Every Monday I post some of the books I have received in the previous week. This post will be in addition to my regular blog posts and newsletter.
In today’s Book Post 23 included are some of the titles I received in the past few weeks and are worth mentioning and not necessarily confined to parcels received during the holiday season.
Enjoy reading!
7 January 2019
Lists are subjective. Reading lists are even more difficult to cobble. Today my list consists of the following books. A few days later it may change ever so slightly. But these are the books that have stayed with me over the months.
Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness
Anuradha Roy All The Lives We Never Lived
Supriya Kelkar Ahimsa
Mark O’Connell’s To Be A Machine
Alejandro Zambra’s My Documents
Gabriela Wiener Sexographies
Ranjit Hoskote Jonahwhale
Ravish Kumar’s The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation
C G Salamander and Samidha Gunjal’s Puu
Khaled Hosseini Sea Prayer
Nazia Erum’s Mothering a Muslim
Jarrett J Krosoczka’s Hey, Kiddo
Henry Eliot’s The Penguin Classics Book
Cordis Paldano The Dwarf, the Girl and the Goat
Mohammed Hanif Red Birds
Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell Art Matters
T M Krishna Reshaping Art
Alan Lightman In Praise of Wasting Time
Every Monday I post some of the books I have received in the previous week. Embedded in the book covers and post will also be links to buy the books on Amazon India. This post will be in addition to my regular blog posts and newsletter.
In today’s Book Post 21 included are some of the titles I received in the past few weeks and are worth mentioning and not necessarily confined to parcels received last week.
Enjoy reading!
3 December 2018
Every Monday I post some of the books I have received in the previous week. Embedded in the book covers and post will also be links to buy the books on Amazon India. This post will be in addition to my regular blog posts and newsletter.
In today’s Book Post 20 included are some of the titles I received in the past few weeks and are worth mentioning and not necessarily confined to parcels received last week.
Enjoy reading!
24 November 2018
Every Monday I post some of the books I have received in the previous week. Embedded in the book covers and post will also be links to buy the books on Amazon India. This post will be in addition to my regular blog posts and newsletter.
In today’s Book Post 19 included are some of the titles I received in the past few weeks and are worth mentioning and not necessarily confined to parcels received last week.
Enjoy reading!
19 November 2018
“Refugees can’t be picky. . . .”
Akil Kumaraswamy’s debut Half Gods is a collection of interlinked short stories. These are stories revolving around a father-daughter duo who are Tamil Hindus of Sri Lankan origin and now based in the US. Along the way the daughter, Nalini, a nurse, has married a Punjabi Sikh and has two sons — Arjun and Karan, named after two demigods from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. They also have a circle of friends, consisting mostly of immigrants. It is a motley bunch that manages to share experiences and find some common ground to have conversations. It is only when their “back stories” are shared that it becomes clear their pasts have been traumatic. For instance, Nalini and her father fled Sri Lanka after their house had been attacked by mobs and her mother and twin brothers had been lynched. It is a horrific past to live with but they do and find a way to get across to the US.
In a fabulous interview with Sara Novic, Akil Kumaraswamy discussed Half Gods. In it Akil Kumaraswamy says she has never been to Sri Lanka but “the war has inhabited such a vast part of my consciousness growing up”. She agrees with Sara Novic when the latter says “I worry about most is how the war is being taught to this new generation of children who weren’t alive during the conflict or in its immediate aftermath. It’s such a complex tangle of money and power and hatreds, and it’s easy to flatten or try and ignore completely”. This is also Akil Kumaraswamy’s preoccupation with histories of conflict especially in South Asia, where many of the countries experienced horrific violence at the time of their establishment or subsequently too such as the Partition of the Indian subcontinent or the 1984 riots in Delhi upon the assassination of the Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
The author’s rationale for writing Half Gods as interlinked stories is that “War messes with any conception of chronology, and the past can feel more lived-in than the present. Also, since the work deals with displacement, I knew it would not be fixed by one geographic location. I eventually found that the interlinked short story form allowed me both expansiveness and a tight construction for the work.” Interestingly enough Half Gods began life as “a play and it only focused on the family and the story of the Mahabharata ran tangentially to it. I had these large monologues where Gods in their full regalia talked about their lives on earth. It was strange but it opened up the book in my mind. There is a scene in Half Gods where Karna shows his class a picture of his family and one of the drawings is of the sun dressed up in a suit. I am interested in how the mystical or divine brush up against the ordinary—something that often happens when the pressure is building, when reality becomes unbearable.”
Every story is powerful and it is difficult to choose a particular favourite. But if one were to then it would be the hauntingly powerful “The Office of Missing Persons” ( LitHub, 5 July 2018) which is about the entomologist whose son suddenly disappears. It is eerie for it does not seem like fiction as such stories are constantly being repeated in conflict zones and often reported in the morning newspapers. Two of her other stories that can be read online are “At the Birthplace of Sound” ( Boston Review, 21 April 2015) and “Shade” ( Guernica, 1 June 2016) .
Akil Kumaraswamy is a promising new voice in the literary landscape. As with most debut writers it is always fascinating to know what will be their next piece of work — will it be fiction in a similar vein to their first book or will it be a leap of faith in to narrative non-fiction? Whatever it is to be, will be worth looking forward to since once a writer has waded into conflict literature there is no looking back.
To buy on Amazon India
3 November 2018
When people move they inevitably bring certain things with them, leave a few things behind, and acquire new possessions. My parents had asked me to choose what I wanted to take with me to Boston. I was allotted a single suitcase. Everything else was to be sold, given to relatives, or thrown away. This is what I chose to bring in my suitcase:
Red plastic View-Master with four reels (Disney World, Japan, Baby Animals, and Mecca)
Four Bengali books –Raj Kahini ( Royal Tales) by Abanindranath Tagore; Aam Antir Bhepu ( The Song of the Road) by Bibhutibhushan Bandhyopadhyay; Shishu ( Child), a collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore; and gopal Bhand ( Stories of Gopal the Royal Fool)
My report cards from my old school, attesting to my grades from 1974 to 1982
My beloved collection of miniature plastic animals that came free with the purchase of Binaca brand toothpaste in India during the 1970s
A Misha commemorative pin from the 1980 Moscow Olympics
A couple of dresses made of printed cotton
A pair of gray denim pants, the closest thing I owned to the coveted American blue jeans
A pair of blue canvas shoes from Bata, the most popular shoe company in India
None of these items were going to be of much practical use, as I soon found out. The tools and weapons I needed to survive and flourish in the New World were waiting for me elsewhere. I would find them in the hallways of my new school. And on the small screen of our black-and-white TV.
Indian-born American Sharmila Sen’s memoir Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America is an absorbing account of her trying to negotiate her way through her new life in USA while her ties were still strong with India. She was twelve years old when her parents decided to move from Calcutta to the US. Having been born in a bhadralok ( cultured and well-respected) Bengali family she took certain privileges for granted. These were mostly of respect accorded to her cultural inheritance and the family she belonged to. She was not necessarily exposed to the rough and tumble ways of existence. Whereas in America the mere shade of her skin immediately put her in a different category. Her first experience of the classrooms where segregation was not visible as students had no choice in their seating arrangements was small consolation when it came to lunch time or other breaks for then the students promptly clustered in racially segregated groups.
Not Quite Not White is fascinating while moving account of Sharmila Sen negotiating her way through a new culture. She arrived as a young girl bewildered by the customs and social rules of engagement. By social standards of acceptance she did very well for herself as a non-white immigrant, primarily by learning to smile always. She taught herself to learn the rules. Ultimately she found herself being accepted by everyone so much so she heard remarks like “I always forget you are Indian” or “But I see you as white”. Sharmila Sen was educated in the public schools of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied in Harvard and Yale. She taught at Harvard for a few years too. Currently, she is the executive editor-at-large at Harvard University Press. Yet her memoir brings out the painful negotiations she has learned to make on a regular basis, imbibing much of it, so as to survive.
To buy on Amazon India
2 November 2018
Wildlife conservationist Raza H. Tehsin’s Steed of the Jungle God: Thrilling Experiences in the Wild is a collection of essays written along with his daughter, Arefa Tehsin, which recount his days in the jungles of Rajasthan. It has been illustrated splendidly by Sumit Sakula and Sonal Goyal. These are stories that are told as they were lived. It is a form of oral history being recorded which does not seem to have been edited much later. The sense is of a flowing commentary, plucking memories that have left a significant impact and stringing them together in this book. They are stories that are about discovering species, encountering ghosts, putting to rest local folklore, and learning to co-exist peacefully with superstitions, ghostly presences and wild life. It is also an encount of a man who is deeply committed to preservation of wild life and by sharing his experiences hopes it is not too late to save this planet from the eccentricities of mankind.
There is something special about the tone of storytelling, something soft, understanding, full of kindness and empathy which exists in Raza Tehsin’s accounts of wildlife and of the people he meets. There are stories here of his going on trips into the jungle with his father, later with his family. As a young man in the jungle he learned to live as a hermit, doctor and hunter. Later these experiences came to the fore when he became a wildlife conservationist.
He shares many, many stories. One of them that is particularly moving is that of the panther cub who was as yet not fully trained to hunt, had to very soon learn the skill as he had to look after and feed his mother after she had been injured by a bullet in her front leg. Later the affected part had died and fallen off leaving a stump in its place therebey preventing her to go hunting. Ultimately mother and son decided to live in a cave where the panther cub would bring his kill. Later after reviewing the cave Raza Tehsin discovered that the place had been kept spotlessly clean with all the bones of their kills cleared away. This unusual relationship was discovered when the local tribals began to lose their goats. So Raza Tehsin was summoned to track the big cat and kill it. It was then that the hunting party to their astonishment discovered not one but two cats esconced in the cave. It is a very sad and haunting tale that must be read.
Another one is of his descriptions of trying to help the tribals who lived in abject misery infested with guinea worm. While sharing one such episode he shares a telling experience about the status of women — something that has not altered decades later. Guinea worm infestations have been cured but not the mindset of people vis-a-vis towards women.
I remember another instance when an old village woman was brought to me. She was not able to swallow food as her food pipe was burnt. I was told that she lived with her husband, who was infected by guinea worm. He was the only working hand and both of them had starved during his illness. He finally got better and went to work. But he was too weak to earn much. He bought two or three fistfuls of the cheapest rotten maize and asked her to boil it with a little salt. Driven by hunger and afraid that her husband would not give her a share, she gulped most of the maize piping hot.
A terrible encounter more so made vile knowing that Raza Tehsin came from a family where his mother was quite progressive by contemporary standards. Raza and his siblings ( sisters included ) were educated, his mother did not observe purdah and despite being an invalid was an excellent markswoman. She would use a small calibre shot gun, also called a Ladies Shot Gun No. 28 gauge.
In 1942, she formed Bazm-e-Niswan, a women’s study group with a library, to spread the message of Gandhiji and increase awareness about the country’s socio-political situation. She started a girls’ literacy movement in Udaipur, especially to mobilise the conservative Muslim families. This led to cent percent literacy in the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community of Udaipur in a short span of time. She was also one of the founders of the Residency Club formed by the wives of British officers. The club had women volunteers working to help those affected by World War II. After independence, she became President, Udaipur branch, and Vice President, state branch, of All India Women’s Conference.
Steed of the Jungle God has been co-written with Raza Tehsin’s daughter, Arefa Tehsin, who is equally passionate 
about wildlife conservation. She has already published a couple of books for children including the most recent one being a middle grade novel The Globetrotters that involves a school bully Hadud whose new history teacher at school decides to set him straight. Hadud is sent off on a quest that basically takes him on a life changing journey through various ecologies. With her immense knowledge of the environment the precisely detailed descriptions in the novel a delightful. It has been magnificently illustrated by Nafisa Nandini Crishna.
Take for instance:
His eyes were fixed on a large crack in a distant rock when his vision got distrubed by a flutter of wings. A young Arctic tern, her white wings moving like waves against the sun, her red beak stuffed with moonbeams of fish and her red feet swaying in the wind, rose above the cliff. Hudhud’s beak dropped as he looked at the elegant bird in her liquid motion. Just after her, rose three seagulls that took a dip at her one at a time. Seeing the avian pirates trying to steal the tern’s fish, Hudhud ducked behind a small jutting rock.
Thank heavens for wildlife conservationists like the Tehsins who are using their experience and knowledge of earth’s biodiversity and sharing it with younger generations in the hope that the planet’s environment will not be completely destroyed. To create a younger team of wildlife enthusiasts is an effective way of controlling the rapid pace of environmental destruction.
Buy and share these two books — Steed of the Jungle God and The Globetrotters !
On Amazon India:
29 October 2018
Former journalist Shubhangi Swarup’s debut novel Latitudes of Longing is a plot spread across a few decades, loosely held together by some characters particularly the scientist Girijia Narain Mathur. The novel is a tramp through different climatic belts and geological formations while firmly remaining within the latitudes that define the subcontinent. It is also a walk through time and political upheavals in India and Burma. While the reader is a mute spectator to the events, it is fairly obvious that a man’s lifespan is just a blip if the forces of Nature are to be considered. The book is divided into four sections with each section focused on a different part of the subcontinent; beginning with the Andaman Islands, then Burma, Nepal and finally, Ladakh. There are a handful of characters but it is Giriraj Narain Mathur who remains a steady presence throughout, even after death. This is a novel which is a mix of fact, fiction and generous dash of magic realism so there are plenty of ghosts, or colonial ghosts as the author loves to refer to them. ( She first researched the colonial ghosts of Andaman islands in 2011.)
On Monday, 22 October 2018, I was in conversation with Shubhangi Swarup at The Bookshop, Jorbagh, New Delhi. Shubhangi Swarup is soft spoken but when it comes to describing the Panagea or the geological formations of the subcontinent she begins to speak animatedly. It excites her knowing that man is just a tiny being in this vast cosmos, geological formations are a testament to how long earth has been around. Or for that matter the landmass called India we take for granted is still in the process of formation with the tectonic plates constantly hitting each other to push the Himalayas higher and higher. Years of being a journalist and an activist have ensured that her first novel has innumerable incidents with plenty of backstories. At the beginning of the evening when being called upon to read an extract from her book, “I am not a performer!” but soon caved in and read a short piece about the drug smuggler in Thamel, Nepal.
Latitudes of Longing has been seven years in the making. While writing the book she also filed several articles and inevitably did stories that would help her travel in the areas she wished to research further for her book. There are portions in the book that seem heavily inspired by folklore. Whether it is the shapeshifting turtle or the appearance of Yeti or even the creation myth that Giriraj churns out to explain to his daughter Devi how she was conceived:
‘Where did you find me, Papa?’ she will ask, mildly annoyed by his grip. ‘Why did you bring me home?’
In conversation with Shubhangi Swarup at The Bookshop, Jor Bagh, New Delhi on 22 October 2018
Girija Prasad will weave a story from the embers of twilight to pacify her. ‘It was a beach just like this, an evening just like this, when your mother and I came across an empty bottle, half-buried in the sand. We opened it to find a note inside: Please put all the ingredients of your dreams in this bottle and shake vigorously. And so we did. Using a prism, I trapped sunlight in the bottle. I closed it with a cork and shook it vigorously for hours. Then your mother opened it. She took a deep breath and exhaled into the bottle. That was your first breath.’ For the ingredients, Girija Prasad will concoct a fantastical list to arrest her wandering imagination: golden sands from the dunes of Rajasthan and white sands from Havelock Island; shreds from the swiftlet’s nest and petals of a fuschia pink rose; a piece of bark from the oldest padauk tree on the islands; ash blessed by the riverbank baba; a crocodile’s tooth, an elephant’s eyelash; and drops of the monsoon mingled with Himalayan snow.
Shubhangi Swarup’s reliance on folklore and local storytellers who could tell her neverending stories comes through stupendously in the story. Once she met an 8yo shepherd who was legendary in his village for the stories he told, mostly to entertain himself. He is like an intellectual jukebox. According to Shubhangi “You give him the elements you want to hear in a story and he immediately sets off. At some point he has to be told ‘enough’ and he switches off leaving the tale hanging in the air for the next time.” There are moments of pure beauty in the language used that seem to come from some place else, of having withstood time and developed a life of their own and found a place in this story. Whether it is that of the shape-shifting turtle or the Yeti that comes visiting and many other instances.
In her obsessiveness with faultlines and geological formations Shubhangi manages to weave a story across various geographies. In fact many of the episodes in her novel can be directly linked to a story she wrote as a journalist. For this she had a very valid explanation as in that she required to do the research but did not always have the necessary resources to undertake the trip. Being a journalist travelling on a story helped her tremendously. It is no wonder that Latitudes of Longing was on the JCB Prize 2018 shortlist. After this impressive debut many readers will await Shubhangi’s second offering but it will probably be some time in the making as she said “She has nothing on the cards for now. It has been seven years to write this book.”
Till she does opt to write, we will wait.
To buy on Amazon India
26 October 2018
There is a tremendous spurt in middle grade novels and young adult literature. It is also a grey area as it is never clear what kind of stories may attract the young readers. Even so there is a great mix of storytellers and stories being published regularly. There is so much variety to choose from. Here is a selection:
Beginning with the seasoned writers like Paro Anand, Ranjit Lal and Subhadra Sen Gupta, all of whom have new books published. Well, Subhadra Sen Gupta’s is a reissue of one of her earliest collection of historical fiction short stories. It is a revival of her backlist that is very welcome. Painters, Potters, Cooks and Kings was first published 
nearly two decades ago but it remains one of my all time favourite collection of short stories. These stories with children as the protagonists are set in different periods of Indian history — King Ashoka, Emperor Akbar, King Krishna Deva Raya, Princess Jahanara and British India.
Paro Anand’s The Other is a path-breaking collection of short stories for young adults exploring critical issues like gender, sexual abuse, grief and loneliness and much, 
much more. It is a set of stories that even adults will do well to read. ( I wrote about it too and embedded a fantastic conversation between Paro Anand and Sunil Sethi too.)
Ranjit Lal is another very prolific writer for children. Over the years his storytelling has matured to magnificent levels. His child protagonists are always very well-defined and easy for the young readers to identify with as they are ordinary folks. His plots are of the familiar too. Even when his stories become sinister and dark, the scenarios are completely plausible as there is a logical 
progression from the point of the personal and known. Again spaces that are easy to recognise. This holds true for Adventures of Bozo & Chick: Terror at Bedlam House which is set in Mumbai. Teenagers Bozo and Chick, ably assisted by youngsters in the neighbourhood, try and solve the mystery of the masked strangers living in a more or less abandoned home. Mixed with generous doses of references to real life such as love jihad or terrorists attacking Mumbai using the sea-route make this novel unnerving but a gripping read.
And then there are two extraordinary middle grade novels by USA-based writers of Indian origin — Ahimsa and The Night Diary. Both novels deal brilliantly with the Indian freedom struggle. ( Read interviews with Supriya Kelkar and Veera Hiranandani.) 
Award-winning writer of adult fiction Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s first book for children Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh is a tremendous book. Friendships between magical creatures and little children, the implicit trust that binds them, always makes for a perfect story. Hansda has achieved it charmingly so in his own gem of this utterly 
fabulous Jwala Kumar. A fun, fun book is Tommy Greenwald’s Crimebiters! It involves little children and a crime-fighting vampire dog. Need I say more? It is utterly delicious!
Three collections of short stories that are equally engaging are Grandpa Tales and Grandma Tales 
( edited by Lalitha Iyer) and Flipped: Funny Stories/Scary Stories. The stories edited by Lalita Iyer are a great collection with the contributing authors mostly sharing stories that they heard from their grandparents. In the next edition of these anthologies it may be better if there was a wider selection of stories representing the diversity of India rather than focused on a handful of regions. Nevertheless these are two entertaining volumes. The third one is a curious book of flipped stories. So to read the 
scary stories you read the book one way and to read the funny stories you flip the book. The two stories that stand out in this volume are “Of Grave Importance” by Adithi Rao and “When I Was a Little Girl” by Shabnam Minwalla. 
But the new voice in children’s literature to be noticed is Cordis Paldano. A theatre professional who has also been trained in Tamil street theatre called Terukkutu, Cordis Paldano’s debut novel The Dwarf, The Girl and the Holy Goat is a stupendous book. It has an 
excellent sense of drama and timing. Being true to the elements of street theatre that thrives on incorporating elements into the performance of local socio-political developments, this book too is no different. It is a brave book. Cordis Paldano is the talented new kid on the block and worth following!
Given that the festival season is here. These books would make tremendous Diwali gift packs whether for reluctant or mature readers.
Happy reading!
30 October 2018
To buy on Amazon India
Painters, Potters, Cooks and Kings
Adventures of Bozo & Chick: Terror at Bedlam House
Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh
Flipped: Funny Stories/Scary Stories
The Dwarf, The Girl and the Holy Goat
