Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wacky like the work Haruki Murakami, but not as zany or paranormal.

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उषा प्रियम्वदा रचित शेष यात्रा

शेष यात्रा by Usha Priyamvada
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of a devoted wife and a philandering husband, which reads almost like a prelude to the author’s Arkadipt. Another similarity is the mental breakdown of the protagonist after a broken heart and the recuperation in a psychiatric ward in a foreign land.

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The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I marvel at the author’s depth and range of the extensive research done prior to writing a novel on such a grand scale. Her stories have been set in Africa, South America, various regions of America and all with unique themes – it’s remarkable! This book is a tour de force of Mexican history (the Aztecs and Mayans specifically); Mexican artistes (a tribute to the tortured genius of Frida Kalho and the virtuosity of Diego Riverera);

the convoluted Mexican politics; the vilification campaign of Hoover and McCarthy against professed and imagined Communists post-WWII. The protagonist is a self-deprecating, agoraphobic gay author of mixed parentage (in sharp contrast to the ambitious Youngblood Hawke). The boundaries of fact and fiction blur in the engaging bildungsroman. I loved the evocative poetic descriptions – a market-day in a Mexican village

A man leading his pregnant wife on a burro, like Joseph and Mary. Three long-legged girls in dresses straddling one gray mare, their legs hanging down like a giant insect. A peevish rooster that ought to have been in a better mood, because look here my friend: at the roadside butcher stand, all your comrades hang upside-down ready for roasting. Sausages also were slung over the line like stockings, and a whole white pig skin just hanging, as if the pig went off and left his overcoat. His wife the sow was alive, tied to a papaya tree in the yard with her piglets rooting all round. They could be free to run away, but don't, because of their mother chained on the spot.

… a sleepy afternoon in a Mexican town

In the afternoon when the sun lights the stucco buildings across the street, it's possible to count a dozen different colours of paint, all fading together on the highest parts of the wall: yellow, ochre, brick, blood, cobalt, turquoise. The national colour of Mexico. And the scent of Mexico is a similar blend: jasmine, dog piss, cilantro, lime. Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes. The pebble thrown into the canyon bumps and tumbles downhill. Here life is strong-scented, overpowering. Even the words. Just ordering breakfast requires some word like toronja, triplet of muscular syllables full of lust and tears, a squirt in the eye. Nothing like the effete "grapefruit," which does not even mean what it says.

Here is the irrepressible Frida

"Everyone will say horse shit smells like flowers," she stated, "if they want to be popular with a horse's ass."
Natalya takes Phanodorm morning and night, and cups of tea one after another: drowning her sorrows, as Frida would say, until the damn things learn to swim. But maybe some sorrows can't be borne.

The protagonist’s self-effacing amanuensis

"Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down."

This is the weird and famous house designed by the architect who was le Corbusier’s disciple

When he stops to rest, that poor old man has to raise his eyes to this modern mess of glass and painted cement that looks like a mistake. It looks like a baby giant was playing with his blocks when his mother called him, so he ran away and left his toys lying in Calle Altavista.

Two blocks: the big pink one and small blue one standing separately, each with rooms stacked one above the other, screwed together by a curved cement staircase. The big pink block is the Painter's domain, and his studio on the second floor is not so bad. That window is the size of a lake, a whole wall of glass looking down at the neighbour's trees. The planks of the floor are yellow, like sun on your face. That room feels like someone could be happy in it. Everything else feels like being shut up inside a crate. The small blue block is meant to be for the small wife.

Viva Frida!


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आदमी का जहर by श्रीलाल शुक्ल

आदमी का जहर by श्रीलाल शुक्ल
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An enthralling murder-mystery, although not a patch on the cult classic राग दरबारी.

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The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay

The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay by Varun Thomas Mathew
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This starkly Orwellian yarn is set in 2041 in a dystopian rain-starved India – the result of climate change. There are allusions to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - bhaashafish, gay prosecution, the outcast Moosahaars of Bihar, venal and fanatic politicians viz., the present dispensation in Maharashtra and Delhi. There is a damming indictment of the much vaunted IAS, a sly dig at BJP and an uncalled-for criticism of AADHAR. The plot is a little too preposterous – the story would have been more readable if the characters and context were more plausible.
An accurate description of present-day Mumbai

Newspaper boys lined the pavements, pushing advertisements for computer repairmen into the sheaves of the morning newspapers. Vendors pushed their carts along the sea-facing roads, heavy with fresh vegetables that would become lunch for the now-sleeping millions. Dozens would take their morning dump by the rocks along the shore and wash themselves in murky salty water, the ideal liquid for nether-cleaning. Street sweepers would sit on their haunches and drink tea and tell each other about the strange things they found on the street the day before. Rat killers would carry their nightly catch in a blood-stained sack to deposit it at the corporation offices. These were the elves of the city: invisible, yet without whom the city would cease to function.

In contrast to a future Bombay

Indeed, they have robbed you of your agency, snatched away your sense of history, confounded your idea of what a nation should be - to the extent that the Constitution of India is now nothing more than a few lines of software embedded into the Bombadrome's operating system.

It’s fine to have differing views – that’s what a democracy is all about, but this is positively secessionist

…we have a Supreme Court that is for sale. But you really don't really care. You are content with your lives, happy to violate your wives each night and bow down before idols to heal your gay children, and tomorrow you will gladly put a blogger in jail. So go ahead, play your patriotic songs and buy your little plastic flags from children at traffic signals. Rejoice in whatever way you can, for this country of yours is one year older. As for me, I hope that your neighbour in the east devours you, while your sister in the west swarms you with her children. I hope that your glaciers melt faster than ever before, that your tectonic plates shift and consign everything you have built to the bottom of the earth, and that the seas rise up and wash away all memory of you from this land. It is a miracle that this country has survived so long despite being populated by the likes of you, and perhaps that single accomplishment is in fact deserving of the celebration that will be in plentiful supply tomorrow. In fact, why not? Let me give it to you now. With a full heart, allow me to wish you all a very happy Republic Day, though I would much rather tell you simply to take your accursed flag and go fuck yourself.

The author is obviously a member of the tukde, tukde gang – a self-aggrandizing group of traitorous left-leaning ‘intellectuals’

That life in this country, as it exists now, is absurd. That people are arbitrary, and society is run by chance. So the truths that you fight for in court don't matter.
I know now that I'm not really a Kashmiri or an Indian, but just a human being. I do not believe in a motherland or a chosen race, which are concepts that can destroy lives. Nationalism is one of the worst creations of men.

I wish he was more circumspect with his poison-spewing quill.

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मनोहर श्याम जोशी कृत कसप

 

कसप by Manohar Shyam Joshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An unusual but endearing love story set in the sylvan hills of Uttarakhand.

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House Sparrow

 

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

Lotus Blossoms

 

The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams

The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Disappointing – written with a Western, especially American, bias. There is no mention of why there were no horses or their progenitors in the India. I expected some information about the historic vital role of horses in the invasion of the Indian sub-continent by the Aryans and, later, Mongols, Huns and Mughals.
Were there horses during the Harappan times? How did the Ashwamegh yagya come into being? What type of hoses came to India? Something about the role of cavalry in modern warfare? Are horses only used for ceremonial occasions? When did mules come into the picture? A lot of unanswered questions. I guess this will be more helpful: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.

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श्रीलाल रचित राग दरबारी

 

राग दरबारी by श्रीलाल शुक्ल
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Easily one of the best books in Hindi, ever. A brilliant biting satire on the political landscape in India especially in the rural context – the village being a microcosm of India. The evocative description of the landscape, the day-to-day life of a village, the atmosphere is a delight to read; as are the vividly described eccentricities and foibles of the inhabitants. These are those memorable and entertaining characters

मंगल/सनीचर, लंगड़, रुप्पन, रंगनाथ, वैद्यजी, खन्ना, मोतीराम, मालवीय (kleptomaniac), the unnamed प्रिंसिपल व् क्लर्क, दरोगाजी, रामाधीन भीखमखेड़वी, स्व ठाकुर दुरबीन सिंह, रामस्वरूप चोर, काना पं. राधेलाल, बद्री पहलवान, छोटे पहलवान एंड बाप (cantankerous family), कालिका प्रसाद, बेला (एकमात्र महत्वपूर्ण महिला पात्र)

ये कथा है शिवपालगंज के बाशिंदों की जो अपने आप को गर्व से गँझहे कहते हुए आसपास के गांवों में दादागिरी करते हैं, परन्तु उनकी गतिविधियाँ देखकर उन्हें गँजेड़ी बुलाना अधिक उचित है। लेखक की लिखने की शैली अति हसीपद एवं रोचक है। प्रत्येक वाक्य हँसते हँसते लोट पॉट करा देता है, किन्तु शीघ्र ही कटु सत्य सामने आ जाता है और पाठक सोचने पर विवश हो जाता है अपने देश व समाज की दयनीय दशा पर।
Here is an evocative description of a roadside tea-stall

प्रायः सभी में जनता का एक मनपसंद पेय मिलता था जिसे वहाँ गार्ड, चीकट, चाय की कई बार इस्तेमाल की हुई पट्टी और खेलते पानी आदि के सहारे बनाया जाता था। उनमें मिठाइयां भी थीं जो दिन-रात आंधी-पानी और मक्खी-मच्छरों के हमलों का बहादुरी से मुकाबला करती थीं। वे हमारे देसी कारीगरों के हस्तकौशल और उनकी वैज्ञानिक दक्षता का सबूत देती थीं। वे बताती थीं कि हमें एक अच्छा रेजर-ब्लेड बनाने का नुस्खा भले ही न मालूम हो, पर कूड़े को स्वादिष्ट खाद्य पदार्थ में बदल देने की तरकीब साड़ी दुनिया में अकेले हमीं को आती है।

A typical roadside scene as you approach any Indian village

थोड़ी देर में ही धुँधलके में सड़क की पटरी पर दोनों ओर कुछ गठरियाँ-सी रखी हुई नज़र आयीं। ये औरतें थीं, जो कतार बाँधकर बैठी हुई थीं। वे इत्मीनान से बातचीत करती हुई वायु-सेवन कर रही थीं और लगे-हाथ मल-मूत्र का विसर्जन भी। सड़क के नीच घूरे पटे पड़े थे और उनकी बदबू के बोझ से शाम की हवा किसी गर्भवती की तरह अलसायी हुई-सी चल रही थी। कुछ दूरी पर कुत्तों के भूँकने की आवाज़ें हुईं। आँखों के आगे धुएँ के जले उड़ते नज़र आये। इससे इंकार नहीं हो सकता था कि वे किसी गाँव के पास आ गए थे।

Here’s more dementia precox type of writing

तुमने मास्टर मोतीराम को देखा है कि नहीं। पुराने आदमी हैं। दरोगाजी उनकी बड़ी इज्जत करते हैं। वे दरोगा जी की इज्जत करते हैं। दोनों की इज्जत प्रिंसिपल साहब करते हैं। कोई साला काम तो करता नहीं है, सब एक दूसरे की इज्जत करते हैं।

Bureaucratic behaviour

एक पुराने श्लोक में भूगोल की एक बात समझाई गयी है कि सूर्या दिशा के आधीन होकर नहीं उगता। वह जिधर उदित होता है, वही पूर्व दिशा हो जाती है। उसी तरह उत्तम कोटि का सरकारी आदमी कार्य के आधीन दौरा नहीं करता, वह जिधर निकल जाता है, उधर ही दौरा हो जाता है। ... पिछले साल के व्याख्यान के कारण इस साल रबी की फसल अच्छी होने वाली है। काश्तकार उनके बताये तरीके से खेती कर रहे हैं। उन्हें यह मालूम हो गया कि खेत जोतना चाहिए। और उसमें खाद ही नहीं, बीज भी डालना चाहिए। वे सब बातें समझने-बूझने लगे हैं और नयी समझदारी के बारे में उनकी घबराहट छूट चुकी है।

An example of filth and our pullulating population

गांव के किए एक छोटा सा तालाब था। गन्दा कीचड़ से भरा-पूरा, बदबूदार। बहुत क्षुद्र घोड़े, गधे, कुत्ते, सूअर उसे देखकर आनंदित होते थे। कीड़े-मकोड़े और भुनगे, मक्खियाँ और मच्छर - परिवार-नियोजन के उलझनों से उन्मुख - वहां करोड़ों के संख्या में पनप रहे थे और हमें सबक दे रहे थे कि अगर हम उन्हीं के तरह रहना सीख लें तो देश की बढ़ती हुई आबादी हमरे लिए समस्या नहीं रह जाएगी।
गन्दगी की कमी पूरा करने के लिए दो दर्जन लड़के नियमित रूप से शाम-सवेरे और अनियमित रूप से दिन को किसी भी समय पेट के स्वेच्छाचार से पीड़ित होकर तालाब के किनारे आते थे और - ठोस, द्रव तथा गैस - तीनो प्रकार के पदार्थ उसे समर्पित करके, हलके होकर वापस लौट जाते थे।
अपने पिछड़ेपन के बावजूद किसी देश का जैसे-न-कोई आर्थिक और राजनितिक महत्व अवश्य होता है, वैसा ही इस तालाब का भी, गन्दगी के बावजूद, अपना महत्त्व था।

An acoustically accurate description of the noise pollution emanating from a blaring radios and other glimpses of rural India

तहसील के सामने तम्बोली की दुकान पर बैटरीवाला रेडियो अब भी बज रहा था और फ़िल्मी गानों के परनाले से 'अरमान, साजना, हसीन, जादूगर, मंजिल, तू कहाँ, सीना, गले लगा लो, गले लग जा, मचल-मचल कर, आंधियां, गम, तमन्ना, परदेशी, शराब, मुस्कान, आग, जिंदगी, मौत, बेरहम, तस्वीर, चांदनी, आसमाँ, सुहाना सपन, जोबन, मस्ती, उभर, इंतज़ार, बेजार, इसरार, इंकार, इकरार' ... जैसे शब्द लगातार गिर रहे थे जो भुखमरे देशों में नवजागरण का सन्देश देने के लिए सब प्रकार से उपयुक्त थे।

रुप्पन बाबू, जिनका जन्म 'अंग्रेज़ों, भारत छोड़ो' का नारा बुलंद हो जाने के बाद हुआ था, बड़े विश्वास से बोले "खुदा अपने गधों के जलेबियाँ खिला रहा है। हर शाख पै उल्लू बैठा है।"

उन्होंने सबसे पहले पान की दुकान खोजने का विचार किया। हिंदुस्तानी के लिए यह कोई कठिन बात नहीं है। रॉबिंसन क्रूसो के बजाय कोई हिंदुस्तानी किसी एकांत द्वीप पर अटक गया होता तो फ्राइडे की जगह वह किसी पान बनाने वाले को ही ढूँढ़ निकालता। वास्तव में सच्चे हिंदुस्तानी की यही परिभाषा है कि वह इंसान जो कहीं भी पान खाने का इंतज़ाम कर ले और कहीं भी पेशाब करने की जगह ढूँढ़ ले।
पीछे-पीछे मोटरें आती-जाती रहीं और लड़कियों की अंग्रेजी से सनी हुई आवाजें हवा में तड़प पैदा करती रहीं। खिलौनेवाले, किसी सिनेमा में किसी खिलौनेवाली ने जैसी ट्यून बजाई थी, उसी के नकल पर कर्णविस्फोटक संगीत के रचना करते रहे।

The imagery of a bucolic rural scene

थाने के बहार कान पर जनेऊ चढ़ाए हुए, बनियान और अंडरवियर पहन हुए तंदरुस्त सिपाही। पेड़ों के नीचे कुत्तों की तरह पड़े हुए चौकीदार। टूटे कुल्हड़ों, गंदे, भिनभिनाते हुए पत्तों और धुआँ निकलने वाली ढिबरियों से संपन्न मिठाई और चाय की दुकानें। चीकट लगी हुई तिपाइयाँ। सड़क पर घरघराते हुए नशेबाज़ ड्राइवरों के हाथों चलनेवाले हत्याभिलाषि ट्रकों के कारवां। साइकिल के कर्रिएर पर घास-जैसे कागज़ात लादे हुए वसूली के अमीन। तहसीलदार का बदकलाम अरदली। शराब पीकर नाइ की दुकान पर बिना मतलब झगड़नेवाले पं. रामधार का बेलगाम बेटा, जिसे सप्ताह में सात बार स्थानीय पोस्टमैन उससे भी ज्यादा शराब पीकर जूतों से पीटता है। कॉलेज की तरफ से आते हुए, एक-दूसरे की कमर में हाट डालकर चलते हुए, कोई कोरस-जैसा गाते विद्यार्थी।

A pithy rustic saying

शहर का आदमी है। सूअर का-सा लेंड़ - न लीपने के काम आये, न जलाने के।

A bonus is the garnishing before each chapter – a simple, yet cute graphic by Vikram Nayak.



A book that deserves multiple re-readings! The translation by Gillian Wright (Raag Darbari), in contrast, is so nondescript and pedestrian.

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Graphics from श्रीलाल रचित राग दरबारी

 

The Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell

A Clergyman's Daughter: George Orwell by George Orwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Orwell described this book (his second published novel) disparagingly as a ‘silly potboiler,’ but then he also labelled Animal Farm as ‘a little squib!’ The tale has his favourite tropes – the impoverished and the disenfranchised – surviving on the periphery of society. He paints an accurate subjective description of poverty since it since it was his subjective experience as in Down and Out in Paris and London

She had come, like everyone about her, to accept this monstrous existence almost as though it were normal. The dazed, witless feeling that she had known on the way to the hopfields had some back upon her more strongly than before. It is the common effect of sleeplessness and still more of exposure. To live continuously in the open air, never going under a roof for more than an hour or two, blurs your perceptions like a strong light glaring in your eyes or a noise drumming in your ears. You act and plan and suffer, and yet all the while it is as though everything were a little out of focus, a little unreal. The world, inner and outer, grows dimmer till it reaches almost the vagueness of a dream.

It was a life that wore you out, used up every ounce of your energy, and kept you profoundly, unquestionably happy. In the literal sense of the word, it stupefied you. The long days in the fields, the coarse food and insufficient sleep, the smell of hops and wood smoke, lulled you into an almost beast-like heaviness, Your wits seemed to thicken, just as your skin did, in the rain and sunshine and perpetual fresh air.

His vivid portrayal of nature and humans is underappreciated

Miss Mayfill was very old, so old that on one remembered her as anything but an old woman. A faint scent radiated from her – an ethereal scent, analysable as eau-de-Cologne, mothballs and a sub-flavour of gin.

A momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds. It struck downwards through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of leaves in the doorway gleamed with a transient, matchless green, greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic waters.

The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful widow was playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had now remembered that it was August and settled down to be broiling hot.

When he was puzzled or in difficulties, his moustaches seemed to bristle forward, giving him the appearance of a well-meaning but exceptionally brainless prawn.

Certainly not his best book, yet, immensely readable.

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Chowringhee by Sankar

Chowringhee by Sankar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Poor translation and a disjointed narration style has marred this Hotel wannabe.

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