Not the Perfect Murder: HRF Keating’s Breaking and Entering

This review first appeared in India Today, several years ago.

What I didn’t mention in the review, as it didn’t seem relevant, was that I had met Keating a few years earlier.

In fact, he had recommended me strongly to a British literary agent who flew down to Mumbai to sign me up, convinced (based on her reading of Vertigo and my other books) that I was going to be the Next Big Thing.

As it turned out, I didn’t become the Next Big Anything. Partly because she expected me to produce a crime novel and it took me a long while to realize that I just wasn’t interested in the structure and limitations of a generic crime story – what did interest me were the realistic details, especially of life in urban India, as you can see in my novels Vertigo and Byculla Boy.

Anyway, to make (another) long story short, the agent later retired, and I went on to write my Ramayana series and signed on with another agent. This one expected me to write formula fantasy fiction for an American readership, again something I wasn’t in the least interested in doing.

But to come back to Keating. He was very warm and endearingly English, hugely encouraging – he praised my books highly in every interview he gave in India at the time – and gave me a much-needed morale boost at one of the low ebbs in my writing career. (Come to think of it, most of my writing career was just low ebbs.) I blessed him for that, even if the agent he recommended me to didn’t work out for me, and I wish him well wherever he is now.

That meeting with him was one of the only interactions with another practising writer I’ve ever had, and it helped me believe that it was possible for someone, even someone like me, to make a living at this precarious profession.

I didn’t let any of that affect my writing of this review though. I’m like that. You can be my best friend, but if I have to write about you, well, sorry, I’m going to call it like I see it. And it mostly won’t be pretty, but it’ll be tough and fair. Better than soft and false, right?

The only thing I don’t stand by anymore is that last line. I have no intention of writing more crime fiction, regardless of how well it sells or gets reviewed. I simply don’t have the kind of mind that can shape a story to fit genre formulas.

What’s more, shaping any story to fit any kind of structural expectation, in my honest opinion, is a crime in itself. Which is perhaps why I no longer read much crime fiction, or respect it very much.

BREAKING AND ENTERING
By H.R.F. Keating
Macmillan
266 pages
Hardback
£16.99

In one of the delicious ironies of life, an English crime novelist found fame in the USA with a detective novel set in India.

The novel was The Perfect Murder, later made into a film of the same name by Merchant Ivory, and it achieved what Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating’s other English detective novels could not: transatlantic sales and critical acclaim.

Almost thirty years and as many novels later, the Inspector Ghote series now occupies a permanent corner of the large comforting country manor of the English detective novel.

Breaking and Entering is not the best Ghote novel.

But it’s the best to start with if you’re just discovering the series. Keating began the series without having visited India just as another British crime writer, James Hadley Chase, began
writing thrillers set in America without having visited there. But, like Chase, Keating did in time visit India, and brought back armloads of detail and local colour to festoon later novels in the series.

The sense of contemporary Mumbai life – the housewives watching a daily soap, the city’s name change, the humid October heat – remains the most endearing feature of any Ghote novel. In a city largely abandoned by Indian English writers barring the occasional Rushdie, it’s always pleasing to see familiar sights and sounds used in fiction.

But despite these few instances of local detail, the Ghote novels are not realistic crime fiction.

This has always been the chief cause of dismay to any Indian reader. They are rather more novels of manners with detective plots. In the tradition of the ‘cozies’ and ‘armchair mysteries’ that continue to stay so hugely popular in the USA.

Instead of the English manor or country club, Ghote prowls Mumbai thoroughfares. Instead of eccentric inbred English aristocrats, he encounters eccentric inbred Parsi socialites, gossip columnists, fraudulent jewellers. Beneath the descriptions of dusty roads and ever-so-slightly tweaked ‘Indian’ names – Ajmani, Latika, Dinkarrao – this is a very English novel.

Keating’s by-now irritatingly familiar attempt to capture the broken-English patois of Ganesh Ghote is another deterrent. This kind of patter is bad enough in the juvenile pulps of authors like Anurag Mathur and the poppish new breed of Hinglish films like Bombay Boys and Hyderabad Blues. It’s painful to trudge through pages of internal monologue that try hard to amuse and entertain Western readers.

Thankfully, the narration quickly settles into a more readable style and the tapori baasha is relegated to dialogue. This comic device, one of the most-admired qualities of the series abroad, has not aged well.

Breaking and Entering is about two separate criminal cases, one a series of jewellery thefts, the other a ‘locked-room’ murder. Keating is pulling out old aces from a worn sleeve: The baffling murder in a locked high-security bungalow, the reappearance of Ghote’s Swedish friend and other clues underline the story’s resemblance to the first and best Ghote novel. But sadly, B&E doesn’t quite live up to the first debutante freshness of that novel.

Still, it’s hard to dislike this novel. Short, pithy, immensely readable if you come to it without expectations, it’s a pastime romp through a Westerner’s notion of contemporary Bombay life must be like. It’s a reasonably amusing detective mystery too. Don’t expect too much and you’ll come away mildly entertained. For better crime novels, you’ll have to go to Keating’s English mysteries, notably the Rich Detective, Bad Detective series.

Bombay still awaits a truly worthy detective series – or several of them – to explore the city’s unique beauty, charm and sleaze. Ghote was a worthy attempt, and certainly the only commercially successful one abroad. Now, what we need is a detective series that Indians will enjoy and buy in great numbers.

Even if I damn well have to write it myself.

Mar 31, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The Ludlum Identity: Obit of a spy-fi master and other odd odds and ends

It’s been a movie-full week.

Reason being my son finished his ICSE boards, my daughter recovered from an attack of viral flu, and one of my best friends had a much-needed break between schedules of the film he’s working on (the film’s directed by another mutual friend, John Mathew Mathan of Sarfarosh fame).

So the past week I saw a number of movies, mostly on DVD.

There was the very hilarious Harold And Kumar Go To Whitecastle. Did I mention this before? (Must read my own blog, if only to know what I’ve blabbered before. Anyway, if I have, then pardon the reprise.) It’s about what you’d expect from an American teen comedy: vulgar, obscene in parts, outrageous throughout, sentimental and schmaltzy, and very very funny.

What makes H&K a bit different and refreshing is the fact that it features two non-WASP protagonists, a Korean and an Indian. The Indian is played wonderfully well by Kalp Penn, whose full name is actually Kalpen Modi, and with the success of H&K, he becomes perhaps the only Indian actor to successfully headline a mainstream Hollywood movie.

He’s definitely one Modi who’s more welcome in the USA than the other one who got denied a visa!

If you want a good laugh, and your parents, kids and pets aren’t around to be offended, you could do worse than snorting for an hour or two with H&K. It’s a fun ride.

The Indian connection led us to Kal Penn’s earlier film, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.

This one wasn’t half as much fun or one-third as funny as H&K, but it was worth taking in for Kalp Pen’s very charming send-up of an Indian exchange student desperate to lose his virginity.

Even the typically grating (and let’s face it, typically racist) Hollywood caricature of apna desis seemed less offensive and more amusing when sketched by Mr Modi.

This one’s worth keeping an eye on, and here’s hoping he finds better material than Van Wilder, or even H&K next time out of the stalls.

Then there was Flight of the Phoenix, a remake of a 1946 (or was it 1956?) film of the same name, the new one featuring Dennis Quaid and an ensemble cast playing a bunch of survivors who, um, survive a plane crash in the Gobi desert and have to build a new plane to get back to civilization.

It was a passable TP film, with excellent CGI effects for the storm and the crash – reminded me of The Aviator, because even in that film the plane crash stayed with me much longer than the rest of the film. See it if you want some thrills and chills but don’t expect anything gurreat, paaji.

The Final Cut starring Robin Williams was more promising. A science fiction film about ‘cutters’ who edit a person’s life story into a feature-length film it looked like a good serious whack at the age-old Luddite fear of technology taking over our lives.

I for one actually like Robin Williams doing serious roles – I thought he was marvellously creepy in Insomnia (playing the serial killer opposite a tired but still dependable Al Pacino) and in One Hour Photo (playing a serial killer opposite nobody) – and he’s as trusty as ever. But somehow the script disappears halfway through, alongwith most of the major characters, and the film sadly ends without any real climax, just a clever ‘ending’ which delivers nothing.

It reminded me of another thriller, Eye of the Beholder, which was such a wonderful ride – much, much better than The Final Cut, I hasten to add – and which featured wonderful performances (by Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor) but crashlanded at the end, as if (and this is quite possible with independent films on tight schedules with even tighter budgets) the producer had pulled the plug and said, “Okay, that’s it, we’re out of time and money, so let’s wrap it up right here and now and call this the climax.”

I saw a couple other things but I’ll get back to you on that in a day or three.

Oh, and I Limewired a whole bunch of alt rock. Have you heard Smashing Pumpkins? They’re smashing! And Crash Test Dummies I like partly because their lead singer has that gravelly kind of voice like Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas that’s lovely to listen to on a lazy Sunday morning.

But right now, I want to share with you this curiosity I found in my archives. It’s an obituary I wrote for spymeister Robert Ludlum a few years ago for The Indian Express, New Delhi.

Now, I haven’t read a Ludlum for years, but I can’t deny having really enjoyed his work, especially growing up and in my younger days.

Everytime I get in over my head in terms of work and deadlines and other pressures, I keep telling myself that I’ll take a vacation, go off somewhere to a resort hotel with a bunch of Ludlums and just read till I burn my eyes out.

(I don’t drink or smoke or do any other kind of stimulant so that’s the closest I come to living dangerously, apart from movies and music, sorry to be so boring, guys.)

The other writer I think of doing that with is Herge. I still have the whole bunch of Tintins and still re-read them every year or so.

But I still haven’t got around to redoing Ludlum’s oeuvre. I’ve been saying that for, like, ten or fifteen years, and I’m no spring chicken. Pushing 42 now, and there aren’t many vacations left to take before I get my final cut. So must get around to doing it sometime.

Before someone writes an obituary like this for me…

The Ludlum Identity

He woke in a strange room dressed in strange clothes with no recollection of anything. For a moment, he didn’t even remember his own name or identity.

He knew then that this was it. They were coming for him now, and this time there was no getting away. There was no place left to run anyway. He was tired of running, it was time to make a stand. So he sat on the bed and waited. And while he waited it all began to come back to him.

He had fled from New York city where he was born on May 25, 1927, to suburban New Jersey where he had grown up, just another normal average American kid. Baseball and bowling, bubblegum and prom night.

But after his father died in 1935, things changed. His mother sent him to one, then another private school, both in Connecticut. That was when he knew that he would be running all his life, and decided to make the most of it.

So he had tried acting. There was something about standing on a wooden stage in front of an audience and pretending to be strange men, other men, that was exciting. It helped him forget they were out there. That they might come at any time and take him back.

Acting was great. Like “running away to join the circus” as he told a reporter from The Chicago Tribune much later. In 1943, he got a role in the Broadway production of a play called “Junior Miss” and became a part of the show’s national touring company. More moving around. Good. Safer. From them.

Somewhere on the way, he passed through Detroit, got the bright idea that he should join the Royal Canadian Air Force, crossed over into Windsor, Ontario and applied but was turned down. “Too young,” was the reason given. But he knew the real reason: Them. In 1945, the Marines took him in, and he saw active duty in the South Pacific.

That was when he started writing. Just a log, really, an account of his experiences in combat. It was over 500 pages by the time he was discharged in San Francisco. But it was lost in the excitement of that night–or taken away for evidence. You know who.

He came back to the stage. Small parts in Broadway productions, more than 200 appearances in television dramas. Mostly as a lawyer or a homicidal killer. Because of his lean mean looks. But inside, he was less than mean, he was hungry for something more than just being told what to do, what to say, where to stand, the usual gripe of an actor’s life.

He turned producer, moving again, always moving. One step ahead of the piper. And them. Fort Lee, New Jersey. Paramus, New Jersey. Finally, he had had enough.

That was when it began. He taught himself to wake at 4.30 every morning, to scrawl 2,000 words or more (never less) on a yellow legal pad. To make up the stories that filled his mind. Not just stories, but things he knew were real, were happening all around him, to people like him. Big corporations, big governments, big people, tracking down, victimizing little people like himself.

Novels of paranoia, that’s what he liked to call them. Not thrillers, as the publicists labelled them later. Stories about individuals trying to deal with giant forces and systems.

The first publisher turned it down. The second took a chance on it. And on his next book. And the one after that. Meanwhile, he kept doing voiceover work for television commercials, just in case the writing thing fizzled out. He was the voice for Tuna Helper and Plunge bathroom cleaner, and other domestic miracles.

But the first two books both sold brilliantly, and the third book busted the bank. And that was it. After that, no more voiceovers, no more producing stage plays that nobody saw, no more bit parts playing serial killers in TV dramas.

He was Robert Ludlum, bestselling novelist.

And now, on this cool March morning in the first year of the new millennium, he was still Robert Ludlum. 73 years old. Author of 21 novels, every single one a New York Times Bestseller, an unbroken record for 30 years. 210 million copies sold in 32 languages and 40 countries.

His current bestseller was The Prometheus Deception. His previous one The Hades Factor was just out in paperback. It was the first in a series co-authored with different writers, called the Covert-One Series. The next title, The Cassandra Compact, co-authored with Philip Shelby, would be released on 15th May 2001.

There was a big Hollywood movie coming out too this year. An adaptation of his best-selling (and some said best) novel of all: The Bourne Identity. Currently under production by Universal Pictures, it starred Matt Damon. And if it did well, then Hollywood would want to make a whole lot of pictures from his books. And there were a lot of books.

Just look at them now, lined up on that shelf in reverse order, marching back through the years.

The Cassandra Complex (With Philip Shelby)
The Prometheus Deception
The Hades Factor (With Gayle Lynds)
The Matarese Countdown
The Apocalypse Watch
The Road to Omaha
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Icarus Agenda
The Bourne Supremacy
The Aquitaine Progression
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Bourne Identity
The Matarese Circle
The Gemini Contenders
The Holcroft Covenant
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Road to Gandolfo
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Cry of the Halidon
Trevayne
The Matlock Paper
The Osterman Weekend
The Scarlatti Inheritance

He got up to pick up one of them, his favourite, the one he had loved best because he had written it at white heat, never knowing what was going to happen on the next page. That was his only secret, to keep discovering page after page what happened next, and that was what kept his readers turning those pages too.

But before he could reach out and take the book, they came for him. They caught him in a vise around the heart. And laid him out on the bed. The hospital bed.

He went quickly and peacefully. His wife and grown children were well provided for. All his affairs were in order. Even his publishers would be pleased they had just signed him to the series, so the books could continue to appear years after his death.

And in any case, he had known that they would come sooner or later. No matter how far or how long he ran. He smiled a last smile. For Bourne. For Rhinemann. For Scarlatti. For Osterman. For Holcroft. For every last one of them.

And then he let the light fade from his eyes.

The last thought that flashed through his mind was: But who are they? And why do they want me?

And then he was gone.

The answer would have to remain a secret to the end.

Like a final twist at the close of one of his own stories.

Mar 30, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Telegraph’s Fave: Vertigo vows Kolkata

This week, Vertigo makes it the list of The Top Five Books in The Telegraph (Calcutta).

And its run of rave reviews continues countrywide. As well as its on-off appearances on bestseller lists.

Interestingly, while it isn’t a nationwide bestseller like the Ramayana novels, it’s selling exceptionally well at certain bookstores in certain cities.

What does that mean? Beats me. Except…well, maybe some people have better book sense than others, hmm?

What can I say? Ravi Singh, and the rest of the team at Penguin India sure as heck knew what they were doing when they decided to reissue this 13-year old novel.

Thanks, guys.

Mar 29, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Bangalore loves Banker: Demons of Chitrakut appears on bestseller lists in the IT city

Don’t know why, but Bangalore seems to love me – or my books, at least.

Demons of Chitrakut, barely out in bookstores, has started appearing on Bangalore bestseller lists, according to my publishers.

If past experience is any indication, Delhi usually follows soon after.

Why Bangalore and Delhi first? And why not Mumbai? Beats me.

Maybe because ‘ghar ki murgi, daal barabar’?

Or because I don’t speak to any Mumbai journalists, with no exceptions – while I am somewhat cautiously open to speaking to non-Mumbai journalists, occasionally.

And in Mumbai, of course, you’re either a Page 3 celebrity or you’re nobody.

So Mumbai’s nobody is Bangalore’s bestseller…and Delhi…and Kolkatta…and Chennai…and London…and Singapore…and Kuala Lampur…and…etc…

Mar 28, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

So men, what you’re doing nowdays? – random notes on current reading, music, movies.

Currently listening to Incubus, Bombay Rockers (still), Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Oasis, Nine Inch Nails, old Hindi film music, and some classical.

Currently reading a lot of history tomes. Just finished The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by James Lawrence (I’d read his Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India), Soldier Sahibs by Charles Allen, still working through Empire by Niall Ferguson and The Honourable Company by John Keay. Somewhere in the midst of all that, a book I’d been awaiting for awhile arrived, and I pounced on it like a hungry leopard on a gazelle – Africa: A biography of the continent by John Reader.

Brilliant, simply brilliant. A must-read for anyone interested in evolution, paleoanthropology, geography, and of course, human history itself. At times, it’s hard to digest because of the inevitable disgust that overwhelms you over the brutality of white peoples against the natives of that beautiful bright continent. And the legacy of that brutality remains today, in the incessant wars, epidemics, genocides that ravage Africa itself, as well as the omnipresent reminder of ten million abducted, abused, and enslaved souls, whose descendants live on as modern-day African Americans, and people of African descent across the world.

A great book, even if it is written by a non-African – and I make that point because it is itself a comment on Africa’s subordination and subjugation that we continue to be shown its history through the eyes of its exploiters and enslavers. At least, John Reader is aware of that irony and takes pains to address the issue of balance without eschewing the racial issues inherent in his undertaking.

Now, if only we could get Max Muller to rescind half of – no, make that all of – his historical writings on Indology, we might have a biography of the Indian sub-continent that was as valuable as this book.

Also happened to pick up a copy apiece of On Death and Dying and Life Lessons by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, reprints of the classic non-fiction books about dealing with death and learning from it to enrich our lives. Kubler-Ross, for those of you who still remember the Seventies, was the psychiatrist-author who first named the five stages in which all human beings deal with death and dying: Denial (and Isolation), Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

Worth a read, even if you think the topic isn’t for you, or, like most of us, that death is something that happens to other people, not you. (In short, if you’re still stuck in the first stage, like most of us are most of the time.)

And then of course there’s the TP reading that I do to cleanse my palate between books.

Like The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon which I finished a couple of nights ago. Enjoyable, if over-translated (I don’t really care if the translator is Robert Graves’ daughter,but either she or the original text was trying way too hard for ‘literary’ effect) and readablewithout being particularly memorable.

It’s invited comparisons to Borges – which is laughable, because I can think of single short-short stories by Borges which are masterpieces, which this entire 500+ page novel isn’t – and Dumas, which is actually more accurate, except that Dumas’ novels had much more action and suspense.

The problem with Shadow of the Wind is that it takes entirely too long to deliver on an initially promising premise. By around the halfway mark, you’re itching to skip pages, and if you don’t, as I didn’t, you end up wondering why the hell you didn’t.

Too many italicized sections, narrating flashback events that get repititive, and just plain uninteresting, despite the fact that they’re actually more interesting than the present-day goings on.

What it did remind me of, in voice and tone, was The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

But oh wow, Secret History was a book and a half, a great read that didn’t promise too much and ended up delivering more than the sum of its contents. While Shadow of the Wind hands out blank cheques left, right and centre, most of which end up bouncing and leaving you with a bankrupt feeling. Still, worth a dekho if you’re in the mood for fashionable lit-fic.

Seen any good movies lately? I saw a teen comedy – I love teen comedies – the other night, Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle. Fun! Sure, vulgar as hell at times, gratingly offensive in parts, and with gratuitous everything throughout, but it was still a good TP film – just don’t see it with your parents or kids around, and you’ll have a good snorting laughfest. It’s especially nice that an Indian character gets to co-star in a major comedy and comes off without making too much of an ass of himself – he makes asses of the white guys instead, which is part of the film’s crossover appeal.

Speaking of history and comedy and white writers who take it upon themselves to tell us our own histories (ah, that white man’s burden), couldn’t help but pause and stare at this line in The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by James Lawrence.

Now, Lawrence is one of the most respected British historians, and an acknowledged expert on British Indian history, but clearly he doesn’t know a word of Hindi or this minor infelicity would never have crept in.

From Page 127, the last sentence, and I quote verbatim:

“Seizing Calcutta was a surprisingly easy operation and astonished the Bengalis, who afterwards mocked the British as ‘banchots’ (cowards).”

Perhaps someone should let Mr Lawrence know that ‘banchots’ doesn’t mean ‘cowards’.

Somehow I doubt he’d have used that word if he knew what it really means. Unless he’s trying to make amends for the way the British acted in India, in which case, I can live with them referring to themselves as, ahem. Cough, cough, sneeze.

And on that solemn note, I’ll say bye-bye bhaiyon-aur-behenon for now.

Mar 26, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The review that caused a tehelka in Tehelka: Babu Fictions by Tabish Khair

In a career as a journalist, first amateur, then part-time, and for a brief period, full-time, spanning around 25 years, my byline appeared around 1820 times in print. Most of them were for hoity toity publications like Times of India, Hindustan Times, Telegraph, Outlook, India Today, The Week, Rediff.com, etc.

Now, on with the review that made such a tehelka in Tehelka…

BABU FICTIONS: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels
By Tabish Khair
Oxford University Press
Literary Criticism
407 pages, Hardcover, Rs 575

Clearly, Tabish Khair hadn’t read Sagarika Ghose’s The Gin Drinkers at the time of writing this book but he should have. Reporter Ghose’s debut novel paints a pointillist portrait of Delhi literary intellectuals standing around at cocktail parties discussing Proust and Punjabi in the same gin-laden breath.

Diplomats, socialites, industrialists with cultural pretensions, nouveau riche seeking social respectability by patronizing artists, desi Soho-type dilettantes in their straggly beards and khadi kurtas and jeans. They’re the perfect readership for this book at hand. In fact, I’d bet an US dollar that if there’s a book launch for Babu Fictions, it’s this exact crowd you’d meet.

Which is not to say that they read this book. Not on their lives! Oh, they would buy it all right. And put it up there on the elegantly designed shelves, besides the leatherbound editions and fashionable new literary novels by mega-advance-earning and award-winning Indian English novelists. Most of whom are the subject of discussion in this book.

But they’d never read it. Ploughing through the 407 closely leaded pages of Macaulayesque prose, poring through arguments about the “existential concept of self-estrangement” and the Kierkegaardian preoccupation with alienation of R K Narayan’s protagonists, wading through the thick swamps of Khair’s thesis as he works his way towards epiphany as methodically as a dying elephant in search of the fabled graveyard, these are not pleasures sought out by the peculiar breed of literary afficionados who spend the rupees at the turnstile in Indian bookstores.

On the other hand, there are certainly professors of English Lit at universities across the country who’ll wet their knickers with glee at the sight of this tome. It’s the perfect convoluted pseudo-literary doublespeak that passes for literary criticism in this country. The attitude of ‘let us now praise critically acclaimed writers’ and ‘hail, hail, the literary gang’s all here’ pervades every page.

Khair even has a decent argument or two to offer. Such as his excellent championship of the novels of Amitav Ghosh and his relative “lack of discovery” by Western critics coloured by colonial perceptions of literary heritage. Ghosh is arguably the finest living Indian English writer, both in fiction as well as nonfiction, and the very fact that he remains largely unsold and unlauded while the current Ken and Barbie dolls of the month continue to be handed out staggering advances and paraded through the media is a disturbing and important issue that deserves exploration.

Khair could have simply taken the chapters on Ghosh and published them as a separate if smaller treatise in its own right. As such, it would have been perhaps the most insightful analysis of Ghosh’s relative obscurity (as compared to his more glamour-laden colleagues like Rushdie, Roy and Seth) and literary importance ever attempted.

But Khair’s bitten by the ‘think big’ bug. It’s not enough to look at the colourful landscape of contemporary Indian English fiction and examine it in its own right, discovering the pleasures and pains of this mela-like display. Khair has to succumb to literary ass-writis, wringing his convoluted arguments in his best Harold Bloom imitation, squeezing the most organic narratives into wooden, synthetic meta-theories of literary colonialism, Raj hangovers, and similarly imposed strictures and structures.

Still, there’s meat for the mind and food for thought aplenty here. If you’re a student or a
teacher of Eng. Lit., you’ll probably find much to chew on between these Oxfordian pages. If you’ve read your way through Indian English shelves in the last decade or so (as well as the notable works of the previous five) you’ll be able to weave steadily through the labyrynthine meanderings of Khair’s mind.

But here’s the main problem: I just don’t buy it. After those 407 closely printed pages and reams of philosophical, philological, and meta-critical arguments and dozens of examples cited, I just don’t agree with the central frame of reference. Why judge Indian English novelists and their work in the context of West-East references at all? Why examine the byways and highways of colonial and post-colonial literary criticism in search of influences and inferences?

It’s true that Indian English fiction occupies a bastard child status in contemporary world literature. It’s also true that most of its authors were weaned on a steady diet of classical, hence colonial, texts. And that even the language used by these upstart renegades is that of their former rulers rather than an indigenous tongue.

But does that mean we continue to measure and analyze every new work and author only in the light of that outdated colonial tradition? Or that we expect every new novel to measure upto the standards and precepts of those towering pillars of world literature? Wasn’t it Vikram Seth who said in Time magazine at the time of the launch of A Suitable Boy that “the English language has been taken over”? And wasn’t he right?

Professors of dwindling English classes and scholars who write books like these for other scholars to read will probably find a dozen cocktail parties worth of pleasurable argument in the pages of Babu Fictions. But to anybody interested in the living river of the genre, there’s no jewel of insight or illumination to be found here. Just the tired academic labourings of yet another colonial-hungover babu critic.

Mar 25, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Drunk and In Search of a Story: Sagarika Ghose’s The Gin Drinkers

This is another oldie – but I won’t claim it’s a goldie! – from my journalistic career. It appeared first in The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, and I recall hearing an anecdote about it subsequently from a Delhi journalist friend. At the launch of the novel in New Delhi, it seems someone, possibly Renuka Chatterjee of HarperCollins, read out my entire review before the assembled literati. And, if you believe such things, the author Sagarika Ghose was reduced to tears.

Now, despite my erstwhile reputation as an ‘angry young columnist’, I never intended to bring tears to anyone’s eyes, Ghose’s or anyone else’s. But I have to admit, I was a bit bemused. What in this review was scalding enough to make an author cry? Frankly, I’ve received worse reviews myself, and yes, while I did shudder and look longingly at the bottle of rat poison on the top shelf of my kitchen, I promptly overcame the impulse by taking the newspaper or magazine in which the offending (or offensive) review appeared and put it to good use in my bathroom, by assigning it a purpose which simultaneously saves precious water and recycles newsprint successfully. I’m sure Shekhar Kapur and the BMC would approve.

Anyway, coming back to the review. I’ve reprinted it here just as it appeared – although I have no idea what headline and captions HT used at the time – and still feel that while it does tear into the book’s vitals somewhat strongly, it also lavishes generous praise on the writer’s talents. And this from an author-reviewer who candidly insists that I myself have no talent at all, just a very good keyboard…

THE GIN DRINKERS by Sagarika Ghose

After socialite wives, failed actors and salacious celebs, it’s the turn of the reporter. A spate of newsdesk faithfuls have turned to their keyboards and begun pounding out longer, much longer copy. Perhaps the most successful has been Pinki Virani, whose three non-fiction books are well researched, professionally written and have sold extremely well. But unlike Virani, most byliners aren’t satisfied with the gritty respectability of book-length journalism. It’s the glamour of fictional stardom they seek. Or lit-fic as I call it, short for the new fashionable ‘literary’ fiction that seems more ubiquitous than pulps ever were.

Sagarika Ghose is the latest name to leap off the masthead and onto the front cover. Being completely un-hip about such things, I scanned the author bio on the inside back cover of this book to find out a bit more about her. She cleverly leaves out her journalistic c.v. (all the better to mold a new image as a novelist, my dear!) and mentions only that “since 1991 she has worked in New Delhi as a journalist”. I seem to remember that she had some truck with the newsmagazine Outlook, but if she’s ashamed to admit it, why should I give the game away!

But she needn’t be ashamed of this novel. As a first novel, it’s more than creditable. The Gin Drinkers is extremely well written, in an unsentimental yet generous prose style. Ghose has a sure touch with the language that makes you want to read on, enjoying the sips of detail she squeezes out effortlessly. Her flagon is a familiar one: the Delhi world of socialites, mediapersons, literati, the politically connected, and intellectually superior Oxbridge types. Her sure eye for character detail and tropes suggest she’s been to a lot of parties and brought home something more than just a hangover.

The novel is aptly titled (and beautifully edited, adding yet another shiny green feather to HarperCollins’ Chief Editor Renuka Chatterjee’s crowded cap). It’s very comfortable, easy reading, flowing from character to character, circumstance to happenstance. Over its 345 pages, a mosaic of detail constructs itself bit by bit, leaving you with a very lush portrait of Delhi intellectual life. Somewhat like an oversized Seurat mural, Sunday in the Park with George, or perhaps even the enormous Mario mural in the Mumbai shopping mall, Crossroads.

On another level, The Gin Drinkers is at the far end of the spectrum from less fully realized novels such as say, The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra, another byliner turned prose-grinder. What Romantics, and indeed most Indian English novels suffer from most is a kind of ‘kanjoosi’ that leads to a strange sterility when it comes to describing the emotional and inner life of characters. Ghose is at her best with the solitary narrative monologues of characters such as Madhu alone in her hotel room with her baby, reminiscent of the best writers anywhere.

But having said that, here’s the problem: The story. There isn’t one. Not one worth reading at least, let alone writing, editing, and publishing between the covers of a very elegantly designed and produced hardback. This is sad, because Ghose displays such a virtuosic talent that you keep waiting for the point when the book will finally “move on”. Sadly, that never happens. She remains mired in the nuances and details of her characters. And they just aren’t interesting enough to sustain 345 pages of ‘nothing on’.

In fact, this flaw is more than just a book-flaw. It’s an author-flaw that seriously begs correction. As a former newsie, Ghose is clearly lost without a subject, a story or a theme. If she finds Delhi socialite and intellectual life so stimulating, it would be better to live it than write about it. It’s boring enough to observe; why on earth would anyone want to pen a whole book about it? If she’s trying to tell us something here about the people whose lives interweave with that milieu, then she fails completely. Except for occasional vignettes that appeal, she never achieves a full connection in the sense that Forster meant when he cried out ‘Only connect’.

The Gin Drinkers comes off as a beautifully written and observed Delhi novel of manners that seems concerned only with a small insulare universe of a few thousand persons, all apparently ivy league graduated, Anglicized, media-savvy, jean-clad thirtysomething. Since this group is also the main audience for lit-fic in India, it’s a savvy marketing idea.

But Ghose’s talent is superior to such an insignificant exercise. She has what it takes to vault the wall and soar with the best, if she can only find a story that grips her powerfully enough to awaken her best journalistic instincts. This is a perfect example of the kind of trashy non-novel journalists tend to reel out in a desperate attempt to prove they’re ‘real writers’. Sagarika Ghose can do much better. And must.

Mar 24, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Retelling the Ramayana: Author’s Note to the Indian edition

PS: Those of you who have the Penguin India editions of Prince of Ayodhya, Siege of Mithila, and/or Demons of Chitrakut, will find a few minor additions to this essay, especially in the last section “Maazi Naroti”. This revised version appears in Armies of Hanuman, due out in June 2005. As always, I can’t seem to stop tinkering with my prose until it’s dragged, kicking and screaming, from my hands!

Oh well. At least I’m not as bad as the famous American horror novelist, who shall remain un-named here, who was still writing the last few pages of his novel as he stepped out of the lift to enter his editor’s office! I usually force myself to stop when the printers start screaming and tearing out their hair.

One more small request: Please don’t copy or print out any part of this Essay, unless you have written permission from me and/or the publishers, Penguin India. If you really must have a printed copy for yourself, or to show someone, I’m afraid you’ll just have to invest a couple hundred rupees and buy a copy of one of the Ramayana books. And if you don’t already own one of them, hmm, why on earth are you reading this at all?

Enough said. Now, on with the show…


Adi-Kavya: The first retelling

Some three thousand years ago, a sage named Valmiki lived in a remote forest ashram, practising austerities with his disciples. One day, the wandering sage Narada visited the ashram and was asked by Valmiki if he knew of a perfect man. Narada said, indeed, he did know of such a person, and then told Valmiki and his disciples a story of an ideal man.

Some days later, Valmiki happened to witness a hunter killing a kraunchya bird. The crane’s partner was left desolate, and cried inconsolably. Valmiki was overwhelmed by anger at the hunter’s action, and sorrow at the bird’s loss. He felt driven to do something rash, but controlled himself with difficulty.

After his anger and sorrow subsided, he questioned his outburst. After so many years of practising meditation and austerities, he had still not been able to master his own emotions. Was it even possible to do so? Could any person truly become a master of his passions? For a while he despaired, but then he recalled the story Narada had told him. He thought about the implications of the story, about the choices made by the protagonist and how he had indeed shown great mastery of his own thoughts, words, deeds and feelings. Valmiki felt inspired by the recollection and filled with a calm serenity such as he had never felt before.

As he recollected the tale of that perfect man of whom Narada had spoken, he found himself reciting it in a particular cadence and rhythm. He realised that this rhythm or metre corresponded to the warbling cries of the kraunchya bird, as if in tribute to the loss that had inspired his recollection. At once, he was taken by a resolved to compose his own version of the story, using the new form of metre, that others might hear it and be as inspired as he was.

But Narada’s story was only a bare narration of the events, a mere plot outline as we would call it today. In order to make the story attractive and memorable to ordinary listeners, Valmiki would have to add and embellish considerably, filling in details and inventing incidents from his own imagination. He would have to dramatise the whole story in order to bring out the powerful dilemmas faced by the protagonist.

But what right did he have to do so? After all, this was not his story. It was a tale told to him. A tale of a real man and real events. How could he make up his own version of the story?

At this point, Valmiki was visited by Lord Brahma himself. The Creator told him to set his worries aside and to begin composition ofng the work he had in mind. Here is how Valmiki quoted Brahma’s exhortation to him, in an introductory passage not unlike this one that you are reading right now:

“Recite the tale of Rama…as you heard it told by Narada. Recite the deeds of Rama that are already known as well as those that are not, his adventures…his battles…the acts of Sita, known and unknown. Whatever you do not know will become known to you. Never will your words be inappropriate. Tell Rama’s story…that it may prevail on earth for as long as the mountains and the rivers exist.”

Valmiki needed no further urging. He began composing his poem. He titled it, Rama-yana, meaning literally, The Movements (or Travels) of Rama.

Foretelling the future

The first thing Valmiki realised on completing his composition was that it was incomplete. What good was a story without anyone to tell it to? In the tradition of his age, a bard would normally recite his compositions himself, perhaps earning some favour or payment in coin or kind, more often rewarded only with the appreciation of his listeners. But Valmiki knew that while the form of the story was his creation, the story itself belonged to all his countrymen. He recalled Brahma’s exhortation that Rama’s story must prevail on earth for as long as the mountains and the rivers exist.

So he taught it to his disciples, among whose number were two young boys whose mother had sought sanctuary with him years ago. Those two boys, Luv and Kusa, then travelled from place to place, reciting the Ramayana as composed by their guru. In time, fate brought them before the very Rama described in the poem. Rama knew at once that the poem referred to him and understood that these boys could be none other than his sons by the banished Sita. Called upon by the curious king, Valmiki himself then appeared before Rama and entreated him to accept Sita back.

Later, Rama asked Valmiki to compose an additional part to the poem, so that he himself, Rama Chandra, might know what would happen to him in future!

Valmiki obeyed this extraordinary command, and this supplementary section became the Uttara Kaand of his poem.

Valmiki’s Sanskrit rendition of the tale was a brilliant work by any standards, ancient or modern. Its charm, beauty and originality can never be matched. It is a true masterpiece of Indian literature, the ‘adi-kavya’ which stands as the fountainhead of our great cultural record. Even today, thousands of years after its composition, it remains unsurpassed.

And yet, when we narrate the story of the Ramayana today, it is not Valmiki’s Sanskrit shlokas that we recite. Few of us today have even read Valmiki’s immortal composition in its original. Most have not even read an abridgement. Indeed, an unabridged Ramayana itself, reproducing Valmiki’s verse without alteration or revisions, is almost impossible to find. Even the most learned of scholars, steeped in a lifetime of study of ancient Sanskrit literature, maintain that the versions of Valmiki’s poem that exist today have been revised and added to by later hands. Some believe that the first and seventh kaands, as well as a number of passages within the other kaands, were all inserted by later writers who preferred to remain anonymous.

Perhaps the earliest retelling of Valmiki’s poem is to be found in the pages of that vast ocean of stories we call the Mahabharata. When Krishna Dwaipayana-Vyasa, more popularly known today as Ved Vyasa, composed his equally legendary epic, he retold the story of the Ramayana in one passage. His retelling differs in small but significant ways.

Sometime later, the burgeoning Buddhist literature, usually composed in the Pali dialect, also included stories from the Ramayana, recast in a somewhat different light. Indeed, Buddhist literature redefined the term dharma itself, restating it as dhamma and changing the definition of this and several other core concepts.

In the 11th century a Tamil poet named Kamban undertook his own retelling of the Ramayana legend. Starting out with what seems to have been an attempt to translate Valmiki’s Ramayana, Kamban nevertheless deviated dramatically from his source material. In the Kamban Ramayana entire episodes are deleted, new ones appear, people and places are renamed or changed altogether, and even the order of some major events is revised. Most of all, Kamban’s Ramayana re-situates relocates the entire story in a milieu that is recognisably 11th century Tamil Nadu in its geography, history, clothes, customs, etc, rather than the north Indian milieu of Valmiki’s Sanskrit original. It is essentially a whole new Ramayana, retold in a far more passionate, rich and colourful idiom.

A few centuries later, Sant Tulsidas undertook his interpretation of the epic. Tulsidas went so far as to title his work Ramcharitramanas, rather than calling it the Ramayana. By doing so, he signalled that he was not undertaking a faithful translation, but a wholly new variation of his own creation. The differences are substantial.

In art, sculpture, musical renditions, even in dance, mime and street theatrical performances, the story of Valmiki’s great poem has been retold over and over, in countless different variations, some with minor alterations, others with major deviations. The tradition of retellings continues even in modern times, through television serials, films, puppet theatre, children’s versions, cartoons, poetry, pop music and, of course, in the tradition of Ramlila enactments across the country every year.

Yet how many of these are faithful to Valmiki? How many, if any at all, actually refer to the original Sanskrit text, or even attempt to seek out that text?

Should they even do so?

So many Ramayanas

Does a grandmother consult Valmiki’s Ramayana before she retells the tale to her grandchildren at night? When she imitates a rakshasa’s roar or Ravana’s laugh, or Sita’s tears, or Rama’s stoic manner, whom does she base her performance on? When an actor portrays Rama in a television serial, or a Ramlila performer enacts a scene, or a sculptor chisels a likeness, a painter a sketch, whom do they all refer to? There were no illustrations in Valmiki’s Ramayana. No existing portraits of Rama survive from that age, no recordings of his voice or video records of his deeds.

Indeed, many of the episodes or ‘moments’ we believe are from Valmiki’s Ramayana are not even present in the original Sanskrit work. They are the result of later retellers, often derived from their own imagination. One instance is the ‘seema rekha’ believed to have been drawn by Lakshman before leaving Sita in the hut. No mention of this incident exists in the Valmiki Ramayana. Then there is the constant process of revision that has altered even those scenes that remain constant through various retellings.

For example, take the scene where Sita entreats Rama to allow her to accompany him into exile.
In Valmiki’s Ramayana, when Rama tells Sita he hais to go into exile, and she asks him to allow her to go with him, he refuses outright. At first, Sita pleads with him and cries earnest tears, but when Rama remains adamant, she grows angry and rebukes him in shockingly harsh terms. She refers to him as a ‘woman disguised as a man’, says that ‘the world is wrong when they say that there is no one greater than Rama’, calls him ‘depressed and frightened’, ‘an actor playing a role’, and other choice epithets. It is one of the longer scenes in Valmiki’s Ramayana, almost equalling in length the entire narration of Rama’s early childhood years!

Tamil poet Kamban retells this incident in his more compressed, volatile, rich style, reducing Sita’s objections to a couple of brief rebukes: ‘Could it be that the real reason [for Rama not taking her into exile] is that with me left behind, you’ll be free to enjoy yourself in the forest?’

By the time we reach Sant Tulsidas’s rescencion recension, Sita’s rebukes are reduced to a few tearful admonitions and appeals.

Were these changes the result of the change in the socially accepted standards of behaviour between men and women in our country? Quite possibly. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitramanas depicts a world quite different from that which Valmiki or even Kamban depict. In fact, each of these three versions differs so drastically in terms of the language used, the clothes worn, the various social and cultural references, that they seem almost independent of one another.

Perhaps the most popularly known version in more recent times is a simplified English translation of a series of Tamil retellings of selected episodes of the Kamban version, serialized in a children’s magazine about fifty years ago. This version by C. Rajagopalachari, aka Rajaji, was my favourite version as a child too. It was only much later that I found, through my own extensive research that my beloved Rajaji version left out whole chunks of the original story and simplified other parts considerably. Still later, I was sorely disappointed by yet another version by an otherwise great writer, R. K. Narayan. In his severely abridged retelling, the story is dealt with in a manner so rushed and abbreviated, it is reduced to a moral fable rather than the rich, powerful, mythic epic that Valmiki created.

English scholar William S. Buck’s 19th century version, dubiously regarded as a classic by English scholars, read like it might have been composed under the influence of certain intoxicants: In one significant departure from Indian versions, Guha, the tribal chief of the Nisada fisherfolk, without discernible reason, spews a diatribe against brahmins, and ends by kicking a statue of Lord Shiva. To add further confusion, in the illustration accompanying this chapter, Guha is shown kicking what appears to be a statue of Buddha!

If you travel outside India, farther east, you will find more versions of the Ramayana that are so far removed from Valmiki, that some are barely recognizable as the same story. In one recent study of these various versions of the epic across the different cultures of Asia, an aging Muslim woman in Indonesia is surprised to learn from the author that we have our own Ramayana in India also! The kings of Thailand are always named Rama along with other dynastic titles, and consider themselves to be direct descendants of Rama Chandra. The largest Rama temple, an inspiring ruin even today, is situated not in India, or even in Nepal, the only nation that takes Hinduism as its official religion, but in Cambodia. It is called Angkor Vat.

In fact, it is now possible to say that there are as many Ramayanas as there are people who know the tale, or claim to know it. And no two versions are exactly alike.

My Ramayana: A personal odyssey

And yet, would we rather have this democratic mélange of versions and variations, or would we rather have a forgottenhalf-remembered, extinct, tale recollected only dimly, like a mostly- forgotten myth that we can recall only fragments of?

Valmiki’s ‘original’ Ramayana was written in Sanskrit, the language of his time and in an idiom that was highly modern for its age. In fact, it was so avant garde in its style—the kraunchya-inspired shloka metre—that it was considered ‘adi’ or the first of its kind. Today, almost none of us can understand or read it in its original form.

Kamban’s overblown rhetoric and colourful descriptions, while magnificently inspired and appropriate for its age, areis equally anachronistic in today’s times.

Tulsidas’s interpretation, while rightfully regarded as a sacred text, can seem somewhat heavy- handed in its depiction of man-woman relationships. It is more of a religious tribute to Lord Rama’s divinity than a realistic retelling of the story itself.

In Ved Vyasa’s version, the ultimate cause of all Rama’s misfortunes, working through the devices of ill-intentioned Manthara, misguided Kaikeyi and reprehensible Ravana, is none of these three.In Ved Vyasa’s version, the devices of ill-intentioned Manthara, misguided Kaikeyi and reprehensible Ravana are not the ultimate cause of Rama’s misfortunes. In fact, it is none of not due to the asuras either. It is Brahma himself, using the mortal avatar of Vishnu to cleanse the world of evil, as perpetuated by Ravana and his asuras, in order to maintain the eternal balance of good and evil.

My reasons for attempting this retelling were simple and intensely personal. As a child of an intensely unhappy broken marriage, a violently bitter failure of parents of two different cultures (Anglo-Indian Christian and Gujarati Hindu) to accept their differences and find common ground, I turned to literature for solace. My first readings were, by accident, in the realm of mythology. So inspired was I by the simple power and heroic victories of those ancient ur-tales, I decided to become a writer and tell stories of my own that would be as great, as inspiring to others. To attempt, if possible, to bridge cultures, and knit together disparate lives by showing the common struggle and strife and, ultimately, triumph of all human souls.

I was barely a boy then. Thirty-odd years of living and battling life later, albeit not as colourful as Valmiki’s thieving and dacoit years, I was moved by a powerful inexplicable urge to read the Ramayana once more. Every version I read seemed to lack something, that vital something that I can only describe as the ‘connection’ to the work. In a troubled phase, battling with moral conundrums of my own, I set to writing my own version of the events. My mind exploded with images, scenes, entire conversations between characters. I saw, I heard, I felt…I wrote. Was I exhorted by Brahma himself? I had no reader in mind, except myself—and everyone. I changed as a person over the course of that writing. I found peace, or a kind of peace. I saw how people could devote their lives to worshipping Rama, or Krishna, or Devi for that matter, my own special ‘Maa’. But I also felt that this story was beyond religion, beyond nationality, beyond race, colour, or creed.

Undertaking to retell a story as great and as precious as our classic adi-kavya is not an enterprise lightly attempted. The first thing I did was study every available edition of previous retellings to know what had been done before, the differences between various retellings, and attempt to understand why. I also spoke extensively to people known and unknown about their knowledge of the poem, in an attempt to trace how millennia of verbal retellings have altered the perception of the tale. One of the most striking things was that most people had never actually read the ‘original’ Valmiki Ramayana. Indeed, most people considered Ramcharitramanas by Tulsidas to be ‘the Ramayana’, and assumed it was an accurate reprisal of the Sanskrit work. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

For instance, Valmiki’s Ramayana depicts Dasaratha as having three hundred and fifty concubines in addition to his three titled wives. In keeping with the kingly practises of that age, the aging raja’s predilection for the fairer sex is depicted honestly and without any sense of misogyny. Valmiki neither comments on nor criticises Dasaratha’s fondness for fleshly pleasures, he simply states it. When Rama takes leave of his father before going into exile, he does so in the palace of concubines, and all of them weep as copiously for the exiled son of their master. When Valmiki describes women, he does so by enumerating the virtues of each part of their anatomy. There is no sense of embarrassment or male chauvinism evident here: he is simply extolling the beauty of the women characters, just as he does for the male characters like Rama and Hanuman and, yes, even Ravana. Even in Kamban’s version, the woman are depicted in such ripe, full-blown language, that a modern reader like myself blushes in embarrassment. Yet the writer exhibits no awkwardness or prurience in these passages—he is simply describing them as he perceived them in the garb and fashion of his time.

By the time we reach Tulsidas and later versions, Rama is no less than a god in human avatar. And in keeping with this fore-knowledge, all related characters are depicted accordingly. So Dasaratha’s fleshly indulgences take a backseat, the women are portrayed fully clad and demure in appearance, and their beauty is ethereal rather than earthly.

How was I to approach my retelling? On one hand, the Ramayana was now regarded not as a Sanskrit epic of real events that occurred in ancient India, but as a moral fable of the actions of a human avatar of Vishnu. On the other hand, I felt the need to bring to life the ancient world of epic India in all its glory and magnificence, to explore the human drama as well as the divinity that drove it, to show the nuances of word and action and choice rather than a black-and-white depiction of good versus evil. More importantly, what could I offer that was fresh and new, yet faithful to the spirit of the original story? How could I ensure that all events and characters were depicted respectfully yet realistically?

There was little point in simply repeating any version that had gone before—those already existed, and those who desired to read the Ramayana in any one of its various forms could simply pick up one of those previous versions.

But what had never been done before was a complete, or ‘sampoorn’, Ramayana, incorporating the various, often contradictory aspects of the various Indian retellers (I wasn’t interested in foreign perspectives, frankly), while attempting to put us into the minds and hearts of the various characters. To go beyond a simple plot reprise and bring the whole story, the whole world of ancient India, alive. To do what every verbal reteller attempts, or any classical dancer does: Make the story live again.

In order to do this, I chose a modern idiom. I simply used the way I speak, an amalgam of English-Hindi-Urdu-Sanskrit, and various other terms from Indian languages. I deliberately used anachronisms like the term ‘abs’ or ‘morph’. because these were how I referred to those events. I based every section, every scene, every character’s dialogues and actions on the previous Ramayanas, be it Valmiki, Kamban, Tulsidas, or Vyasa, and even the various puranas. Everything you read here is based on actual research, or my interpretation of some detail noted in a previous work. The presentation, of course, is wholly original and my own.

Take the example of the scene of Sita entreating Rama to let her accompany him into exile. In my retelling, I sought to explore the relationship between Rama and Sita at a level that is beyond the physical or social plane. I believed that their’s was a love that was eternally destined, and that their bond surpassed all human ties. At one level, yes, I believed that they were Vishnu and Lakshmi. Yet, in the avatars they were currently in, they were Rama and Sita, two young people caught up in a time of great turmoil and strife, subjected to hard, difficult choices. Whatever their divine backgrounds and karma, here and now, they had to play out their parts one moment at a time, as real, flesh-and-blood people.

I adopted an approach that was realistic, putting myself (and thereby the reader) into the feelings and thoughts of both Rama and Sita at that moment of choice. I felt the intensity of their pain, the great sorrow and confusion, the frustration at events beyond their control, and also their ultimate acceptance of what was right, what must be done, of dharma. In my version, they argue as young couples will at such a time, they express their anger and mixed emotions, but in the end, it is not only through duty and dharma that she appeals to him. In the end, she appeals to him as a wife who is secure in the knowledge that her husband loves her sincerely, and that the bond that ties them is not merely one of duty or a formal social knot of matrimony, but of true love. After the tears, after all other avenues have been mutually discussed and discarded, she simply says his name and appeals to him, as a wife, a lover, and as his dearest friend.

‘Rama,’ she said. She raised her arms to him,
asking, not pleading. ‘Then let me go with you.’

And he agrees. Not as a god, an avatar, or even a prince. But as a man who loves her and respects her. And needs her.

In the footsteps of giants

Let me be clear.

This is not Valmiki’s story. Nor Kamban’s. Nor Tulsidas’s. Nor Vyasa’s. Nor R.K. Narayan’s. Nor Rajaji’s charming, abridged children’s version.

It is Rama’s story. And Rama’s story belongs to every one of us. Black, brown, white, or albino. Old or young. Male or female. Hindu, Christian, Muslim, or whatever faith you espouse. I was asked at a press conference to comment on the Babri Masjid demolition and its relation to my Ramayana. My answer was that the Ramayana had stood for three thousand years, and would stand for all infinity. Ayodhya, in my opinion, is not just a place in north-central Uttar Pradesh. It is a place in our hearts. And in that most sacred of places, it will live forever, burnished and beautiful as no temple of consecrated bricks can ever be.

When Rama himself heard Luv and Kusa recite Valmiki’s Ramayana for the first time, even he, the protagonist of the story, was flabbergasted by the sage’s version of the events—after all, even he had not known what happened to Sita after her exile, nor the childhood of Luv and Kusa, nor had he heard their mother’s version of events narrated so eloquently until then. And in commanding Valmiki to compose the section about future events, Rama himself added his seal of authority to Valmiki, adding weight to Brahma’s exhortation to recite the deeds of Rama that were already known ‘as well as those that are not’.

And so the tradition of telling and retelling the Ramayana began. It is that tradition that Kamban, Tulsidas, Vyasa, and so many others were following. It is through the works of these bards through the ages that this great tale continues to exist among us. If it changes shape and structure, form and even content, it is because that is the nature of the story itself: It inspires the teller to bring fresh insights to each new version, bringing us ever closer to understanding Rama himself.

This is why it must be told, and retold, an infinite number of times. By me. By you. By grandmothers to their children. By people everywhere, regardless of their identity. The first time I was told the Ramayana, it was on my grandfather’s knee. He was excessively fond of chewing tambaku paan and his breath was redolent of its aroma. Because I loved lions, he infused any number of lions in his Ramayana retellings—Rama fought lions, Sita fought them, I think even Manthara was cowed down by one at one point! My grandfather’s name, incidentally, was Ramchandra Banker. He died of throat cancer caused by his tobacco-chewing habit. But before his throat ceased working, he had passed on the tale to me.

And now, I pass it on to you. If you desire, and only if, then read this book. I believe if you are ready to read it, the tale will call out to you, as it did to me. If that happens, you are in for a great treat. Know that the version of the Ramayana retold within these pages is a living, breathing, new-born avatar of the tale itself. Told by a living author in a living idiom. It is my humble attempt to do for this great story what writers down the ages have done with it in their times.

Maazi naroti

In closing, I’d like to quote briefly from two venerable authors who have walked similar paths. The first is K.M. Munshi whose Krishnavatara series remains a benchmark of the genre of modern retellings of ancient tales. These lines are from Munshi’s own Introduction to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan edition of 1972:

“In the course of this adventure, I had often to depart from legend and myth, for such a reconstruction by a modern author must necessarily involve the exercise of whatever little imagination he has. I trust He will forgive me for the liberty I am taking, but I must write of Him as I see Him in my imagination.”

I could not have said it better.

Yuganta, Iravati Karve’s landmark Sahitya Akademi Award-winning study of the Mahabharata, packs more valuable insights into its slender 220-page pocket-sized edition (Disha) than any ten encyclopaedias. In arguably the finest essay of the book, Draupadi, she includes this footnote:

“The discussion up to this point is based on the critical edition of the Mahabharata. What follows is my naroti (naroti = a dry coconut shell, i.e. a worthless thing. The word ‘naroti’ was first used in this sense by the poet Eknath).”

In the free musings of Karve’s mind, we learn more about Vyasa’s formidable epic than from most encyclopaediac theses. For only from free thought can come truly progressive ideas.

In that spirit, I urge readers to consider my dried coconut shell reworking of the Ramayana in the same spirit.

If anything in the following pages pleases you, thank those great forebears in whose giant footsteps I placed my own small feet. If any parts displease you, then please blame them on my inadequate talents, not on the tale itself. Several previous infelicities and minor errors have all been meticulously corrected by my excellent editors and myself. We trust that this, the first Indian edition, will stand as the definitive edition of my Ramayana series.

Mumbai Ashok K. Banker
March 2005

Copyright © Ashok K. Banker 2005. All rights reserved.

Mar 24, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

With Prejudice and Without Pride: Susanna Clarke’s Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell

What have I been upto of late?

Well, apart from the usual reams of proofs to check and copy-edit corrections to make in my several different editions of various books of the Ramayana, working on my Mahabharata, and putting a few last-minute touches to King of Ayodhya before sending it off for good, I’ve been listening to a lot of classic rock (The Who rocks, majorly) and the usual mix of classical, hip hop and Punjabi rap (Bombay Rockers are cool), found time to see Million Dollar Baby (a simple, straight, human drama that doesn’t promise any pyrotechnics and delivers none), Meet The Fockers (vulgarly entertaining in parts, the CGI baby was the highlight with his baby signs and ‘first word’), and the whole Season 1 of The O.C. on DVD, the very enjoyable new teen soap that’s replaced Dawson’s Creek for my 12-year old daughter.

One thing I’ve been careful not to do on this blog is use it as a forum to pontificate on current events. There are any number of self-serving columnists in the daily rags to do that. I don’t intend to participate in the Page 1 culture, even to the extent of commenting on it, because, frankly, commenting on it is participating.

Don’t be fooled by the journalists who insist they’re ‘against’ Page 3 culture and spend reams of newsprint criticizing celebs and Page 3 people – as they say in advertising, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Those very journalists, by criticizing and attacking Page 3 people, have created their own monster sub-genre, the Page 1 culture. Wherein they take subjects that even Page 3 journalists would have hesitated to touch with a barge pole and splash it all over Page 1 under the guise of ‘news’. In this category, I’d include trashnews like the Delhi schoolboy-MMS scandal, the Kareena-Shahid alleged kiss in a restobar, the recent ‘casting couch sting operation’ fiasco, and a horde of other stuff that, twenty years ago, wouldn’t have found space in the gossip columns of most trashy film mags.

It’s gotten so bad that when I look at the latest sensational front page news these days, I have to ask myself, who are they really addressing this news to? Not us ordinary newsreaders surely, so it must be their colleagues who write for Page 3. It’s a war of the Roses, and it doesn’t smell sweet.

Someday, someone needs to conduct a sting operation on the news media itself, and expose the sordid corruption, power politicking and other inside horrors that go on in this secret world. I might have a few interesting revelations to make about it myself. In fact, I even have an unfinished novel, a sort-of sequel to Vertigo entitled Under A Neon Sky, which is set in this very grimy world of the Indian media, and deals in part with the rise of the Page 3 culture.

But that’s a story for another day.

For now, I’m going to do what I love most, post another review of a book. This one’s also from my Hindustan Times reviews cache, but after the book’s made waves everywhere, I thought it might be interesting to post my review here, to give you the other side of the story.

Enjoy…the review, if not the book itself!

(And despite saying I would not comment, even to criticize, I ended up making a few comments anyway, didn’t I? Ah, as they say, you can de-tongue, muzzle, hog-tie, and thrash an old columnist till he’s died nine times over, but you can’t make his fingers stop typing! Now you know why, in my heyday, I was called the most outspoken columnist in the country – I wouldn’t hesitate to criticize even my colleagues, or even my own editor: no wonder I didn’t get paid half the time!)

Jane Austen is Alive and Well, and Writing Fantasy

Jane Austen died and came back as a fantasy writer. In her new avatar, she calls herself Susanna Clarke, lives in Cambridge, and has authored a fat historical fantasy novel set in the year 1860. The book, which she now calls her “debut”, began attracting media attention long before publication and on release it’s been universally lauded. Unlike her previous avatar, the 21st century Ms Clarke (nee Austen) seems to be enjoying the attention showered upon her and far from publishing her first book under a pseudonym, has been a central performer at her own media circus.

The book itself has been called, by a media ever eager to summarize even 800-page hardcover tomes into a snappy catchphrase, “Harry Potter for adults”. It’s also been praised by perhaps the best living author of British fantasy novels (though he’s now moved to the USA), Neil Gaiman, “Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the past seventy years.”

It helps that it’s published by Bloomsbury, the very people who bought and believed in the maiden effort of a certain Joanna Rowling not many years past and who were then stamped with the label of the “world’s biggest fantasy publisher” on the strength of that Hogwartian breakthrough. At first appearance, this book would seem to have everything to recommend it: a great publisher, a promising new author (who spent an alleged ten years on the book), a beautifully produced book design (the white covers were restricted to only the first 40,000 copies, so if you get one, know that it’s a collector’s item), and a book that seems perfect in every respect.

So you really want to like this book. Love it in fact. Especially if fat fantasy tomes are your buzz-biz. And discovering a great new author gives you the kind of kick that television viewers must get everytime a new ‘KKK’ serial goes on air. So you settle into a cosy sofa, or your favourite ergonomically designed seating, and crack the spine.

And that’s where the castle in the air falls to smoky shards. Crumbles into vapour. Vanishes with the suddenness of yet another overhyped media celebrity after her 15 nanoseconds of frame.
Here’s the story behind the headlines. JS & Mr N is a boring, dreary and unimaginative novel of manners, not magic. Unimaginative? Yes. Believe it or not, there’s less imagination and originality displayed in these almost-800 large pages than in ten pages of a Harry Potter novel–and I’m not even a Harry Potter fan!

The story is easily enough summed up: In an England where magic is studied but no longer practised, two practising magicians appear, aid their country in the war against Napolean, and generally change society forever. It’s an interesting enough premise and one that you expect something dazzling of, perhaps even a clever fantasy take on War and Peace or Dickens with dragons. Anything but the dull and plodding monstrosity that it actually turns out to be.

The novel is written in an impeccably manicured faux-Victorian prose straight out of the pages of an Austen novel of manners. And that’s exactly what it is: a novel of manners, not magic. The characters parade about much like characters in an Austen novel, with great emphasis on how a person dresses, speaks and which parties he or she attends (or doesn’t) but without the genial, deceptively incisive Austen insight into hearts and minds that makes her simplicity so profound even today. There’s a super-abundance of stiff, English-backed male characters who disembark from horse-carriages and tug on bellpulls to call for their valets, with the usual disregard for well-drawn women characters (extremely odd in a novel written by a 21st century woman author) and even the obligatory repitition of numerous stereotypes and social slurs of the period, all, presumably, to convey historical accuracy.

This is perhaps the one thing that Clarke does get right: accuracy. She recreates the English novel of the period with pitch-perfect detail. This is the novel’s greatest strength–and failing. If you love utterly “English” novels, then you’ll be in heaven. If you haven’t read much literature since 1860, the period in the which the novel begins, then you’ve got a great treat in store. But if you’ve managed to imbibe something of world literature after the death of Napolean, then you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering at the lack of psychological insight, the completely bereft inner lives of the characters, the tepid and hesitant story that develops–lacking the subtle but certain iron-fist-in-velvet-glove surety of an Austen, the character depth and symbolic beauty of a James, and quite definitely the raucous emotional drama of a Dickens.

On the fantasy front, the book falls woefully short in every respect. The footnotes, virtually a novel within a novel, are cleverly done but have been done before far more effectively–check out Mark Danielswki’s brilliant dark literary fantasy House of Leaves. The attempt to combine realistic English settings with imaginative elements has been done far more effectively by writers like Tim Powers, Graham Joyce, Christopher Priest, and even Gaiman himself. The fantasy elements, while nicely done, are ultimately quite ordinary and lacking ambition. The historical period, while brilliantly recreated, stands like a beautiful set upon which no truly worthy drama is played out. Unlike, say, the well-deserved Booker winner, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, this novel doesn’t even aspire to re-visit a period of history in order to better illuminate some new aspect of the human condition. In fact, to pursue the unlikely comparison, Line of Beauty is a far more entertaining and rewarding book.

On the plus side, Clarke’s wit is brilliant–she writes marvelously elegant prose. The book is immensely readable and not entirely without its charms. If beautiful writing, wit, and a perfectly achieved mimicry of the 19th century novel of manners were all this novel claimed to be, you could even forgive it its hype. A great novel of the fantastic it certainly isn’t.

Mar 23, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

A magnificent miniature: Irawati Karve’s Yuganta revisited

Over the years, I’ve read Irawati Karve’s Yuganta more times than I can remember. The copy I now own is at least my third copy – the previous two editions wore out from repeated readings – and I remember buying it at least ten years ago, from Book Point at Ballard Estate, the bookstore owned by and neighbouring the offices of Orient Longman Ltd.

It’s a small book, some 220 pages in a small paperback size, published by Disha Books, an imprint of Orient Longman that was earlier called Sangam Books. And it’s an English translation of a Marathi Book, originally published by Deshmukh Prakashan in 1969 according to the copyright page of my copy.

In its Marathi original, Yuganta won the Sahitya Akademi prize as the best book in Marathi in 1967. (Yes, I know that’s before the “first” publication date listed on the copyright page – I guess, there was an earlier edition that’s unacknowledged or some mixup with the dates.)

According to the publisher’s note, the English translation “was prepared mainly for a foreign audience.” But that was essentially because, according to the author, foreign readers showed the most interest in the Mahabharata. I’d wager the situation has changed a great deal now. When I began writing my Ramayana, one of the strongest criticisms levelled at me was that only foreign readers would want to read an exoticized version of an ancient Indian epic, since most Indians “don’t find the Ramayana relevant anymore”.

As the popularity of the series, and subsequent sales figures have proven beyond doubt, not only is the Ramayana relevant even today, it’s a great story that lives on regardless of the shenanigans of votebank politics as well as the cynicism of media mavens who would probably love to see a John Grisham in the hands of every English-speaking Indian. But the other oft-repeated comment among the tons of reader responses I recieved for the Ramayana series was a loud and lusty clamouring for my Mahabharata.

That clamouring hasn’t died down, if anything, it’s gone up several notches, until every person I correspond with or meet now seems to inevitably ask, “So when’s your Mahabharata coming out?”

(The answer to that is, ’soon’. It will follow close on the heels of the last Ramayana book, which means that you’ll see the first book of the Mahabharata in Indian bookstores sometime next year itself. I’m almost done with the first draft of the first book, titled As The Blind King Watched, and hopefully should be done with the revisions and rewrites sometime in August 2005, barely a year and a half after I started – but of course that’s not counting the years spent researching it, because you can’t really research the Ramayana and ancient Indian puranas without studying the Mahabharata as well. Anyway, to get back to Yuganta…)

Even rereading Yuganta today for the umpteenth time, it doesn’t seem written for any particular audience, whether foreign or Indian. It is a book that appeals to anyone, regardless of race or age, who is fascinated by the great epic of Krishna Dwaipayana-Vyasa named Jaya, which we popularly call Mahabharata. Divided into 11 short chapters, it explores different facets of the epic from a character-based point of view, shedding new light on old knowledge and illuminating new areas in startling ways.

The 11 chapters are titled as follows:
Introduction,
The Final Effort,
Gandhari,
Kunti,
Father and Son?,
Draupadi,
The Palace of Maya,
Paradharmo Bhayavahah,
Karna,
Krishna Vasudeva, and
The End of Yuga.

Every one is a gem. My favourites are Draupadi, Father and Son?, Gandhari, and Kunti.

Perhaps the most insightful is Father and Son?. This chapter postulates whether Vidura was the father of Dharma, (who later came to be called Yudhishtira – every character in the epic has several different names, like the epic itself Jaya/Bharata/Mahabharata, and its author Krishna/Dwaipayana/Ved/Vyasa).

There is a fair amount of evidence to support the possibility of Vidura being Yudhishtira’s father. Nor is Karve the first Mahabharata scholar to ask the question.

For instance, in the epic, Yudhishtira is said to be sired by the god Yama. And Vidura is called an incarnation of Yama. So, at the end of the great battle, when Vyasa says that Yama and Yudhistira were father and son, it is unclear whether he means Yama himself or Yama in his current incarnation as Vidura. The semantics of Sanskrit are such that either interpretation is possible, and Karve informs us that even the critical edition (also known as the Baroda edition) leaves both options open to interpretation.

Karve explores the entire relationship between Vidura and Yudhishtira in this light, throwing up a great deal of detail to support her theory. In the end, she neither forces the reader to accept her theory, nor backs down and denies it either. She raises the question, and this in itself is enough.

Each essay in this beautifully composed little book is a masterpiece, achieved after a lifetime of study of the great epic. Her familiarity with its characters, events, details are nothing short of miraculous. At times, she makes the story so clear and simple, it seems like child’s play. But as anybody who has ever attempted to study the Mahabharata in its unexpurgated form can testify, there is no shortage of confusions and contradictions. Yet, Karve makes you see beyond the cross-interpretations of Sanskrit obscurities, and the conflicting viewpoints of scholars, to glimpse the pure story beneath the veil. And that story, ultimately, is simple and beautiful. Well, perhaps some people who don’t appreciate thousand-page epics won’t agree with the ’simple’, but surely everyone will agree that it’s ’simply beautiful’!

In her own introduction to the revised edition, Karve admits to wrestling with the idea of adding a synopsis of the whole story in her book. In the end, she decided against it. Which is a pity, because I suspect that her retelling, even in a few dozen pages, would be far more compelling than those of a number of other scholars whose studies of Jaya I’ve read. She has the rare gift of seeing the skull beneath the skin, rather than losing sight of the forest for the trees – to mix two unlikely metaphors – as most scholars seem to do. And this makes you wish she had written more, much much more.

In the end, Karve’s steely-gazed unsentimental secular outlook comes through most clearly in the way she approaches every aspect with an unstintingly clinical approach, asking questions nobody has thought to ask (publicly at least) before or since, and that few people are willing to discuss in these relatively more conservative and controversial times.

Take it from someone who has spent the last several years studying every available book on the topic – and several other books that aren’t on the topic at all – Irawati Karve’s study of the Mahabharata is itself a classic in its own right, and a book well worth reading several times over, whether or not you’ve read the Mahabharata itself.

If you have read the Mahabharata, or are about to, then it’s still a treat. Like a road map you can refer to while navigating the complex byways of the labyrinthine landscape that is the world’s largest – and in my opinion, greatest – epic of all.

In fact, the sheer smallness of Yuganta in relation to the vastness of the Mahabharata itself puts me in mind of the little modak at the feet of Lord Ganesha.

It’s an offering that – even the elephant-headed one Himself would agree, I think – demands to be devoured.

Mar 17, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

V is for Vertigo

Whoever said hype sells? I didn’t. In fact, I actually used to write a weekly column in a Bombay daily called ‘Cut The Hype’. In which I used to yank the dhoti off anyone who aspired to celebdom for even a minute. I still snook a finger at the media and the Page 3 culture – which, if you ask me, is spilling over into the headlines so often these days, it should be called the Page 1 culture (more about that in a future post) – and the finger I snook at those media mavens is not a thumb!

So when my 1993 novel Vertigo was re-released in January 2005, I wanted to see how it would fare sans interviews, launches, public appearances, etc. So, for the past three months, I haven’t said a word in the press about the novel, haven’t agreed to any interviews, even turned down offers to launch the book with some fanfare at a major bookstore chain.

And I went on with my life, my writing as usual. I was quite prepared to see the novel take a nosedive and vanish from existence. It should, logically, since it has absolutely nothing in common with my other bestsellers, the Ramayana series, is in fact a 13-year old novel republished, and doesn’t have any newsworthy ‘angle’ to render it worth reporting. As I expected, the media didn’t take notice of it at all, as far as they were concerned, it might as well have not existed. I liked that. Because it left serious readers free to make up their own minds.

And they did.

As of last week, Vertigo was No. 1 on the Bangalore bestseller lists. And No. 8 on the Delhi bestseller lists, ahead of even the most-promoted novel of the moment by another Indian author. And if I know anything about bestseller lists, it’s just begun its ride.

Now, I really don’t give a rat’s hair whether it sells a thousand copies or ten thousand, rides the lists for a week or six months (as it did when it was first published in 1993). Whether it gets rave reviews or pans across the board. What I’m proud about is the fact that a novel like this, with absolutely nothing to hype it up, could get noticed, bought, and liked by readers – the reviews coming in from them confirm this last beyond doubt – in an age where hype is believed to rule the roost.

So much for hype.

Hoorah for real readers, and good books.

V is for Vertigo. And for the triumph of good sense over media hype.

Mar 14, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Biting the book-end: Shashi Tharoor’s Bookless in Baghdad

Well, this is my fourth attempt to post to the blog this past week. The previous three attempts seem to have got lost in transition.

What were they about? Well, one was about the music I’ve been listening to lately – a lot of Radiohead, The Who, soft rock, classical, my regular mixed bag.

Another post was about the bunch of history books I’ve been reading lately. The third was about a single book that remains one of my greatest inspirations, especially while writing my work-in-progress Mahabharata retelling.

I’ll try and recap the main gist of those lost posts, but first, I’m going to test the waters by posting this review here. Fingers crossed…

(PS: This review appeared earlier in The Hindustan Times, New Delhi.)

Living in Mumbai, that overpriced piece of real estate that exists as a loose extension of Bollywood, you soon become familiar with the phenomenon of star rub-offs. A neighbour claims to know someone who is a cousin of a cousin of a cousin of…Shah Rukh Khan. Or Aamir Khan. Or, pick your star. Everybody knows somebody who is somebody. Six degrees of intimacy.

Arguably, a collection of essays on books and authors is something like that claim. By writing about literary greats, you can hope to capture some of their stardusty magic as well. Which can only enhance your own tawny sheen. Of course, by that measure, writing a book review of a book by a literary star does much the same thing. Rubbing shoulders with a star may only leave you with sore deltoids, but the human mind is a wonderful thing.

Shashi Tharoor probably doesn’t need to elevate his own star status, such as it is, by collecting his own book reviews of other book reviewers, some of whom are actually authors. He’s already regarded with warm admiration by a fair number, mostly for his modern-day Mahabharata-revisionist retelling, The Great Indian Novel, and to a lesser extent, for the novels Riot and Show Business, and, most recently, for the non-fiction book India: From Midnight to the Millennium. He hardly needs to rub shoulders with the likes of Rushdie, Naipaul, Kipling, and Wodehouse, to name just a few of the authors covered in this collection, in order to further his own literary reputation.

But what else is one to do with all those files full of yellowing clippings? Or, when one is a career diplomat – an Under-Secretary-General of The United Nations, no less, and unable to write more than a book every half-decade or so, how does one keep one’s byline alive in the bookstores? So, Tharoor brings together a mixed bag of his own book reviews and columns on writers, books and literary musings from the past decade or so in this collection.

Like the neighbour with starry aspirations, there are some jewels of truth here: The essays on Mining the Mahabharata, Bharatiya Sanskriti in the Big Apple, The Cultural Geography of Criticism, and various freewheeling essays on the unique geopolitical complexity of being an Indian English author adrift in a sea of western culture are enlightening, insightful and very rewarding. While the critics – like this one – may wax critical about how genuinely Indian writers like Tharoor really are, or are not, the fact is that he is a practising author pursuing the most difficult of paths: that of the insider who chooses to live as an outsider, yet continues to report from within. In these essays, he strikes hardest and most passionately, raising sparks of valuable illumination into the inner mind of the literary exile. Perhaps this is why his comments on Rushdie, the epitome of literary exile, ring so heartfelt and true. In these pieces, you see the Tharoor of India: From Midnight to Millennium, and wish he would write more non-fiction like this, more essay-length insightful personalized self-commentary on the condition of being Indian abroad, and of being a quintessential babu-educated (a Stephanian no less) bhadralok in the international sharkpool.

In other, more general essays, Tharoor is readable at best, and completely vapid at worst. This is a slim book with only a few dozen pages really worth the price, but those pages are a glimpse into the larger, more ambitious book that Tharoor could write someday, something neither autobiography nor literary essay, a sustained literary rumination on the life and times of a career diplomat and author. Then perhaps at last, he will no longer need to spend his space rubbing shoulders with literary stars and become one himself.

Mar 10, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Cover stories

Well, my copies of the Penguin India editions of the first three Ramayana books – Prince of Ayodhya, Siege of Mithila, and Demons of Chitrakut – arrived today. Have to say, I like them. They’re handsome, sturdily bound, and the paper is nice and thick, if a bit yellow. The printing could be better, especially the covers, but on the whole, it works for me.

In fact, I’m really darn pleased with these editions. They’re the first editions of my Ramayana series which I was allowed to have my full say in terms of the editing of little niggling errors and inconsistencies that bothered me from the beginning – no doubt, of my own creation – minor revisions, the deletion of a glossary that was starting to resemble the tail of a dinosaur tacked onto a tiger – and the inclusion of a foreword explaining the process of retelling the Ramayana, something I’d felt was essential to a project of this kind.

So, I’d like to thank the Academy, my great-grandmother…Ooops, they took the mike away! And I didn’t even start on my Bush joke, which goes somewhat like the line in the The Who song, “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss!”

But seriously, I think messrs. Ravi Singh and co. at Penguin Books India did a really bangup job of the Ramayana books as well as the reissue of Vertigo which came out a couple of months ago.

For the record, the cover illustrations on the Indian editions are by Suddhasattwa Basu and Grisham Verma.

The contents are, as before, by aamchi padosan Ashkok Kay Bankrupt.

And that, by the way, for all you desi readers, means that the copies are off the presses and en route to the stores! Look for them in a couple of weeks.

While on the subject of covers, have been getting some email about the revised UK covers, some of it from readers in the USA – who, of course, as some of you might know, have been special-ordering the UK editions rather than wait endlessly. Plenty of grumbling. Mainly over the change itself. Most don’t seem to like the new covers at all.

My comment? Hmm. Tough one. Not that I don’t have views on this, but it’s rather unsporting when I know exactly why the publisher changed the covers. They did it because they felt that my readership is now much more clearly defined after three bestselling books than when they first signed me on as a ‘virgin’ author (internationally, that is), and naturally, they wanted to build on that readership.

So what is that readership, my readership? Well, quite simply put, it’s like the title of this blogomobile: Indian English. That is to say, Indians living abroad who read English-language books. There’s no question that 90% of my fanmail comes from bhadralok everywhere, and the sales figures bear this out too. Of course firangs do read and seem to enjoy my books a lot as well, but they’re outnumber by the desis, not surprising when you consider that they’re outnumbered to begin with!

I think Orbit/Time Warner know quite well what they’re doing by changing the covers. In any case, it’s their decision to make – just to clarify once more, for those of you who went out for popcorn :~) – the author does not design the covers of his books. And we’ll soon know how right or otherwise they were when the first four books hit US shelves in July.

Actually, we’ll know much sooner, when Armies of Hanuman reaches UK & Commonwealth countries (incl. you guys out there in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia – waves and blows kisses to fans in the Far East). So, fingers crossed, and whether you like it or lump it, be heartened by this little factoid: It’s what’s between the covers that’s really important. Right? Right!

Mar 05, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Penguin India’s Author in Focus

Aharrrmph. (Clearing throat softly.)

Guess who’s Penguin India’s Author in Focus for the month of March 2005?

They even have a picture of me that’s halfway decent.

So, head on over to the Penguin Books India website. And join me in figuring out (scratches balding patch on head in bafflement) why on earth they’d go and do something like this to a perfectly unassuming nice guy like me.

Just when I thought it was safe to go out in public without a burkha and a beard…

Mar 01, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »