Review of The Machine is Learning

Let me be upfront about what I think about this novel: this is an important and greatly relevant piece of literature that raises some pivotal questions pertaining to the ultra-modern world we live in now. It’s a comparatively thin book and if you read without your smartphone nearby, you should be able to finish the book in one sitting. But then, the questions will haunt you. You won’t be able to pick up your phone and start scrolling mindlessly that you would have inadvertently done. You’ll keep wondering if you have read anything like this before. The answer would be a firm no. The tech-man relation and how it affects your head is the focus of this book.

(Now is a good time to let you know that there will be spoilers from now.)

Saransh, the narrator and the protagonist is working on a project that uses machine learning to predict normal human behaviour which will finally make the humans redundant. The question Saransh will try to answer is whether he should be part of such a project and even if he is, whether there is an alternative where this new tech and people it aims to make redundant can flourish together. The wheel of capitalism will make technologies that will try to minimise human involvement and humans will get involved into more interaction oriented jobs. The intelligent jobs. What happens when intelligence itself can be cultivated artificially? This is a unique situation to mankind and there will be a lot to discuss.

The start of this discussion happens in the novel when Jyoti, whom Saransh has met via Tinder comes to know his work and questions its intentions. Saransh who hails from a small town, who has struggled to reach Mumbai from Muzaffarnagar, knows in his heart the point Jyoti is trying to make (this perhaps is one of the reasons he falls for her), but still argues for the importance of technological advancement and inevitability of leaving some people behind. Jyoti argues there must be a way to do both: make the tech work and still keep the people.

Finally they will realise it would not be possible; the corporate God (the narrator compares the corporate culture to religion, daily commuting in large groups to pilgrimage, the honking to the chants, the grandiosity of temples to the tall glass buildings placed on a higher ground) is ruthless. They realise that a technology that can track your digital activity, learn about you and then predict your personality is all too powerful. That the machine is learning constantly about you to one day be able to replace some of you. This is what makes the title fear-inducing, daunting and cool.

So what Jyoti suggests is to suffer for the loss of those people who will be left behind, to feel guilty if nothing more. Saransh questions whether such an approach makes any real impact to the situation. This, the heated argument with his colleague Mitesh and the urge to impress Jyoti has made him do what the reader has been wanting for a long time: turn around and try to stop the wheel. Later, he tries to understand why he has done so. The moving image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian kid, face-down on a beach and palms skyward, helps him to understand why he felt so angry and then guilty for violence happening elsewhere, in the least conflicted era of mankind. The frequent philosophical debates between Jyoti and Saransh often reminded me of a Dostoevskian narrative. Though, I would have liked the arc of the complacent Saransh to the rebellious Saransh a bit longer.

In the final chapter of the book, after inevitably failing to stop the machine, when Saransh says how his expertise in eliminating human involvement will land him another good job, we will realise this is how the modern hero will behave in this world: caught up in a vicious cycle like Sisyphus. There can be no better ending for this novel.

I’ll finish this review by congratulating Tanuj Solanki for his courage, his keen observation and really, really good characterization throughout this lucid, highly readable book. A must read.

And I’ll just leave this here:

I think of the one game –the fourth of the five-match series – in which Lee Sedol beat AlphaGo. Somebody should talk about the beauty of that.

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The Dogs Declared War

There is no place for street dogs in a modern city. One must collect them and systematically eliminate them without hurting public sentiments. One may propose methods used in the holocaust, or simple poisoning in the night. But then, what happens when the dogs, utterly desperate, choose to leave the city on their own accord? This short wonder of a novella is far superior and more mature than Nabarun’s more popular works (like Kangal Malsat) in terms of subtlety and depiction of human brutality.

Cover of the First Edition

It questions the much promoted slogan ‘Safe drive. Save life.’ Whose life to be exact? The crows, the dogs and cats — are they ever a part of the design of the human society? Once the author said in an interview, ‘Like I have the right to live in the city, a mosquito also has a right to bite me.’ From this non-anthropological view, the story forms its basic outline. Some critics compare the dogs with Naxalites whom the state chased and picked up like dogs and killed brutally. But I think, the idea is broader and scarier when applied to the helpless classes of the society.

Lubdhak is the Bengali name of the constellation Canis Major or The Greater Dog. In the novella, it acts as a compass for the helpless dogs. They had to leave the city. Lyka and other famous characters also appear as shadowy ghosts. They talk, they show ways, they predict that an asteroid is en route to destroy the city Kolkata like many such events in the past. That’s why the dogs must leave.

The sarcastic narrative, at times, accompanied by short poems, often goes quite experimental presenting a chapter in form of a bullet points and counterpoints. Sometimes, the narrative shifts from the third person to first person narratives of the animals. The continuously shifting voices give the novella a sense of urgency, a collective cry.

Like Khelna Nagar (Toy City), this one also is a dystopian work and can be termed as one of the major literary achievement in Bengali literature.

How Ungreen Had My Valley Become!

This is the first installment of my newly-thought-up series called “To Talk About Bangla Books.” Given the fact that Bangla has this huge collection of good literary stuff and I thought why not talk about them in my blog and they just might pique interests of readers and more fortunately, translators!

The Tale of the Hasuli Turn by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay

This is the first novel by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay I read. Set in 1941, the novel explores the sub-tale (upokatha in Bengali. Interesting to note that the author chooses to call this a sub-tale and not a tale/story, in tandem with the civilized world’s disinterest with the “other world”). The story starts with the villagers’ or residents’ worry about a strange particularly loud whistling in the forest every night. Some thought it must be the restless spirit of “Babathakur” (Godfather) who died years ago before setting the place for Kahars (those people were ‘classified’ as Kahar) to live. They were really scared and thinking up ways of sacrifices and worships to please him. Their leader Banowari was in support of this. Things got complicated when Karali, the youth with modern outlook discovered that it was a king cobra and killed it. Later all other condemned him of this sinister act because that snake was Babthakur’s ride (bahan). Say it because of superstition or tradition, but from then on there was continuous tussle between the new and the old, between faith and logic, between unquestioned submission to the known process and the finding out new dangerous ways. And this has set the core tumult in the novel.

Backcover. Source: Amazon.in

A constant politics is being played at every conversation, at every action, and how natural and fundamental they are in the core rural life where a person’s very existence depends on small decisions he takes in his daily life, can be easily felt in the author’s expert observations and insightful depiction of human mind. The relationship equations of friendships and love are more fundamental to human nature in here and above the normal sense applied to the civilized world.

Original Bangla Edition

The language is diversely rich with regional variations of Bangla, and most of the times, the narrative is closely linked with the dialogues and thoughts of the characters. It has been repeatedly emphasized in the novel that the war and hunger of outside world will never affect the reclusive bank of Kopai river (shaped like a scythe, hasuli in Bangla. Pretty much reminded me of Marquez’s Macondo). When at the end, during WW2, the sinister military planes flew over their sky and devoured all the trees in which they slowly had constructed their interdependent habitat, when all his (Banowari’s) people betrayed him by leaving their farmlands and joining the factory, one can see how the outside can affect (or ruin) an almost hidden patch of the forest-land in rural Bengal. The influence of the outsider (Karali, slowly became an outsider to the people) is one of the themes in the book. Coetzee’s works e.g. ‘Age of Iron’, ‘Disgrace’ explicitly deal with this theme. The comparision is far-fetched but worth mentioning.

I can safely conclude that this is a hugely original work and it takes some time to get over the dark, mysterious, mesmerizing world of the bend of Kopai river.

This has a translation available, published by Columbia University Press and can be found here .

Review: Neon Noon

Lately, I have not been able to read as much as I was reading earlier this year. Among the two books I read in last four weeks, this one is something that I’d read again. I have been following Tanuj Solanki’s stories online at many places and going by the quality of those, I had a high expectation from his debut. And this book delivered.

As a writer, or better say as an aspiring writer ‘who knows he can’t write but still writes’ this book has resonated with me on many levels. So after reading it the first time, I went on to read it the second time.

This is a book about the making of a writer, his struggle to express what he feels, his attempts to come to terms with love and literature.

The book starts with a short story (a brilliant one at that) by another budding writer sent to the protagonist of the novel for beta-reading. The protagonist is introduced in his intermediate stage of being in a relation and going to PATTAYA (the place where most of the events happen) in this short story. In the book it is said somewhere that the beginning of a work should not be The Beginning or The End, but something that says nothing yet says a lot. This story acts as a perfect introduction to the novel. It is kind of stylish. I have not seen such introduction of characters. You may read ‘The Other Room’ online. I think it was published independently as a story.

Next, the book goes back to the love life of the protagonist. It is told in flashbacks. And it is done marvelously. The author never tries to draw an elaborate picture, but rather provides small details in fragments. This is how a person remembers his past; in fragments. His lover is from France. He tries to learn French so that the barrier of language can’t be there between them anymore. And in trying to learn it, we see the writer in him is slowly developing. The parallel description of past and artistic development is done so fluently that I wonder at the apparent lucidity of the book.

But this is a very complex book, written word by word, carefully.

After this comes part 2 of the book, titled as ‘The Bachelor’. This is my favourite part. This has small segments that step by step show the post-breakup emotional blockage and the Bachelor’s tryst to create literature. His attempt to find a way by which he can transform his pain into literature. He finally writes something near the end, a thought, a bitter truth. A realization. And he cries after writing that down. I’ll quote those lines:

“Interred deep within the labyrinth of my inner life is a masterpiece, though I shall require a talent as good as an oil rig to make it gush forth, and even then my broken imagination may prove to be that faulty little part, that worn-out-safety-valve, that allows everything to spill and burn, and then all we would have would be the silent ashes of my masterpiece, though that shouldn’t bother me much, for floating ashes are what all masterpieces end up as.”

At the end, the Bachelor writer says, “I’m such a compulsive archivist of myself.” I think it is said to show the pride and contentment of a young writer who realizes something important and ready to go forth writing, no matter how difficult it is.

The pivotal part of this novel is the 3^rd chapter, Neon Noon. The protagonist goes to Pattaya, mainly in search of sex. By then, he has an idea of a novel where the protagonist would be a half-Indian half-French, his son, and a great poet. He will be caught up in finding his true identity, where he belongs, and will therefore shuttle from one continent to another. The son can be interpreted in many ways. One of them is that the son is actually the fruit of the protagonist’s artistic imagination, a work that would provide him all the answers he has been searching. The part about meeting Orhan in Pattaya confirms this. When he says, “In this city of pleasure, pain has suffered genocide”, it has a deep impact on the writer/protagonist. It reminded him that, just searching for sex or solace or pleasure would not provide him what he wants. It is the girl Noon who shows him that even after a heart-break one has the capability to love again. Note that the emphasis is on capability. This is an important point and builds the culmination point of the novel. Meeting Noon, and then realizing he has the ability to fall in love with her, and after falling for her, being able to come to terms with yet another heartbreak make him realise the difference between being in love and being able to love. The book ends with him tearing the photo of his ex-girlfriend and wanting Noon to see that. This shows that he has finally moved on, after accepting his version of life, literature and love.

Solanki’s style is new, but not showy. It has a certain air of confidence and you’d never feel the story is written by a debutante. I look forward to his future work with an ardent interest.

I would recommend this book for readers with an affinity to subtle and intelligent literature.

P.S. I have bought the hardcover version of the book and this is an unbiased review.

On James Joyce

Whenever people ask me who my favourite writer is, I blurt, without even letting them complete the question, “Joyce, Joyce, it can’t be anyone else.” And the reactions I normally receive are mixtures of surprise and doubt.

A writer who have not read even one Austen or Bronte novel, says his favourite writer is Joyce. It surely would stir doubt about the honesty of the statement. Even it can reflect pompousness, pretentiousness or boastfulness of an aspiring writer who wants to let people know that he knows things.

I don’t want to defend myself, I don’t need to. And I am not bound to explain myself either, because I really don’t care.

This post is my dedication to the writer for whom I have the purest, the most childish love possible between a writer and a reader.

(Before starting, I confess: I have not read “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” yet.)

 

I never knew I want to be a writer. I am good with mathematics and science has always been my easy choice. Still, when time or mood permitted, I picked a random book and read. My childhood books consisted of the Bengali translation of “Tintin” and Bengali comics like “Nonte-Fonte”, “Batul the Great”. I never needed to seek stories in English language. Feluda and Byomkesh gave me all the Sherlock Holmes I wanted to read and “Chader Pahar” (The Mountain of Moon) gave me all the adventures I aspired to have. When I needed some serious stuff, I had our good old Tagore.

During my college days, I didn’t regularly read books. My selection was so random that I read one book by Bhagat, then next by Robin Cook, then Hosseini or Ken Follett or Coelho. I never wrote much either. One or two scattered Bengali poems max.

James Joyce

So 19 years of my life had passed and I had read only some 20+ books. After graduating in engineering with rather good marks, I had too much free time. I watched all the movies I got from hostel and had all the boozing I could indulge myself in while staying in home.

I could do nothing but read books. I read “The Idiot” by “Dostoevsky” next. Strange, isn’t it? I just randomly picked it from my ebook collection I got from my hostel friends (reading or not you got to have collections to show off). It was long but I liked it. It was good time-pass for me. I read “1984”, “A Passage to India” after that, which I got from our town library. I attempted to read “Beloved” and “Midnight’s Children” back then but couldn’t understand it.

One day, I happened to come across a book titled, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” By then, I started to doubt whether I’d remain an engineer and go for research in control and automation.

The title and the content of the book had a kind of ironical justification to my mental condition back then.

There were few thoughts, emotions I used to have when I was child and I thought only I thought that, and they were my secrets, my very own little but extremely personal ones. No one knew it. But here was this book where I was seeing Stephen doing things, thinking things that shook me at the most vulnerable corners of my mind. For example when I read:

But he was not sick there. He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps the roar was shut off like a train going into a tunnel. That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel again and then stop.

I literally used to do that. During the boring lectures in the programs at my missionary school, I used to do that (opening and closing ear-flaps) and entertained myself. I thought I knew a trick that no one knew. It was mine. Mine. But this strange author came and took that away. For the first time, I realized what words could do to a person. I read that part again and again. After that, I came across this paragraph,

He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there: himself, his name and where he was.

Stephen Dedalus

Class of Elements

Clongowes Wood College

Sallins

County Kildare

Ireland

Europe

The World

The Universe

I wrote that in my school copies. (Anirban Nanda, Class 4, Section A, Saradamoni Sisu Niketan, Haldia, West Bengal, India, Asia, World, Universe.) How the hell Joyce knew that?

Though winter is short in my country, I cherished those nights inside quilt as described below.

First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn.

In short, I felt Joyce wrote this book for me to read. It was meant for me. The struggle of Stephen to find his vocation in later chapters resonated with me. Though the prose was becoming denser with each chapter, I read the book line by line. Read each sentence again and again until I understood it. I read it three times in a row. I almost ruined the library copy.

There are many more deeper secrets that I share with this book and for this reason, whenever I feel down, I read it; whenever I feel a block, I read it.

I read Dubliners after that and with each story —I must emphasize on ‘each’— I learned unexplored sides of human emotions. So, yes, even if Joyce had never written (thank God he did) “Ulysses” or “Finnegans Wake”, I’d worship him all the same.

Joyce is not just another writer for me; he is my tuning point, my Literary Guru.

A Forgotten Indian Masterpiece: All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani

It is matter of utter despair that a book like this, of such caliber and quality, is long forgotten. This is the first major attempt to break the pure English and mix it with oriental colloquial. Desani did something for Indian literature as Joyce did for Irish literature. Though Desani never wrote another novel, and though he published few short stories and a poem (Hali) apart from this, he was immediately recognized by the likes of T.S. Eliot and Saul Bellow.

This novel is essentially a polyglot one, but it goes on to break the general assumption that anything polyglot is bound to be difficult (the major reason of this, obviously, none other than Finnegans Wake). I have never read a funnier book than this. Desani’s innovative play with words makes you read a page again and again and chuckle each time.

The reviewer at the Los Angeles Times rightly says,

“”I write rigmarole English,” Desani taunts, “staining your goodly, godly tongue.” Bless him, he does mash it up, bending orthography, stretching syntax, mixing in shards of Hindi, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German and a goodly dose of balderdash, whilst tossing in references to Whitman, Shakespeare, Socrates, Freud and appeals to Kama and Laxmi as well as to Allah and Christ. Only a quasi-outsider (an Irishman, say) could have such an irreverent ear for the Anglo-Saxon tongue. But “Hatterr” is more readable by miles than “Finnegans Wake,” and a lot more fun.”

 

To introduce to the style of this novel, let me quote H. Hatterr (Desani) himself in chapter III, page 120.

(…Wherefore, pious brethren, by confessing I lie, yoiks! I tell the truth, sort of topholy trumpeting-it, by the Pharisee G.V. Desani: see the feller’s tract All About …, publisher, the same publishing company): a language deliberately designed to mystify the majority, tempt ‘em to start guessing, and interpreting our real drift, and allegory, what the hell we mean: pursue our meaning on their sthula (gross), the sukshana (subtle) and para (supreme) planes, and levels, and still miss the issue and dash their heads against the crazy-paved rock of confusion.

We are getting the drift. Though the book seems pointless rambling (allusion to one of the characters in the book Y. Rambeli .. Why rambling?) of a person who loses in every adventure he goes to, the book is intricately structured. To quote from the paper: Chaudhury, Sarbani. “All About H. Hatterr – Desani’s ‘Novel Gesture’.” Glocal Colloquies 1.1 (2015): 38-53 .

The subterranean method in madness, mentioned earlier, becomes more pronounced as we encounter the making of fiction. Despite his numerous disclaimers, Desani’s novel-gesture (as I shall persist in calling it) has a rigorous structure: the two epigraphs labelled “Warning!”, and the production account followed by a “Mutual Introduction” of the inscribed author (Hatterr), serve as a kind of combined prologue for the seven chapters recounting Hatterr’s encounter with the seven sages. The rear is brought up by an epilogue labelled “An Afterthought” supposedly penned by another fictional character in the work, a lawyer who, as mentioned previously, prefixes the pompous title of “504 SrimanVairagi, Paribrajaka, Vanaprasthi, Acharya” to his more simple but nevertheless comic name “YatiRambeli” (giganticbelly) to suit the lofty task of providing a worthy defence for the hapless Hatterr. Apart from undermining the very defence it intends to uphold, the ‘naming ceremony’ is a dig at the aristocrats’ and god-men’s tendency to legitimise and iterate their political/ religious status by claiming a long line of descent from royal/ holy forbears.

Seven chapters form the main stay of the book where Hatterr, seeking lucre, lust and illumination, encounters seven sages across India who take on increasingly presumptuous names as the work progresses – sages of Calcutta, Rangoon (now resident in India), Madras, Bombay, “right Honourable sage of Delhi,” “wholly worshipful of Mogalsarai-Varanasi” and “naked Holiness number One, the Sage of All India himself!” – matching the ludicrousness of the ‘life experience’ encountered and the lesson learned thereof. Save for one, where Hatterr gains a princely sum of Rs 1000/- (Chapter IV), all the escapades conclude in inevitable disaster with Hatterr, very much the modern prototype of the ‘gull’ in classical drama, barely escaping by the skin of his teeth.

Each of the seven chapters is given an intriguing and often half-finished title – Chapter I. “The Sage, He Spake…,” Chapter II. “…Versus the Impressario,” Chapter III. “Archbishop Walrus versus Neophyte the Bitter-One,” Chapter IV.“Apropos Supernatural Agent…,” Chapter V. “Assault below the Belt,” Chapter VI. “…Salute the ‘Kismet’” and, Chapter VII. “Punchum and Another, with Contempt” – that literalise the ensuing content. For instance, Chapter V. “Assault below the Belt,” is literally an assault on Hatterr’s loincloth by a demented Naga sanyasi to relieve Hatter of his hidden stash of money so as to release him from the clutches of “Evil-Triumphant” green monster (223)!

To show you some example of ultra-creativity of Desani, few small excerpts are presented below.

Excerpt 1:

” The name is H. Hatterr, and I am continuing… 

Biologically, I am fifty-fifty of the species. 

One of my parents was a European,

Christian-by-faith merchant merman (seaman). From which part of the Continent? Wish I could tell you. The other was an Oriental, a Malay Peninsula-resident lady, a steady non-voyaging, non-Christian human (no mermaid). From which part of the Peninsula? Couldn’t tell you either.

Barely a year after my baptism (in white, pure and holy), I was taken from Penang (Malay P.) to India (East). It was there that my old man kicked the bucket in a hurry. The via media? Chronic malaria and pneumonia-plus.

Whereupon, a local litigation for my possession ensued.

The odds were all in favour of the India-resident Dundee-born Scot, who was trading in jute.

He believed himself a good European, and a pious Kirk o’ Scotland parishioner, whose right-divine Scotch blud mission it was to rescue the baptised mite me from any illiterate non-pi heathen influence. She didn’t have a chance, my poor old ma, and the court gave him the possession award.

I don’t know what happened to her. Maybe, she lives. Who cares?

Rejoicing at the just conclusion of the dictate of his conscience, and armed with the legal interpretation of the testament left by my post-mortem seaman parent, willing I be brought up Christian, and the court custody award, the jute factor had me adopted by an English Missionary Society, as one of their many Oriental and mixed-Oriental orphan-wards. And, thus it was that I became a sahib by adoption, the Christian lingo (English) being my second vernacular from the orphan-adoption age onwards.

The E.M. Society looked after me till the age of fourteen or thereabouts.

It was then that I found the constant childhood preoccupation with the whereabouts of my mother unbearable, the religious routine unsuited to my temperament, the evangelical stuff beyond my ken, and Rev. the Head (of the Society’s school), M.A., D.Litt., D.D., also C.B.E., ex-Eton and Cantab. (Moths, Grates, and Home Civ), Protor par excellence, Feller of the Royal Geographical, Astronomical and Asiastic Societies (and a writer!), too much of a stimulus for my particular orphan constitution. (The sort of loco parentis who’d shower on you a penny, and warn you not to squander it on woman, and wine, and
song!)

“Help others! Help others!” he used to say. Knowing that the most deserving party needing help was self, I decided to chuck the school, get out into the open spaces of India, seek my lebansraum, and win my bread and curry all on my own.

And one warm Indian autumn night, I bolted as planned, having pinched, for voluntary study, an English dictionary, the Rev. the Head’s own-authored ‘Latin Self-Taught’ and ‘French Self-Taught’, the Missionary Society’s school stereoscope complete with slides (my second love after my mother) and sufficient Missionary funds lifted from the Head’s pocket to see me through life.

From that day onwards, my education became free and my own business. I fought off the hard-clinging feelings of my motherlessness. I studied the daily press, picked up tips from the stray Indian street-dog as well as the finest Preceptor-Sage available in the land. I assumed the style-name H. Hatterr (‘H’ for the nom de plume ‘Hindustaaniwalla’, and ‘Hatterr’, the nom de guerre inspired by Rev. the Head’s too-large-for-him-hat), and, by and by (autobiographical I, which see), I went completely Indian to an extent few pure non-Indian blood sahib fellers have done.

I have learnt from the school of Life; all the lessons, the sweet, the bitter, and the middling messy. I am debtor both to the Greeks and the Barbarians. And, pardon, figuratively speaking, I have had higher education too. I have been the personal disciple of the illustrious grey-beards, the Sages of Calcutta, Rangoon (now resident in India), Madras, Bombay, and the right Honourable the Sage of Delhi, the wholly Worshipful of Mogalsarai-Varanasi, and his naked Holiness Number One, the Sage of All India himself!’ (pg. 31-33).

 

Excerpt 2:

PRESUMPTION: ‘Kismet’, i.e., fate — if at all anything, and as potent as suspected for centuries — is a dam’ baffling thing!
It defies a feller’s rational: his entire conception as to his soma, pneuma, and psyche!
Why did a feller like me commit matrimony with a femme fatale like Mrs H. Hatterr (née Rialto), the waxed Kiss-curl?
A personal query, but I don’t mind answering…
If only I could!
All I know is that I wanted to raise a family: add to the world’s vital statistics and legitimate: have a niche in the community, for my own kid, to hand out the wager till the end. And since you can’t achieve this without a wife — the neighbours wouldn’t let you! the police wouldn’t let you! — I equipped myself with the blarney-phrases, convinced this female that she was real jam, had me led to the middle aisle and gave the ready ‘I do’ to the amenwallah her brother had hired for the occasion.
This I did, knowing, hell, that between us was all the temperamental difference in the world!
Till death us do part! this museum-piece and I! And that promise — what a stingo! — after a conflict dating back to the donkey’s Sundays!
The female — contrast? — was poles apart: though, between the cur Jenkins, me and the Duke Humphrey, it did seem once that she was going to win my regards for good, by delivering me an heir-presumptive — my own piccolo le fils — to survive me (and be added to the looney-bin). But despite days and days of biological observation and anticipation — the wasted reference to the obstetric table and pre-occupation with the signs of labour — it didn’t come off. (Backed the wrong filly, or, maybe, something the matter with me as create-or!).

 

After writing this novel, Desani got deeply involved with spirituality and Buddhism and didn’t publish another book. He nonetheless inspired Rushdie to take the lead and expound upon the newly invented babu-vernacular and write another Indian masterpiece, Midnight’s Children (Rushdie’s essay “Damme, This Is the Oriental Scene for You!” is based upon this very novel).

I wanted to type and present few more wonderful excerpts but what can I do? Every single page of this book is shouting brilliance and I can’t choose! Desani was so sure about the importance and genius of this work that he had the following conversation with Khushwant Singh:

“Can you recommend me for the Nobel Prize?”

Khushwant was dumb struck: “But you’ve only written that one book!”

“So?” countered Desani softly, “Eliot’s written very little also!”

“Only Nobel winners can recommend others,” Khushwant protested weakly, taken aback by Desani’s total lack of modesty.

“No, even the Government can”, insisted Desani steadfastly.

Worn down by his persistence and ingenuous self-belief, Khushwant meekly signed the forms. Nothing came of it of course. The Nobel Committee checked with Dr.Radhakrishnan, Ambassador to Sweden and a nominee for the Nobel at the time. Totally unamused, he ticked Khushwant off roundly and Desani continued to live with his inconvenient loo across the courtyard until he took off for the Orient.

(source: http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/user/319051.html)

I’ll end my discussion about the book with the praises about it by the greats:

Anthony Burgess: “…it is the language that makes the book. . . . It is not pure English; it is like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Kipling, gloriously impure.”

T.S. Eliot: “… Certainly a remarkable book. In all my experience, I have not met anything quite like it. It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo at such length.”

C.E.M. Joad : “… an original and remarkable book. It starts well and continues at the same level … to my surprise … the gusto, tempo and style all being maintained until the end.”

Edmund Blunden : “… Something remarkable here by this most curious and resourceful among writers. I can’t think anybody who pays attention will miss that.”

Saul Bellow : “I didn’t read many books while writing Augie. One I did read and love was All About H. Hatterr…. So, what about All About? I hate to be siding with T.S. Eliot… but what can you do?”

Salman Rushdie: “This is the ‘babu English,’ the semi-literate, half-learned English of the bazaars, transmuted by erudition, highbrow monkeying around, and the impish magic of Desani’s unique phrasing and rhythm into an entirely new kind of literary voice.”

Damme, buy the book!

 

 

Review: Spy from Unaula by Alok Kumar

Introduction:

The story is set in pre-independent India spanning over a life time of a character. The story follows Ram, who born in a remote village Unaula and his adventures as he frees himself from the bondage of social prejudices and backwardness of the uneducated society there. He is inspired and supported by his brother Bhagwati right from the beginning.

What I like about the story:

The content of the story is very unique, fresh and something we don’t see in present piles of romance, mythology and crime-thriller novels. The characters are normal, real-life people and events are told in good detail (the war with Japanese, the process of selection, the atmosphere of death). Especially I like the sketched images which frequently try to bring out the scenes going on in the book. It has social messages, about how a little person from some remote village can become big.

Critical Comments:

The narration puts me off, to be honest. It is top to bottom telling in dull way. The story here is huge and if it is written with more patience it could become a 400+ pages epic, whereas solely due to the school text-book style telling, the book is merely 210 pages long. For example, it is not enough if one tells me that Ram is courageous and nervous at the same time. One can show that simply by his actions (like he elopes from his house just before 2 days of his forced-marriage but at the same times, trembles, cries sobs, wanting for water etc. when he is walking away from his home.) Or if one really wants to stick to telling, he should use similes, allegories to evoke cruelty, humor in the tone. For example, let see if the same situation can be written like : Fifty kilos of weight, he felt such pride and determination that he could alone conquer even Achilles if he tried to force him to marry that unknown girl, who definitely was not a decedent of Helen. By the way, when Bhagwati fights against Japanese in army of British, I have expected the mention of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who was using the Japanese force to create the menace British felt.

To be Specific:

Plot:

The plot is has potential, as I have mentioned before. You’d agree with me after completing the journey of the characters in this book.

Dialogue:

It is natural and okay, but the amount of dialogue is very less in this book which is not compensated by good narration.

Characterisation:

It is good but could become livelier with more developed style of presentation. I wanted to feel the same disappointment was Ram was prevented from going to school, I wanted to feel the tension Ram felt when he was leaving his home forever.

Pacing:

Unnecessarily fast which neither creates the thrill it intends to create, nor allows the reader to feel for the characters.

Narrative:

It is mentioned in critical comments section.

Editing:

Not many typographical and grammatical errors. It’s neat.

Resolution:

Satisfying but could have been of more impact.

Overall impression:

A good read for readers searching for something new based on Indian setting which could become a far better piece of novel.

3 out of 5.

Amazon Link.

View my other reviews.

Interview with Aditi Bose

Me: How are you feeling?

Aditi: I feel like a frozen icicle. Delhi’s getting darn cold slowly. Jokes apart, I’m currently in a content state. Things seem to be on the right track. So I am not complaining.

Me:Yes, it’s quite cold in here too. Let’s start with a conventional question. Tell us something about yourself.

Aditi: I am a mother. This is what will always come first. The rest follow – writer, swimmer, shopper, foodie, and an utter romantic.

Me: When did you start writing & what/who inspired you to begin writing?

Aditi: I have been writing for a very long time. As a child I used to write my personal diary and a travel journal. Writing a novel is a recent entrant though.
My parents and the stories they told me are an inspiration. My child is too – when you have to tell a kid a new story every night, there is no choice but to keep your creative juices flowing.

Me: What did you like to read in your childhood?

Aditi: Enid Blyton and more Enid Blyton. A few years later I was hooked onto Satyajit Ray’s Feluda series.

Me: Feluda is my favorite. I have read every story of Feluda in my childhood days. 🙂 So, who is your favorite Author? Anything specific that keeps you hooked to his/her writing?

Aditi: I like reading a plethora of authors. Usually the story line and the book cover is what attracts my attention. But, in general, I like Danielle Steele and the poignancy that she brings up in her stories.

Me: Oh, I see. What is your current book about? Can you tell us something about it?

Aditi: My Dream Man explores the changing relationship between a professor and his student. I don’t think I want to divulge any further.

Me: How have you conceived the idea about writing this book?

 

Aditi: Ideas just come to me suddenly – out of the blue. This one also just happened.

Me: Could you tell us something about the main character of your current book?

Aditi: The female protagonist is a vivacious Bengali girl and the professor, who is twelve years older to him, is a mature and calm person.

Me: Tons of other books are being published every day out there. What makes this book different and attractive for a reader?

Aditi: Because it has been written by an attractive lady! (Giggles). Jokes apart, I think the teacher-student relationship in a romance plus the kind of twist that it has hasn’t been experimented with yet.

Me: That seems interesting. It is said that a writer should always read a lot, do you agree? Does it influence one’s writing? How do you avoid the influence & maintain the flow?

Aditi: The words should / have to doesn’t apply to writers. We are a bunch of creative people and we do what we like. For some reading works and for some staring into open space does.

If one were to read only a single author’s writing then it is likely that some influence would brush off. As for avoiding influence, there’s really no need to avoid it. Every writer, eventually, always finds his own style coming out.

Me: Do you follow a special regime to write? And how do you go about writing every day?

Aditi: The only regime that I follow is that I need to feel happy and energetic. When I do I can write even an entire chapter in an hour. But when I’m tired or upset I can’t get the words out of me. So there are days at a stretch when I give myself a break without feeling guilty about it. And I never set myself goals like ‘X words in X days’ etc.  I write when I feel like.

Me: Do you like to plot and plan everything beforehand or just let your writing lead you though the story?

Aditi: I have the basic plot in mind. That’s it. Names of characters, incidents, the twists everything happens as I write.

Me: You are a management graduate. Does it help you in your writing career? 

Aditi: Nope. But, having an MBA degree, being a good student, and being an alumna of well known educational institutes in the country does give me a sense of self pride.

Me: When you sit to write, how do you create the flow/mood to keep writing without getting disturbed?

Aditi: I don’t create because I can’t. I have my responsibilities which I need to fulfil. So I just avoid times when disturbances are high. So till I know I can get some silent time in the house I stay away from writing.

Me: Do you see yourself exploring other genres like crime thriller or fantasy?

Aditi: Fantasy maybe. But in the distant future, if ever. The only other genre I like writing is tales for kids. My first book – an ebook – was a collection of short stories for children – ‘Hama-Guri goes to School’.

Me: What is, according to you, are some of the traits of a successful writer (be it’s a blog writer or a fiction/non-fiction writer)?

Aditi: When a writer can write without thinking how much royalty he will be getting, he’s a successful writer.

Me: Well put. In what position do you see yourself five years from now?

Aditi: The mother to an almost teenage daughter! (Laughs)

Me: 🙂 She is lucky to have a mother like you. What do you like to do when you are not writing or reading?

Aditi: Sketching, swimming, being with my kid, Whatsapping.

Me: New Year is around. Do you want to give any message to our readers?

Aditi: It is easy to make promises to oneself and even easier to break it. Don’t do that in 2016. Have smaller goals if need be, but live upto it.

Me: Thank you so much, it’s a pleasure interviewing you. Tell us when your book is going to be released and where can one find it? 

Aditi: My Dream Man is already on the stands. You can order it from Amazon or PustakMandi. It will be on Flipkart soon.

Me: Also, if you are okay with it, how can someone get in touch with you?

Aditi: They can follow me on FB or on Twitter.

So folks, that’s all about Aditi and her book, The Dream Man. From her words, it seems intriguing. Watch this space for more interviews and discussions. Thank you for reading. ❤

—-interviewed by Anirban Nanda.

How it is possible to read more than one book at the same time.

As a voracious reader and an ambitious writer, I am member of many book-clubs where we share what we are reading and discuss it. So, when I say that I am reading 3 books at a time, people get surprised and ask how it is possible to do so and still not mix up themes and characters.

First of all, it’s not a matter of pride for reading more than one book at a time. People who read one book at a time normally plunge themselves in the book and become lost into it, which is a great thing and truly depicts how one should enjoy a book.

But as for me, like many others, who reads many books at a time gets a different experience, neither superior nor inferior to the previous case.

Let’s get to point about how someone does read a lot of books at a time, let me tell you from my own experiences. I am currently reading Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy; all of which are well respected. Each of these has separate plot, themes, styles and characters. As a writer who doesn’t say he earns his bread by writing, he has to go through separate realms of life-styles/thinking processes; for example: a writer who also works as an accountant has to be a good serviceman, good reader, good husband, friend etc etc. So many personalities where you are supposed to think separately and behave accordingly. Do they mix these up? This is the source for me to find the reason of my reading many books at a time. While I am reading the story of Caulfield I am thrown into different world and different tone and while I am reading Elizabeth Costello’s story which revolves around struggles of a writer at old age, I see a new style and premise and a lot more though provoking literature. But I do not mix them up because I do not read them as a reader, rather I read them to find the tricks the author is using in his writing. I do not get surprised/delighted to face a plot twist, I normally get drawn to a novel solely because of the writing style and set up and how the writer is building the whole plot. I do get lost into the stories but on some level, I’m also aware of the techniques the author is using.

That’s is most probably the case with me. I don’t know if I am able to make myself clear enough, but right now, this is all I can think of (and blogging because the thought is tormenting me).

Review: Voices of the Silent Creek by Vikkas Arun Pareek

The book ‘Voices of the Silent Creek’ tries to bring out raw truth about women hidden behind the curtains of big houses and how knowing their situation, people choose to keep their mouth shut. The hypocrisy of people calling themselves supporter of women empowerment will strike you fiercely in this novel. A very different attempt for a debut novel and definitely deserves a round of applause.

While you are wondering what creek (meaning a narrow waterway) represents in a novel on women, let me assure you, it’s just a symbolic or abstract object where many important conversations, solitary quests happens (with most of the characters, be it Shanti or Bhano.)

As I do not want to brood more on the content, making this review hugely spoiled, I’ll switch to literary aspects of it i.e. language, characterization and presentation.

The book starts off well, with sparks of talent showing through words:

She sat on one of the hillocks facing the creek, her face red with fury, when she heard some noise. Someone was looking at her. She saw him—he was looking at her—he kept looking at her—she looked away. Bhano looked again. He was still looking at her. Bhano stopped and marched towards him. He was surrounded by boys of his age group. She looked at him, at first she wanted to pinch him, her teacher had taught her that if a boy teased her, she should pinch them on the upper arm, it hurts most there and they will run away, she had never tried it as boys in her school were all nice to her, but then she looked at him and she was not sure why she resisted herself, it was a new feeling for her, she had never felt this way. He was taller than her and was very fair, fairer then her, had large eyes and long hair. She was confused and she couldn’t decide what to do next but all his friends were looking at her—she felt nervous, she felt scared, and she felt a sudden urge to run back.

This clearly establishes that the author has written this piece very passionately, giving attention to minor details, and therefore, making the novel richer. But as I progressed, the tone and excitement of the author seemed to falter a bit and became mundane. Like the following:

An old lady got on a crowded bus and no one bothered to lend her a seat, and while Arti, being a young able woman, left her seat for the old lady. Firstly, I don’t understand why Arti was surprised that no man left the seat while being a woman; she had to do the same. While calling about equal rights and feminism (which, by the way, is a misnomer), you shouldn’t differentiate responsibility of a citizen in a situation like this. Arti was perfectly healthy and strong lady, and I find it unfair for her being surprised/angry for men sitting around her. On the other hand, I’d not expect such a response after doing that:

 Arti looked outside the door. It would now be a few hours before she would sit again, but she felt happy. A tear rolled down her left cheek. She was happy. She promised to herself that she will always do the right things in her life.

This is over-reaction.

Sometimes, while imposing hard punishment to characters, author should judge the realistic possibility of doing the same. Moron husband married Shanti though he loved Laxmi and while questoning the insanity of it, Shanti was punished like:

“Then why have you married me, why haven’t you married Laxmi?” she looked into the eyes of her husband and asked.

She was slapped hard twice, and kicked a dozen times as a response.

Kicking a dozen times seems another over-reaction.

But author also experimented here and there a bit like this: lover kissing and talking:

“uoorr eilps rar foft hn oose,” Arti said inside his mouth.

Good one. But what about this:

Once inside the room, Arti pushed Amol and he fell on the bed,“What were you thinking, you dog!”

“You wanted it.”

“I now want this,” Arti slid her hands inside her tee and pulled it off.

“What are you doing, this is your home.” Amol jumped off the bed.

“Why? You fucked me in front of the whole college and you can’t do it here?” Arti moved closer and kissed him.

I leave a conversation like this to the romance readers (because I’m not expert in romance) to decide whether it is apt. But the ‘f-word’ and ‘dog’ are, I think, used to express naughtiness of their relationship.

Another thing: while raining, Shanti (married) and Mano (mad and infertile thanks to her benevolent in-law’s treatment) went to dance in roof and a moment like is very tender. I expected a more matured and expert treatment to it.

An admirable material in writing is the way the author makes his readers glued to the story. I clap for that.

To be clear of any confusion, as a reviewer, which I fear to proclaim myself, this one is well above average books published out there every day. Maybe J.M. Coetzee or Thomas Hardy, whose books I have been happen to be devouring, have veiled my mind with a messy amalgamation of art, and thus making this book deprived of the appreciation it may deserve. So, with no qualms and circling through strange alleys of literature, I’ll stick to my perceived view of the book, no matter how much it (my perception) is ‘polluted’. This is the obvious reason for which I do not want to rate it on a scale of 5.

In conclusion, I feel the author has written a very important book and I give him a pat on the back for that, but somewhere I have felt that, he also has misused the bleak, sensitive situation to strengthen the bleakness of the novel (which I’ve never felt in bleak books like Midnight’s Children, A Fine Balance or Sleeping on Jupiter).

 

Thank you for reading. ❤