that a Chinese visit to the Mediterranean sparkedoff the Renaissance.

Now, he’s back with The Lost Empire of Atlantis. I wascurious about what new academically baseless fantasy he was going toexpound. The book starts innocentlyenough on Crete, once home to an advanced sea-faring civilization people by theMinoans named for the legend of King Minos famed for his labyrinth within whichdwelt the Minotaur. He goes on to talkabout the island of Thera, now called Santorini, where a cataclysmic volcaniceruption destroyed much of the island. Menziesmarvels at the culture, trade and technology of the Minoans and makes remarksthat beg you to question his intelligence like “That meant that from around1425 BC there would have been Minoan travellers in Egypt: a pretty staggeringidea.” Why is it a staggering idea that a sea-faring trade-based people wouldvisit the nearest landmass to the south of their island?

However, all of this is just an irrelevant build-up. Thefull blow of his dodgy hypothesis doesn’t hit you till page 136 when he states “Mytheory that Minoan ships could cross the Atlantic depended on one thing:navigation.” And here I’d thought thatgreat sea voyages depended on the quality of calico cats on board. In a nutshell, Menzies would have us believethat Minoans, headquartered on Crete and Santorini, ran an expansive tradeempire that stretched from India to the Great Lakes Region of North America. True to his style, he bases this on spurious evidence. Much of his theory rests on the quality (notthe chemical composition) of copper found in Cretan sites for which he claims NorthAmerican origins. “The copper ingotfound at Lothal (a Harappan port in Gujarat, India) was of over 99.8 percentpurity. The only mines which produced copper of that purity in 2500 BC were themines of Isle Royale and Lake Superior. Ships must have brought that copper,crossing the Atlantic to do so.”

Interestingly, Menzies spends a lot more time discussing theMinoan connection to India than directly supporting his hypothesis which is approachedfrom the perspective of “BTW, the Minoans were also in America.” Among somescientific material, he cites some strange sources: “The Rough Guide to Keralahas a very good summary that illustrates that lure Kerala would have had forany enterprising foreign traders.” Heoften uses superficial similarities in culture to support his arguments. “By now I was convinced of the Minoan presencein Kerala during the Middle Bronze Age ... There was some interesting evidenceof bull-leaping in the annual celebration of ‘Jellikatta’. However, though bull-leaping appears an oddand unlikely custom, this in itself could be a coincidence. It seems less sowhen you consider that this is a Hindu society, where cattle are consideredholy, objects of veneration. This custom has clear similarities to those inancient Crete.” Jallikattu is not bull leaping and it has very ancient origins inIndia pre-dating the veneration of cows, which is a relatively new phenomenonin Hinduism. Besides, many cultures have traditions that involve manhandlingcattle. Menzies then turns his attentionto the stone circles of South India. “How strange that a European-styleprehistoric ceremonial circle should have been found in Kerala and that itshould be so close to the river that I was sure the Minoans had traversed.”Cairns and stone circles are found at Neolithic sites all over the world fromEgypt to China. There is nothing European about them. He then presents us with whathe believes to be conclusive archaeological proof. “In India, I’d discoveredthat beautiful rock art carvings and paintings of American bison have beenfound on the borders of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, near the point where the PeriyarRiver rises. They were dated to the 2^nd millennium BC. I had to askmyself how Keralan (sic) artists of 4000 years ago had any knowledge ofAmerican bison.” I believe Menzies isreferring to petroglyphs close to the Edakkal Caves in Wayanad. They are notimages of American bison but of gaur or Indian bison who lived and continue tolive in the Western Ghats.

The only bits where I’ll give Menzies the benefit ofthe doubt are alleged representations of New World flora in Indianreligious art. I’ve read about this before and it is quite intriguing. Menzies cites two examples: a statue of a godholding maize from a Hoysala temple in Karnataka and sunflowers at a Jain caveshrine in Udayagiri in Orissa (both of which are supposed to be native to the Americas and couldn't have been known in India until the 17th century). But, these are in no way proof that the Minoanstravelled up the Mississippi to the Great Lakes and mined cooper from itsshores!

One of Menzies’ favourite expressions is “solid proof orevidence”. “By now, I was running tocatch up. I’d got solid proof that the Minoans had travelled through most ofEurope and that they had explored a large part of North America.” He frequentlyproclaims that he has “solid evidence” for all manner of things when he reallyonly has conjectures and coincidences. I reckon that he shouldn’t have gone thenon-fiction route at all. This is delicious material for a work of fantasy or apaperback of the Clive Cussler variety.

Instant City by Steve Inskeep

2011-12-19T13:16:00.002+05:30

When Google Earth first came out, I recall tracing the coastnorth of Bombay over a multitude of estuaries, farms and factories. On and on,past the ship cemeteries at Alang, pastthe island of Diu, past the bleakness of the Rann of Kutch until suddenly myvirtual hand hovered over a large city spreading octopus-like from the coast,its tentacles reaching into the barren brown interior. The perpendicular orderliness of its seasidedistricts, the rambling chaos of its suburbs and the orthography of its labelstold me that this was no Indian city. Political capitals are rarely the urbanheart of a nation. The US, China, Australia and India have New York (or maybeLA), Shanghai, Sydney and Bombay respectively. Karachi, Pakistan’s urban heartis a city loaded with preconceptions when seen through Indian eyes.

Inskeep’s insightful book is a window for the curious intowhat is often claimed to be Bombay’s Pakistani topoganger. But with thesubtitle Life and Death in Karachi, you know you are going to get more thanjust a walk in the proverbial park. Karachi is an appallingly violent city withever-increasing bouts of sectarian strife. Inskeep notes that in 1947 whenKarachi’s Hindus and Sikhs fled across the line of partition and the citybecame ostensibly less diverse, it also became more divisive. “In thisexpressly Islamic state, well over 90 percent of the populace shares the samebasic faith, yet throughout Pakistan’s history, as we will see, that surfaceunity has masked great diversity and deep divisions. The divisions areespecially evident in Karachi ...”

Inskeep attempts to pivot his narrative around a series ofblasts on a single day in Karachi. On December 28, 2009, a bomb exploded duringan Ashura procession by the Shia minority of the city followed by blasts atother places including a hospital. The suspicious riots that followed the blastseemed less oriented towards revenge and more towards clearing out retailoccupants from valuable downtown property. This sets the tone for the remainderof Instant City, exploring Karachi’s history and the events over the last sixdecades which have led to the political-criminal-sectarian stranglehold over acity that was once supposed to be among the most pleasant in BritishIndia.

Karachi’s growth from just 400,000 in 1947 to over 14million today makes it a perfect candidate for the label instant city but it isby no means the only one. Inskeep toodraws a comparison with Bombay. “There are also divides between instant cities.Karachi residents know it, and feel it. It pains them. Mumbai has some of thesame problems as Karachi, but it is seen as a city on the rise. Karachi hassome of the same advantages as Mumbai, but is seen as a city in crisis.” I don’t see Bombay as an instant city in thesame vein as Karachi. Bombay already had a population of 4 million in 1947. AndBombay, despite its diversity, is a poor representation of middle India whereasKarachi seems the perfect microcosm of Pakistan. So much so, that Inskeep can’trefer to the city’s past without talking about the history of Pakistan.

I found it interesting that the problems shared by the poorand disenfranchised and the lifestyles of the rich are the same across the developingworld regardless of nationality. It’s greatto see that Karachi has brave and committed people who work towards protectingits parks and civic spaces although sometimes paying for this passion withtheir lives. Others whimsically encourage communities to dig their own sewagelines instead of waiting listlessly for the city to provide utilities andinfrastructure. What makes Karachi’s problems unique is the extent ofcorruption and political malaise in Pakistan, even by the standards of those atthe bottom of the corruption stats.

However, Inskeep’s initial promise of tying everything inthe book to that one day in December fizzles out in execution. He does returnperiodically to the Ashura bombing but this makes the book choppy anddiscordant rather than lending is some sort of unifying theme. Inskeep ramblesbut these deviations are interesting and relevant enough that they don’tdetract from the book’s key message about the nature of instant cities. I also notice, not just in Instant City, butacross a lot of different kinds of writing, the tendency to avoid directly criticisingIslam while commenting about some aspect of its practice or culture. Usually, thistakes the form of a negative observation followed by a positive affirmationabout the religion. Inskeep is no exception to this quirk: “He wanted to followa Muslim ideal of according full respect to non-Muslims (the implicationhere is of course the reverse), an ideal that is as old as Islam itself.” Whytag on that skewed aside at the end? Clearly, that’s not something theinterviewee said. I feel like there is pressure on writers to portray thereligion as peaceful, tolerant and blameless to balance out incidents that showhow its followers demonstrate just the opposite. It smacks of something betweenself-censorship and trying very hard to prove the existence of fraternity and goodness.The number of times Inskeep used “the Hindu temple of Shiva and the shrine ofAbdullah Shah Ghazi” in the same sentence was emblematic of the grasping of thestraws I perceived with respect to pushing the case for something that may havebeen true in the past but no longer is.

On the whole though, Instant City is a curiosity quenching accountof our neighbour’s largest and most intriguing metropolis.

Cesária Évora

2011-12-18T12:28:00.001+05:30

Last year, I blogged about how I was in love with a Morna singer from a tiny archipelago off the coast of North Africa. Cesária Évora died yesterday on Sao Vicente, the island she grew up on, in Cape Verde. She was 70. No singer better exemplifies the universality of music. She sang mostly in Portuguese and very occasionally in Spanish or French and yet her remarkable voice evoked something profound in me. The French called her la diva aux pieds nus - the barefoot diva because she always sang without shoes. Cesária had a difficult life, growing up in an orphanage and scrounging a living by singing in bars to sailors and on passing ships. She was only "discovered" in the 80s. And what a discovery it was - a voice that can melt a hardened heart. Fame brought her some financial security but no relief from a constant battle with alcoholism.

When I listen to my Évora favourites - Besame mucho, Sodade or Petit pays, I am transformed into someone else. It's not about escape from the real world. Her voice drips with far too much pain for that. Instead, Cesária's music empowers you to stand outside yourself for just a moment and recognize that love, life and suffering are too tightly woven together to beat yourself up every time you trip.

Sweet dreams my silver-tongued angel. Obrigado por tudo.

Cesária Évora

(1941 - 2011)

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

2011-12-17T09:31:00.001+05:30

The Affinity Bridge has been on my wish list ever since Ifell in love with all things steampunkish. The first tome in the Newbury-Hobbesinvestigations was billed as a Victorian steampunk mystery. What could possiblybe more interesting than a sub-genre within a sub-genre? In my quest for steampunkstuff, I found this ring at Lady Ghagra, run by a pair of Ahmedabad basedjewellery designers. At first glance, the ring seemed incredibly ingenious andcool. Later, I thought it bulky andbland - sentiments I could echo about The Affinity Bridge.

The plot plays out in a steampunk version of VictorianLondon. The airship is the principalform of long-distance transportation and cobble stone roads are shared by horsedrawn carriages and steam powered automobiles. Queen Victoria continues toreign albeit with her life extended on an eerie gothic-industrial avatar of alife support system. Sir Maurice Newbury, a dashing and worldly Victorian gent,is charged with investigating paranormal cases for the crown. When we areintroduced to Newbury, he is preoccupied with a spate of murders in London’sEast End attributed to a ghostly policeman who glows blue like a smurf onLSD. London’s also experiencing a plaguethat (predictably) turns the infected into zombies. However, the crash of an airship underunusual circumstances results in a diktat from Buckingham Palace which compelshim to put his glowing policeman investigation on the backburner, although the lawof convergence in mysteries dictates (predictably) that the two cases arebranches of the same tree. He has helpfrom his newly recruited assistant, Veronica Hobbes. A Victorian lady sidekick? The things people do to achieve PCness! I see nothing wrong with correctinghistorical under-representation of women and minorities. But, why inject onecharacter with feminist Botox when you deemed it appropriate to leave everyoneand everything else in the novel wallowing in oppressive Victorian parochialism.

Where faux-Victorian language worked notably for Susanna Clarke’sJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Mann’s attempt comes off as a try-hard Doylewannabe. I reckon the novel would have read better if Mann had separated thenarrator from his characters. It’s one thing to have your protagonist spoutsycophantic and cringe-worthy dialogue and it’s quite another to have yournarrator proclaim garbage like “Newbury had visited Buckingham Palace onnumerous occasions over the last few years, yet the grandeur of the place neverfailed to take his breath away. He was awed by the spectacle of it; looming outof the grey, fog-shrouded morning, its towering facade was an imposing sight, asymbol of Her Majesty’s might rendered in stone for the entire world to see.” Awed by the spectacle of the ugliest palacein Britain, surely not? Even tiny Holyrood House is more impressive.

The characters themselves are poorly developed,one-dimensional 19^th century caricatures (save Ms. Hobbes, a sillyattempt at correcting gender imbalance only to have the woman play second fiddleto the inscrutable Sir Maurice). SirMaurice is grievously injured on multiple occasions but fights on scene afterscene like a moustached Tamil matinee idol. And zombies ... you thought you could get awaywith it by calling them revenants but a zombie by any other name smells just asrevolting. And most odiously, the book (notjust the characters, mind you) reeks of an anti-science bias, with a wicked scientistas the villain. “And with genius comes a certain amorality that is difficult tojudge” we are told. It seems that some prejudicesdon’t die so easily.

The Affinity Bridge is at best run of the mill although a deeperreading may reveal the extent of its absurdity.

The Golden Acorn by Catherine Cooper

2011-12-15T06:25:00.003+05:30

After his mother dies, Jack Brenin moves in with his grandfather who lives in a rural corner of England. He misses his friends and life back in Greece where he'd lived his parents. The village boys are mean to him and don't let him play football with them. It looks like Jack's stuck in a prepubescent rut, that is until he finds something peculiar. In the woods near his home, he discovers a golden acorn. A chance encounter with the village madwoman - Nutty Nora - puts him at the centre of a prophecy where the task of opening a portal to another world is entrusted to him. Jack seriously doubts that he's 'the one' that Nora and her niece Elan keep referring to. He's small and not very brave. But, with some help from his new friends including a ravenous (literally) talking raven named Camelin, Jack attempts to open the portal and save the last dryads in what might be the only remaining sacred grove in Britain. But, to do that, Jack and Camelin must travel back in time to Roman Britain to discover what happened to three special artifacts.

The Golden Acorn is an earnest and charming diversion. Inspired by Celtic mythology, it has all the ingredients that children will enjoy and a central character who they might strongly identify with. The story also implies an environmental message. Fantastical species such as talking rat guards, tunneling spriggans and a covetous gnome-like race remind you of old picture books rather than novels in the same genre for young readers. I have never quite understood, however, why children's authors play up the victimization card. Do young readers only empathise with a character when he or she is maltreated?

Celtic themes dominate The Golden Acorn and where you have Celts, you must have druids. Camelin, the talking raven, alludes to the massacre on Mona on several occasions. The Roman administrators perceived the druids as a threat to their rule. To escape persecution, the druids fled to the sacred island of Mona (now the Isle of Anglesey in Wales) where they believed themselves immune from attack. But, attack they did. Here's an account from the Roman historian Tacitus:

"He prepared to attack the island of Mona which had a powerful population and was a refuge for fugitives. He built flat-bottomed vessels to cope with the shallows, and uncertain depths of the sea. Thus the infantry crossed, while the cavalry followed by fording, or, where the water was deep, swam by the side of their horses. On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women, in black attire like the Furies, with hair dishevelled, waving brands. All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful imprecations, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their limbs were paralysed, they stood motionless, and exposed to wounds. Then urged by their general's appeals and mutual encouragements not to quail before a troop of frenzied women, they bore the standards onwards, smote down all resistance, and wrapped the foe in the flames of his own brands. A force was next set over the conquered, and their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed. They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails."

Sounds like ancient propaganda. The Golden Acorn references the correlation between the Menai Massacre as the slaughter of druids is known and the uprising by the Celtic queen Boudicca. I didn't even know that the two events took place in the same time frame. Apparently, with Roman military attention diverted to Mona, Boudicca of the Iceni, seized the chance to wreak vengeance and began her murderous rampage which culiminated in the burning of Londoninum (London) to the ground. Strange, how a children's book can you teach a lesson out of Tacitus.

Cooper is the first recipient of the Brit Writers' Unpublished Writer of the Year in 2010 for The Golden Acorn. Well-deserved although the award itself is oddly named.

Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace

2011-12-11T20:37:00.001+05:30

Topical anti-Greek jokes have been making unsurprisingrounds of the Internet. The Economist references a joke currently incirculation in Bratislava in an article describing Slovak indignation towardswhat they perceive as Greek indolence.

“For 400 euros, you can adopt a Greek. He'll stay at yourplace, sleep late, drink coffee, have lunch and then take a nap, so you can goto work.”

To label an entire race lazy is undoubtedly unjust. However,it’s hard to deny that the Greeks are quirky and complicated. Patricia Storace,an American poet, captures this Greek mosaic in her first and only work ofnon-fiction in what turns out to be a charming and reflective travelogue. The book was published way back in thenineties but the acuity of Storace’s observations make them as relevant todayas they were then, perhaps more so in light of the Greek crisis.

Storace sees the things others would miss. She is eruditebut never pompous. Her erudition is tempered by her sense of humour and hernose for irony. The fact that she speaksGreek is perhaps her greatest strength because it allows her to reach out to afair number of Yannis, Giannis and Kostas (average joes) with a healthysprinkling of yia-yias (the indomitable black-clad Greek grandmother). It alsopermits her access to an intriguing language. “Greek makes no distinction between painting, drawing, and writing, sothat a painter is a zographos, a writer of life, zoi, and a cartoonist is awriter of laughter.” A writer of life,what wonderful imagery! I have alwaysbeen fascinated how words often transform in meaning when transferred to a newlanguage but retain the soul of the original like the word metaphora which inGreece refers to a moving company. Storace too finds such nuggets, “I have someletters to mail, so we stop outside the post office, where the domestic andinternational boxes are marked, to my permanent pleasure, esoteric andexoterico.” At other times, the distinction is more facetious. Greek lacks the ‘h’sound and as a result its speakers sigh by saying “ack, ack” and drops hs inforeign words – “I meet an actor appearing in a production of Hamlet, whichconjures up unpredictable private images, since the Greeks pronounce it ‘Omlet’.”

Storace’s inferences are persuasive but I did sense atendency to stereotype. The odd bit about her writing is that you enjoy her generalizations,(which by the way feel very perceptive) so much that you want to overlook them.One of my favourites is this following excerpt, which contrasts the Greek maleattitude towards smiling with the American one.

“In the Greek vocabulary of the face, smiling does notinclude the nuance of power that it does in the United States. Roosevelt’ssunny optimistic smile had an air, for Americans, of invincibility, of masteryof both good and bad fortune, because to possess happiness is a kind ofauthority in America, barely comprehensible to Taki, who saw smiling as a kindof placation, a sign of submission, and in whose native tongue the verb “tolaugh” also means “to deceive.” This different language of the face begins atpassport control in each country. The Americans smile in their booths with aneasy self-assurance that enjoyment cannot threaten; the Greeks scowltheatrically, implacably, since a smile is not considered an impressive facialexpression, and a male face is meant above all to impress, not to charm.”

I love the bossiness, nosiness and parochialism that theGreeks are so prone to. Nothing demonstrates it better than this encounter betweenStorace and an unfamiliar neighbour. “The doorbell rings, and I answer it alittle uncertainly, not knowing quite how cautious to be. Standing outside is asmall, sturdy woman with carefully architected gray curls. She is holding atray of some unrecognizable cookies, and is dressed in a flowered smock. Theentire floor smells like a swimming pool, thanks to the heavily chlorinatedcleansers popular in Greek households. “Welcome to Greece,” she says, “I amKyria Maro. If you have any questions, knock at my door. I am a friend of yourlandlady’s, so if you cannot reach her for some reason you can come to me. Anyquestions at all. And,” she adds in grandmotherly tones, as if she wereimparting some domestic golden rule about doing the dishes or the frugal use ofelectricity, “you know, Macedonia is Greek.”” This being around the time when Yugoslavia split up and one of itssplinters dared to sully the pride of the Hellenes by appropriating the nameMacedonia and all its Alexander the Great related trappings.

It is easy forget how old Greece is, although the Greeksnever seem to tire of reminding outsiders. So, it’s not surprising thatreferences to the classical world turn up in the most unexpected of places.

““Perhaps it takes an old soul to feel it, but there you canfeel the presence of Alexander as nowhere else, not even in Macedonia, whichafter all was only the country of his boyhood, not of his manhood. ButAlexandria was a city that came to him in a dream, when he was given the omenthat he had chosen the right site, through certain verses of Homer’s that werequoted by a white-haired man in the dream. And it was in Egypt that it wasconfirmed that Alexander was a god and the true son of Zeus. Oh, yes, there areproofs of it in his life story. You know, for instance, about the sign thatoccurred just before Alexander fought the Persian king Darius at the battle ofGaugamela? Alexander was addressing the troops, and inspiring them to victoryover the barbarians. He raised his right hand and prayed that if he were thetrue son of Zeus the Greeks should be protected and should win this battle.There had been some debate about the right moment to attack the enemy, but atthat instant an eagle, the bird of Zeus, flew down and hovered over Alexander’shead, then the bird itself led the Greek troops into the battle, which theywon. You don’t believe this? There were eyewitnesses.” It is the first timethat I have been told a story out of Plutarch while my hair is beingblow-dried. He seems a person who would enjoy the small erudition of knowingthe source, so I guess, since he hasn’t mentioned it, that he may not know itis from Plutarch—or that it is a story.”

The “he” in question is the hairdresser in case you hadn't caught on.

But, back to language which I think reveals far more aboutthe psyche of a nation than one would imagine. On the wall of a school, Storace reads, “Youare all masturbators”. She interpretsthis as meaning that the subject of epigraph is “so low in the world (that he) can’tafford either a prostitute, a schoolboy, or a wife.” The misogyny Storace finds in Greece isoverwhelming, coincidentally the benefactor of the word. Women are constantly getting slapped on Greektelevision and perhaps in reality as well. As one of her acquaintances poignantly remarks “I am not aware ofanything in our criminal code that defines beating or any kind of physicalviolence to women as a criminal offense. But for the mutilation or any physicaldamage done to statues, the penalties are very severe.” Incongruent behaviour for a nation that adulatesa goddess – panagia mou -my holylittle virgin.

I found it fascinating the Greek identity (whether they wantit or not) is quite disparate from the Western one. The Greeks themselves don’twant to identified with the east, especially the Turks if not anyone else. Theysee themselves as the originators of Western civilization. But, they skipped theentire Renaissance because their nation was then an Ottoman colony. The dichotomy of Greece and the West is a dominanttheme in Dinner with Persephone and pops up in all sorts of places includingthe theatre.

“It is another lesson in the different quality of the Greekschool of acting. Aura’s husband, a Dutch cinematographer, tells me he isconstantly aware of the peculiarity I perceive. There is a sense less ofcommunicating individual personality than of revealing a concealed divinity;the player doesn’t seem to develop a character through time from theinteraction of event and personality, but instead to incarnate, to be thevehicle for the presence of something timeless. I think back to the Feast ofthe Metamorphosis in August. For us, heirs of the western Romans, the idea ofmetamorphosis comes through Ovid, and conjures up change, permeability,transformation. But the Greek image is in the repeated icons of themetamorphosis of the human Jesus, revealed as eternal god—perhaps the model forthis acting style, the ultimate feat of theatre.”

I enjoyed this witty and intelligent book immensely.However, I was let down by this apologetic comment attributing Islamic fanaticismto the West, “... the anecdotes she(Persephone Delta, an early 20^th century Greek writer) tells of herfather beating their gardener for an imagined presumption, and of a Britishofficer slashing an Arab’s face with a whip, provoke the thought that the rootsof Islamic fundamentalism may not lie in the Koran, but in Europe.” Ironic thenthat Storace’s attempt to be politically correct about Islam (before it was fashionableto do so) takes a drubbing when she lands on the coast of Turkey in a town thatspoke Greek less than a century ago.

“The women shopping wear their long overcoats and scarves;some are fully veiled in black, some in Turkish trousers in electric colorcombinations, topped with blouses in flaming colors covered with sequins, theselast unveiled. Although most of the women in the market are lumpen withcoverings, in many of the shop windows you see posters of belly dancers,marking a hopeless sexual polarity. On the one hand, there are the women insequins and flames, jeweled bras and pubic coverings, the stuff of sexual fairytale; on the other, women covered like people guilty of a great crime, orhideously disfigured, objects as much of fear and loathing as of desire. Thesewomen can have no reality on either side of the veil. And the veil posits in anugly way that men’s sexual relations with women are fundamentally rapes,enactments of uncontrollable lust and violence; but the veil is itself aviolation, a woman who wears it has already been raped.”

I can't deny, however, that Storace is anything but a brilliant writer. I have quotedfar more than I intended to but I want to end with one more where the writerberates and celebrates her lack of photographic skills.

“Any picture I take would fossilize these trees, while in mymemory they will be growing. My looking at them is my attempt to record them,these wellsprings of flowers so inexhaustible that the bright pink blossomsdropped on the green grass are mere overflow, not loss at all. I look at themas you listen to the talk of someone you love, watch his face, the infiniteunphotographable range of his expressions.”

The Acacia Trilogy by David Anthony Durham

2011-12-04T12:24:00.001+05:30

I have been super busy at work and all my weekends inNovember were marked by endless stare-at-my-laptop-athons in mostly ineptattempts at meeting deadlines. I have been sneaking in some readingthough. The three books in the AcaciaTrilogy by David Anthony Durham – Acacia: The War with the Mein, The OtherLands and The Sacred Band were my companions during this stressful time. Allthree books seem to have received very favourable reviews. I thought the novelswere fairly unremarkable although each seemed slightly more senseless than thelast. Epic fantasy shouldn’t imply a license for daftness. Still, it’s the sortof daftness that doesn’t tax a worried mind - an inadequate justification Irealize, for reading all completing all three.

Acacia: The War with the Mein takes place in a fictionalrealm called the Known World, a vast continent with great diversity ingeography, climate and people. At the centre of this world is the small islandof Acacia, named for the trees found there. The island is the seat of theAkarans, the benevolent and enlightened (as they see themselves) rulers of theworld. The Akaran king has four childrenall of whom hero-worship their father as the epitome of virtue and goodness.The empire, however, is founded on a malignant trade controlled by a sinistermercantile guild called The League of Vessels. The League is the only the powerin the Known World to have ships that take them across a treacherous oceancalled the Grey Slopes to the Other Lands inhabited by a mysterious butadvanced race, the Lothan Aklun. TheLothan Aklun barter a drug called Mist through The League. Mist keeps thecitizens of the empire sedated and oblivious to the injustices that they aresubjected to, particularly what’s offered in exchange for the drug. When a longsubdued race from the icy north overthrow the Akaran dynasty, the Akaranchildren are spread to the four corners of the Known World. Aliver, the eldestspends his adolescence among the dark-skinned warriors of a remote desert land.Mena washes up on a remote island and is declared the incarnation of thearchipelago’s eagle deity and becomes a living goddess. Dariel, the youngest,becomes a sea brigand while Corinn is captured and returned to Acacia as acaptive and souvenir of l’ancien regime. Each plays their role, explicitly or unconsciously in avenging theirfather’s death and taking back the throne. An unanticipated death among theroyal four and the unexpected rise of Corinn lend some tension to an otherwiselinear story.

In The Other Lands, theAkarans who have returned to the Acacian throne start consolidating their power,only to face a new threat from the continent across the ocean. Corinn who rulesthe empire as the undisputed queen, has acquired some sort of grimoire which bestowsmagical abilities on her. She uses this power to set into motion the trilogy’scrudest bit, a resurrection. In The Sacred Band, we await the battle betweenthe empire and the non-human forces of the Other Lands, only to be let down bya really wimpy denouement.

The world of the first book was awfully promising –an anthropological wonderland. Its characters (brown-skinned protagonists J), rivalries andlandscapes truly befitted an epic. What could have gone so wrong? One word. Magic.Too much cringe-worthy magic. Durham seems to have drawn inspiration fromGeorge R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. He ought to have to followedMartin’s lead in giving magic and its associated effects, a low profile.Instead, the role of magic grows in the plot to the extent that by the time weget to The Sacred Band, it plays a pivotal role. And it isn’t the fun or theinspiring kind. It’s magic of the pseudo-spiritual variety stemming from what’sessentially a creation myth of the Judeo-Christian variety. I felt seriouslylet down after all those multihued people when faced with an Abrahamic “Giver”.In The Other Lands, we discover that the Lothan Aklun power their technology byharnessing souls using a soul extractor. I sense that Durham is trying veryhard to differentiate his creations but the result isn’t exciting in the least,it’s just plain daft.

The Acacia Trilogy unfortunately turns promising intopassable.

Haiti Noir edited by Edwidge Danticat

2011-10-30T18:47:00.002+05:30

I read Danticat’s introduction and then put Haiti Noir away. Did Ireally want to read about misery and wretchedness (which I presumptuouslydecided would be chief themes of these 18 stories)? I should have got DelhiNoir instead, I thought to myself. Last week, it dawned on me that I was beinga schmuck so I picked up where I left off ... at the very beginning.

I expected the earthquake and vodun to dominate. Only a couple ofstories deal with le tremblement de terre. Danticat had largely finishedcollecting stories for the anthology when that frightful disaster struck. Thefirst of Haiti Noir’s entries, Odette written by Patrick Sylvain, is anintersection of both this fate-altering event and the system of belief thatshapes the lives of many Haitians and certainly moulds their image abroad. Anold woman with the gift of “double-sight” is abandoned by her daughter whojoins a protestant church. She finds solace in her five-year-old granddaughterwho has also been left behind. When the earthquake hits, her granddaughter isfound in pieces and the old woman is compelled to seek refuge in a tent citywhere neighbours spread rumours about her. When the lynch mob arrives to killthe witch, you realize with a sort of tragic detachment that you have plungedheadlong into a violent and abject world.

In M.J. Fievre’s Rainbow’s End, a comely eighteen year old realizes toolate that she has got herself mixed up with the wrong boy with the ominous conclusion“I suck in my breath, I can’t taste the sunrise. I am looking over my shoulder.Because Ben knows where I live.” GaryVictor’s The Finger, a paranormal tale of posthumous revenge, was one myfavourites. Where noir means gritty crime fiction in the rest of the world, inthe land of Baron Samedi, the surreal is never far behind. This opinion was validatedby the next story, Gokal by Kettly Mars about a Hotel California like inn forspecial visitors from the capital. What fun, you remark. You expected City ofJoy but got Mulholland Drive instead. But Evelyne Trouillot’s Which One? quicklybrings you back to reality as a mother must face the pain of switching herdaughter with her nearly identical half-sister to give her the promise of abetter life with a rich relative in the US (TB – la tante Brooklyn).

The stories become progressively more tragic and affecting. EdwidgeDanticat’s contribution, Claire of the Sea Light was particularly moving. Animpoverished fisherman struggles to raise his daughter alone. “During thosefirst moments with his daughter, there were times when he had visions for whichhe detested himself, fantasies about letting her starve to death. He’d even considered dropping her in the sea,but these were things he was dreaming for her because he could not do them tohimself. He could not poison himselflike he so desperately wanted. He couldn’t hazard the possibility of leavinghis child totally parentless, of having her end up in a brothel or on thestreets.”

It isn’t for nothing that Danticat was selected to edit this anthology.What a skilled writer, I must look up her other work. I loved the creepy but comic ending to KatiaD. Ulysse’s The Last Department and the odd Jewish boy from Miami who becomes acrusader for the Haitian cause in Mark Kurlansky’s tongue-in-cheek The Leopardof Ti Morne. The sagest comment in thecollection comes from this last story, appropriately from a vodun priest- “Ah,justice. Justice costs. Justice is very expensive.” That really sums up Haiti, acruel but whimsically opportunistic place like no other.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

2011-10-29T10:20:00.001+05:30

After her mother dies under suspicious circumstances, Yeine is orderedby her estranged grandfather, the head of the Arameri and sovereign of theworld to journey to Sky, the citadel from which the hundred thousand kingdomsare ruled. Yeine knows little of the ways of the Arameri who run a malevolenttheocracy centred on the god Itempas or skyfather. The gods responsible forcreating this world are a part of its fabric albeit slaves to the Arameri afterbeing defeated by Itempas in an ancient war. At Sky, Yeine is named heir to the Arameri throne along with two of hercousins, a decision that is tantamount to a death penalty. It doesn’t help thatthe Arameri regard her as little more than a northern barbarian. When theenslaved gods offer her an alliance, which wouldn’t save her life but may redeemit, she is drawn into a conspiracy that could have disastrous consequences forher.

I usually enjoy books that the Speculative Scotsman recommends. This isnot actually one that he’d read – but was apparently very eager to read, havingcollected all the books in the trilogy. I was naturally disappointed because I found the book boring. I suspect thishad a lot to do with Yeine’s point of view from which the book is written. Isuppose Jemisin was trying to show Yeine’s evolution from a timid and unsureentrant in this world of intrigue into someone who later demonstratesextraordinary control over her actions and emotions. This motivenotwithstanding, the narrative appears lopsided, disjointed and franklyannoying.

The focus of the story is not on world building at all. We see verylittle of the world at large beyond Sky’s walls. The citadel had the potentialto astound but felt like a second rate blend of Gormenghast and Pandora’sfloating mountains. Its descriptions are mundane and make it feel like a mildlymagical manor house. Jemisin’s interest appears to lie in relationshipsparticularly those that Yeine carves with the gods, Nahadoth and Sieh. Theformer is the alluringly hot lord of the night who cares and harms in equalparts. The latter is the childlike deity of mischief who confuses Yeine withhis overtures. The novel has strong feminist inclinations. For instance, Darr,Yeine’s homeland is a matriarchal society where in the past young men werecaptured on the battlefield, mutilated and used for breeding. Although its misandryseems to have mellowed, the nation’s army continues to be made up of womenwhere the strength of men is seen as better used to defend homes andbabies. Even among Yeine’s opponents, Reladis shown as lazy, inebriated and indolent whereas his sister Scimana is cunningand capable albeit cruel. She exploits Nahadoth sexually and sadistically in whatseems to be a reversal of traditional roles. Additionally, Yeine herself appearsto be sexually independent, perhaps even the dominant partner in the encountersshe discerningly commits to – very unusual for a work of fantasy where womenare rarely masters of their sexual destiny. This Germaine Greerish tenor, howeverunconventional, wasn’t enough to make this novel work.

Good Morning Glory

2011-10-29T07:51:00.000+05:30

Every morning, hundreds of morning glories say hello to me with their purple trumpets. It's a great way to start the day.

Literature Live: Mumbai LitFest

2011-10-29T07:28:00.002+05:30

The Mumbai LitFest is going to held at the NCPAbetween November 3 and 6. The organizers have got an interesting line-up ofwriters and events.You can view the schedule here or download a pdf version from this link.

The most interesting events seem to be happening on Thursday and Friday.There's no way I'll be able to get to town in time after work. I'll miss bothVikram Seth and Dalrymple - tragic! There is however a discussion about Englishin India on Saturday with a panel that features Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat.That one might be a good laugh especially if Bhagat makes any of thegrammatical or semantic errors that he's so well known for.

Here are some of the events that caught my eye:

November 3, 2011

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Discussion: How To Get Published

The answer to a writer's perennial question Featuring Shobhaa De,Amish Tripathi, David Dadar andGautam Padmanabhan at Tata Theatre

6:45 PM - 7:45 PM - Performance: The Last Mughal

Inspired by William Dalrymple's Book Featuring William Dalrympleand Vidya Shah. at Tata Theatre

November 4, 2011

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Presentation: Battleground Bombay Hot Jazzand the Cold War

How and why did Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong findthemselves performing in Bombay in the 1960s.Featuring Naresh Fernandes at Experimental Theatre

6:45 PM - 7:45 PM - Book Release: Vikram Seth's The Rivered Earth

Book Reading Featuring Vikram Seth at Experimental Theatre

8:00 PM - 9:30 PM - Performance: Finkelstein's Castle

A ravishing, virtuosic and thrilling musical adventure story with atwist! A story told with a Cello Featuring by Matthew Sharp at TataTheatre

November 5, 2011

5:15 PM - 6:15 PM - Discussion: Taking Liberties with Language

How far can the English language be streached byIndians? Featuring Shobhaa De, Chetan Bhagat, Jerry Pinto, andFarrukh Dhondy at Experimental Theatre

Wild Coast – Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge by John Gimlette

2011-10-26T15:04:00.002+05:30

The article titled “Suriname, South America’s Hidden Treasure” which appeared in the travel section of The New York Times, made thecountry out to be a charming, multicultural diversion. Paramaribo, its whimsically named capital iscertainly charming with its distinctive wooden colonial architecture. The placeis undeniably multicultural with a strange hodgepodge of Amerindians,Hindoostanen (whose forbears were indentured labourers from India), Javanese,Creoles, Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves), Europeans, Jews and Arabs. I revisitedthat article several times over the same week. There’s no other country that Ihave come so close to and yet never actually visited. I still remember beingdriven up the west coast road to Berbice through that Guyanese flatness of sugarplantations, paddy fields and houses on stilts. Were it not for the quirky Antilleansigns, the temples, prayer flags and mosques would trick you into believing thatyou were in a dinky settlement in Uttar Pradesh. On the scruffy banks of theCorentyne in the non-descript Guyanese town of Corriverton, we’d wave to theSurinamese over in Nieuw Nickerie.

The New York Times article referenced a travelogue byJim Gimlette whose book on Paraguay – At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig – I mightilyenjoyed. Wild Coast has since then been on my wish list. Had Gimlette notwritten about all three Guianas, Wild Coast could have been the non-fictionaltwin to Rahul Bhattacharya’s The Sly Company of People Who Care. Gimlette’sjourney like Bhattacharya’s fictional one, begins in Georgetown, Guyana’s lowlying capital. In At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, I admired Gimlette’sability to weave the past and the present seamlessly and offer them to us,wrapped in his wry observations. His talent is ubiquitous in his latest work aswell. Walking around the city hedescribes as conspiratorial, he spots signs that say “NO IDLERS’ and ‘NOTOUTS’. “It was an impossible injunction. In Georgetown, everyone was eitherone or the other.” Even when digging through history, he finds the unlikeliestnuggets as if they were just waiting to be used as part of a quip. Forbes Burnham,the dictator who led an Afro-Guyanese police state from 1966 to 1980 wasoriginally brought to power at the behest of Britain and the United States who wantedto do all that they could to keep the Marxist leaning Indian dominated People’sProgressive Party from democratically winning power (was there no limit to theirall-pervading hypocrisy?). At the beginning of Forbes’ rule, “everyone agreedthat he was charming and articulate.” He even won an endorsement from Naipaul. “Onlyhis sister was suspicious. On the eve of his election she published a pamphletcalled Beware of My Brother Forbes.”

On his travels both through history and thecountryside, Gimlette’s roving eye never misses potential irony. In Georgetownstands a terribly ugly statue of Cuffy, an eighteenth century black Spartacus who ledplantation slaves on a rampage in East Berbice. Gimlette remarks that Cuffy isperhaps the only historical figure in Guyana to have a memorial. “It’san angry-looking piece cast in England and erected in Georgetown. What Cuffywould have made of this is anyone’s guess: a statue of a man whose appearanceis unknown, made by the old enemy and erected in a city that did not exist atthe time.”

In Georgetown, I felt that Gimlette was on familiarif eccentric territory. The real adventure, though, begins when he leaves thecity. “To most townies, what happened beyond the city limits was beyond thepale – a vast, malarial dystopia of stinking swamps, thorns, bandits, bugs thesize of rats and dark carnivorous forest. ‘You gonna find nothing man,’ they’dsay, ‘the bush swallow everything. You can’t see you hand in front of you face...’” In the savannahs of the Rupununi, among the ranchers and Makushitribesmen and in the border town of Lethem, we see Gimlette’s extraordinary strengthas a travel writer. This is an otherworldly realm at the very precipice of ourconsciousness marked by “slicks of brilliant ooze, grass like green fire,liverish pools and succulent bogs rimmed with pink.”

Paramaribo, Suriname

At the book’s halfway mark, I was anxious about when theSurinamese leg of the journey would begin. As much I was fond of Guyana, I wasfar too familiar with the land of the arrow-headed flag to feel excited by it.Gimlette must have felt the same way because although he expends fewer pages on theformer Dutch colony, he is clearly as besotted by it as I was when I read thatarticle. “I spent my first day falling in love with Paramaribo, and then therest of my time wondering quite why. It wasn’t that I ever fell out of love,just that after a while things stopped making sense. Although the city wasnever conspiratorial like Georgetown, it could still be mind-bogglinglyobscure. How had it ended up with a square coins, for example, and a banknotefor 2½ dollars? Why was the newspaper called the Times of Suriname and yetpublished in Dutch? And why were all the advertisements in ‘English’ English, alanguage only a few understood? The big poster at the time depicted a woman ina state of advanced ecstasy, under the banner ‘Did you already find spice?’ Isimply couldn’t imagine what she wanted to me buy. Her tiny dress? Condoms? Delayspray? Or just marjoram and dill?”

But when he digs deeper, he discovers that the countryis not as tame as its wooden porticoes and whimsical patois (Sranan Tongo) leadyou to believe. An idle comment to a bystander about the comeliness of women ina parade gets this retort, “That’s all this country has ... nice girls andcocaine.” Even when he’s deep in theSurinamese interior, among the simultaneously quixotic and sinister Maroons, narratingall the conflicts the land has been witness to (the last one only ended in thelate eighties), the savagery of this inhospitable land doesn’t strike you. It’snot until he makes his way to French Guiana that we see a living metaphor forits wantonness. A French physicist whogives him a lift on the road to Cayenne cautions him about hitchhiking. It’s “stillpretty wild”, he tells Gimlette. “... I’ve seen billions of francs and eurospoured into this land. But does it look any different? Has anything changed? Youturn your back, and everything’s covered in rust, and all the bridges havecollapsed. We have an army out here, trying to keep out the immigrants and findthe cocaine. But does it make any difference? It’s like trying to turn back thetide! This crazy coast will be whatever it wants to be. France has been herealmost 400 years, and yet it looks like we just arrived! All around, what doyou see? La foret, les bamboos, les étrangleurs ... la terre sauvage!”

I was feeling quite downcast at not having read anygood travel writing in a long time and along comes Gimlette to the rescue. Hecombines three skills that are key to good travel narrative: historicalresearch, flair for writing and the courage to travel. I have to confess thoughthat he has a tendency to exaggerate. “Even as I write, there isn’t a singleroad that leads from the Guianas into the world beyond” and “As Guyana’s onlylandlady, Lorlene was hopelessly ...” he tells us. Although there may not beany turnpikes connecting the coast with Caracas or Manaus, there are definitelyroads connecting Guyana to at least Brazil if not Venezuela. And it was a bitrich of him to pass off Lorlene (who took him in as a paying guest) as the solelandlady in the entire country. We’ll allow him this bit of hyperbole forbringing us these wonderful new vistas. As he aptly remarks “Other places mayfeel more magnificent than the Guianas but nowhere feels quite so unconquered.”

You'll find some pictures from the author's trip at his site.

Zerostrata by Andersen Prunty

2011-10-26T09:22:00.001+05:30

Hansel Nothing returns to his family’s suburban homeafter abandoning it a decade earlier. He is depressed and seeks meaning in hislost childhood. His family has undergone some changes though. His father is largelyabsent due to his new profession, superhero. His mother’s gone batty; she wearsa cat on her head, pops prescription drugs like candy and has taken a lover(they sleep together but don’t have sex). His brother, Zasper, hasn’t left hisbasement room in two years and wants to become his father’s sidekick. In the yardis a much-cherished tree house, Zerostrata. While coming to terms with all thisweirdness, he spots a naked girl running around the neighbourhood. He attempts tofollow her and discovers that her name is Gretel Something and she lives withher evil grandmother. Hansel immediately understands that his life is about totake on a new direction.

Zerostrata apparently belongs to a genre called bizarrofiction. Regardless of the label under which it’s filed, it’s supremely surrealwith severe absurdist leanings. I quite liked the first half of Zerostrata. Itwas like a floating through a quirky amusement park. Later, however, Pruntypacks in more of the surreal than this post-modern fairy tale can handle andyou get off that Ferris wheel nauseous and slightly confused.

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

2011-10-23T12:07:00.002+05:30

I lived in Delhi for a short while when I was youngerand had the misfortune of attending a school run by an evangelical despot. Eachdreary day began with proclamations of eternal damnation, fire and brimstoneand badly sung hymns, made more painful by the fact that many were in Hindi (Ischhoti jeevan gaadi ko tu hi chalaye prahbu). “Will you be among the chosen?”was a question the principal often asked when concluding his diatribe (in betweenrelieving himself of frequent wedgies from the expansive cleft in his arse). The ‘chosen’feature prominently in Perrotta’s The Leftovers, making their presence feltthrough their absence.

In the world of The Leftovers, October 14 is asignificant day (eerily, I began the book on October 14). On this day, millionsof ordinary people across the world vanish in what’s termed the Sudden Departure.Many view the event as the realization of the Christian concept of the rapturewhen the good and the decent (aka those who have accepted Jesus Christ as theirsaviour) are whisked away to heaven where they get to enjoy all you can eatbuffets and parlour games for what’s left of eternity. The novel, though, isnot about the chosen. It is, as the title suggests, about those who were leftbehind. The trouble is that those who have disappeared seem to have beenselected quite randomly. Their numbers include Buddhists, Hindus, atheists,homosexuals and a fair few who have led anything but pious lives. The tensionand insecurity caused by not being selected seems to far outweigh any impact onsociety by the missing. In fact, things seem to chug along as if nothing hadhappened and yet the lives of the leftovers will never be the same again.

The Garvey family live in Mapleton, a quiet NewJerseyish exurb. Kevin Garvey becomes the town mayor after the Sudden Departure.He seems the most unaffected by the event in the family. His daughter Jillwitnesses the disappearance of a friend and subsequently goes rogue. His sonTom is incongruously affected when he hears of the disappearance of a classmatehe hadn’t seen in years and was never close to in the first place. He drops outof a college and joins what is billed to be a support group. Kevin’s wifeLaurie who initially seems the most stable of the lot surprises us by joining acreepy cult.

Cults proliferate in this post-rapture world. TheBarefoot People avoid showering and wearing footwear while acting outhedonistic hippie fantasies. The Healing Hug movement which counts Tom Garveyas a member, begins as an innocent share and care and develops into a dodgy groupcentring on its leader, Holy Wayne, who impregnates underage girls with thegoal of birthing a messiah. But none are as disturbing as the Guilty Remnantwhose members take a vow of silence, wear white garb and live secluded livesexcept when they come out to follow ordinary citizens around, lighting up inpublic – “we smoke to proclaim our faith” they say.

There are no explanations as to why the Sudden Departureoccurred nor is there even a slightest movement towards some kind ofresolution. Perrotta is interested in something far deeper. He indolently exploresthe impact of the event on those who are left behind. In doing so, he throws upuneasy questions about our values and what we perceive to be the purpose of living.Rev. Matt Jamison, a Baptist pastor is most discomfited at not having been whiskedaway. So much so that he starts publishing a newsletter detailing the sordidlives of those who were taken to prove that it was a false rapture. Nora isinconsolable when her affluent and contented existence is disrupted by the disappearanceof her husband and two children. When Rev. Jamison publishes evidence of herhusband’s infidelity, she realizes that “She wasn’t a tragic widow, after all,just another woman betrayed by a selfish man. It was a smaller, more familiar role,and a lot easier to play.”

In the hands of another, The Leftovers could haveturned into an exercise in flippancy or worse a funereal work weighted down bythe gravitas of its pivotal event. Perrotta writes with a remarkable degree of poiseand clarity. His narrative is a sharp knife, unafraid to cut characters and theiractions down to their very bones. And yet, it’s melodic and easygoing, almostas if someone were whistling an impromptu but cheerful tune.

After finishing the book, I was left wonderingwhether an event like Perrotta’s Sudden Departure would affect other culturesin the same way for I feel he describes a very American reaction. What wouldIndians do? Would they deliberate and grieve, wallowing in an existentialmiasma? Or would they move on?

The Leftovers asks many questions and doesn’t answermost of them. It’s an oddly intriguing work.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

2011-10-23T08:44:00.001+05:30

Thearea, whose lanes through which I plough a shortcut on my way to work, fascinatesme. Ostensibly a slum, its pucca houses reflect a different story. Their narrowfaces and shared walls lend them what could pass for the facade of a Georgianrow on the Gangetic plains. Here church and madrassa squat beside each other.Down the street, the space adjacent to a municipal school hosts all nightjagrans to Pandurang, the hands-on-hips deity venerated through pilgrimagemarches in the wrinkly folds of Western India. In a corner house lives a covenof hijras. Their street is mostly Hindu. Many armed elephant figures on theirlintels announce the faith of those who live within. A parallel lane is Muslim.The lane that is perpendicular to both, Sikh. All have a smattering of aCatholic presence attested to by crucified saviours on their doors. Somefamilies are prosperous. They have cars and LED TVs, the lives of theirneighbours seem pallid with relative penury. I know because I see into theirpucca row-houses. Through their ever-open doors, I sight rooms beyond rooms androoms within rooms, like corridor-less Indian houses of old.

Ioften wonder about these people. What would it be like to write about them?Would the initial promise of distinctiveness give way to the sameness ofpeople’s lives? I share this with you because it’s a testament to Daniyal’sMueenuddin’s disquieting talent. Stories are such fickle things, even the mostnovel are subject to the vagaries of taste and perception. On the other hand, familiaritybreeds tedium and that’s surely ill placed footing to start an anthology ofautonomous but slightly overlapping stories.

Mueenuddincuts into the harsh and eclectic bedlam that is Pakistani society and serves usa neat cross-section as if it were a layered sponge cake. All of the eight storiesare connected to the family, household or estate of K.K. Harouni, a now fadingfeudal nabob who nonchalantly surveys this cumulative decay from his ramblingmansion in Lahore. He is but one among the many intriguing characters whopopulate this work and certainly not all are as privileged. Nawabdin is agenius electrician on Harouni’s lands in rural Punjab and Saleema, a servant inhis household. In one story, we meet Lily, a vapid Islamabad socialite. Inanother, we encounter Rezak, a labourer on a plush retreat in the hills whereLily once partied. These would be unremarkable, tedious stories were it not forthe genius of Mueenuddin’s writing. By this, I don’t mean to say that he hasembellished his work with descriptions of the baroque kind. Instead, heobserves his characters and the scenes he sets them in at length.

Wesee this most keenly in Provide, Provide where Jaglani, a canny andopportunistic estate manager marries the servant who keeps his estate quartersfor him.

“YetDunyapur had been spoiled for him by the presence of Zainab. He minded verymuch that he had given his sons a stepmother of that class, a servant woman. Heminded that he had insulted his first wife in that way, by marrying again, bymarrying a servant, and then by keeping the marriage a secret. His senior wifehad never reproached him, but after Jaglani told her she quickly became old.She prayed a great deal, spent much of her time in bed, stopped caring forherself. Her body became rounded like a hoop, not fat but fleshed uniformly allover, a body thrown away, throwing itself away, the old woman sitting all dayin bed, dreaming, muttering perhaps when left alone. He reproached himself fortaking his eldest son’s daughter and giving her to Zainab, transplanting thelittle girl onto such different stock. Secretly, and most bitterly, he blamedhimself for having been so weak as to love a woman who had never loved him. Hemade an idol of her, lavished himself upon her sexual body, gave himself to awoman who never gave back, except in the most practical terms. She blotted thecleanliness of his life trajectory, which he had always before believed in. Sherepresented the culmination of his ascendance, the reward of his virtue andstriving, and showed him how little it all had been, his life and hisambitions. All of it he had thrown away, his manliness and strength, for a pairof legs that clasped his waist and a pair of eyes that pierced him and that yethad at bottom the deadness of foil.”

This excerpt struck me more than any other did in the bookand I immediately highlighted it. I notice that Chandrahas Choudhury has also quotedit in his review of the book. I am elated that my eyes are getting sharper althoughI am not able to deconstruct the finer points of Mueenuddin’s writing. I amcertain though this is seasoned fiction at its very best, simple, authentic and insightful.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a startling workpunctuated by a misleading sense of effortlessness. Some of the stories are available online through the New Yorker: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, A Spoiled Man and Nawabdin Electrician.

A Real Chore

2011-10-17T06:35:00.002+05:30

I haven't been reading any Indian authors lately. Well, that's not exactly true. I borrowed Mohyna Srinivasan's The House on Mall Road and then Urmila Deshpande's A Pack of Lies but I couldn't make headway with either. A collection of Tamil short stories, Aseem Kaul's Etudes and Indra Sinha's Animal's People sit despondently on my bookshelf, half-eaten and abandoned. I suddenly seem to find Indian fiction a real chore. I am currently reading River of Smoke. Amitav Ghosh happens to be one of my favourite Indian writers and yet I have been progressing at a snail's pace.

Nevertheless, I am going to endeavour to read more Indian writers over the next 2 months. They're seriously under-represented on the web unless they fall into the mass-market bracket.

I just wish they weren't so ponderously dense and contrivedly nostalgic.

Flikr CC image India Postage Stamp by Karen

City of Fortune by Roger Crowley

2011-10-16T19:09:00.001+05:30

Isthere any city that evokes as much ardour as Venice? Its magnificent imagery andotherworldly pageantry transport you into a work of fantasy where you mustpinch yourself to disbelieve that the surreal panorama of arches, bridges, palazzosand water bodies is the contents of a dream. At least, that is my conjecture ofwhat things will be like when I visit the eternal city. I know that I won’t be thefirst naive tourist to pretend to discover its hidden places but even if it isonly for a moment that camera clicks stop, footsteps fade and I find myself allalone, I will feel like I am a part of the city, its history, splendour anddecay. It’s so easy to forget that Venice was not created to be a museum of moulderingand sinking buildings or a romantic’s theme park. That the Venice of today, a depopulatedshowpiece for the tourists of the world was a superpower in its age seems hardlycredible. But, Richard Crowley’s brilliant work showed me just that.

I wasvery irritated with myself when I received this book because for some oddreason, I was under the impression that I had ordered Peter Ackroyd’s book on Venice.As a result, I began City of Fortune begrudgingly. How wrong I was! At onepoint, I almost got the feeling I was reading a Clive Cussler bestseller.Crowley brings all the action to life in the most convincing and canny way. Thefirst part of the book pertains to the rise of the city and is almost entirelydevoted to the fourth crusade. I was perplexed at first. I’ve read enough aboutthe fourth crusade and the sacking of the Hagia Sophia disturbs me every timewhether in historical accounts or fictional work like Umberto Eco’s Baudolino.Only as this section ends do we learn the pivotal role the fourth crusade playsin propelling Venice to its dominance of the eastern Mediterranean.

Eachyear, the doge, the elected ruler of the most serene republic would toss agolden ring into the city’s lagoon in a symbolic act of marrying the sea. Thesea was everything to Venice and it determined the city’s destiny. This explainswhy subsequent chapters of The City of Fortune don’t focus on the physical cityat all. “To its inhabitants Venice was less a few finite miles of crampedlagoon than a vast space, vividly imagined, extending ‘wherever water runs’, asif from the campanile of St Mark, distance were foreshortened and Corfu, Coron,Crete, Negroponte, the Ionian Isles and the Cyclades were plainly visible, likediamonds on a silk sea. Damage to the Stato da Mar was felt like a wound;losses like an amputation.” Hence, the book is dominated by events elsewhere, withinthe imposing walls of Constantinople, in rebellious Crete and in far-flung Tanaon the northern shores of the Black Sea.

Venicewas different from all of its contemporaries. Here was a city that had a uniquecontract with its citizens built on the promise of profit and prosperity inreturn for cooperation with state campaigns. Citizens regularly forwent individualgain for the greater good of the city, a stark contrast to its arch-rival Genoa.They had little choice because the city had no resources of its own save thefish that lived in its brackish waters. Venice’s real strength lay in the strategicuse of its manpower which it mobilized to execute enterprising mercantileprojects as well as plans of a more devious nature.

“Outsiders attempting to grasp the meaning of the place at the end of thefifteenth century found it impossible to match to their known worlds.Everywhere they were confronted by paradox. Venice was sterile but visiblyabundant; running with wealth but short of drinking water; immensely powerfulyet physically fragile; free from feudalism but fiercely regulated. Itscitizens were sober, unromantic and frequently cynical, yet they had conjured acity of fantasy. Gothic arches, Islamic domes and Byzantine mosaics transportedthe observer simultaneously to Bruges, Cairo and Constantinople. Venice seemedself-generated. The only Italian city not in existence in Roman times, itsinhabitants had created their own antiquity out of theft and borrowings; theymanufactured their foundation myths and stole their saints from the Greekworld.”

Fromswamp and mud they may have arisen, but that was not going to stop them fromaping and superseding far greater states. We see this immediately after thefourth crusade when Venice takes control of Constantinople and the doge, JacopoTiepolo “proposed moving the centre of Venetian government to the city. Venice,once the puny satellite of the Byzantine Empire, idly contemplated replacingit.”

It’sthe men who created this history that I have the most admiration for, each morecolourful and unusual than the next. From the geriatric but heroic Enrico Dandolo,the ninety-year-old doge who personally led Venetian forces in the siege of Constantinopleto the valour and tragedy of Pisani, Venice’s most famous sea captain. A scenethat remains in my mind is when Alexius (usurper to the Byzantine throne andhelped on to it by the Venetians) double-crosses his sponsors, he receives avisit from Dandalo.

“Dandolo,from the perspective of his ninety years, decided to make one more personalappeal to Alexius’s better nature. He sent a messenger to the palace,requesting a meeting at the harbour. Dandolo had himself rowed across in agalley, with three more galleys packed with armed men to guard him. Alexiusrode down to the shore. The doge opened abruptly: ‘Alexius, what are youthinking of? Remember that it is we who dragged you out of misery and then madeyou lord and crowned you emperor. Will you not honour your commitments and notdo anything more about it?’ The emperor’s response was firmly negative. Furyovercame the doge. ‘No? Contemptible boy,’ he spat, ‘we hauled you out of thedung heap and we’ll drop you back in it. And I defy you. Be fully aware thatfrom now on I will pursue you to your utter destruction, with all the power atmy disposal.’ With these words the doge left and returned to camp.”

Crowley’swonderfully wry observations of the hypocrisy of the times attest to both hisskill as a writer and a researcher. This particular incident from the fourthcrusade had me in stitches.

“AbbotMartin of Pairis learned that the Church of the Pantocrator Monastery housed anextraordinary collection of relics. Hurrying there with his chaplain, heentered the sacristy – the depository of the most sacred objects – where heencountered a man with a long white beard. ‘Come faithless old man,’ bawled theprelate, ‘show me the more powerful of the relics you guard. Otherwiseunderstand that you will be punished immediately with death.’ The tremblingmonk showed him an iron chest, containing a trove of treasures, ‘more pleasingand more desirable to him than all the riches of Greece’. ‘The abbot greedilyand hurriedly thrust in both hands, and as he was girded for action, both heand the chaplain filled the folds of their habits with sacred sacrilege.’ Withtheir robes stuffed with religious treasure, the two men waddled back to theirship, with the old monk in tow. ‘We have done well … thanks be to God,’ was theabbot’s laconic reply to passers-by.”

Ienjoyed The City of Fortune so much that I want to overlook this tiny flaw butI would also want Crowley to fix it in reprints. “Like the Venetians they wereeverywhere; by the start of the fourteenth century Genoese traders could befound from Britain to Bombay (p.138).” I don’t think it’s worth risking an anachronismfor the sake of alliteration.

Despiteall their desperate efforts, the Venetians knew they were fighting a dyingcause. With the rise of the Ottomans and Vasco da Gama finding a route toIndia, their beloved Stato da Mar and the commercial enterprise it supported, buckled.“The lintel of more than one collapsed Venetian house on Crete bears the Latinmotto ‘The world is nothing but smoke and shadows’. As if they knew, deep down,that all the imperial razzmatazz of trumpets, ships and guns was only a mirage.”Only, could they have predicted that the lasting impression they would leave onthe world would be of decadence and romance, not empire and enterprise?

Cityof Fortune is undoubtedly the best work of non-fiction that I've read so far this year.

Flickr cc image Venice by lpsychik

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

2011-10-16T16:40:00.003+05:30

Yearsago, Margaret Pomeranz complained to David Straton on The Movie Show (when theywere still on SBS and I was still in Australia) that filmmakers were making increasinglyand unreasonably long movies which with tighter editing and smarter plots couldeasily fit into a 75 minute production. I could echo those words about booksthese days. Not only are many overly long, they persistently spill over into unendingsequels. This irritant is my only beef with Glow.

TheEmpyrean is a large spaceship on its way from a dystopian Earth to a distantplanet, a journey that will take it decades. Its denizens are buoyed by thevision of saving the human race, especially its young who in late adulthoodwould ostensibly colonize the planet they called New Earth. Life for teenagers onthe ship is painted in scenes that we would recognize. They play, hang-out anddate although they help out with their parent’s hydroponic gardens and face thepressure of reproducing early to overcome issues of lowered fertility in deepspace. The torpor of life on The Empyrean is disrupted when it suddenlyencounters The New Horizon, its sister ship in the middle of a nebula. Why hasThe New Horizon, which ought to be years ahead of The Empyrean, decelerated toallow the second ship to catch up to it? When people on board The Empyrean get aninkling of their sister ship’s sinister intentions, it’s already too late toreverse events that will have devastating effects on all their lives.

This was a really quick read. The premise of Glow is appealing and Iempathized deeply with its anti-religious message although Ryan attempts tobalance the portrayal by pitching it more like a debate between whether religionsaves or skewers. I don’t know how much YA science fiction is out there butthis is definitely a worthy addition to the genre. I didn’t read into thelanguage too much but some lines made me laugh. Listen to this one from the seventeen-year-oldprotagonist’s rousing sermon:

“Humankindwill not recede into the darkness. The journey is long, the mission isdifficult, some say impossible, but we will prevail. There will come a timewhen children gather around a fire and look at stars unknown to us. They willremember our sacrifices. And our names will fill their songs.”

Isuppose it’s alright given that the book’s intended audience will be moreinterested in whether the book’s dashing captain in waiting gets to be with hisdamsel in distress. But, that’s where Glow becomes interesting. This isn’t aboy rescues girl story at all.

Withsharper editing, Glow could have been conclusively ended in one book. Sadly,the gleam or should I say glow of the trilogy beckons.

I prefer the version of the cover on the right. The one above looks like a perv hole in a restroom.

The Sworn Sword by George R. R. Martin

2011-10-16T15:14:00.001+05:30

I still haven’t got around to writing anything about Martin’s monstrously long epic. Maybe, if my disposition this evening permits a little self-indulgence, that review might see the light of html day. It so happens that I was quite flabbergasted at what a clever bastard Martin turned out to be. So I started to look up some of his other work and discovered that he has written a number of novellas (thank the stars). The Sworn Sword is the second in what is currently a three part series (but with many more siblings expected) featuring a knight deprecatingly named Dunk – Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg, a scion of the royal family, roaming about the realm incognito. I vaguely remember a reference to Dunk and Egg in one of the A Song of Ice and Fire books.

In TheSworn Sword, Dunk who is a hedge knight (a sort of travelling knight for hire)is in the employ of eclipsed nobleman Ser Eustace of Standfast, an old man withdelusions of grandeur. When Ser Eustace’s neighbour, the powerful Lady Webberof Coldmoat dams a shared stream in the midst of an impoverishing drought, awar of words escalates into an ill-matched clash; one that Dunk, as the soleeffective knight at Standfast, is charged with winning.

There’snothing noteworthy about this simple story, a fact that serves to accentuateMartin’s talent. Remember the wild and gripping popular fiction of your youth;the Robin Cooks and Sidney Sheldons of the world who we pooh-pooh today? Rarelydo I experience the magic of a frantic page-turner these days. My schemata arefront loaded with the cynical skeletons of far too many books to feel as excitedanymore. But this man who looks one third Santa Claus and two thirds RichardAttenborough, issues words from his fingers that are pure crack. I can’t quite pin down what it is that makeshis writing so addictive. Sentences, paragraphs and pages collude to urge you to read on and on and on. Martin’s genius seems to lie in his ability to shackle youto his story. You begin his books as readers and consumers and you end them asslaves to his uncommon acuity.

Global Vipassana Pagoda

2011-10-09T14:28:00.003+05:30

Last weekend, I checked out the incongruous pagoda that's arisen out of the mangroves in Gorai, once an island but now a peninsula hanging off the north-east coast of Salcette - the island that barely contains suburban Bombay.

Two thoughts ran through my head as I boarded the ferry that crosses Manori Creek. One, I wanted to shoot myself in the foot for not checking the charge on my camera's battery. Two, I could have been floating down the Irrewaddy in Burma in the shadow of Shwedagon. The Vipasanna pagoda is modelled after the famous temple in Rangoon and not surprisingly I spotted Burmese craftsmen in lyongis at the site. It was pretty impressive in a sort of tacky goldeny way but the place didn't exude the tranquility I associate with Vipasanna.

Fisherman unloading their catch on Marve Beach. One of them is inadvertently flying the Irish flag.

Nope! It's just gold paint. But at the very top they have a golden flag encrusted with diamonds and rubies topped by a glowing crystal.

This is going to sound very irreverent but it does look like a ginormous golden plunger.

Directions: Take the Essel World Ferry from either Marve Jetty in Malad or Gorai Jetty in Borivali. The pagoda is a 5 minute walk from the Essel World pier. Alternatively, you can drive there or take a bus that leaves from Bhayander station, but that might take forever.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

2011-10-09T13:52:00.002+05:30

Entrancing in’it? But, it wasn’t the trailer thatdrew me to this unusual book. I didn’t even know there was a trailer until acouple of hours ago. There is something so eerie about the photograph on thecover, not eerie in a menacing way. I suppose the right way to describe myreaction was a sort of ominous curiosity.

Rather than summarize the book and inadvertently slip in a plot spoiler, I am going to quote directly from the jacket description.

“A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And astrange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discoveredin Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel thatmixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our storyopens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to aremote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins ofMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandonedbedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once livedhere—one of whom was his own grandfather—were more than just peculiar. They mayhave been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island forgood reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.”

The book’s strength lies in its ability to transcendgenres and simultaneously please a variety of audiences across age groups. Thesense of mystery is heightened by the inclusion of a number of authenticvintage photographs borrowed from private collectors. In all likelihood, itwould seem that the photographs determined the characters instead of the other wayaround. Therefore, the book becomes a sort of exposition of found-art. The blurbpromises a spine-tingling fantasy and the book delivers it with aplomb. Thereis a lot of tension in the story coupled with a sinister edge but it isn’t of the ghoulishvariety. There’s an endearing innocence to it all.

I really enjoyed Miss Peregrine’s Home for PeculiarChildren but its length doesn’t do justice to its scope. I loved the open-endedway in which the book was concluded (almost as if the author was asking us tocontinue to adventure in our own dreams), but feared a sequel. I gather fromRiggs’ website that there definitely is going to be a sequel. As much as Iwould want to read the next book, I loathe how it would dilute the uniqueness ofMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Ransom Riggs is a writer, filmmaker and photographer.His site is fascinating and some of his photographs are out of this world.

Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika by Giles Foden

2011-10-09T11:47:00.001+05:30

You’dbe forgiven for thinking this was the story of two cuddly bears who were off onan adventure in the land of Nod. History is indeed a rich source of eccentricand whimsical tales but none as bizarre as the battle of Lake Tanganyika.

“At the start of World War One, Germanwarships controlled Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. The British had no navalcraft at all upon ‘Tanganjikasee’, as the Germans called it. This mattered: itwas the longest lake in the world and of great strategic advantage. In June1915, a force of 28 men was despatched from Britain on a vast journey. Theirorders were to take control of the lake. To reach it, they had to haul twomotorboats with the unlikely names of Mimi and Toutou through the wilds of theCongo.

The28 were a strange bunch—one was addicted to Worcester sauce, another was aformer racing driver—but the strangest of all of them was their skirt-wearing,tattoo-covered commander, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. Whatever it took, even if itmeant becoming the god of a local tribe, he was determined to cover himself inglory. But the Germans had a surprise in store for Spicer-Simson, in the shapeof their secret ‘supership’ the Graf von Götzen…”

Spicer-Simsonwas probably the most ineffectual senior office in the Royal Navy at the time. He’dalready been subjected to two court martials from events that combinednegligence with stupidity. Spicer seemed to have regarded himself as a victimof circumstance and had delusions of grandeur. Why he was chosen to lead such acritical and tricky mission is puzzling. Perhaps, in the middle of a war, therewas no one else available.

WhenSpicer and his crew left Britain for South Africa to launch the clandestinemission of dragging two largish wooden motor boats overland to Lake Tanganyika,the operation was already Britain’s worst kept secret. It’s a real wonder whythe Germans, who seemed to known about the mission from the very beginning,didn’t do anything about it. Maybe, they doubted its success, laughing it offas a fool’s venture led by a fool.

Spiceroriginally wanted to call the two motor boats, cat and dog. When his superiors rejected these names asabsurd, he decided to call them Mimi and Toutou, supposedly French for meow andbow-wow. Strangely, these names were accepted. The boats and the team who wouldman them were loaded on to liner bound for Cape Town. Well before this motley group reached Africanshores, Spicer was earning quite a reputation with his boastful idiocy:

A few minutes later Wainwright and acivilian passenger joined them. Wainwright’s companion began pointing out the SouthernCross and the other stars that filled the magnificent panoply of the tropicalheavens, when a voice was heard in the darkness. It was Spicer, correcting thecivilian’s reading of the night sky.

‘You must forgive me if I don’t agree,’responded the passenger. ‘Stars are in my line of work, you know.’

‘Oh, indeed?’ retorted Spicer. ‘I certainlywouldn’t know it from what you’re telling us. I am a Navigating Officer!

Wainwright’s companion studied Spicer as heemerged into the light, then simply turned and walked away.

‘That was the Astronomer Royal of CapeTown,’ explained the doctor, as casually as he could.

‘Is that so?’ Spicer laughed out loud. ‘He’dmake a damned bad Navigating Officer!’

Such stories spread like wildfire among themembers of the expedition, rapidly eroding Spicer’s authority. It was hisstupid boastfulness about hunting that especially did for him. When he claimedto have carried a water-buck back to camp slung over one shoulder, havingoutstripped his native trackers, it only needed someone to point out that awater-buck was about the size of a pony for him to appear a figure of fun.

FromCape Town, the expedition needed to take the boats 4800 km north to LakeTanganyika. Part of the journey was undertaken using a special trail thattravelled to Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo by way of Bulawayo in SouthernRhodesia, now Zimbabwe. They then travelled to the farthest railhead atFungurume from where they had to drag the boats and their equipment over themountains of Katanga and found their way to the treacherous Lualaba, atributary of the mighty Congo. Aneventful journey north took them to the railhead of Kabalo where they were ableto hop on a train to Lukuga, a Belgian controlled port on Lake Tanganyika.

Foden,the author of the brilliant novel, The King of Scotland, writes exceptionallywell. His focus is not just on the conflict on the lake but issues at itsperiphery as well like the expedition’s interactions with the natives:

“For many members of the Naval AfricaExpedition, products of their own period in history, the Africans were littlemore than beasts. Like someone staring into a thick fog, they could not see thehumanity there. The people on the shore and the animals on the shore were oneand the same: simple embodiments of the wilderness—pawns in the romanticprimitivist game the white man had been playing with Africa for the past 40years.”

And hedigs up wonderful anecdote-worthy incidents which make the book exceptionalquirky:

“During the journey, British forces capturedBukoba, an important port on the other great African lake, the Victoria Nyanza.One can be sure that the full story of the victory did not come through on theLlanstephen Castle’s Morse set: drunken soldiers dancing about in looted Germandress uniforms, or in stolen ladies’ underwear, with spiked Pickelhaube helmetson their heads and cigars between their lips.

Some of the looters, writes Byron Farwell,‘were scandalised…by their glimpses of the Germans’ sex lives. One soldierdiscovered companion photographs of the German commandant: in the first hestood resplendent in full dress uniform beside a woman (his wife?) who wascompletely naked; in the second, the same woman stood fully dressed in formalattire beside the naked commandant.’”

On theshores of Lake Tanganyika, Spicer’s eccentricity bubbles over when he regularlytakes to wearing skirts that his wife has stitched for him, proclaiming themmuch more suitable for the tropical weather. With lady luck on their side, Spicer’smen sink one German ship and capture another – efforts that Spicer commandeersas purely his own initiative. While his own men may have viewed him with someambivalence, the Holo-holo, the tribe native to the lake shores saw Spicer in avery different light:

“The Holo-holo offered more than mere‘appreciation’. The sinking of the Kingani and the sending away of the Germancaptives did not simply make him a man of power in their eyes, it elevated himto the category of divine being. Everything he did seemed to increase theirreverence. ‘The tattooed snakes curling up his arms added to his lustre,’explains Byron Farwell, ‘particularly when he took to semaphoring to or fromthe launches, even though no one, not even the signalman, could read his messages.The Ba-Holo-holo believed he was calling to his ju-ju to deliver another Germanship into his hands. Perhaps he was doing something like that.’”

Theycalled him Bwana Chifunga-Tumbo or Lord Bellycloth in honour of his skirt andcarved wooden fetishes of him faithfully replicating the skirt, binoculars andtattoos that he was famous for. Spicer’s work though was not yet done becausethe largest of the German vessels - the Graf von Götzen – was still prowlingthe lake.

Theconclusion to this thrilling tale is a bit disappointing and anti-climactic. Isay this because it’s easy to forget that Mimi and Toutou Go Forth is a work ofnon-fiction because Foden has written it almost akin to a novel. I wonder where he got all the material forthe conversations from. He seems to have relied heavily on a work from thesixties. Shankland, the author of that book, extensively interviewed the doctorwho accompanied the expedition who in turn undoubtedly had his own journals.

Thelast chapter in the book is a travelogueish diversion into Foden’s own journeyof trying to pick up the pieces of the story in and around the lake. At first,I found this slightly odd; it seemed irrelevant to include it at this point.Perhaps, starting the book with this journey would have made more sense. But,then I realized that it was indeed positioned appropriately. Foden is hardpressed to find anyone who remembers the Battle of Lake Tanganyika. He is initiallyperplexed by this before coming to the realization that not only are thecurrent inhabitants of the lake shore unmoved by the white man’s war in thedistant past, but they also have far more pressing matters to worry about.

Thestrangest bit of the story relates to the present. The Graf von Götzen – the Germanship that Spicer never got around to attacking – is still in operation. Itferries passengers between Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia on Lake Tanganyikaunder the name M.V. Liemba (the name for the lake in Livingstone’s time).

Image available under Creative Commons

Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley

2011-10-09T09:57:00.005+05:30

Afterenjoying Ruckley’s The Edinburgh Dead, I decided to seek out more of his work. TheEdinburgh Dead is his latest novel but he’s previously penned a trilogy – The GodlessWorld – whose first instalment, Winterbirth was his debut novel. I don’t knowwhat I was expecting from Winterbirth but it turned out to be a very different kettleof fish than The Edinburgh Dead.

An uneasy truce exists between the thanes of the True Bloods.

Now, as another winter approaches, the armies of the Black Road march south, from their exile beyond the Vale of Stones. For some, war will bring a swift and violent death. Others will not hear the clash of swords or see the corpses strewn over the fields. They instead will see an opportunity to advance their own ambitions. But all, soon, will fall under the shadow that is descending.

For, while the storm of battle rages, one man is following a path that will awaken a terrible power in him – and his legacy will be written in blood.

Inspiredpossibly by Viking and Celtic lore, Winterbirth is set in a violent worldabandoned by the gods centuries earlier. Feudal lords called thanes of theself-professed True Bloods, rule fiefdoms sending tithes and soldiers to a highthane, their liege lord. Their lands are occasionally troubled by skirmisheswith the Kyrinin, a forest dwelling hominid species (with nature-affiliatedvirtues of the Pandoran or Native American variety). But, a more serious threat comes from theBlack Road, a fanatical religious sect who were forced out of their lands andnow dwell in the north among barbarian tribes.

Thereare a large number of characters in Winterbirth. Their names tend to be long,similar sounding and very confusing. I kept getting the characters mixed-upuntil about the halfway mark. There are fortunately some that are moresignificant to the plot and their names are relatively easier to remember. Whentheir castle is attacked in a devious ploy on the night of Winterbirth celebrations(the first day of winter), the lord’s son Orsinian is badly injured and escapesinto the forest with his shieldman. They are found and sheltered by reluctantKyrinin. His sister, Anyara is not solucky and is captured by the Black Road along with her father’s na’kyrim advisor,a human-Kyrinin hybrid with unusual powers. The rest of the book follows these charactersas they try to face the challenging situations they find themselves in it withthe larger backdrop of political intrigues and conflicts.

Winterbirthprogressively grew on me. Ruckley introduces too many elements at the verybeginning of the book, making it difficult to follow what’s happening. The complicatednames don’t help at all. Later, as you develop a modicum of understanding, you beginto appreciate the story. My only complaint is about the non-linear styleRuckley follows throughout the book. I am not sure what purpose this wassupposed to serve but it really doesn’t make any sense in the context of thisstory.

Toconclude, Winterbirth is somewhat confusing but fairly captivating.

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

2011-10-09T08:41:00.000+05:30

TheMap of Time is a work of science fiction by Spanish writer Felix J. Palma andis probably the first translated book that I’ve read in this genre. The book iscomposed of three stories and despite maintaining a connection to the other,each is autonomous but incremental, revealing a little more of Palma’s granddesign.

Inthe first story set in the late 19^th century, a silver-spooned churlnamed Andrew Harrington becomes besotted with the portrait of a redhead hangingin his cousin’s house. He is not dissuaded when he discovers that Marie Kelly,the subject of the painting, is a prostitute “But not a high-class whore fromthe brothels in Russell Square, not even one of the tarts who ply their tradein the park on Vincent Street, but a dirty foul-smelling draggletail fromWhitechapel in whose ravaged vagina the wretched of the earth alleviate theirmisery for a few meagre pennies.” Thus starts an odd relationship that meets apremature and abrupt end when Marie is killed by Jack the Ripper. Andrew spends the next decade pining for hislost whore becoming depressed and suicidal. His cousin comes to his rescue bysuggesting that recent discoveries in time travel might enable Andrew to turnback time. To do this, they rope in science fiction writer H.G. Wells who isrumoured to harbour a time machine in his attic.

Thesecond story concerns a headstrong young woman named Claire Haggerty who wantsnothing more than to escape her corseted Victorian life. When she and herfriend take a trip on Gilliam Murray’s amazing time travel device to the year2000 to witness the summative battle between Solomon, the evil king of theautomatons and Captain Shakleton, the dashing leader of beleaguered humankind,Claire discovers the outlet she’s been pining for. Wells is involved with thisplot as well instigating Murray’s foray into time travel. I won’t say anymorelest I spoil it for those who intend to read this book.

Thelast part of the book focuses on Wells through whose perspective we now viewevents. A series of mysterious murders occurs in London and clandestine timetravel may be involved. It’s up to Wells to set things right.

I amundecided about The Map of Time. The plot is compelling and I was intrigued byPalma’s style of leading the reader into cul-de-sacs in the first two storiesbut then I found the denouement in the third clumsy. Without giving too muchaway, I feel that Palma should have stuck to the original reasoning of thenon-existence of time travel because its abrogation in the third story createsa dull explanation loaded anti-climax. This, however, wasn’t the reason that Idithered about giving The Map of Time a thumbs up. Palma’s narrator vexed me tono end with his predilection for chatting with the reader - “To Charles-whosepoint of view I shall adopt at this juncture, if for the purposes of dramaticeffect you will consent to this rather obvious switch of points of view withinone paragraph” – and providing useless commentary, “Permit me, if you will, toperform a little narrative juggling at this point, and recount the storyGilliam Murray told them in the third person instead of the first, as if itwere an excerpt from an adventure story ...” Palma is a terribly overindulgent writer embellishing his tale withextraneous details that he shares with his us in his faux-Victorian gossipytone such as this gem that follows two pages describing the person of H.G.Wells: “There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or goinginto intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterlycurvature of his manhood.”

TheMap of Time, despite its strengths, suffers from a similar curvature into therealm of the senseless.

James Potter and the Hall of Elder’s Crossing by G. Norman Lippert

2011-10-08T19:24:00.002+05:30

I recall reading and watching news flashes proclaiming that it was all over; that the world as we knew it would never be the same again; and that there was really nothing to look forward to other than an ignominious death. Dystopian visions of the end of civilization and the demise of the earth flash through your mind only to leave you sheepish when you discover that the apocalyptic event so universally discussed pertained to a seven part book and movie series about a bespectacled boy at a boarding school for magic.

I may have read all the books but I am no Harry Potter cultist (evidenced by my lack of interest in watching the two parts of the last movie in the franchise among other things). I admit that the books filled a certain niche and did so effectively. Rowlings writes well enough although her characters have the tiniest tendency to annoy with their earnestness and pretension. So the end of the Harry Potter saga was no skin off my back. But, it seems to have afflicted some acolytes with pustules of the compelling variety.

G. Norman Lippert is one such groupie who didn’t want the magic to end, literally. He, consequently, took things into his own hands by crafting his own Potter canon with the subtext “Your father’s battle is over. Yours begins.” When I teach reading lessons, I often ask my students to predict what a text is about before they launch themselves into it using clues such as pictures, titles and subtitles. I won’t ask the same of you because it is so ludicrously simple in this case.

At the beginning of Lippert’s first book, we find ourselves on platform nine and three quarters awaiting the departure of the Hogwarts Express. The adult versions of the characters we know and love (Harry Potter and Ginny Potter né Weasley) bid farewell to their eleven year old son James who embarks on the journey they themselves made a generation before. No prizes for guessing that James becomes best chums with his two muggle-born compartment mates, Ralph and Zane. It’s the latter character who is symbolic of Lippert’s most significant deficiency, his nationality. Yes, dear readers, G. Norman Lippert is an American.

I mean no offence to anyone but you have to admit that a derivative work in a British setting recycling characters from an earlier work by a British writer with a pointedly British voice was bound to throw up some challenges for an outsider. The premise of James Potter and the Hall of Elder’s Crossing is mildly interesting and expectedly so since Lippert attempts to use Rowlings’s successful formula of an elephantine conspiracy whose sum parts are exposed through each new instalment. He may even have got away with it if he hadn’t pursued (in a bout of jingoism might I add) the American angle. Not only is Zane, one of his protagonists (effectively the Hermione of this series) American, but Lippert also includes a pantheon of American professors on an exchange program (they arrive in flying vintage cars through an inter-dimensional portal from the Yankee equivalent of Hogwarts). We could still exonerate all of these as side-effects of Lippert’s freshman-like enthusiasm, were it not for Zane’s role and Benjamin Franklin. That’s right, old Benji is alive, kickin and teachin magic apparently. Zane on the other hand reveals Lippert’s depth of ungainliness. I perceive this character as the author’s endeavour to write himself into the story and remould the culture of Harry Potter on his own (ergo American) terms. As characters go, Zane is smart, suave and successful to the point that he nearly eclipses James Potter. I am sure this was never Lippert’s intention but his subconscious mind seems to have had other plans.

Nonetheless, considering that the author is a software programmer with zero experience with writing, I would say that James Potter and the Hall of Elder’s Crossing is not bad. In any case, I wasn’t expecting a gratifying reading experience. What persuaded me to read this book is its legal status. The Harry Potter juggernaut has never been shy of taking legal action against perceived infringement of copyright. J K Rowlings threatened to sue Lippert but then subsequently dropped the idea after he presented her with the book. You don’t need to be a legal expert to conclude that this book indisputably infringes copyright. He recycles characters, settings and other devices and makes a hash of British regional speech (Hagrid and McGonagall). Why did Rowlings decide to be so magnanimous? Is it because Lippert is offering his work to readers for free? Or has Rowlings padded her bank account sufficiently to allow her to be high-minded?

Whatever the reason, Lippert is at the vanguard of a revolution in writing and distribution. Books in all forms are claimed to be under threat. But, it’s publishers who are most at risk, not writers. People like Lippert can effectively cutout the middleman and distribute their work directly to readers.You can participate in this movement by visiting Lippert’s site and downloading James Potter and the Hall of Elder’s Crossing and its sequels. It’s no Harry Potter but you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Looking for Jake and Other Stories by China Miéville

2011-10-02T18:19:00.004+05:30

Have I told you how much I love China Miéville? So much that I am willing to overlook the unevenness of this anthology of short stories. Some of the stories are Miévillian gems; accounts of the bizarre in his exceptional and characteristic style. Others were skim-worthy at best. The titular work did nothing for me. In this story, the narrator looks in vain for a missing friend after some dystopian event has emptied London. This was a little too sentimental for the likes of me.

There were several pieces that I really enjoyed. The Ball Room is an eerie (and very effective) tale about strange goings-on in a children’s playroom at a department store. Reports of Certain Events in London is an investigation into some enigmatic feral streets (they appear and disappear). In this story, Miéville appears as himself and is co-opted into the mystery when he receives a package addressed to someone else and finds himself intrigued by a society established to study the phenomenon. I wasn’t quite sure about Familiar – a male witch uses his own flesh to craft an amoeba like familiar which he gets rid off, only to have it grow in both size and sentience. Two satirical inclusions that I loved were ‘Tis the Season and An End to Hunger. In the former, Christmas is trademarked and available only to those who pay ... that is until some who think otherwise decide to take the festivities into their own hands. An End to Hunger describes a seditious hacker who endangers his life after running a cyber crusade against a hypocritical philanthropic organization. The Tain, the longest of the stories (I suppose a novella at 70 plus pages) was interesting with its imagos – vampirical creatures borne out of our mirror reflections – but didn’t have the oomph to take it beyond a short story.

What I appreciated about all these stories, even the ones I didn’t particularly care for was the lack of explanations, justifications or annotations. The stories, along with their inscrutable endings, stand on their own merit without the need for any affirmative action from the author through the narrative or any other means. The stories in Looking for Jake are unquestionably superlative models for anything I may churn out.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2011-10-02T17:21:00.002+05:30

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.”

Source: http://erinmorgenstern.com/the-night-circus/

I was very disappointed with Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel after reading all the praise that both bloggers and professional critics have been showering her with. I feel like writers are getting caught up in creating ever more phantasmagoric imagery without sparing much thought for their poor plots. In The Night Circus, these elaborate verbal sculptures describe sideshows and are meant, I suppose, to evoke intense pathos. Instead, they seem like self-conscious attempts to be poignant. Here’s one of those sideshows:

The Pool of Tears

The sign outside this tent is accompanied by a small box full of smooth black stones. The text instructs you to take one with you as you enter.

Inside, the tent is dark, the ceiling covered with open black umbrellas, the curving handles hanging down like icicles.

In the center of the room there is a pool. A pond enclosed within a black stone wall that is surrounded by white gravel.

The air carries the salty tinge of the ocean.

You walk over to the edge to look inside. The gravel crunches beneath your feet.

It is shallow, but it is glowing. A shimmering, shifting light cascades up through the surface of the water. A soft radiance, enough to illuminate the pool and the stones that sit at the bottom. Hundreds of stones, each identical to the one you hold in your hand. The light beneath filters through the spaces between the stones.

Reflections ripple around the room, making it appear as though the entire tent is underwater.

You sit on the wall, turning your black stone over and over in your fingers.
The stillness of the tent becomes a quiet melancholy.

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness.

Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

The stone feels heavier in your hand.

When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece of rock.

Morgenstern is cryptic without cause. The circus exists only as a venue for the current round in an ongoing rivalry between two men, Prospero the Enchanter and Mr. A. H. Each chooses the piece that will represent him. Prospero selects his magically endowed daughter Celia and Mr. A. H. picks a talented orphan, Marco. The board is set. The pieces are ready. The game begins in earnest though we have no idea of what’s happening. The reader is kept in the dark about the rules of the game and strangely enough, in the same boat as the players. It seems that each player must outdo the other with outlandish exhibits (like the pool of tears) for the circus although it isn’t really clear how these creations are judged. Later, we are told that at the end of the game, only one player is left alive so by definition, the game ends when one of the players dies. All the pressure that’s built up over the first half of the book with the careful grooming of Marco and Celia into magical adversaries fizzles out in the most unacceptable way when the two (predictably) fall in love. Their romance is clichéd and makes The Night Circus’ already thin plot, somewhat hackneyed.

Thanks to the shards of a memory of an unpleasant childhood experience at the Madison Square Garden, circuses have always made me nauseous. The Night Circus, on the other hand, left me feeling impassive.

Echo City by Tim Lebbon

2011-10-02T07:13:00.000+05:30

Echo City is a sprawling metropolis made up of cantons, each with its own personality, ruled over by a deeply insecure, class conscious theocracy. To the citizens, Echo City is not merely home. The city is their world. Surrounded by a toxic desert that kills anyone who dares cross it, no one knows what lies beyond the poisonous waste. If the official line is to be believed, then there is nothing in the world but Echo City. Many of the citizens, however, remain deeply sceptical. If Echo City is the world, how did the mythical founder at the heart of the state sponsored religion arrive at it or more crucially, where did he come from? Those who question the city’s founding myth and its political arrangements are systematically persecuted.

Peer is one such victim of the insecurity of the ruling class. Unlike many other prisoners of consciousness, she isn’t executed. Instead, she is brutally tortured and exiled to a pariah canton at the edge of a desert. There she lives in oblivion until she spots a man doing the unthinkable – walking towards the city from the desert. The man has no memory of where he came from or how he crossed the desert or even his own name. Peer dubs him Rufus after her father and a city god. Risking death, she leaves her canton and seeks out Gorham, an ex-lover who now leads an underground resistance group. Gorham takes Peer and Rufus to the Baker, one in a long line of female ‘creators’ stretching back to the beginning of the city. The Bakers ‘chop’ people to fashion new beings, sentient telescopes, living bellows, guardian monsters, Frankenstein-like. The Baker with her protracted knowledge of the city may know something about the mysterious man from the desert but Nadielle, the current baker, is preoccupied with other thoughts. Something is rising in the layered ruins and caverns below the city, something that threatens Echo City’s existence and by extension, the habitable world.

As in K.J. Bishop’s The Etched City, Echo City’s ‘city’ is the star of the show. The city is surreal and fascinating. There are parallels with both Miéville’s New Crobuzon and Shelley’s Frankenstein. The city’s residents never demolish but continually improve their homes by building on top of them resulting in millennia worth of subterranean layers or echoes of past cities. This allows for rich and beguiling if somewhat incredulous imagery. The dual mysteries of the enigmatic man from the desert and the peril rising from below are interesting but not sufficiently so to keep you in the plot’s grasp for 400 pages. Echo City is undoubtedly a sophisticated novel with an enthralling vision but it feels empty like hiking to the summit of the hill only to realize that there is no view.

The Etched City by K.J. Bishop

2011-09-25T17:21:00.001+05:30

Raule, a healer, ekes a meagre existence in the arid lands of the Copper Country (imagery surely inspired by the deserts of the author’s own country). A chance encounter with an old ally, Gwyne, sparks an association borne out of convenience and need. Gwyne and Raule had once been a part of an unsuccessful insurgency before hiring themselves out as mercenaries. Their heads, though, still carry a price and they flee their would be captors by escaping the desert to a great plateau and finding refuge in the large tropical city of Ashamoil on the banks of crocodile filled Skamander.

In Ashamoil their lives diverge. Raule, who comes to city anticipating a wonderful new life is sorely disappointed. Gwyne who comes with no expectations seems to profit the most from the sultry metropolis. Raule becomes a physician for the city’s lowliest in a riverside slum while Gwyne joins a gang of slavers as a hired thug. Raule develops an obsession with Ashamoil’s moral decay. Gwyne on the other hand is besotted with Beth, an enigmatic etcher of cityscapes and spends his evenings drinking with a priest who desperately tries to save his godless soul.

If you have been paying attention to my ‘books I am reading’ list, you may have noted that I have been reading this book for yonks. Therefore, you may be surprised when I say that I think Bishop is an astonishingly skilled writer. She depicts her etched city with such clarity and intensity that words and sentences are transformed into bricks and streets in unmatched visual imagery that is simultaneously simple in language but elaborate in vision.

“The Skamander ran from the mountains near the centre of the Teleute Shelf to the city of Musenda on the southwestern edge, where it poured over and cascaded into the sea. For most of its great length it moved slowly, carrying an enormous load of silt, which it deposited in muddy embankments. The flamingo was the river’s handsome prince, beloved of the people, and the crocodile was its terrible king. Between the one above and the other below, humans took their boats.

Ashamoil was built along a straight stretch of the river, in tropical hills almost exactly halfway between the mountains and the Musenda cataract, filling some twenty miles of valley. The upper reaches of the city, in the airy sphere of the pink flamingos, belonged to the wealthy. Their mansions had walls of marble and mosaic, towers with stained-glass cupolas, and around them huge park-gardens, with lakes that mirrored swans, artificial islands, and boating parties. But going down the hillsides, the city descended by degrees into a stew of heat, dirt, noise, and bad odours: the mouth of the crocodile. Next to the main wharf, on the south bank, was an older stone quay that served as a repository for all manner of refuse, from broken, rusting boiler pipes and propeller screws to household trash that ragmen collected from the city and traded to water gypsies, who took some of it away to a mysterious fate while the rest stayed and rotted until somebody bothered to push it into the water. East and west of the wharves were massed rows of mills and foundries, whose chimneys ceaselessly excreted columns of black smoke, which spread across the lower parts of the city and didn’t budge for anything less than a typhoon. The moon was never more than vaguely visible in the yellow nocturnal sky, and the stars and planets were permanently occulted.”

In Ashamoil, however, the plot also disintegrates into a drawn out pensive deliberation about identity, morality and destiny among other things. I understand what Bishop is trying to do and I don’t dispute that her writing is anything other than striking. But, Bishop allows her vision for her fictional city to supersede and choke all the other elements such that characters become secondary to the setting. I found this deeply disengaging and it took me forever to finish The Etched City. She is apparently working on a new book. I do hope that the she is able to use her unique voice to paint much more than just static, beautiful pictures.

A picture that I did appreciate is the one that graces the book's cover - dark and enigmatic.

The author's site has links to extracts from the book.

Mageborn: The Blacksmith’s Son by Michael G. Manning

2011-09-25T11:37:00.000+05:30

Severalweeks ago, I met a friend who I hadn’t seen in 14 years. “I thought you would have produced one by now,”she said to me. Ah, the dreaded ‘fruit of the loins’ question. While I rackedmy brain for a reasonable explanation (my astrologer told me that I would die amost hideous death the day my progeny saw the light of day etc.), my friendinterrupted me, “of all the people I know, I thought you’d be the first towrite a book.” Saved by the book. “I am sure you have plenty of stories,” sheadds.

If writing abook was as simple as putting a story to paper, we’d all be authors. I am ledto believe that publishing is in the winter of its existence. Nevertheless, theindustry is more prolific than ever before in human history. Writers areseeping out of the unlikeliest places; cracks in the walls, commodes and themonotony of Texan suburbia. It’s the last of these that’s home to Michael G. Manning,a practicing pharmacist and avowed fantasy and science fiction reader.

A story,however engaging (and by this I am not saying The Blacksmith’s Son isengaging), is a wasted effort if it isn’t matched by an appropriate style. TheBlacksmith’s Son is no different from the hundreds of fantasy books out in themarket with a predictable plot with all the regular devices that writers of thegenre can’t do without; a male protagonist, his chums, faux-medieval setting,magic and indomitable bad guys. But, Manning shuns the crowd and takes hisnovel to interesting depths in the ocean of mediocre writing.

The style isso immature that I wondered if the author had some help from his two kids.Manning relies heavily on an explanation driven narrative instead of focussingon dialogue. The story is narrated at times through the first personperspective of Mordecai, Manning’s smug hero and at other times in third personfrom the points of view of other characters. The result is extremely confusingand crude. The language is bizarrely anachronistic. His poorly developed charactersimplore each other with ‘gonnas’, complain about hangovers and order roomservice in a medieval castle. And isthis meant to be teen or young adult fiction because ye olde rape scene thatthe plot seems to hinge on is pretty graphic.

Story andstyle are the yin and yang of fiction. This is Manning’s first book so Isuppose some of the blame also lies with his editors for not giving himadequate guidance. My advice to him (if he cares about his readers) is to cleanup his language and eliminate these stylistic flaws from the next book in theMageborn series.

The Well of Echoes Quartet by Ian Irvine

2011-09-25T09:42:00.000+05:30

Fourbooks, 2500 pages, multiple worlds, loads of characters and incomprehensibletechnology. Was it time well spent? I am not really sure.

Thestory is fairly linear but quite long and complex so I am going to quote the blurbfor each book in the quartet from Irvine’s site.

"Thisseries is set two centuries after the time of The View from the Mirror, whenthe world is greatly changed as a result of what happened at the end of The Waybetween the Worlds. It's a dark world where the entire society is regimentedfor just one thing: survival in the endless war against the winged lyrinx.

Geomancer
Twohundred years after the forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war withthe lyrinx - intelligent, winged predators from the void who will do anythingto gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and masteryof the crystals that power them, humanity is losing. The enemy is destroyingtheir nodes of power, one by one.

Tiaan,a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, is experimenting with anentirely new kind of crystal when she begins to have extraordinary visions. Thecrystal has woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful of all theSecret Arts, and the most perilous. Geomancy is likely to kill her before shemasters it. It is a talent that allies and enemies alike are desperate tocontrol.

Falselyaccused of sabotage by her rival, Irisis, Tiaan flees for her life. She is alsohunted by the lyrinx, Ryll, who plans to use her in his dreadful flesh-formingexperiments. Only geomancy can save her. Struggling to control her talent,Tiaan follows her visions all the way to Tirthrax, greatest peak on all theThree Worlds, where a nightmare awaits her ...

Tetrach
Santhenaris on its needs. The war with the alien lyrinx drags on, and humanity is losingit, but there is worse to come. The Aachim have invaded with an irresistibleforce - a fleet of battle constructs. Cursing humanity for the loss of Aachanand his own clan, the embittered Aachim leader, Vithis, demands half the worldin reparation. The council is in no position to resist. But even if they agreeto his demands, can anything satisfy his thirst for vengeance?

Tiaanis in despair. Her life lies in ruins, and now she is being hunted through theabandoned city of Tirthrax by an implacable Nish, who blames her for theattack.

Thefuture of the world rests in the hands of three flawed people: Tiaan, whosegeomancy holds the key to the power that can save or destroy them; Nish, whohas sworn to bring her to justice; and Irisis, whose great talents are hiddeneven from herself.

Alchymist
Tiaanis held prisoner by a vengeful Vithis, who is determined to extract hergeomantic secrets at any cost. For his failings, Nish has been cast out andbranded a traitor while Irisis, accused of high treason, has been forced toflee for her life.

Thefate of humanity is dependent on the survival of one wily old man, ScrutatorXervish Flydd. But Flydd has been blamed for the defeat at Snizort. His enemy,the vicious Chief Scrutator Ghorr, has expelled Flydd from the Council andstripped him of all rights. Now Flydd is condemned to die a brutish death as aslave, hauling ironclad clankers out of the battlefield mire until his heartbursts under the strain.

Chimaera
Allresistance has been crushed. In a few minutes of overwhelming violence theCouncil's air-dreadnought fleet has destroyed Fiz Gorgo's defences. XervishFlydd, Irisis and their allies have been condemned to die in a brutal aerialspectacle designed to reinforce Chief Scrutator Ghorr's power and majesty.

Nishis their one remaining hope. But Nish is trapped in a burning watchtower, andhunted by both the scrutators and his former lover, Ullii, whose twin brotherhe accidentally killed. Before Nish can hope to rescue his friends, he mustconvince Ullii to spare him, then overcome the most powerful cabal of mancersin the world as well as the Council's four hundred crack guards.

Andeven if he succeeds, to win the war the allies still have to defeat thescrutators and overthrow Nennifer, the corrupt Council's dread bastion, beforethe rampaging lyrinx overwhelm all Santhenar."

Comprendo?The Well of Echoes is a continuation of Irvine’s earlier quartet, The View fromthe Mirror, where he introduces his three worlds. A cataclysmic event creates aportal from an inter-dimensional plane called the Void, which separates thethree worlds catapulting terrifying void dwelling creatures onto one of thethree worlds – Santhenar. The lyrinx are the only sentient beings among thesecreatures and become involved in a brutal war with the humans who inhabitSanthenar. In Geomancer, the war has been going on for a couple of centuriesand humanity seems to be losing. Therest of the books in the quartet follow several characters as they navigatetheir lives through the complexities of an inter-species war.

I thinkI first came across Irvine and Geomancer on the Speculative Scotsman who wrotethat both the story and the style of writing were far more engaging than Irvine’sfirst quartet. I felt the story wasinteresting but not compelling enough to make you read four books. So why thehell did I read all of them? I quite liked Tiaan who Irvine initially proposesas his heroine, an ill-treated genius underdog (culturally pertinent when youlearn that Irvine is an Australian). However, after Geomancer, Irvine takes thefocus off Tiaan, becoming increasingly involved with two characters, Nish andIrisis who begin The Well of Echoes not just as Tiaan’s antagonists, but her tormentors. So much so that in Alchymist and Chimaera, Ifelt Tiaan was getting very little face time and she was the only reason I wasintent on finishing the quartet.

GeorgeR.R. Martin makes the point of view style look deceptively simple but in thelast month, I have come across two writers who make a hash of it. Joe Abercrombie’serror was in creating far too short POV sections marked by poor transitions.Irvine, on the other hand, attempts to show an event through multipleperspectives in a sequence of chapters. In A Song of Ice and Fire, this approachcreates a wonderful play between gaps in your awareness, assumptions you makeand their resolution. In The Well of Echoes, however, this style seems morelike an unnecessary repetition of events after the cat’s let out of the bag. Ifrequently found myself skimming through sections where character A is witnessto a critical event only to have the same event witnessed by character B in asubsequent chapter with barely any additional insight.

The booksin The Well of Echoes are of the type that makes you feel ever so slightly, touse the Australian word for it, daggy. There is a lot of focus on emotions andrelationships instead of world building. If I had wanted the former, I wouldn’thave been reading this genre. Irvine misses valuable opportunities to flesh outcities and scenes in original and memorable ways. The only cities that aredescribed with any kind of love, Thirtrax and Stassor come off as updatedversions of Tolkein’s Moria and Superman’s lair respectively.

I also agree with the Speculative Scotsman that the title Geomancer is inappropriate - in fact I would argue that all the titles are a case of over-promise under-deliver.

So,was it time well spent? I’m still not certain but I am sure of one thingthough, I won’t be hunting down the next quartet (give this man a frigginaward - that terribly opportunistic ‘to be continued conclusion’ irked me to no end) in the Three Worlds Cycle anytime soon.

The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley

2011-09-25T07:59:00.000+05:30

Couldthere be a more appropriate setting for an unsettling gothic tale of graverobbing and the undead than Edinburgh? I have always been fascinated by themedical body snatchers of the 19^th century. Edinburgh was at thecentre of a scientific revolution (many of the greatest minds of the time wereScots). The fast advancing medical profession demanded cadavers for dissection.This was a request that the genteel Christian public were loath to acquiesceto, spurring the creation of a dodgy cottage industry specialising in the procurementand sale of the dead.

Sowhat about the men charged with policing these dark times? Adam Quire, an officer with the newly formed citypolice investigates a badly mauled body found on a shadowy street of oldEdinburgh. A clue on the person of the victim leads him to the stately home ofan upper class gentleman in Edinburgh’s Newtown. The comportment of JohnRuthven is sufficient to make the thickest sod suspicious. But, Quire isreprimanded for suspecting Ruthven and barred from pursuing the case furtherand he learns the hard way that words of an upper class gent are not to bequestioned, however suspect.

Gravescontinue to be relieved of their occupants but when Quire is attacked on twoseparate occasions, once by a great hulk of a man who does not seem affected bya direct shot to his chest and then by a triad of ghastly dogs, reeking of carrion,he realises that something terribly dark is afoot. His investigation into agroup that regard Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a blueprint for raising theundead ruffles feathers of the malignant kind putting his job and his life atrisk.

Ruckley’swriting is uncluttered and yet his strength lies in his ability of capturingdetails. His rendering of Edinburgh is exceptional and contributes greatly tothe mood of the book. Beyond the elements of fantasy, The Edinburgh Dead isfirmly rooted in the impoverished realism of the industrial edge. As Ruckley’sprotagonist (a very likable character) poignantly reflects “... it was neverthe wealthy, or the powerful, who found themselves, after departing this life,displayed and dismembered for the edification of the students. Dignity in deathwas, like all else, unequally shared.” Or when Quire observes two prostitutes, one a former lover, “... sharingtheir whisky out into fine china. A strange, distorted mimicry of refinement. Ahabit that put a shape into their day just as the civil, sober ritual of teadrinking did for the kind of people who much have first owned the cups.”

Thenovel has two weak spots though. The first is the portrayal of the bad guys asalmost Hollywoodish villains. One of these villains, some sort of malevolent spiritturns a very credible Shelley inspired tale into an Anne Rice affair. Theconsequence of this character’s inclusion is the book’s other weak bit – a lessthan satisfactory denouement.

TheEdinburgh Dead was a good introduction to Brian Ruckley. If and when I getthrough my Himalayan pile of books to be read, I might look up his work.

PopCo by Scarlett Thomas

2011-09-23T19:51:00.004+05:30

I found PopCo by accident in the new arrivals section of an online bookstore. As my eyes scanned the list of covers and titles, I spotted something familiar. I didn’t linger because I thought it was The End of Mr. Y which I read last year. Then, I said hang on, this looks a tad different and I thusly found Scarlett Thomas’ latest novel. The covers are suspiciously similar. Would the contents be similarly eccentric and original?

Alice Butler, raised by mathematician grandparents to be a neurotic puzzle solver is headhunted by a large toy-manufacturing conglomerate called PopCo. Alice is not entirely comfortable in her role as a ‘creative’ in the company but she has more money that she’s ever had and even a colleague who she can label friend and in return all she has to do is design something she has an aptitude for – puzzle toys. Her bland routine, marked by doses of homeopathic drugs (specifically carbo vegetalis tablets, Thomas reprises their role albeit in a not so significant form than in The End of Mr. Y) is disrupted by a company event at a remote West Country location.

The event, nominally an AGM, is in fact a filter to select an elite group who will design a new fad for teenage girls. It’s difficult to explain what the book is about after this point. Thomas loads with innumerable elements and themes ranging from corporate ethics to the morality of capitalism to vegetarianism. But, despite the introduction of all these issues, nothing really happens. The plot becomes stuck in an endless loop of conversations about these issues interspersed with observations about the minutiae of the lives of Alice and her colleagues. The only thing that really keeps you going is the chain of cryptic notes that Alice keeps receiving. Thomas rambles on for what seems like forever, including charts of prime numbers, a cake recipe, lateral puzzles, mathematical sidenotes (all crude rather than quirky) and then suddenly there is the shittiest denouement I have read in the longest time. Scarlett, I love you, but what were you thinking?

I felt miserable because I identified strongly with Alice. From her odd beliefs, misanthropy, insecurities, idiosyncrasies and craving for miso (yummmmm), I couldn’t help but see my own reflection. Alice deserved a better novel than one that ends with a bathetic treasure hunt. In response to a doctor’s question about whether she has any allergies, she says “‘No,’ I say sullenly, thinking, I’m allergic to doctors, to work, to contemporary life. At this moment I want to live in a bubble on another planet, if you must know.” Would you think me a weirdo if I said that I wanted to kiss her when I read that?

It’s almost as if Thomas had let her heart (and by that I mean her perspectives on a variety of ‘isms) derail what could have potentially been a captivating story.

Djibouti by Elmore Leonard

2011-09-23T18:28:00.002+05:30

Never has a novel angered and amused me simultaneously. I startedDjibouti - toes tingling with anticipation. Somali pirates, hijacked tankers,Islamic terrorists, the seedy port on the Horn of Africa that’s the book’snamesake, all exceptional ingredients for a swash buckling adventure. DaraBarr, an American documentary filmmaker arrives in Djibouti with her unlikelyassistant, Xavier LeBo, a 6’6” black septuagenarian, wait there's more, retired merchant navysailor. Dara, buoyed by the success of her films on rapes in Bosnia andhurricane Katrina, wants to capture something edgier and grittier. In Djibouti,the filmmaker and her assistant meet Ari Ahmed Bakar aka Harry Baker, a dandyrich boy of British-Saudi extraction who admits to calling his mummy when heruns out of cash. Harry who claims to be negotiating some kind of truce withthe Somali pirates (pretty bloody likely) hooks Dara up with Idriss, a quixoticand fairly refined pirate lord. Withleads in place, Dara and Xavier head out in their in their rented trawler (namedBuster wudjabelieve?). So far, so good.

Then Elmore Leonard bends his adoring reader over the side of a Somaliskiff and fucks him till the pirates come home with their ill-gotten booty. Therest of this alarmingly short novel is pretty much a post-adventure editing (andscrewing – and yes he’s 72 – but he did get some help from horny goat weed, a usefulnative herb) session in their suite at the Kempinski in Djibouti. The cheek ofthe man!

They were at work again in Dara’s hotel suite, looking at the rough cuton her seventeen-inch screen, a bottle of red on the table. They watched:

Xavier coming out to the Buster ina pirate skiff, a young Somali at the tiller. “Sixteen years old,” Xavier said,“dyin to hijack some ships. I told the boy it wasn’t for my age I’d be adedicated pirate myself. They give us all these stores, stalk of green bananas,liter bottles of water wrapped in plastic, the meat—”

“I smelled it,” Dara said, “andthrew it over the side.”

“That’s what happen to it. Iwondered how those sharks got diarrhea. The boy was no help to me till hepicked up the bunch of khat I promoted for us.” Watching the screen, Xaviersaid, “Good, you got me relievin him of the bouquets. The boy startin to chewon a bunch.”

“This was Friday,” Dara said,“the natives still friendly. They’ve got the captain of the Alabama in alifeboat and want two million for his release. Sunday, the SEALs took out thepirates and the standoff was over.”

“And all hell broke loose,”Xavier said. “You ever use that expression?”

I was so pissed off, cheated out of a story; everything discussed,debated and gnawed over retrospectively. I almost abandoned Djibouti. But, itwas so deliciously politically incorrect – Arabs qualified with gems like “notthe kind that rode camels” and Eritrean women complimented for their slenderfigures and their “cheekbones, some black as coal, their race not tampered withmuch through the ages.” Well, I am glad I read on. The pirates’ unwittingcapture of two Al Qaeda men with sinister intentions adds a whole new fascinatinglayer to the scene; not forgetting a psycho Texan tycoon with weird intentionsof his own.

I wasn’t exaggerating when I wrote that the author is fucking with thereader. He is actually playing with you and undoubtedly having fun at your expense(doubly so at Rs.991 a pop). He is one brilliant bloody fuckwit.

In summary, Djibouti is deviously erratic. This coupled with Leonard’s intriguingstyle make this novel a really refreshing read.

The Tree Shepherd's Daughter by Gillian Summers

2011-09-23T08:20:00.001+05:30

I have become a bloody genre whore. I have to stop borrowing books because I think they remotely conform to my notion of the themes that I seem to be currently obsessed with it. Particularly when those books are ostensibly written for pimply teenage girls. My latest unfortunate tryst with this mania introduced me to a 15 year old Californian named Keelie who, after her mother's sudden death, is dumped with her father. And no her father isn't a bum who lives in a trailer. Close though, he is a super-hot, easily discomfited carpenter at a Renaissance fair in Colorado. All-American girl Keelie hates it at the fair and plots her escape. Only, all isn't quite there at the fair and the when the trees start talking to her, Keelie realizes that there's more to it than the pot the hippies around her have been smoking.

Surely, fantasy doesn't have to imply sheer ridiculousness. The entire premise of real elves (how done to death are they?) hiding out at renaissance fairs - in Colorado - of all places is completely farcical. And like all novels these days, this one follows the law of threes with two more Faire Folk siblings.

Come on you pimply teenage girls, you are better than this.

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

2011-09-22T10:45:00.001+05:30

BestServed Cold has a Kill Billish plot with a setting that’s seemingly inspired bythe wars of medieval Italian city states. At the very beginning of the book, DukeOrso celebrates his successful campaign against other Styrian city states bymurdering Monza Murcatto and her brother who have been instrumental indelivering victory to him. Only, Monza isn’t dead. Broken and seriously pissedoff, but not dead. Thus starts Monza’s relentless quest for revenge as sheplots the death of the seven men who double-crossed her. She collects a ragtagband to assist her, an itinerant Northman, a haughty professional poisoner andhis apprentice, a mentally unstable convict and a former mercenary general whosetitle Monza had once dispossessed. By the time the first couple of bodies hadhit the ground, I was bored. It all seemed very linear and been there donethat. Then an ambush in a whorehouse changes the tone of the book. From a focuson blunt action, the narrative becomes almost pensive. The characters areinteresting and the relationships between them even more so. Monza Murcatto is particularlycomplex but we don’t realize this until much later in the book.

Despitebecoming somewhat interesting, the plot continued to miss a crucial ingredient thatcould have made it more absorbing. Was it the predictability of a revenge caper?The ‘point of view’ style in which Best Served Cold is written did much tospoil the reading experience. I have no problems with this style but Abercrombiehas POV accounts (within chapters as opposed to accounts being chapters like inGeorge R.R. Martin’s works) as short as a page with poor or no transitions betweenthem.

BestServed Well seems to have been well received by bloggers but I don’t think it’smade a significant enough impression on me to egg me on to read The Heroes, thenext installment in this series.

The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes by Jamyang Norbu

2011-09-22T08:47:00.000+05:30

Thosewho are familiar with the Holmesian canon may recall that the series or Holmes(depending on your perspective) goes into a hiatus in the last decade of the 19^thcentury after Doyle kills off his hero in The Adventure of the Final Problem.Many years later, he would be compelled to release a “post-humous” work – The Houndof Baskervilles – which would go on to become among the more popular books inthe Sherlock Holmes saga. However, public pressure forced Doyle to resurrectHolmes giving rise to the missing years. The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes is aderivative work that places Holmes’ lost years in India and Tibet. I seem to remembera theory (and a book) that describes Jesus’ missing years in India as well. Iwonder if this was the seed for Norbu’s story.

Watsonis replaced by a caricaturish Bengali (drawn from Kipling’s Kim) named HureeBabu and the story is recounted from his perspective as the contents of memoirsthat the author discovers in a Darjeeling bungalow. Holmes arrives in Bombay inthe guise of a Norwegian explorer and travels with Hurree Babu, a spy workingwith the British-Indian establishment to Tibet where he is charged with protectingthe young Dalai Lama. “From the covetous Chinese”, you ask? Well, not really, the actual antagonist (plotspoiler ahead) is a resurgent Moriarty, Holmes’ traditional arch nemesis, who isapparently the reincarnation of an evil Tantric master. It naturally followsthat there is also a Tibetan Tantric equivalent of a white wizard – Holmes –the reincarnated soul of a powerful and pious lama.

Initially,The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes is able to capture the atmosphere of a SherlockHolmes mystery notwithstanding Hurree Babu’s completely OTT British-Indianclerk English. But later, the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous, a pastiche of historical, mythological and fictional elements, requiring asuspension of thought, not just disbelief. Despite my partiality to both Tibetand reincarnation, I couldn’t help but feel that my time could have been betterspent staring at a wall.

Thereis one point, however, that I wholeheartedly agree with Norbu about.

FreeTibet!

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

2011-09-20T15:08:00.003+05:30

No,I am not a sucker for bad writing but I’d forgive you for thinking just that ifyou had read my review of The Magicians. The truth is that I was curious aboutwhere Grossman would have his story go. If we are to believe Damien Walter ofThe Guardian, who says “In Grossman's novels, magic isn't so much the key toultimate power as it is a response to existential ennui and disillusionment”,there shouldn’t have ever been a sequel. After all, the author made hisallegedly poignant point by writing “a book for the generation who grew uploving Harry Potter, but are experiencing the crushing disappointment ofoutgrowing their fantasies.” So why write another desperate work peopled by theodious characters we know and love? I suppose the temptation of the franchise (aswell as those lovely greenbacks) was too strong.

It’sbeen claimed that Grossman’s Fillory series has driven readers into two camps(honestly, are our lives so meaningless that we must brawl over the writing ofsome opportunistic gimp from Brooklyn?). Camp one is populated by fantasyloonies who are baying for Grossman’s blood for purportedly breaking thefantasy fourth wall (is there such a thing?). Then, there’s camp two. These schmucksor non-fantasy reading public saw beyond fantasy devices such as magic, portalsand Narnia-like worlds and recognized delicate satire, clever social commentary– all in all, an existentialist masterpiece. Satre (whichever plane he nowexists on) must be rubbing his crotch with glee.

So,who’s in the right? What a conundrum! I thusly used my powers of telepathicretrieval (which all Hindoos who have undergone careful casteist inbreeding areborn with) and discovered the genesis of The Magicians and The Magician King inLev Grossman’s mind through twelve incremental ideas.

Idea1: Must make moolah

Idea2: Must write book

Idea3: book = moolah

Idea4: Harry Potter = moolah

Idea5: Narnia, lame but popular

Idea6: Narnia = moolah

Idea7: Harry Potter + Narnia = plenty big moolah

Idea8: Sex sells

Idea9: Drugs sell

Idea10: Sex + drugs = sell plenty big

Idea11: Harry Potter + Narnia + Sex + Drugs = PLENTY PLENTY BIG MOOLAH

Idea12: Harry Potter + Narnia + Sex + Drugs + Existential dissonance = PLENTY PLENTYBIG MOOLAH + literary praise

TheFillory phenomenon if I may call it that is a good example of how we retrofitthe perspectives of others onto our own experiences. This isn’t Heidegger orKafka. It’s middling fantasy fiction. Don’t read between the lines where theretruly isn’t anything between those often poorly composed ones.

Andsomeone teach this man a lesson in subtlety, at least in allusions if notanything else.

““Iknow.” Quentin was stretched out on the bed, wearing silk pyjamas. “Believe me,I’ve tried. If they really did I have no idea how they did it. They just look like ordinary tapestries tome. They don’t even move like in Harry Potter.”

““I’mQuentin. I’m from Fillory. We’ve come toyour island in search of a key.” He glanced at the others and coughedonce. It was pretty much impossible todo this without sounding like he was reciting a Monty Python sketch.

“Thetowering Gandalfian wizard he once cowered.”

Sowhile we wait for Grossman to predictably squeeze out another piping-hot existentialistmagnum opus from his much lauded orifice, we can only hope and pray that theFillory saga will end here.

P.S.

Idea13: The Magician’s Wench – the story of a trash talking Puerto Rican maid (MS Wordrecommends that I change this to “house cleaner”) from the Bronx who becomes aFillorian...

Books I've been reading

2011-08-28T17:40:00.000+05:30

I haven't been writing any reviews lately. A part of the reason is this unrelentingly depressing weather. But, I am also exhausted from reading four super-long books from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.

A Visitor

2011-08-28T17:18:00.000+05:30

I spotted a flying fox hanging upside down from a mast tree in my building's yard. He was chomping away on the tiny black fruits that the tree produces. The photo is terrible but you can make out his lovely bronze colour and he was huge. I know bats are mammals but I can't be bothered starting another label so I am going to file him away under birds.

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

2011-08-28T17:04:00.001+05:30

I read this book some time ago so I am trying to claw at my memory to write a couple of lines. Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School has spent the better part of two decades researching choice. She claims that her interest in choice goes back to her own childhood and her parent’s marriage. Born to Indian immigrants to Canada, she asks age-old questions about arranged marriages. She doesn’t stop there. The book all the scenarios involving choice that’s she explored over her long career. Some like the study of Anglo and Asian children were very interesting (the Asian kids were likely to perform tasks better if they were informed that their mothers had made certain choices for them whereas the Anglo kids did better when they made their own choices and in fact were embarrassed or horrified to learn that their mothers were somehow involved in making even trivial choices on their behalf).

Others I dispute like the study of fundamentalist religions being liberating for their followers despite all their restrictions. “Members of more fundamentalist faiths experienced greater hope, were more optimistic when faced with adversity and were less likely to be depressed than their counterparts... Indeed, the people most susceptible to pessimism and depression were the Unitarians, especially those who were atheists. The presence of so many rules didn’t debilitate people; instead, it seemed to empower them. Many of their choices were taken away, and yet they experienced a sense of control over their lives.” What a load of manure! This is my problem with these pop-sociologists. They crawl out of academia and make sweeping proclamations on the bases of studies that we can’t possibly question. Still, Iyengar is no Malcom Gladwell and she takes the middle path for the most part.

There’s plenty here to fuel dying conversations or make yourself look interesting, perhaps even intelligent pre or post-coitus. The writing however is atrocious, a hodgepodge of studies and examples presented in a strange conversational style. Also, the reference to the Taj Mahal as one of the seven wonders of the world a few pages in did much to prepare the groundwork for that opinion of mine.

You can check out Sheena Iyengar at Ted.com talking about some of the material in her book.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

2011-08-28T16:19:00.002+05:30

It is interesting that I was reading Pigeon English when the London riots broke out. But, that’s about where the interest ends. We are led to believe that Kelman’s maiden novel is a path breaking look into the lives of inner city youth in England. It has been lauded nearly universally and appears in all manner of lists, incredibly even under the bestselling columns of Indian booksellers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that it was commissioned by a committee charged with guarding all sorts of things from education to multiculturalism. In fact, this terribly self-conscious work is suffixed by discussion points around questions posed to the author “Who is your favourite character in Pigeon English?” Knee in the groin for the snivelling publishing understudy who asked that question.

There really is only one character in Pigeon English. Harrison Opoku is a precocious 11-year-old Ghanian who has recently arrived in London along with his mother and his sister Lydia. It’s through Harri’s eyes that we experience life in his council estate and his state school. Kelman takes incredible pains to use the language of an 11-year-old immigrant. If he means this to be endearing or authentic, he has sadly missed the mark because the idiosyncratic writing is chiefly annoying. The pigeon in the title could refer to the use of West African English phrases like “huitious”, “advise yourself”, “ease yourself” and “gowayou” (Kelman's no Chimamanda, he may have got the lexicon right, but it isn't syntax he needed but spirit) or the protagonist’s obsession with the pigeons that land on the balcony of his council flat. But the wonder of being in this new world takes a sharp left turn when a boy is stabbed on the local high street and Harri and a friend decide to play Miss Marples, discovering that all is not rosy in the land of crumpets and council flats.

I have always thought that the most tedious thing being a novelist is coming up with appropriate and non-monotonous words for describing speech (said, exclaimed, drooled, ejaculated etc.). This brings me the only bit of Kelman’s writing I admired (in that ‘what a sly bastard’ way).

Mamma: ‘What is DFC?’

Mr Frimpong: ‘Who knows? Some code of theirs. Just nonsense.’

I didn’t tell them what DFC really means. I pretended not to know.

Mr. Frimong: ‘Will they be on CCTV?’

Derek: ‘They’ll have covered their faces. They’re ignorant but they’re not stupid.’

Pigeon English is surely a candidate for state proscribed curriculum. That overly dramatic unnecessary ending should make for interesting essay topics. My heart goes out to those snotty, potty-mouthed recipients of the English education system.

The cover is quite striking though. A pity about its contents.

Dragons Ascendant?

2011-08-14T07:53:00.001+05:30

I have just been skimming Dragons Ascendant: George R. R. Martin and the Rise of Fantasy, an essay by David Orr over at the NY Times. It's a neat coincidence that I happen to be reading the second book in Martin's epic series A Song of Fire and Ice. I picked it up after being enormously impressed with the HBO television series - A Game of Thrones - based on the book with the same book. Through the success of the series, Orr attempts to analyze why fantasy books are outselling every other kind of book and indeed the reasons behind the rise of the culture of fantasy; "even now the five remaining earthlings who haven’t read “The Lord of the Rings” are being hunted down and put to the sword." In the midst of plot spoilers (prat!), Orr attempts to offer reasons beyond the routinely heard explanations (escape from ennui and modern life etc.), I'm not convinced.

"Martin’s books, however, are generally praised for their realism. When people are stabbed, they die; when kingdoms ignore debts, the bankers show up. The characters understand their world, and we understand the characters. But this view of Martin’s books is incomplete, because the magical elements of his books are not, in fact, within the characters’ understanding at all — “the Others,” for example, are truly Other. In this sense, “A Dance With Dragons” is a kind of fantasy within a fantasy, and Martin now must find a way to let us feel that strangeness as the characters themselves do, rather than simply explaining it to death.

If he succeeds, he will have fulfilled one of the highest functions of this rich genre. Because fantasy of any kind tells us that the world we know is not the only one, nor the most enduring — and that truth can be anything but an escape or a comfort. “You must change your life,” Rilke said. But fantasy’s commandment can be more subtle: “Your life is not your life, not entirely, not forever.” Looked at one way, that message can seem naïve, even childish. Looked at another, however, it has a dark side, which reminds us why fantasy is so often shelved beside not romance but horror."

I don't know but I kind of feel that fantasy's appeal goes beyond merely yearning for a different life in a different world. I am going to go off and chew on this for a while.

The Nocturnal Court: The Life of a Prince of Hyderabad by Sidq Jaisi

2011-07-31T19:11:00.000+05:30

Sidq Jaisi moved from Uttar Pradesh to Hyderabad in 1923 to take up a job at a school. He managed to get an invitation to the nightly court of a minor prince where he impressed the wanton royal sufficiently to take him on as a poet-courtier. He would spend every night over the next seven years paying homage in an orgy of sycophancy. And the word nocturnal isn't just a figure of speech - the court would begin around 8 in the evening and end anywhere between 3 and 6 in the morning depending on the whims of the princeling. He records these experiences in a Urdu diary titled Darbaar-e-Darbaar whose translation of course forms the basis for this book. The accounts of the goings-on in the prince's court are interesting... at first but I quickly tired of the repetitive feasts, self-aggrandizing Urdu couplets, all that boot licking - seven salaams for all manner of events from fawning bouts of gratitude to the princely breaking of wind (okay, I made that up, but bumlicky as these courtiers were I am sure they were quite capable of it). Overall, the diary is mildly interesting as a first-hand account of princely life in the last days of the Raj and I suppose there really is a paucity of perspectives other than those written in English. What irked me what was the completely idiotic introduction by the translator of the diary, Narendra Lutra whose language resembles that of a secondary school student from a self-professed English medium school.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

2011-07-30T18:04:00.002+05:30

I am lovin' all these hyper-interesting works of multicultural urban fantasy. First, there was Ian McDonald with his superb speculative trilogy and then Paolo Bacigalupi with his astounding book The Windup Girl. When you take fantasy out of its habitual Anglo-American (and Judeo-Christian... think Narnia) setting and set it down in a place like South Africa, it gives it that special oomph, turning it into a dynamo of a story. Of course, a rabid imagination also helps and Beukes is fairly rabid.

Much of Zoo City takes place in Johannesburg in an alternate reality. People who commit serious crimes become animalled - attached to a familiar. No one knows why it happens but it imbues the individual with special powers. But, it also comes with a host of significant drawbacks. Zinzi December's familiar is a sloth, an animal she acquired after getting her brother shot. She has the ability to find lost things, a talent that she uses to eke a meagre living, a situation that's compounded by her drug debts. Her debtor forces her to write phishing emails (of the Nigerian variety). I felt the use of this device was particularly canny besides being topical. When Zinzi is offered a large amount of money to track down a missing singer from a teenage brother-sister teen pop sensation, she gets herself into more trouble than she could have ever anticipated.

Weird, hallucinatory and simply outstanding. All I want from life is some decent wine, pleasant weather and a pile of books as addictive as Zoo City.

Serious Men by Manu Joseph

2011-07-30T17:32:00.000+05:30

Ayyan Mani, a lowly assistant at the Institute of Theory and Research, is charged with writing the hallowed establishment’s quote of the day and among genuine quotes, he churns out gems like...

“Rebirth is the most foolish mathematical concept ever.” - Issac Newton

“If ancient Indians were really the first to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Moon, why is it that they were not the first to land there? I look at the claims of old civilizations that they have done this and that with great suspicion.” - Neil Armstrong

“It’s a myth that Sanskrit is the best language for writing computer code. Patriotic Indians have spread this lie for many years.” - Bill Gates

...just one small part of Ayyan’s machinations to cause discomfort to the bloated Brahmin heads who run the place. I commenced Serious Men with tredipdation. I vaguely remembered something about caste in reviews I’d read last year. However, I’m glad that Joseph’s first novel turned out not to be polemical social commentary. Instead, it’s refreshingly well written satire.

Ayyan, the son of a sweeper is chronically dissatisfied with his lot and he would like nothing better than turning the system on its head. From his matchbox sized one room kitchen in Worli's BDD chawls, he plots a better life, one where his wife doesn't look like a cook next to other mothers at their son's school and where he can be intimate with her without this same son watching them at night. But, it's his ten year old son, Adi, who takes pride of place in a plurality of his plans. He weaves an elaborate ruse to make his below average half-deaf son into a child prodigy. Adi says pre-scripted lines like "prime numbers are unpredictable" so often that he seems to believe in his own counterfeit skills. I know this is a little suppositious but Ayyan Mani reminded me a lot of Arun, Vijay's Tendulkar's flawed Dalit genius in Kanyadaan.

At work, Ayyan's antagonist is his boss, Arvind Acharya, the Brahmin who runs the Institute of Theory and Research with a titanium fist, a man who was once tipped to win a Nobel Prize and who rubbishes the Big Bang for being too Christian (only a Christian would want a beginning). Ayyan opens all mails, personal or otherwise, eavesdrops on all meetings, conversations and calls, and writes fake anti-Brahmin quotes, running his own little covert operations through an army of clerks and cleaners. Acharya, though, is far too preoccupied to notice all this. His attention is diverted to a shapely new denizen of the basement lab in what develops into the most unexpected romance. But, when a coup led by radio astronomers (who want to participate in SETI, - a quest Acharya lampoons as idiotic saying "Man is not searching for aliens. Man is searching for man. It's called loneliness. Not science.") displaces him, Ayyan and Acharya become unlikely allies as the former is allowed to bring his most devious plan to fruition in exchange for the latter's return to his post as head of the institute.

I'm very impressed by Joseph. Serious Men is brilliant because it works on different levels. A tight, well-written plot, original language, outstanding character development and a keen sense of reality make Serious Men an exemplary addition to the best of Indian fiction. I really appreciate how authentically Joseph shows us Ayyan's world down to those small, strange details like men in the chawls training their bowels to move after they reach work to avoid the indignities of queuing for a shared toilet. That kind of insight comes only when you yourself have lived in such circumstances (Joseph has, apparently). Adiga - here's a lesson in authenticity for you.

Readin, not Writin

2011-07-26T11:24:00.000+05:30

I have been reading a lot since I got back from Ladakh, but try as I might, I can't seem to write anything.

Here are the books I have been reading. I hope I'll be able to write short posts on them this weekend.