The Skin Room by Morgan Fleetwood

The distinct smell of the postmodernist masterpiece, ‘Perfume; The Story of a Murderer’, by Patrick Suskind, is hard to forget. Equally difficult it is to miss the unmistakable similarities of Morgan Fleetwood’s debut novel ‘The Skin Room’ with Suskind’s story. Both the protagonists, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and Alex Melville, are in search of a personal identity; one which seems true. Their motives are born of the lack of maternal attention, and their urges driven toward seeking out the elusive essence that makes them. In a more cinematic sense, this book reminds one of the ‘Psycho’ too, with a macabre meticulousness that made the 45 seconds long shower scene unforgettable. ‘The Skin Room’ reminds you of some of the suspense thrillers that preceded it, but it hooks you at the edge of your reading chair with its own stamp of screams, suspense, secrets and spiraling ennui. 

The document that Alex, a multi-lingual translator and murderer, is writing forms the narrative of the novel. Like a diary, if you may. His blood-stained and action-packed account, as well as his confession to killing Valentina, is addressed to an Inspector. It is this Inspector that Alex holds responsible for his sister Sonia’s death, who Alex spends most part of the story looking for. The book begins in a ‘bad part of town’ where Alex is looking for a ‘bad girl’ and ends in Sonia’s apartment, where Alex reaches his ‘final incarnation.’ Between the first scene and the spectacularly disturbing climax three things don’t let up – points of suspense with the imminence of something to come, sudden twists in the tale and Alex’s strange, strange voice in our heads.

The points of suspense oscillate between action and thought, bloody deeds and memories. There is always a ‘maybe’ trailing Alex’s every move, and one sitting lodged in the reader’s head. A preparedness for a surprise twist, yet none the less exciting for coming in unfailingly. Unexpected arrivals and departures, blunt hits and sharp misses are a constant. But what is most unexpected? ‘I wanted to have her, and I was had, by her. L’arro seur arose.’ The hunter turns hunted. The murderer gets soaked in his own blood. It is around this axis that the plot flips, and rotates. 

Sometimes, we gallop from one scene to the next, travelling between cities or in and out of rooms with equal speed. Contrarily, Alex slows down the pace so much sometimes that we want to nudge him to move on. Because any more guess-work to do with, say, his father’s dementia (Does he know? Does he remember there was a woman Alex brought into the house?) frustrates the reader. Any more tardiness in unravelling his next move in the cave with Valentina suffocates. Just another minute’s delay by Sonia’s boyfriend in telling Alex about her whereabouts makes our lungs burst. 

We readers are impatient pawns in the hands of the narrator’s clock. Maybe because we have tasted blood. And surely because of how Fleetwood decided to create Alex and his voice. 

Alex, the ‘humble translator with a unique obsession’, ends up opening the widest window to his own mind – not just its bloody deeds and ‘filmic rushes’ of ‘peeling the skin away’ but also its follies, frailties, fears and failures. His narration is not conceited, because he is not. You will catch him looking at his hands, asking, ‘were they capable of murder?’ while on the next page all doubts would have been laid to a dark rest. In that, Alex is a “different” kind of a criminal, crisscrossed with contradictions, doubt and helplessness. 

Remember Grenouille’s utter confidence in seeking a scent? Alex has none of that. While the former moves ahead testing his limits, Alex gets his limits tested, instead.

No doubt he is a sick person, with pouches full of his mother’s and sister’s nail clippings, satisfying an ‘illness’ he recognizes as just that and finding ‘a favourite comforter’ in a dream where Sonia scrapes her knee, and ‘the exposed layer, the pinkness...a revelation to me.’ However, his mind often surprises itself, catching itself off-guard, with its calmness or its rage. His is a mind which is as much trying to unravel itself as it tries to unravel the events for ‘Inspector Sin’. And for us. So you too may wonder - Is he actually a wielder of his sickness or its victim? No, you won’t feel sorry for him. But you will fail to not see in him a human being, a brother, an ignored sibling wanting to be ‘cradled. Kept.’ As if he is one from amongst us, turned thus circumstantially. A ‘monster capable of reflection’. 

The final chapters see him spiraling into a very dark labyrinth of thoughts, spectacularly put together with nuanced madness and a breathless loss of method. His acute perception of and documentation of both people and events which occupied the narration till now are replaced by his turning within, many moments of mindless acts looking for an order; alone. The dizzying sequences culminate in blood and a terrifying ‘living work of art’ that makes your gall rise, but takes your breath away.

‘I guess you’re building up a picture of me slowly, and that’s the way I want it.’ Alex says this at the start of the book. By the end of it, it is not just the picture and the events which disturb. It is the fact that somewhere the reader has been held spell-bound by a criminal revealing his mind and motives, and totally fascinated with the most unsettling of revelations and scenes. This reader got involved in every bit of the telling, every bit of Alex’s “becoming”. It says a great deal about the power of Alex’s narration (and Fleetwood’s craft). But what does this macabre enjoyment tell us … about us? ‘Even if I laid down all my justification, you probably wouldn’t understand,’ says Alex almost at the start of his narration. No, we don’t. The complete depravity. But how do we as readers justify our fascination for reading about it? Or even to have found a haunting depth in a paragraph such as ...

‘What’s wrong with imperfection? … What’s wrong with down, with lines, with veins? Show me them all, I want the lot. These are the surface stresses of the soul… I'm for the removal of skin as a barrier to internal beauty, setting free the leaking reds, the swilling pinks, the oozing folds.’

‘The Skin Room’ by Morgan Fleetwood is a well-written thriller. If it is just shy (by the skin’s thickness no more) of being great, it is because maybe the time has come to think of better motives for male derangement than a lack of maternal love. The mother-angle has been done to death in countless movies and books! It is Alex’s parallel (though related) need for becoming his ‘authentic self’, to find his ‘underlying solidity’, which firmly puts the ‘why’ back in this ‘whydunnit’ and turns revenge to a resurrection. 

Alex is the character you want to turn inside out. His psychological drama is the heart, the hands, the very flesh that makes this book what it is. A good one! 

'The Skin Room' by Morgan Fleetwood is published by Howarth Press, 2017.

[Review was commissioned by the publisher. Views are my own.]

God is in the details in Rajiv Mittal’s ‘Brahmahatya’

The Prologue to Rajiv Mittal’s ‘Brahmahatya’, with its absolute finality of ‘what is over is over’, draws you in, immediately. Is it a sigh of relief, this sense of closure right at the start of a book? Or is it a tone of defeat the book whispers in? The curious unhurried juxtaposition of a priest getting dressed and a man trying to be ‘old enough to be his father’ just a page later only adds to what seems like a very unusual start to a book.

The story of ‘Brahmahatya’ is at once tragic and triumphant, banal and sacred, real and unreal, of this world and another. The book is ripe with episodes from Hindu mythology and excerpts from ancient scriptures which are appropriated by the characters to understand their circumstances, or by the author, in order to move the story forward.   

Govindarajan Memorial Residency (GMR) is an old age home in a Southern state of India. Most sponsors of the aged residents, like Ravi the protagonist, live overseas. The fee for care-giving and for funerals is duly sent, keeping oiled the wheels of this plush retirement home, comfortable but speckled with greed and politics. The residents ‘were historical but they definitely were not works of art in a museum; these were crumbling.’ The atmosphere is one of a ritualistic sameness of routine and a smell of medicines, decay and death.

'Oh! My Name' is fabulous

Children love to own things. (So do adults I know, but let’s not go there!) The little ones want to be proud possessors of things they enjoy, can boast about and later stack and add to their burgeoning numbers. There is always a wish-list on display under the fridge magnet and another one ready to be scribbled after the best friend’s birthday gifts are opened or inadvertently an advert for the latest in children’s goodies watched. (You should have caught the TV remote in time!)

They just want! They know what they want and how they want it. Only sometimes they may know why they want it. Nonetheless, they want and that’s explanation enough. And you, loving parents, need to give, or to put it in the blackmailer’s language, provide. But wanting and getting isn’t always so bad. As a parent nothing makes me happier than my child asking me for books to read, for instance. It is a “demand” I love to meet and never argue against because I always feel like I’m pandering to my childhood love too as I cater to my child’s. Plus, it’s a great first love to have. Books! So be it book fairs or book shops, jumble sales or Children’s Day coupons, this mother hunts for good books with a zeal which she doesn’t even show for good food. Ahem.

So, what is a good Children’s book according to me? One which excites them, frees their imaginations, makes them feel, makes them question and maybe makes them learn a thing or two about their world, about gentle manners, values like team work and Quantum Physics, why not? They grow up so fast! And these days, academic pressure... Sorry. But you get the idea. That’s a good book there for me, minus the Physics, that is.

What is an even better book? A uniquely personalized book. No, not one which simply copy-pastes your child’s name in place of Prince Charming but something like ‘Oh! My Name’ by Nikhil Mittal, which takes personalization to a level beyond mere labeling. It’s a concept which instantly caught my attention and later my appreciation for how it involves tiny readers. 

When I ordered the book online, I was asked to write a Dedication which would actually be printed in my copy of the book.  You could write anything under the sun and over the moon, addressed to your child and signed off with your role of ‘Papa and Mama’, or whatever your relationship is with the kid you are ordering the book for. I thought it was a great opportunity for me to give him my list of Life’s 10 Most Important Lessons but his father disagreed. So a sweet little wish for his dreams to come true it was to be. This idea of creating a dedication not just personalized the book but also added an emotion to the giving of the present itself. The printed words making owning this book even more special. 

But it doesn’t end there, the promotion of a lovely ‘this is my book!’ sentiment. 

‘Oh! My Name’ makes your child a part of the book. Literally. 

‘I didn’t forget my way, but my name.’

This is the story of a boy/girl who has forgotten his/her name and is looking for it. The name is put together letter-after-letter and page-after-page in an adventurous tale. The wonderful twist is, your child is the protagonist of the story and it is he/she looking for the name. No surprise then that it is his name spelled bold and bright in white at the end of the tale! 

The boy in my book, with a unibrow and wearing a red cape, meets different creatures as he journeys ahead. His friend and ‘ally’ Dabi goes along; a favourite toy magically turned real. With expressions of bewilderment and wonder, he meets some animals that he knows and some fantastical creatures like Ila Pika who he is happy to now know. Everyone gives him a letter to take along, in return for what goes on. What goes on is a secret I’m keeping!       

The story is brought alive with big and beautiful illustrations in a book which is printed on a wide landscape format and is super easy to hold. The story is brought home in a child’s mind with its rhyming sentences and simple expressions. Invented sound words like ‘Ho Ho Hokeya’ make reading aloud fun and some conversations are bold and big to be read even louder, perhaps. 

There are lessons and messages gently tucked inside the story, without making it sound like school curriculum. Each tiny episode of meeting a different creature makes the boy in my book make the boy reading it learn something. Take help when you need it, but don’t forget to lend your helping hand when another needs it more. So if in the first part it’s the boy taking help, in the second he has learnt to help back. Both appreciation and gratitude abound, along with thank yous and awards. Dabi, the magical toy, stands for that magic which shows itself when you most need it. It tells children that friends help. Strangers become companions. The universe comes together to lead you on to happiness. Even a snake can give you something that ‘will help you make progress.’ The important bit is to move onwards. And even more, to know yourself. But for now, your name would be enough.

‘Oh! My Name’ is great for pre-schoolers who are just jumping into the sea of phonetics as well as early-readers. This book will certainly make them identify the letters of their name, in the correct sequence at that. Of course, adults will have to help them read the rest of the book. It can make for a good first introduction to many animals too! Words like ‘Organic’ and a picture of Shakespeare made my reading session with my five-year-old digress into unchartered territory. Even more fun! The mystery keeps them hooked, even if the older clever clogs realize the spelling of the name rings a bell. So if by the time NIS have been found and Nishad guesses it’s his name, how the rest of the letters will appear in the story keeps him reading on. For those who don’t make an effort to start putting the letters together as they read, well, the book holds a bigger surprise then! Who says being lazy is bad, huh? 

There was one thing though, in NISHAD’s story that caught my eye. The transition from I to S, only, seemed like a jump. If the book is created by stringing letter-episodes together, it should be seamless. ‘The boy was looking at a creature’ could begin ‘Just a few steps ahead…’ for example. That would help maintain a continuity to the journey. However, such nuances are for the adults to notice in their boring grown-up critical worlds. Children don’t have time to waste on such nitty-gritties. All mine had to say when I asked him about it was ‘I don’t know what you mean. I only wish my name were very loooooong’. Request denied, of course.

While ordering the book online I could read the complete thing with just a ‘tap to open’. Just a sample page as preview would have been enough, or it takes away the charm for adult readers who love tales written for children. (Pssk! It did make me create one in my name to read.) I also found out that the same letters in two different names have same episodes in both books. But repeat letters in the same name have different episodes. Which means multiple stories have been created for the many letter combinations. Which also means siblings with common letters in the name will share a little more than just their parents.

What if siblings could become characters in the same book, looking for letters of their names appearing all jumbled up? Fighting to own the first shared ‘A’ or ‘I’? Oops. Sorry. I digress there.   

‘Oh! My Name’ is a lovely book created with much thought.  It came along with a muppet of Dabi, who has now occupied pride of place in my child’s bed. He felt immense surprise followed by interest and joy on receiving and reading this story which brings together the real and the magical. A real him in a magical story! The tiny adventure in this good-looking book is very personal and at the same time very important too. Because what’s in a name? A lot, especially if it belongs to a child.

'Oh! My Name'  by Nikhil Mittal is self-published (2017)

[Review was commissioned by the author. Views are my own.]

The Nude Figure in Anurag Tripathi’s ‘Kalayug’

The golden spine of Anurag Tripathi’s ‘Kalayug’ catches the eye instantly. It glitters on the shelf, till you pick it up and notice the dark silhouette of a man against the headlights of cars. The contrast of gold and black is palpable. The juxtaposition even more significant when you read the book. For what lies within is a story that takes you deep into the labyrinth that the art industry is according to the author – glam and gloss on the outside but with a murky underbelly behind the sheen. 

‘Kalayug’ enjoys a great plot, with only a handful of characters and a deceptively simple story line. There is no visible effort to complicate things or confuse the readers, and yet there are wheels within wheels; or to put it differently, paintings within paintings. Intrigue is a constant, with the first chapter itself setting the pace, the tone and the characters for what is to follow. And what does follow?

‘The global art world was transforming…this transformation had replaced aesthetics...with economic considerations of value and marketability…’

Jay Malhotra, a sharp and astute banker, enters the unregulated art market of the Navaratnas, hopeful of turning his fortunes around with the help of his personality and unflinching ambition. He knows that ‘the Navaratnas could be the next big trend in the art industry.’ But what he doesn’t is that ‘the purchase of the Navaratnas was so out of the ordinary, it had the potential to spoil the harmony in the art fraternity.’ So many unexpected colours mix on his palate; those events which surprise him, make him soar, make him struggle and finally shock him! As he makes his way from one art gallery to the next dealer, one warehouse to the next businessman and finally to the courtroom, Jay meets an array of characters who make or break his deals and add both style and suspense to this novel. There’s Patty, a savagely competitive art dealer and owner of two of the biggest art galleries. ‘There is no dearth of people, but there is only one Patty’, as she believes and the book later confirms. There’s Arun, a disillusioned artist. Deepak, the first-generation entrepreneur desperate for social acceptance. There are art collectors ‘hoping to ride the wave of increasing prices in the future’. And then there is Biswas, the academician who hopes for the ideal in the art world…

Every character in this book is manipulative. And so everything is manipulated. There are no free lunches and few relationships to trust. Which makes the book a page-turner, more so towards the end. Which makes the characters risk-takers. Which is also why every partnership – in bed or business – sets the reader wondering about ulterior motives and agendas. The guessing-ahead never really abates! 

Consider Jay and Patty, both representatives of the contemporary, urban, educated world of business and art. Their ‘passionate battle for dominance’ in a world where ‘a bank balance is more tangible than goodwill’ is a constant note that drives them to turn the art tide their way. To even buy peace by selling their souls! How an outsider tries to succeed on a project that 'the queen of the market' herself had failed at is the exhilarating journey the book takes us on. Does he? Can he? That remains to be found out.

‘Kalayug’ not just makes for an entertaining story imagined well. It is created well too, the primary reason for which is Anurag Tripathi’s scholarship. Anurag knows the world of art - totally unregulated, fragmented and growing - like an insider would. His book is based in a context which is actual. Like Dan Browns’ books, ‘Kalayug’ is full of facts and analyses of artworks, artists and eras. From the calculated seating arrangement at complex auctions to the psychology of bidders. From the development of Tagore as a painter to the lack of documentation plaguing his paintings. From scientific methods of authentication to the underground forgery market often run by the painters’ families themselves. And from motives behind buying art as an alternate asset class to master painters languishing in penury on the roads. There’s much that is told to the readers, often in slightly repetitive chapters dedicated to information. Some may feel it slows the pace of the novel, but may change their minds when they realize how everything that is told is significant to the story unfolding with every turn of the page. 

The author’s voice comes through the narrator’s - acutely observant, subtly satirical and with a tinge of regret that ‘all was fair in the unregulated art industry.’ Anurag’s social commentary is unmistakable. People who received fancy invitations made sure everyone knew about it. Perhaps, the applause wasn’t for the paintings but for the amount they sold for? ‘People without experience, expertise, reading or aesthetic exposure became art dealers.’ And the one question - ‘Were people buying art for its aesthetic beauty or merely paying for the signature of the Grand Master’? So many times you hear the narrator but you listen to the voice of the lesser sold artist that Anurag Tripathi is standing up for. Almost creating this story for. Even a forger is but ‘an artist…used his knowledge, talent and imagination to interpret’ because these days ‘being talented was not good enough’. It was Kalayug, after all. The world of art. The age of downfall. Or… both. 

The only let-down in ‘Kalayug’ was, perhaps, the character of Patty. The blurb introduces her as a ‘fiercely competitive art dealer who will defend her turf at all costs’ and raises expectations for a great female character. However, the more you get to know her successes the more you realize – Patty is a stereotype speaking a typical script. She is smart and ambitious but ‘she did what was required to survive in an unforgiving world, exploiting her beauty and sexuality to her advantage…a go-getter, known to play dirty.’ Why? Does a female survivor of misfortune have no other way to success, except using and abusing those around her, much in the language of the abuse she may have faced? Plus, her dialogues lack charm, her retorts spunk. Even in her final gesture towards Jay, Patty befuddles rather than attracts. 

One cannot consider ‘Kalayug’ as solely a thriller. It is a convincing exposé of the fickle and impulsive art industry, where money speaks and relationships go from symbiotic to parasitic in one stroke of the brush. This in turn makes the book a reflection of human nature itself, with adult ego, ambition and opportunity driving the characters to possess ‘institutionalised and objectified cultural capital’. The portrait of the art world in this gripping thriller is a nude figure of ‘the commercialization and degeneration' of this very world. 

‘No one knows for certain the extent of these (forged) works currently afloat in the art market.

Biswas smiled as he read the last sentence and wondered if it should have read ‘no one wanted to know’ rather than ‘no one knew’.

The final twist to the tale ends it on a hopeful note. Utopic. Idyllic. (Naïve?) But hopeful, nonetheless, of ‘a new beginning.’ This is a book with a spine, which says it as it actually is. 

Must read!  

'Kalayug' by Anurag Tripathi is a Rupa Publication, 2017.

[Review was commissioned by the PR agency. Views are my own.]

Bringing the Rainbow; The Hindware Story by RK Somany

Once, while driving along a rutted mud road to Bahadurgarh in a bouncing old Morris Minor, RK Somany saw a rainbow suddenly appear. The heat, the dust and the fretful uncertainty of getting land for his plant was forgotten, and ‘a chore became exciting. Ever since, the rainbow became my guiding mantra. In whatever I do, as a businessperson, a father, a husband, a friend and a family man, I ask myself: ‘Am I bringing the rainbow to this? The passion, the excitement, the colour?’

No wonder then that RK Somany titled his autobiography ‘Bringing the Rainbow; The Hindware Story’. And no doubt he tried to bring the rainbow into this book too. The story is about how Hindware went from a newbie to a market leader, surpassing the country’s economic handicaps, everyday business challenges and even personal impediments from within the Somany family. 

Autobiographies create a glorious canvas of context – historical, political and cultural. The story of a person comes riddled with important events from which he, and thus the reader, draws valuable lessons. They provide us with a deeper understanding of the subject they are written around. And they make for interesting literary reading in that the reader looks for omissions in the narration and hesitant gaps in the narratorial voice; those moments which make you wonder – is this his recollection as an adult or an uncoloured version from his childhood? 

The telling of the tale. The home and the world.

RK Somany tells the story as if it is being meticulously recalled for a live audience. So while sometimes the narration is linear at others he shifts between the past and the present. While he does that, a panoramic picture of not just his life’s events but those happenings which beset the times also gets painted. What comes through is a visual of both how the businesses were run and how families were too. 

RK Somany was the ninth among eleven children, brought up by his eldest brother, Hiralall, after his father’s death when he was seven. Those were times of ‘centrality of morals’ and when older brothers were near-bosses, who set standards and conditions! But who also patrolled the house with a rifle during crises like the Great Calcutta Killings. Good words carried worth, good families even more. School admissions and membership of Exchanges and Clubs happened based on reputation. And yet, under the same strong family umbrella came a scheming sibling, two mysterious deaths and some more “bad blood”. 

Business was never usual in times of historical flux and ‘life wasn’t all glamour and fun.’ Red tape, black markets, ‘blinkered government policies’ and socialism made private industry seem suspicious. There was very little market intelligence and data to base decisions on. Add to that infrastructural woes like power cuts and ‘inspector raj’ in a place like UP, and later the Emergency with the ‘draconian MISA used to intimidate businessmen’ and the financial crisis of 1991. Hindware had many tides to overcome, and ‘Bringing the Rainbow’ shows how RK Somany did just that.  

As one reads what comes across as a ‘business saga’, one notices significant events, professional and personal, which made Hindware a household name. And which made RK Somany the man who is speaking to us through this book. 

Important events for him. Lessons for all.

‘In retrospect, I am really grateful to my family for its decision to move me out of Calcutta more than half a century ago. I wouldn’t have become who I am had I remained there.’

In ‘Bringing the Rainbow’, as with all autobiographies, we sense a bildungsroman. From boyhood to his businessmen years, the book clearly chronicles RK Somany’s growth. But if you pay attention to the teller, the tale makes you privy to pivotal points of time in his life which stand out as peaks. His early days reveal how the psychology of this second youngest sibling evolved, as a ‘fierce determination’ was born over fighting for a mere chance to play. Private tutors would teach his siblings and he would sit around, listening.  Learning. A ‘template for my behavioral responses to adversity’ was created as violent and economically stressed historical eras unfolded. In him also developed a streak of individuality away from his brothers’ footsteps - to become a graduate even as he helped his family in business! 

It was the physically taxing days spent in England which helped him learn the ropes of the ceramic industry. The discomfort and ‘enforced thrift’ of those times led to a success which comes when one is ‘in the thick of action’.  The aim always remained to provide world class products at Indian consumer prices, and not compromise on customer goodwill because of the more profitable black-marketing. Trysts with Jaycees and the Rotary Club brought out the public leader in him. Exposure to the differences between workers in England and India made him understand and deal with labour strikes too. 

An eye-opening event was that of buying back his own brand at a high price from a Chinese company, which was using it. Hindware’s wings had spread and problems were fast increasing. ‘The big boys of the global sanitaryware industry soon entered the Indian market.’ Often, the obstacles were political, like he found out when the sales tax department of Govt of Haryana raided his plant. Countless such important events in his life left him learning and unlearning, and leave us doing the same too.

‘I am humble enough to know that I do not have all the answers. The HSIL board comprises men of rare distinctions. It would be foolish not to leverage and take advantage of their combined wisdom. This is simple common sense…’    

The voice.  The person.  

‘I wasn’t certain that the familial ties and the strict Marwari culture that had kept us brothers closely bonded would endure into the third generation…maybe the time had come to divide…’

The straightforwardness with which the story is told makes RK Somany seem a friend by the time we finish reading. And we his confidants! No, there are no sensational revelations eager to please the reader. But there are many moments where the already-thin guard of autobiographies is down, and where the narrator truly shows himself in flesh and blood. 

You sense relief when he says his family was ‘without any choking orthodoxy’, and gratitude and admiration for his brother when he says ‘it takes a rare human being to put his own education and possible future on the line to bring up his siblings.’ There is honest admittance of being well-off from the time he was conscious to the time he first signed a cheque for one crore of rupees. No mincing that, because ‘in the tradition of all the great Marwari businessmen I admire, I believe cash is king.’ No mincing either the candid revelations of ‘strains (that) had begun to surface in this united and happy family image we portrayed to the outside world.’ Forgiveness shows when he speaks about his estranged brother Chandra Kumar. ‘I’m sure he has his reasons’ is what Somany leaves it at. 

‘To find smuggled products in a government-owned facility in the Pakistan capital was both a cause for shock and delight’, he admits. Regret is visible when he notices that ‘the quality of trade and the people involved in it has deteriorated’ and anger when he says ‘what really gets my goat is the unrestricted import of cheap Chinese sanitaryware.’ 

There are gaps in the narration too. Hesitance. A mechanical telling not suiting the events. Spaces where there’s less revealed and much concealed and absence of it is conspicuous. For instance, while we know meticulous details of how the business progressed, we barely know anything about the wives, how they felt about his ‘huge personal sacrifices’ of mostly working through the days, or their mysterious deaths. Did he try finding out what happened? Why aren’t we told? Is it because it has no direct bearing on the Hindware story? Is that the reason why his children also occupy a marginal place in this account? What I also missed reading about were the trusted hands like managers  and workers and clerks and guards who probably were an important part of this journey but who have not found space in the book.     

Interesting business talk.

‘Being the youngest of the four surviving brothers, my claims were often overridden by the others in favour of their own plans for the companies they ran. It may surprise many readers but this is the way Indian business families operate.’

There’s much that readers will learn about businesses in general and sanitaryware manufacturing, designing and trade in particular from ‘Bringing the Rainbow’. How, first, the idea of sanitaryware needed to be introduced to Indian consumers. How vitreous china which ‘didn’t absorb water even if the product was chipped’ could be marketed. How when competition heated up superior technologies and designs had to be introduced. Why HSIL wasn’t comfortable in giving dealers sole selling agencies, while also visiting dealers of rivals to understand ‘market trends’.  Why a close watch had to be kept on allied sectors. And ‘the one clause that has remained unchanged for 52 years is the one on not allowing dealers to charge more than the MRP – a clause we introduced decades before it became mandatory.’

The book also contains nuggets of information on hunter and sportsmen rifles, the structure of ammunition strong rooms, motors of submersible pumps and goes into angry details of some ‘bizarre laws’! 

The book ends in the present, where RK Somany sits talking to us, confessing that ‘I try to teach myself something new every few days.’

His rise, in many ways, signifies India’s post-Independence industrialization drive. ‘Goodwill takes decades to build’ and this book is a glimpse into how it can be. HSIL’s rise, made possible with ‘close supervision, constant innovation, investment in the best technology and strong systems’ is also the journey of a man whose goal ‘was, and remains, to stay ahead of the curve’. This man intends to retire when ‘God retires me.’ But for now ‘I intend to lead HSIL into some new areas.’ 

A good book for those interested in the Indian business history as well as those who love a good story well told! 

'Bringing the Rainbow' by RK Somany is a Maven Rupa Publication, 2016

[Review was commissioned by the PR Agency. Views are my own.]

Mind; The Final Frontier by Ravi Singh

‘What does it all mean? What is going on in the world? Is a human being merely an advanced and complex robot, which processes information and doesn’t have free will, and choice is merely an illusion? It doesn’t make any sense. But why does it have to make any sense?’ 

Once upon a time, we said ‘to my mind’ before we expressed our opinions. Acronyms like IMHO (In my humble opinion) or TBH (To be honest) were yet to be invented. Probably, we owned our minds much more back then, what with borrowed opinions flying amok now. We invoked the thinking-space before we expressed it. My mind, where my thoughts came from. Which in a way defined us. 

So, when I asked myself what came to my mind immediately when I said the word ‘mind’, the social media addict in me took no time to say ‘Hey! Facebook’s persistent question What’s on your mind? In the status window.’ Which was usually answered with a picture of my dinner or my pet! Thankfully, I got to read Ravi Singh’s ‘Mind: The Final Frontier’ to make me think beyond the visible. To make me disassociate from the given and delve deeper into the unseen… less facile bits of what I call my mind.

In the Acknowledgement section of the book the author confesses that he is prone to ‘weird’ ideas in his mind, about the mind. In it he isn’t alone, for thousands have before him and many more will in the future too try to ‘decode the human mind’. The mother of all answers is curiosity and the human mind is not just the confirmed seat but also the most popular subject of it. Ravi believes ‘answers don’t lie outside but within us. For that, we must understand how the mind works.’ With a beautiful request for open-mindedness, Ravi asks us to ‘… dispel any preconceived notions about the mind, and agree that we do not know what the ‘mind’ is. That should be a good starting point.’ And then ‘see what follows.’

The book is divided into three main parts – Part I: Decoding the Anatomy of the Human Mind, Part II: The Universe, God, Love and Morality, Part III: Authentic Life. Each part is further comprised of short and succinct chapters dealing with specific ideas. One look at the chapter names and you know a wide-angle lens has been used for this deconstruction, something that is confirmed once you’ve read the book. Various mental states have been evaluated, as have been over-arching concepts like logic, faith, guilt and even god.  

The basic premise used to unravel the mind was unique for me. Ravi tries to make us see the mind as a computer which processes information. He uses this approach to simplify ideas like self and consciousness while also discussing problems like fear, anxiety and even boredom! 

The Information Processing Approach (IPA) assumes that individuals are, well, information processors. So, an individual receives input information either from his external environment or from internal memory through an interface (say, ears). This input information is processed by a specific processor to produce a change in the individual. This change (physical, chemical, etc), then acts as input information for another processor and so on. For instance, if you like a song the change produced by the processor would cause a sensation of pleasure. As for what a processor is in terms of the human body? While in computers it is a set of instructions, Ravi calls it a ‘mental construct’ and an ‘abstract entity’ here. He divides them into low-level (primitive habit) and high-level (thought-level) processors. Low-level processors include language and pain-pleasure, among others, whereas high-level ones help us analyze, chart-out and choose. 

While I understood the definition of his IPA till this point, a huge part of me doubted if this seemingly simplistic approach could make me see my mind in a new light. And IMHO, it did rather interestingly! 

For instance, how can ‘self’ or ‘I’ be explained using the IPA? Ravi will derive that the notion of self is non-permanent! The mind, with its competing processors and multiple outputs makes the ‘state of mind’ give a cumulative sensation of ‘I’ in a particular context and time. Thus ‘self’ represents reality, rather than being reality itself. So you’re right when you ask ‘Who am I?’ And you’re right if you wonder, if there is no one ‘I’ then whose free will am I talking about?  

This then connects with his idea of consciousness. He infers that it is ‘based on the level of consciousness (that) we have the conception of ‘I’. And further, if the 'window of consciousness’ expands, external time stands still, as we feel 'completely absorbed in the present.’ This state of being devoid of any expectations is a sustainable happiness. Because, ‘fulfilment of high expectations actually makes it difficult to sustain happiness.’ See how one idea connects to the other? 

Ravi Singh’s explanation of ignorance through IPA is about understanding how ‘there is a difference between knowing something at the thought level, and knowing something at the level of lower processors, or the experiential level’. How falsehoods may become truth statements ‘if over a period of time one processor keeps winning over another’. 

Something about decoding psychological fear stuck to me. As a product of a self which by default tries to avoid pain and experience pleasure, here’s what he says about fear: ‘Next time when you experience a fearful thought, try to observe that thought closely. You will see that that very thought is the thinker itself (of that thought). There is no separate self that experiences that thought, rather, it is the thought that experiences itself…and fear will dissolve.’ 

Ravi also argues how logic and emotion are not contrary to each other and with the help of a simple semi-mathematical equation infers that ‘for the doer every action is logical. For the perceiver it may seem logical or emotional based on their own calculation.’ The same equation is used in the analysis and understanding of guilt and faith, till he involves you to a point where you too question in one voice – then is logic itself based on faith? 

To my mind, the chapter called ‘Nature of the Universe; Press Start to Begin’ stands out in the book. It begins thus - ‘Everything in the universe including inanimate things can be governed by information processing.’ You have to suspend all disbelief before you move on; on to more questions. If the universe is a closed system then how did information first enter it? The Big Bang? In a closed system, based on the four dimensions, there cannot be a truly random event. And so ‘if there is even one truly random event in the universe, it indicates that some information from outside the system has leaked into it.’ Between saying it and implying it, Ravi Singh draws us into his idea of evolution, a Matrix World, free will, love and even god. 

I do wish the book ended with this big bang, though. The last three chapters on relationships, job satisfaction and meditation techniques just seem to fade in comparison to what preceded them. Perhaps, they lack the novelty which most of the other chapters shine bright with. The list for references for meditative techniques at the end of the last chapter has one sole reference, and oddly seems incomplete, as if a page went missing. What may also seem missing for some readers who enjoy flourishes and flair even in the most logical and scientific narrations is a certain style – one which uses examples and creative props to drive home the point. Or even humour for that matter! Because, while Ravi Singh’s book hooks you with what it is saying, it may not with how it says it. There are no fancy detours. Examples are repeated in order to explain different concepts. There’s stream-lined focus and purposeful, no-nonsense writing. Almost, as if it is an abridged guide to a larger, more voluminous research.  

Be that as it may, by the time you finish reading ‘Mind: The Final Frontier’, you feel glad to have done that. Ravi Singh gives no grand theories. He makes you see, co-derive and be amazed at how IPA can be used to re-examine ideas which you long thought self-evident. How human minds and machines may not be as far apart as one imagines. This book, the size of an “impulse-buy” in a book shop, belies its conciseness as it begins a large thought-storm, where questions are answered only to give rise to more and more questions. After all, ‘it is preferable to stay in uncertainty than to settle for a truth which one is not convinced of,’ believes Ravi Singh.

A good read for those who like their thought-level processors provoked. Read and then 'see what follows.'

'Mind; The Final Frontier' by Ravi Singh is a Partridge publication, 2016

[Review was commissioned by the author. Views are my own.] 

'Band, Baaja, Boys!' by Rachna Singh

If you’ve read Rachna Singh’s books before, that she is funny enough to make all bones turn into ticklish ribs is a fact that needs no establishing. Her humour flows easy, is derived from life as we know it and makes no attempt to fashionably offend. If it does, and when it should, at best it feels like a pinch! So when I picked up ‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ I was expecting it to ‘launch a million laughs’, as Rachna herself aimed. It did! What it also did was create a most memorable portrait of Allahabad such that we see it as if sitting in a rickshaw, riding through its narrow lanes, missing the paan spittle by a hair’s breath, peeking into the houses as we pass by and all that with an expert guide. 

‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ is a filmy-sweet story with a baraat of characters and a high dose of Hinglish. Each character is created unique in his localness or her quirks, his love angles or her bra straps. Man, woman or neighbor, every one you meet contributes to the Bajpai family’s story; that of 21-year-old Binny’s parents, Brajesh and Kumud, looking for an eligible match for her, while she herself tries fixing one for herself from a handful of bachelor boys. Simple, often silly, day-dreams define the characters, making them sweet as sherbet and bumbling in their small-town aspirations. They endear you individually and yet together paint a picture of the many gully-mohallas that still exist in evolving cities like Allahabad; those spaces living hesitantly at cusps of modernity even when the posher areas hurtle towards an English-speaking “open-mindedness”. 

The portrait of Allahabad then is the portrait of its people; these people in Manphodganj going about their daily businesses and who Rachna brings alive. This portrayal happens in two ways. Mostly it is the hilariously detailed descriptions of characters and the episodes unfurling around them that immensely entertain while showing us Allahabad at close quarters. But at various places in the story of Binny (of parental match-making and romeo romances) the reader also senses the presence of ideas and customs which keep this society where it is - enveloped away from forward-looking views about marriage, daughters and even love.

The fun and funny first.

Rachna’s magnifying glass leaves nothing  uncooked in this Allahabadi sun. Whatever comes under it becomes smoking funny! And a lot does in this place where ‘From Delhi’ was the ultimate style statement’. Girls and boys sat on separate sides, and while ‘the girls took notes the boys watched them taking notes.’ In the Bajpai family ‘an alcoholic was one who could spell r-u-m’ and precious Coke was served in glasses which ‘might as well have served eye-drops’. On the roads ‘Vikrams’ not only transported you to the ‘Minorities Institute of Technology’ but also ‘imparted sage advice via words of wisdom on their rears’. ‘Van Halen’ on t-shirts was understood as ‘forest that is shaking’ and people were rechristened ‘bijli-ghar-waley Sahay’ if the place of work was so enviable! Parents had folders called ‘Tarun Chaubey: Virtues, Merits and Assets’ for daughters and ‘padosi sun lenge’ was the surest way to calm the mother of a truant daughter down... and so on and such fun!

However, amidst all the comic happenings of the book was a note that sometimes broke the laughter, a poignant presence throughout the joy ride. 

‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ uses humour through witty one-liners and topsy-turvy events to train our lens on what still teems in many, many societies in our cities. How ‘a fair complexion almost makes up for the missing tube of flesh between the legs’. How ‘ignore the dogs’ was the precious advice parents raised their daughters with. But no parents told their son, Don’t be a dog.’ In times of need it was caste which defined friendship and in Manphodganj ‘I can make your life miserable if you come in my way’ was no empty threat. Directionless boys like Raja came to the cities to study with dreams of feudal love in their eyes while marriageable girls like Binny were kept from joining hobby classes. Mothers like Kumud fantasized about NRI grooms and foreign lands where they could wear jeans with their bindi and so proudly showcased their decorated daughters to prospective parents in law, while yet they swore to not let them go through what they themselves did at the hands of the in laws. Sonless and childless mothers stayed a distance away from new born babies.  The elite watched the poor die in floods. The rich-and-spoilt lured gullible girls into shameful acts. And so …

‘Binny had pushed out her feelings of inadequacy caused by not being the boy her parents wanted. Brajesh had pushed out his frustrations that arose with the monotony of his existence. Kumud had pushed out her yearnings for a son. Each life operated within the safe, clean niche it had resolved to whittle out for itself.’

In such a scenario, where Brajesh sleeps fitfully, equally worried about the market for his bras and his beti, Binny as a heroine could have been a swash-buckling, sword-wielding leader. You know, someone who freed her sex (or herself!) from marital objectification and even from being seen as second to boys. But Rachna’s Binny isn’t that heroine, and as you read you realize the author herself did not aspire to create her that way. Her motivations for falling dupattas and flickering eyelids begin from something as simple as a need to feel wanted by someone, and end there too. 

Binny is happy enough to be the ‘mistress of deception’. She is no trend-setting girl who shatters the glass ceiling and sets an example for pious friends like Manjul. At best, Binny is like a pocket patakha, a girl from a Hindi-medium school ‘who got no attention and resolved to show the boys how dumb they were.’ Aware of her sexuality and sweetly manipulative enough to enjoy her moments of escape, Binny nonetheless has no aspiration outside of what her parents have for her – that of being a married VIP. So, even as she does the unthinkable when the novel spirals to a punchy climax in Delhi, Binny only manages to somewhat scratch the glass ceiling she was born under. 

Women in ‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ are in control in their own sweet ways, but it’s more like enjoying the freedom to ride the Scooty till the end of town, and duly turning back home before it got dark. Or wearing the nightgown of your choice but with the big bindi intact. While they fail to become powerful-progressive heroines of novels, they remain successful in reminding us of how they are, with their limited controls and cushioned dreams, from among'st us all. We also correct ourselves as we realize how Manphodganj isn’t just in Allahabad, but in our "modern" cities too.

‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ was also about another realization, for me. This is the first book with a heavy reliance on Hinglish that I have read, with even chapter titles all mixed up! My relationship with the English Language is rather like a schoolmarm’s, and from a distance Hinglish was but a hybrid I viewed as foreign to my reading taste. As I saw the characters converse in their vernacular styles, with their geographically unique words (‘bhaak’) and in indigenous accents (blew colour), I sensed how reading them in their language made them flesh-and-blood to me, even when one of them ‘suicided himself’! I could hear them, almost, as one sold bras on the road with ‘Bra…braaaaas….Taaze Braas…Bra le lo’. I could visualize Allahabad going ‘Axe-kyuj me?’ And I could see how many jokes got a punch because how can ‘paisa chaddi ki chor jeb mein hai’ be said any other way. Humour in vernacular and vernacular in humour! 

There’s another thing. It is very difficult to write a language you know correctly so incorrectly that it garners the sought response. Know what I mean? Rachna’s book includes instances of such literal translations as would make you roar with laughter and in turn create a very true-to-life image of the context. For instance, Raja, preparing for the Civil Services, insists on writing letters to his mother only in English - ‘How can I tell Amma but I am telling. I am fixing daughter in law for you. For last six months, I am fixing a girl for you. I am seeing her from my coaching centre window, seeing her fatherji, then also going and seeing her house. Quality of all is good…caste is not the same Amma…but she is having our same caste sanskaars.’ 

I remain in an Open Relationship with Hinglish without fully committing myself to its merits, as yet, because I also see how this book can truly be appreciated only by those who know Hindi, however little.  ‘Band, Baaja, Boys!’ thus becomes not just a book about the Hindi heartland but also belongs there in its truest sense. In this, and this alone, lies its limitation. 

All of Rachna Singh’s books seem to be inspired from personally experienced cities and situations. The author and the narrator are always one and stories read like memoirs, even when they aren’t. This lends her works a flavour of authenticity hard to ignore, even if it makes you wonder as her regular reader if she is unable to dissociate her personal self from her art. For this book too she admits in typical coinage ‘I belongs to Allahabad and I am proud of it’. After reading what she does with it you see that it is actually Allahabad which belongs to Rachna instead! 

Read it to enjoy its hilarity and its delightful frivolousness. But also read to wonder with Binny ‘Marriz…marriz…why human beens need to do a marriz? Why?’ 

'Band, Baaja, Boys!' by Rachna Singh is an Amaryllis publication, 2016.

[Review was commissioned by the author. Views are my own.] 

The beauty and power of Nandita Bose’s ‘Shadow and Soul’

It is not often that you read a book and admire it not just for what it is but also as a part of a larger, ever-growing storm of women’s writing. A book that enjoys its firm individuality thus while simultaneously adding its voice to the generations which came before is Nandita Bose’s ‘Shadow and Soul’. And it does both with immense beauty and power.

Devika is Gautam’s obedient and quiet wife, spinning her world around her son’s meal times and her husband’s exacting nature and busy medical practice, which keeps him away and her alone. Their lives are led with clockwork precision, a routine which the majestic Meera Mansion sees day after day. The interruption walks in in the form of Shaurjyo, a young man on a vacation and half-heartedly looking for direction to his life. Till he meets Devika, that is. The book begins with Shaurjyo’s narration from 2008, five years after this first visit to the house, this time with his film crew. The chapter sensually hints at ‘half-remembered tastes’, mutating dreams and unpaid debts. There is a story behind the story and Nandita makes Devika and Shaurjyo narrate it to us in their own sweet sense of time and space, like a ‘sequence of introspection of pain and the loss within’. All this while real is being recorded as reel, as Shaurjyo and his crew shoot their movie. After all, isn’t that what brought Shaurjyo back to Meera Mansion? 

In the process gets created, in language rich with symbolism and literary tastefulness, a tale of violation and loneliness, responsibilities and obliterated identity and an unhurried awakening towards a sense of self; a reclamation of the myriad aspects of Devika’s self that had vanished. Because marriage and love are two distinct spaces in Nandita’s ‘Shadow and Soul’ and while one self-abnegates here the other empowers!

What is this ‘awakening’ I talk about?

Way back in the 19th century, American columnist Dorothy Dix wrote about how unselfishness in women was a cult. How they wore it ostentatiously, went out of their way to become martyrs. Somewhere around then women were also awakening to the fact that ‘they have been overdoing the self-sacrifice business’ and while a ‘reasonable amount of unselfishness is all right’ (for it could be out of love, really!), the woman who is imposed upon has only herself to blame. For there are ‘middle grounds’ available where they can ‘propose to take their stands’. And even options to fight for their rights! 

So many centuries later we meet Devika as the woman Dorothy was writing about, and we see she has little vestige of personal liberty left. ‘Shadow and Soul’ is Devika’s journey of recognizing this plight, stepping away from it gently, choosing to control her circumstances and in turn awakening Shaurjyo to the inescapability of his life’s truths! 

How it happens?

A few pages into the book and we see Gautam’s ‘invisible hostility masked as teasing’ and Devika’s silence ‘a tentative compromise with reality’ as the norm in the house; the one who spent the money to run it owned it too, and her with it. Over a beautiful scene, where Devika sits sketching a face (because Shaurjyo introduced her to this art) we see the juxtaposition of her married years with the creation of the face on the paper. The more she draws, the more the realization dawns – ‘my silences had become eloquent while his verbiage turned incomprehensible.’ 

The desire to share her solitude gains strength, and the thirst to feel whole trails on its heels. What follows is one of the loveliest book depictions of two people moving towards each other, in mind and body, ‘gripped by an unknown dread … and hope’. With delicious slowness Nandita unravels the turmoil and temptations that mark Devika and Shaurjyo and this ‘interlude of madness’. The impulsive reader will miss the beauty that this hesitant, tip-toeing relationship is full of; of ‘a thousand wishes masquerading as misgivings.’ A patient reader would have ‘tasted the truancy’ of a relationship which resists labels; which is defined by its very undefinable nature! And because it is not events and twists and turns which are moving the story forward at this point, we are left undisturbed to soak it all in, as if we were invisible confidants to the scenes where a sense of well-being comes to these two characters sip by sip, safe-keeping each other’s needs …

In the dark she spoke softer, almost in a whisper. ‘Can we forget for this one night?’

‘What do you want to forget?’

‘Reality. My age. Yours. Our situations. Responsibilities. Right and wrong. Everything external. 

Everything but what we need to mask all the time. What we feel inside.’ 

Something is different five years later, when Shaurjyo returns to Meera Mansion as a lost, angry and misfit man. More worldly, so to say. Faced with truths beyond their helping, Devika and Shaurjyo’s relationship now stands in the very world they made unseen the last time they met. Gone is the delicateness. The escape. Arguments ensue, with Shaurjyo torn with contradictions. But Devika? More aware than ever!

‘I didn’t realize that certain experiences are viewed in isolation such that everything that precedes it is negated. I have learnt only now, the woman’s situation always classifies the act at some level between tawdry and sublime, irrespective of how or what the man felt at that time.’ 

It is this rude return to “worldliness” that makes the dual acts of awakening in ‘Shadow and Soul’ commendably rooted in reality, and Devika a much more meaningful protagonist than simply a woman who comes across an alternative and runs to it. The act of reading this book is involving at not just the level of the senses but also at the level where self-examination and dangerously subversive thoughts exist. Both the power and the beauty of this book, seen in the creation of the central characters, their relationship and the strength of the closure, are also reflected in Nandita’s unmatched expression and style that she uses to tell this story.

Nandita Bose owns her style. 

‘Shadow and Soul’ is full of the most beautiful expressions of love and longing, thoughts about marriage and relationships and lyrical contemplation into what could be our own life’s situations. The author takes you inside her characters’ mind, till you lose yourself, and gently draws you out with the slightest touch of the fingertips. The chapters, named after works of art, end not on threads which create curiosity to know the story further, but at points of expression which leave a lingering impression. Which go beyond the mere tale and make the telling of it the point! She commands her words thus, reining in or letting gallop the pace of the story, till ‘everything else does not exist. Not even concepts of possibilities and impossibilities.’ Just beautiful language!  

Nandita’s use of symbolism can gladden many a literary heart. There are dragonflies and sketches, the river and chapter titles. And then there is the unmistakable connection between Devika and Meera Mansion. Both ‘properties’ of her husband according to the ‘rules of engagement’. Both have character, a sanctity, age, experience and a routine. Later, Devika and Shaurjyo’s explorations of spaces in the house parallel Devika’s awakening to yet-undiscovered feelings and wants within her. Says Shaurjyo – ‘When I first saw you I didn’t know which was more beautiful – the house or you.’ But it isn’t its beauty alone that gets him back to it as a filmmaker. It’s what he experienced there. Meera Mansion with its river nearby becomes that feminine space which nurtures, feeds, provides and cares, and much more when it is awakened and aware. 

I wonder why I feel no need to include in my review the film actors’ stories or the events which ensue around them. After all, it is a part of the story of this book and not entirely avoidable. But most characters, other than the two central ones, seem lazily drawn bordering on typical. The mutual dynamics of the actors and actresses are neither apparent nor enrich the premise of the main story. If it wasn’t for the blurb I would not even have realized their relationships, yearnings and interests at all! Is this true, or am I too smitten by Devika and Shaurjyo who made dull in comparison all else that came in the book?  

Much about Nandita’s ‘Shadow and Soul’ is reminiscent of Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’, both novels of their times. Like Nandita, Chopin too wasn’t terribly explicit about the mechanics of sex. What her novel showed, like this one here, is how to be free in one’s self and for one’s self, yet remain meaningfully connected to others. Devika’s evolving relationship with her grown-up son, Gaurav, reflects this in the end. However, while Chopin’s Edna reaches her autonomy with a terrible price to pay, Nandita’s Devika manages to integrate her awakened self to the physical and social realities which surround it.  Because Devika knows, what Edna in her times probably could not, that ‘we have the prerogative of self-determination.’  Where intentions are explicit because of action, and human agency far superior to mere Fate, or even suicide following a destructive solitude...

How difficult it is to write a review of a book you loved! First, I could not begin. Then, I was besotted with countless resilient echoes of women writers who added their voice to the immortal feminist discourse. And now, I struggle to conclude my thoughts about Nandita Bose’s ‘Shadow and Soul’. Devika believed ‘Moonlight and paintings are dreams. Reality is stark. Maybe it is tough too. But in the end, that is all there is, all that endures.’ This book will endure that test of time, for like good literature, it draws from and depends on shared forms and representations of experience – yours and mine, our shadows and our souls. 

  

'Shadow and Soul' by Nandita Bose is an Amaryllis publication, 2015.

[Review was commissioned by the author. Views are my own.]

A mixed call on 'Curtain Call'

My feelings for ‘Curtain Call’, 20 short stories compiled and edited by Rafaa Dalvi, are mixed. Juicy apples and bland oranges don’t mix. It’s true that most anthologies with works by first-time authors tend to swing between the good and the average, thus. That they introduce us to new writers and fresh writing is an undeniable benefit, as is reading some memorable stories! While both these positives hold true for this multi-genre collection, what is also noticeable is that the editor’s claim of only ‘quality writing’ making the cut rings hollow a few stories into the book. 

Good things first! Eight stories stood out for me, for reasons unique to each. 

The Stage Leads   

‘His Leela’ by Karthik begins with a man snapping at everything that is amiss around him, while his wife finishes off the household chores to escape to college. ‘Do you have no respect for your husband?’ he bellows. We watch the wife closely. We feel her silence, her submission, her patience. But only until Karthik turns the lens towards her husband - the brooding man who stands looking at a dark tower he ‘resented deeply’. The wife is forgotten, as the reader is welcomed into his innermost recess – where a past of unfulfilled dreams gnaws at his insides. Where his misery stems from. And which he habitually uses to repel people and animals. And then suddenly, Leela walks in, becomes ‘his Leela’ and unknowingly turns this couple’s lives around. From what seemed like the picture of many homes at the start to one which ends on a beautiful note affirming a different kind of friendship and love, Karthik’s story is written with much sensitivity and understanding. It removes the curtain from the mundane, scratches the surface of human bitterness and shows us how hope to feel new and see oneself anew always exists.   

If ‘His Leela’ is like a slice of our middle-aged lives, one hopes ‘Office Visit’ by Bruce Memblatt is just a bad, though very creative, dream! Short snappy sentences and microscopic details introduce us to Rosie, a twelve year old girl who is sitting before Gloria, the school therapist. Rosie’s ‘obviously rare maturity’ patiently discussing ‘the futility of it all’ hints at something mysterious. Whispers about ‘old souls’ and ‘old bones’ pique curiosity to dangerous levels. Till Gloria screams – ‘How are you possible?’ and we scream with her. Cruel in his quick pace and without letting the fantastical grip loosen around our necks, Bruce manages to suffocate his readers with the events in the room which follow this ‘cosmic typo’, this … Rosie. You’re left asking – Was Gloria herself in need of therapy? Did this really happen? What did?! And you know this was a story well-told, that’s what it was!

‘The Lifeless Living Sculpture’ by Bhavya Kaushik is different. It involves you with its intensity, saddens with its beauty and leaves you floating in an ocean of interpretations. A sculptor manages to create ‘a physical manifestation of my own thoughts, my obsession’ till the lifeless woman starts living! What follows is like a lover’s monologue – on yearning, obsession, patience and sacrifice. If you can ignore the ‘moral’ at the end of the story, this piece becomes an introspection into the relationship between an artist and his art, the pleasure and hope of creating and the despair that sets in when the work is ready; Ready to belong to the world as an entity in itself, and not just to the artist, who is by now left with nothing but empty hands and a heavy heart. 

‘Cooking up a Storm’ is a well-written story by Shawn Pereira, which draws you in from the word go. Meticulous detail, regular doses of suspense and no overt reliance on a twisty closure! That it is about the Italian Mafia made it run the risk of wallowing in images borrowed from cinema. But it doesn’t! Salvatori, who seems to have had his cook, the narrator’s father, killed is the object of the son’s revenge. So the son steps into Salvatori’s kitchen, serves ‘succulent meat’ and by a horrid turn of events, well, cooks up a storm. In just over four pages the author shows the many layers of truth and lies which powerful families live with, the assumptions their every action comes shrouded in and most importantly, the oft-ignored sensitivity and humanity that lies within.  

The most delightful pair of characters in the book are the two boys in the story ‘Boys will be boys’ by Dr. Roshan Radhakrishnan. All misgivings about feeding stag stereotypes are forgotten in loud guffaws as we see the incorrigible Renjith’s persistent ‘fatherly tone’ to make his colleague Sunil reveal the ‘private’ details of his date night. Their relationship, endearingly portrayed through jokes and hyperbolic references to cartoons and kings, paints an enviable camaraderie while yet reflecting on the wide mental canvas of the author. You want to read further because it’s super fun, and later because there is strip-poker happening too. In the end it’s Roshan who wins the hand! 

Sharath Komarraju’s ‘The Sitarist of Palem’ is not just one of the best-written stories of the anthology but also complex in its plot and subsequent multi-genre interpretation. It also stands out as a piece where context and setting are characters in themselves, with ‘Palem certainly needing cleansing’, adding to the whispers of conversion, Christianity and the eerie charm of something secret. A women’s wellness centre, run by Sister Agnes, is at the heart of the story and Lata, a mysterious overgrown girl reaching there one night, the pivot. What unfolds is at once reminiscent of human violence and yet has an unearthly, macabre feel to it. Says Lata - ‘Yes, what am I? What am I, woman? I was a woman five days ago, until you gave me that sitar to play. Now what am I?’ till the goosebumps on your hands feel like scales. This story plays with your mind and leaves you struggling for answers. 

‘The Last Rock on which the Universe Collapsed’ by Siddhesh Kabe is a highly inventive story which concludes with infinite profundity. It propels you into the future of space exploration with zany instruments but begins where ‘the most accurate frequency for a decoupling motor was calculated by an uneducated 13-year-old’. The author beautifully paints Capt. Anant Mahajan’s lonely life in space, whose only mission is seeking out ‘something … or someone’. The reader is soon suspended on an upside down motionless mountain, with a cabbage patch and a forgetful old man who confirms ‘God? That is good, an old concept, older than creation … and no, I am not God.’ This story transports you into its world with its creativity and opens itself to many light years’ worth of interpretation.  

Suresh C has to have been either a Manager, or one of those his Manager managed, to have written this very fun and true-to-life ‘Office Games’. With a unique sense of humour and well-fleshed out characters, the author writes about Arup, that young man from your own office with no fancy degree but a whole lot of grit, crawling his way upwards. Why? Because the girl he loves has a father who wants him ‘to double my salary overnight’. Beyond the amusing events of the story, and an unexpected revelation at the end, is a poignant sentiment. Of how weddings come with T&C and aspirations get killed by others’ expectations. Where parents may be ‘inflamed haemorrhoids’ but you cannot let them down. Where slimy imps like Piyush will sabotage your promotion. And where bosses often cannot discern how a cow citing experience of chewing its cud for 10 years cannot really run a dairy farm! 

Three other stories in ‘Curtain Call’ came in a close second, if you may. 

In the Second Row

‘A Crimson Affair’ by Rafaa Dalvi is a murder mystery with Birbal in the lead. Imagine lending your story to historical characters and ‘owning’ them, by endowing them with real and imagined traits. I liked the idea and also the simplicity at the heart of the mystery. It’s the telling that lacked in grip and finesse. ‘My Fair Husband’ by Renu Sethi is about a couple who ‘somewhere in the safe confines of their heart enjoyed the arguments’ they always get into. It’s a very real, endearing portrait of marriage, even after the husband dies and becomes ‘even more painful than before’. It’s a pity the events seem borrowed from the very Hollywood movie mentioned in the story. ‘Agent W’ by Rahul Biswas is a suspenseful and well-written story about senior RAW officers, moles and patriotism which is ‘no less injurious to health’. The narration is tight and the end surprising. But points in the story remind you of the many movies made on the subject. After all, how many of us can really know how RAW works, if not from the silver screen?

All other stories can be shoe-boxed together, according to me. They are for readers who primarily like twists in the end rather than the turns used to get there. Which is to say, the end defines the story for them, not how they got there. Such stories do not adequately involve the sensibilities of some readers. They do not linger longer than a gasp. Short-term entertainment, quite typical, often predictable, but then who is to say we don’t need that?  Here are those which cater to readers looking for a quickie.

In the Wings

Vivek Banerjee in ‘Mahua’ takes us into the thick jungles of Chattisgarh, for a survey for building  a dam on River Indravati. But the story is flat and predictable, and very problematic for ‘using’ Mahua the way it does.  An opportunity lost! ‘Mistaken Identity’ by Deepa Duraisamy is about two characters who meet over a train journey. While the author successfully manages to draw us into their relationship, typicality and predictability mar it. ‘Time after Time’ by Aniesha Brahma begins on a note of sibling love and ends on a supernatural one. But there’s much more that can be done with it. ‘Ablaze Within’ by Sanhita Baruah held the promise of showing us an unforgettable portrait of a prostitute. But while Razia’s stand at the end of the story makes you applaud, the story simply reinforces stereotypes through copied imagery.

‘Reminiscence’ by Mehek Bassi has a strangely nonchalant protagonist in search of an old man. Poorly executed where a story there was none, it even ends with a page-long moral. ‘Ookleeboo’ by Diptee Raut seemed so cute it made me wonder if a child wrote it, or a mother narrated it. But neither the conversational style nor the invention of Ookleeboo save the story from seeming under-developed and incomplete. ‘Another Chance’ by Ketaki Patwardhan is a very short story which explores the theme of ‘what if?’ time could be turned back? Again, diluted by predictability. ‘FLAMES’ by Amrit Sinha captures the innocence of school crushes. But while on the one hand his school-going characters are naïve to a fault, on the other they mouth (Amrit’s?) most profound takes on love and life. Contradiction, just like with the boy's abruptness in the final scene. 

Out of all the stories, it is ‘The Princess Bride’ by Ekta Khetan which remains the weakest link. The theme of a married woman ridden with self-doubt and thoughts of betrayal was a lovely one. Sadly, it fails miserably not just the idea of a short story but even the language it is written in. All stories in the book have their own grammatical problems, with fingers pointing at a lazy editor. But to print this piece full of appalling mistakes makes the editor a criminal! Usages like ‘gasped a breath’, ‘asleep off in his arms’; vagaries like ‘sleeping in absolute realm’, ‘work upon her intimacy with him’; mistakes like ‘them’ for single objects, ‘couldn’t help but got carried away’, ‘this ups and downs’, ‘gape of the neck’ and similar others turn readers into teachers. 

And so I think aloud ... A badly written story not just makes the reader feel cheated by robbing her of an otherwise okay experience but also does disservice to other writers in the collection, who have attempted and succeeded in delivering works which at least entertain. Of course, it all points to a larger malaise. The hurry to be published, the insistence that ‘simple is good’ and ‘complex overrated’, that rules of language are for the Queen alone and a lie readers and reviewers tell each other – that grammatical errors don’t interfere with the reading experience. Well, if they don’t then they should! Perhaps then the 'quality' we seek, as writers and readers, will be within reach. 

Rafaa Dalvi intended well to compile this anthology, give new writers an audience and introduce readers to some good writing and promising authors. He did all that! But we cannot ignore the lack of critical eye with which it has been done. ‘Curtain Call’ will find its readers, no doubt. Those for whom a book is an open-and-shut case, where characters needn’t involve them, trouble them, challenge them or stories be unforgettable in their layers, novelty and style. Some prefer that momentariness of relationship with their reading while others want books to remain open long after they have been read and shelved. Most stories in this anthology are for the former, not the latter.

  

'Curtain Call' by Rafaa Dalvi is a Half Baked Beans publication, 2016

[Review was commissioned by the editor. Views are my own.]