Read It: March 2010

I'm going through a reading ebb now where the words and worlds I register are limited to those that The Hindu, magazines and random site-hopping introduce me to. And this at the end of a month when I bought a record number of books! Retail therapy, many call it.

I've also realised that I can't devote a post each for books that have been read earlier, I just don't have much to say about these except that if I had to own a handful of books, these would be vying for the space. So I'll just post lists of books a month, be assured that these come highly recommended (but follow the external links for real reviews! :) )

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Though I read this many years back, I still remember that reading the first two pages of this book just put me off. But it is in the third page that the narrator introduces herself. And that's when I went back and re-read the start - with the guiding perspective of six year old Scout Finch.

 It's through delightful little Scout, Dill and Jem that the reader enters Maycomb, a fictional town in Alabama in the early 1930s. Life in a small town, racism that was very much prevalent back then as seen by the children, like mixed up little pieces of a puzzle. Vividly etched characters -Atticus Finch, Calpurnia - the family's black housekeeper, Boo Ridley - and the very visual style of writing makes you wonder if this isn't an autobiography. It seems it isn't though the author has written about many events that happened during her childhood in Alabama. Just read it.
Wikipedia 

Amazon

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was a fairly recent discovery. She seems to be well known for The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart. The first was made into a movie, the latter into a Tamil serial (Anbulla Snegithiye)

The Palace of Illusions is a narration of Mahabharata from Draupadi's perspective. A contemporary one at that. Draupadi got me hooked on to the book from line one. Taken apart from the setting, the narration of her  birth, childhood and adolescent days are so  next door-like - even in today's terms ... the differences between the way her brother is educated and she is, her special friendship with Krishna, her infatuation with Karna (fictional..but well, who knows), her relationship with Kunti. The few lines on the disrobing incident that Draupadi is remembered for generally are amongst the best.

All this time I'd believed in my power over my husbands. I'd believed that because they love me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me - as much perhaps as any man can love - there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honour, of loyalty towards each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but only when they felt the circumstances would bring them heroic fame. A woman doesn't think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn't have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended so completely on them in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies.

I'm sure most women will enjoy reading this book, it's one of the rare peeks at epics through a lady's point of view. Classic, contemporary, magical.
Amazon

All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot

This book takes me back to the time of an apogee when I spent some minutes browsing through a dog-eared copy while seated on mattresses, surrounded by many such second hand books. 

James Herriot was a country vet and the book is a compilation of true incidents he experienced during the initial years of his practice. Country-side England, 'English' writing, loyal pets, stubborn horses, insecure father dogs, ewes, pregnant cows, animal owners and farmers, pet contests, the starting days of a young vet's career and love life. What's not to love?! I laughed out aloud, turned a bit squeamish, even shed tears over an utterly devoted and trusting dog, just sat back and soaked in the beauty of Darrowby. I can't recollect what exact time lines are covered in each but they sure are books for all times for animal lovers.
Amazon

Jaaga - Creative Common Ground

Pallet racks are shelves used to store heavy materials in horizontal rows and on multiple levels. So they are an integral part of industrial warehouses. But pallet racking has now found its way to a nondescript part of Rhenius Street in residential Langford Town.
Jaaga (meaning space in Kannada) is a structure made of pallet racks, with metal wire mesh and plywood for flooring, paper honeycomb panels for doors and discarded Korean tarpaulin sheets for the ceiling, for tent-like flaps rather. It was built in 15 hours on a plot on Rhenius Street off Richmond Road. So the space in the true sense is the structure rather than its location for it can be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere anytime. Jaaga rose out of artist Archana Prasad's wish to have a place dedicated to art forms. The suggestion of building it out of pallet racks came from Freeman Murray, an American technologist who has built similar structures in the USA. 

 Pic Credit : http://www.designwala.org/2010/02/jaaga-creative-common-ground/

Last week I attended an event that happened on the ground floor of this space. In the dark, the Korean lettering on the front attracts attention but for which there is not much sign of this unique building's existence. There isn't a 'foundation' to the structure so it's just the ground covered with gravel. It's airy, minimalistic, yet equipped with the wiring needed to conduct events. The venue is available free of cost to those interested. 

Do check out this jaaga sometime. You can also visit the website for pics of how it came to be. 

Read It: We The Living

"Kira Argounova entered Petrograd on the threshold of a box car. She stood straight, motionless, with the graceful indifference of a traveler on a luxurious ocean liner, with an old blue suit of faded cloth, with slender sunburned legs and no stockings. She had an old piece of plaid silk around her neck and short tousled hair, and a stockingcap with a bright yellow tassel. She had a calm mouth and slightly widened eyes with a defiant, enraptured, solemnly and fearfully expectant look of a warrior who is entering a strange city and is not quite sure whether he is entering it as a conqueror or a captive." 

Amidst the bleak surroundings that follow the Russian Revolution and faced with an unforeseeable future, Kira Argounova’s goal is to pursue excellence. Her aim is to storm the male bastion of engineering, to march into life like a Viking hero. And for this life "which is a reason unto itself", she is prepared to do anything, even to go with the communist way of life that she doesn’t believe in until she equips herself to fight it back. Kira is but one of the three protagonists. Through Leo, a free spirit like Kira and Andrei, an idealist, a communist party worker the novel brings to light the other tenets to the communist regime and dilemmas dogging the people.

According to Ayn Rand We The Living is the closest to her autobiography, and this is fairly apparent from the details it delves into. The writing transports you to Russia in the 1920s, the inequality, the treatment meted out to erstwhile bourgeois, the glaring poor state of affairs in general. And each of the three main characters strikes a chord. Kira is one of my favourite characters ever; her loyalty to life irrespective of what it throws at her and of how loved ones betray her. The way she sticks to her beliefs through to the end is simply awe-inspiring. “A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.” 

The book is different from Rand's other works in that the characters (the leads and the many other small yet vital ones) are alive and telling us a tale from post revolution Russia. That is, unlike Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead in which characterization is a sheer prop for philosophy and which are replete with lengthy sermons that can be unnerving if you don’t feel the same way (or as much) as Rand about individuality. I know this is precisely why many people stay away from her books. But I’d recommend reading We The Living for the story it narrates, just follow its wonderfully etched characters and take away what you wish to. This book doesn’t preach and it deserves a fair chance - no matter what you think of Rand’s philosophy.

Link to Amazon 
Wikipedia

Read It Series

Being an avid reader and loving to write, it seems obvious in hindsight that I should have put these two together and kept a journal of sorts for the books that I've read or at least those that I love. It's those new perspectives, thoughts that a book rouses in you right when you've put it down that matter the most. Later on, you already are a changed person for the reading and it won't add as much value. Nevertheless, that isn't going to stop me from venturing to write about some of the books that have made an impact, lingered long after the last page was turned.

Book lovers in general go into a frenzy while visiting book shops, wanting to gather them all. Strangely that isn't the case with me, I'd want to read it all, sure. But buying them all? The minimalist in me would press the panic buttons and I'd mostly surrender the stage to the obsessed self without even realizing it. But if I did let myself buy all the books [not relying only on gifts and the relatively rare self-treats] that I love, which ones would they be? That is the guideline for the books that will make it in this Read It series (aka Wishlist), sort of a list of Must Reads. Watch this space! 

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Published by Phoenix. 216 pages

Books open up different possibilities, take one into lives that we'd otherwise not experience. And many like this one challenge our habitualised perceptions and cause one to pause and take notice. 

Fifteen year old Michael Berg's chance meeting with Hanna Schmitz, an older woman who had helped him when he was ill, soon leads to an affair. He spends a lot of time with her, blames himself for any fight that springs up between them. Hanna however is a closed book, irritable and loving in turns and very eager to have Micheal read to her. Then one day she just disappears. All this has a huge impact on young Michael who takes upon himself the guilt for the way things turned out. Years later when he's in law school, Michael sees Hanna at a trial for war crimes and learns that she had been a guard at the Auschwitz camp. The guilt and anger at his parent's generation for being mere spectators to the Holocaust and so passively aiding it, is only enhanced by this discovery. He learns things about Hanna during the trial, some that pain him more and some that could actually help clear her of certain false charges. And that's all I can mention without revealing more of the plot. 

So The Reader is about .. adolescence, relationships, the German guilt about the Final Solution. An analysis of post war Germany, of society during Nazi rule and its impact on future generations. It does this in a straightforward manner. So while it isn't a Holocaust novel, this book attempts to address the aftermath. The narrative is from Michael's perspective, so we never learn why Hanna made certain choices, or get access to her consciousness except through the few direct conversations. We 'know' the Holocaust visually through movies like Schindler's List and through Anne Frank's journal, fiction like The Book Thief. A POV from the other side, like that of SS guards like Hanna or of ordinary stoic German citizens who lived through it all is what I'd like to read about.

It's a well written book anyway, simple style yet complex for the issues it talks about. One to be read and discussed rather than be reviewed.

Excerpts

I didn't like the way I looked, the way I dressed and moved, what I achieved and what I felt I was worth. But there was so much energy in me, such belief that one day I'd be handsome and clever and superior and admired, such antipication when I met new people and new situations. Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill?
~

Regaining my confidence had nothing to do with success; every goal I set for myself, every recognition I craved made anything I actually did seem paltry by comparison, and whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
~

Never to let myself be humiliated or humiliate myself after Hanna, never to take guilt upon myself or feel guilty, never again to love anyone whom it would hurt to lose [...] I adopted a posture of arrogant superiority. I behaved as if nothing could touch, shake or confuse me.
~

'Did you not know that you were sending the prisoners to their death?'
'Yes, but the new ones came, and the old ones had to make room for the new ones.'
'So because you wanted to make room, you said you and you and you have to be sent back to be killed?'
Hanna didn't understand what the presiding judge was getting at. 
'I..I mean..so what would you have done?' Hanna meant it as a serious question.

Mahashweta by Sudha Murthy

Published by East West Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd. Pages: 171

One of the stories in Sudha Murthy's book 'Wise and Otherwise', a collection of the author's articles based on real life incidents, is that of a young man who retracts his engagement to the girl he loves because she had developed leukoderma. He later realizes his folly and marries her, the eye-opener being this book 'Mahashweta'. (The article 'A Wedding to Remember' is also published as Postscript in the edition I read)

That this book inspired a change for good in real lives speaks volumes about the  message it carries. We still live in a society that sets a lot of stock in external beauty, that in this age of information still ostracizes people with certain diseases. Anupama's life turns a full circle from acting in a play titled 'Mahashweta' (based on a work by Bana Bhata) to becoming Mahashweta (meaning White One in sanskrit) in real life. Anupama is an educated, bold, confident girl yet she is aware that the tiny white patch that first appears on her feet could just change her life. But nothing could've prepared her for the reaction of her orthodox in-laws, her vexed father and more than everything else her husband's diffidence and indifference. How she goes on to regain her strength, her vivacious old self despite the despair that surrounds her, which almost pushed her to consider death, is what this story is about.

The character sketches are drawn out well and the circumstances realistic. Yet there are certain dramatic lines that just don't fit with the characters or are plain senseless. Like when Anand says,
'Anu, the other day you gave me tickets and today I am giving you my heart. Please keep it safe.'
What sort of an absurd comparison is this??
Or when he says, ..'Anu, in my blood there is no haemoglobin. There is only a substance called Anupama.'
It's just so film-like and out of place.
And when Anupama worries about her husband's faithfulness it just is not her, it isn't becoming of the sensible girl we've read her to be. 
Her husband was going to an unknown country, and people had been making malicious comments that she could not ignore. 'One can have a wife here and another there as well. It seems white girls are very aggressive', they said. Anupama was afraid that something untoward could happen.

These instances are few, just that one would expect a writer like Sudha Murthy to translate or convey better. The book is written in very simple English, some lines appear like almost a literal translation from Kannada or very Indian-English-ish. But in a book with a strong social message like this I guess the simpler the language the better, for more is the reach and understanding across the society.

Definitely enjoyed reading this book, following the strong female protagonist's journey through misfortunes. Atleast she was equipped with education, what about women from poor, ignorant families who don't even have this lifeline? Hope this book (and many others) will sensitise people regarding their outlook on appearances and this "cosmetic" disease.

Lunatic In My Head by Anjum Hasan

Published by Zubaan-Penguin Books  (290 pages)

Firdaus Ansari, Aman Moondy, Sophie Das are dkhars (foreigners/non-tribal persons) in Shillong, though it is the only place they've lived in all their lives. Their personal accounts form Lunatic In My Head, a novel about life in Shillong, the invisible line between Khasis and migrants and among others about conflicts external and within.

Firdaus, an English lecturer in her thirties, is trying to focus on her M.Phil thesis on Jane Austen, to break up with her boyfriend Ibomcha who seems to be worlds away. His is a world of deals, Manipur, business, his mother, and his boys. Hers is one of loneliness, she lost her parents in a train accident as an adolescent and now lives with her grandfather.

Aman Moondy, a 23 year old is preparing for his second at with the IAS exams, terrified about his future, holding on to the IAS which he now thinks is his only hope to get out of Shillong. Pink Floyd is the only thing he is clear about, what he really gets. Like many of his friends. He writes to Roger Waters regularly about his opinions of the band's albums, about his dreams - that are very alike the world in Pink Floyd songs- which he thinks Waters would understand.

Eight year old Sophie Das knows that she and her parents are very different, odd from the rest of the world. The only way she can go about with things is by making up lies for everything. She decides that she is adopted and can't wait to get to her real parents. She reads voraciously, she looks out of the kitchen window to a white house nestled in the hills, which is Anna's. Anna is her favorite character in a novel she's recently read, Anna - who Sophie wishes to be.

The novel constantly shuttles between these three main characters, each chapter has three sub-parts. It is through up-close encounters with them that we get different perspectives of life in Shillong, of life in a small town, of the common vein that runs through people who are dkhars but know no other place that could be home and about Khasis. The story has a rich cast of other characters too, a refreshing cast I should add. The climate of this hill station (like that of many others) also weighs down on its inhabitants, it's cold, rains incessantly. People are lazy, inactive, sometimes cooped in their houses for days and are waiting for something to happen. Sometimes waiting to get out of this small town, at the same time fearing a large city and its complicated ways, but always loving Shillong and missing it even when they aren't away.

Firdaus's constant indecisiveness about her relationship, her despair, Sophie's need to create dreamy versions of her life to spice it up for herself more than to attract attention, Aman's panic and depression while preparing for exams, his confidence while organizing the Happening are all realistic. As in, it's all written in just the way it would unfold, no drama, simply persuasive. Particularly liked the portrayal of bird's eye view of Shillong and the closing lines. The narrative is absolutely one that will stand out in my memory.

The story is hemmed in by literature (Firdaus, college setting, English lecturers), rock music (Aman and his friends are obsessed with it, to state it mildly). The latter is a steady undercurrent in Aman's world, references to Pink Floyd are aplenty. The title itself is taken from Brain Damage (The Dark Side of the Moon). Familiarity (read a shared devotion) with Floyd, I think, will definitely add clarity to Aman's story. I've listened to few songs by Pink Floyd (The Wall, Pulse mainly) and have only heard (as Aman would put it) some others and had to be satisfied with identifying thoughts like 'Goodbye, Blue Skies', 'Who needs information'. Only after reading this book did I come to know that Shillong is a self proclaimed rock music capital of India, also ran into this interesting article on the same in NY Times.

Anjum Hasan grew up in Shillong, so this is an insider's view of life in Shillong and a special one because little is known in general about North East India apart from the frequent reports of clashes, violence, border issues. Funny, serious, reflective, this book made for a spontaneous-read.

Quotes

If she could clearly articulate what she felt, if she could find the right words, if she could speak them forcefully into the world, she would be able to make an impress on reality.
Sophie took especial joy in her parents' happiness. A open-mouthed smile would break out on her face whenever her parents expressed delight about something, and, as if she were unconsiously contravening the rules about the function of smiling, Sophie's smile could last for long stretches of time..
She thought that the nicest thing, the nicest thing by far, even better than being adopted, would be if she could somehow turn into one of them, somehow become Khasi. 
With one, tiny, still-unaffected corner of his mind Aman realised that he would not and could not bring any of his Floyd tapes with him. It would be unbearble, listening to them in a new place.

'Neti Neti' is a sequel to this book and is about a grown up Sophie Das working in Bangalore and it's on my TBR list!