Fiction | Jaya's blog

Ambai “Fish in a Dwindling Lake”, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom

( This was a review commissioned last year, but never published. So I am uploading it today on my blog. 26 June 2013)

Fish in a Dwindling Lake is a collection of short stories written by well-known Tamil writer, Ambai. It consists of short stories and four long stories. Interestingly the short stories are merely titled as “Journey”, but the longer stories stick to the motif of the journey. The narrator is usually a universal “she”, who is never given a name, probably making it easier to discuss various positions and responsibilities of women. To bracket them as merely as a wife, mistress or a reliable widowed aunt would be doing injustice to the characters created. They do occupy these socially defined and recognized spaces, but Ambai’s strength as a storyteller shines when she is able to describe their lives or an incident or a conversation or a journey that they undertake, but in a manner that shows these strong women have the quiet ability to question and make their choices and be at peace with them. For Bimla in the title story, “Journeys had become the symbols of her life. Journeys with objectives, journeys without; meaningful journeys, journeys made of necessity; journeys which were planned, but never happened; journeys which broke all decisions; journeys which had become rituals.” The stories raise questions about human relationships, sexuality of a woman and the fact that there is nothing wrong in discussing it or being aware of it. In “Journey 5”, Gomati Ammal invites her childhood friend, now a renowned professor, to move in with her after she is widowed. They belonged to the same village near Tirunelveli, but belonged to different castes. Plus, her family was paying for his education. She pleaded with him when they were young to elope and get married, but he refused and married a classmate of hers. But once she was widowed and her children were settled abroad, she wrote to the professor, “I have lived all these years in accordance with your wish. Now at least let me be with you?” So they worked out a convenient arrangement where he visits her twice a month. “He is never asked at home, why and where he is going. Neither does she say anything when she sees me. After all she is a woman who studied with me, isn’t she? Isn’t she my friend?” Using the personal pronoun or naming the protagonist instantly distances the reader from the experiences of the character, although there is an instant recognition and empathy with her. But with a character in the third person it is possible to share minute details that usually remain confined to a woman’s domain, but strike a universal chord, as the pregnant girl in “Journey 4” says ironically, “only a wife knows what goes on inside a house”.

These stories were first published in Tamil by Kalachuvadu. The publisher, Kannan Sundaram says that the English edition has “translated and published all the stories in the Kalachuvadu edition in the same order of stories with the same title. The first story in the Kalachuvadu edition has not been included as it was included in another collection of Ambai stories in English earlier –In the Forest a Deer.” For the translator Lakshmi Holmstrom, “The current collection of eleven short stories translated from Tamil; it showcases Ambai’s technical skills at her mature best. Her style can be elegant, witty and lyrical by turns. … Some of her short stories work through ironic juxtaposition of incidents, or through repetition of images, as in poems. The longer stories, on the other hand, while still using the repeated symbol or motif, are intricately constructed, moving back and forth in time almost cinematically, interweaving different kind of texts and narratives.”

Ambai is the nom de plume of C. S. Lakshmi, a renowned feminist, who established SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women). So it is probably possible for Ambai to jot down these varied instances in a woman’s life since she is immersed in these stories 24×7. In an email to me after the publication of this anthology, she said that for a storyteller “stories are all around one. We must just open ourselves to them.” Hence, the title story “Fish in a Dwindling Lake” is about Kumud, her relationship with her extended clan and friends. But it also works beautifully by tracking the life of Kumud, who quietly and steadily, as happens with women, adapt and survive since the instinct for self-preservation is extremely strong. So like the fish in a shrinking lake, she may have to struggle to survive but will always find sufficient oxygen to live. This is an anthology worth reading.

Ambai “Fish in a Dwindling Lake”, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom. Penguin Books India, 2012. Pb, Rs. 250 pp. 150

Neil Gaiman, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”

25 06 , 2013 No Comments

I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.

Adult stories never made sense, and they were to slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn’t adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?
p.71-72

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s latest offering. A delight for Gaiman devotees, and a treat for those who are yet to discover this fantabulous storyteller. He tells a story about a few days in the life of a seven-year-old boy, being recounted by the adult version, forty years later. Gaiman so casually pushes the limits of conventional storytelling. Visiting a farm, watching a garden patch with overgrown foliage or visiting a placid lake, will probably never be the same experience once you are done with this story!

It is worth remarking upon how Gaiman seems to write for a young reader just discovering fantasy and the magical world of literature, while at the same time giving an adult, a seasoned reader, the same pleasure of reveling in a good story. Gaiman retains a child-like, illogical wonder of the world around. His imagination is stupendous, combined with the wisdom of age and maturity makes the text so rich and memorable. At the same time he is able to weave in very pertinent issues of child abuse, death, adults “ganging” up against children, age, discussing family structures– the conventional and the unconventional.

Read. You will be disappointed that the story ends as quickly as it does.

Neil Gaiman The Ocean at the End of the Lane Headline Publishing Group, Hachette, London. Pb. pp. 250 Rs. 399
( An e-book and an audio book are also available. Price not mentioned.)

“Creative Writing in the Present Crisis” Jawaharlal Nehru, 1963

17 06 , 2013 1 Comment

( As the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru would have been the patron of Sahitya Akademi. The following are extracts from a speech he delivered extempore at the awards for 1962. These are given to books of outstanding literary merit published in the Indian languages during the preceding years. This has been reproduced in the Best of Indian Literature 1957-2007, Vol 1 Book 1, published by the Sahitya Akademi. Editors are Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee and A. J. Thomas. They have edited four volumes of stories, essays, speeches published in the institute’s journal, Indian Literature for fifty years. Many of these have been translated into the English language. A pleasant surprise was to discover this wonderful speech by Nehru and another one by Aldous Huxley on “Literature and Modern Life”, delivered in 1961.)

“…Sahitya Akademi deals with all the languages of India and tries to encourage them and to bring about as much as possible, not a synthesis of them, but a mutual understanding and comprehension of them by translations from one language to another. ….

Really the growth of the Indian languages took place afresh about a hundred or hundred or twenty years ago. That period coincided with the introduction of printing, etc. in India and it was influenced naturally by ideas which had come to India through the English language mostly, through other languages too. The modern world gradually crept into India and that influenced our languages. And the modern literature in these languages is naturally much affected by the modern world, modern problems. That is as it should be. And so we find an interesting aspect of this questions, that, in a period when English was more or less the official language of India under the British Rule and was affecting large numbers of our people, the coming of English affected the Indian languages in a different way by indirectly encouraging them, because English happened to be the vehicle through which we came into contact with the new world. And, therefore, modern ideas, modern concepts began to enrich our languages through English or because of our knowledge of English, and our languages grew. I have no doubt they will grow. Even now they are strong and very effective languages and a large number of books are being published, books of merit. I have no doubt this will grow. But to think that a language is crushed or suppressed by another language, is not quite correct. It is enriched by another language. So also our languages will be enriched the more they get into touch with each other … .” ( p.319-320)

hOle Books, Duckbill Books

11 06 , 2013 1 Comment

In April 2013, Duckbill Books launched a new chapter book series in India called hOle books. ( Duckbill books was launched in 2012. It has been established by Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu. Two names that are very well known in children and YA literature in India and worldwide.) There are four inaugural titles, with one seasoned author, Asha Nehemiah, and three new authors. Each book has a balance between text and illustration. Short chapters, with text laid out well enough for a new reader to understand the text. These books work well for reading out aloud or for a little child to trace their fingers on the text and read slowly and clearly. At the same time, without being tied down to too many technicalities, the stories do have a zany imaginative aspect to them. My particular favourite is Asha Nehemiah’s Trouble with Magic. It has magic, imagination, taking off from an extremely ordinary situation at home. Plus a lot of colourful descriptions in the text. I read out some of the stories to my three-year-old daughter, Sarah. She loved them. The black and white illustrations are simple with bold strokes. Easy to match with the text. In 99% of the cases it works well, except for p.36 of Meera Nair’s Maya Saves the Day. I would not have noticed the discrepancy in the illustration, if it were not for the fuss being made in the story about Maya throwing a tantrum and her mother remarking upon the cost of the t-shirt that she was wearing. In the illustration though she is wearing a frock. Minor detail, but literal minded tiddlers can get quite annoying with their questions about these lapses.

The branding of hOle Books is delightful with a big fat hole punched straight through the top right hand corner of every book. The moment Sarah spotted it, she was ecstatic. She immediately poked her finger through it and danced around the house singing, “its mine, its mine”. Hmm! Not sure if that is what meant to be done to books, but if it helps inculcate a love for books, for reading, beginning with the tactile sense, then I am all for it!

hOle Books, published by Duckbill Books, India. Distributed by Westland books. Here is their Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/hOlebooks?fref=ts

“A Delicate Truth” John le Carre, June 2013

01 06 , 2013 No Comments

My review of John le Carre’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth was published in the Hindu Literary Supplement. (Online on 1 June 2013 and in print on 2 June 2013) Here is the link to it: www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/psychological-not-physical/article4772146.ece . The longer version of the review is reproduced below:

A Delicate Truth is a typical John le Carre spy-thriller, more psychological, less physical action. Yet the plot moves swiftly and is gripping to read. A seasoned but low-flying British foreign office man, “Paul Anderson” is sent off on an undercover assignment to Gibralter by Minister Quinn. Operation Wildlife — a secret operation and a public-private enterprise to kidnap a high-value terrorist from the Mediterranean Sea. As Elliot, Paul’s handler puts it politely, “He is the most unprincipled fucking merchant of death on the face of this earth bar none, but also the chosen intimate of the worst dregs of international society who is preoccupied with selling Manpad, man-portable air-defence system.” Jeb and his beach team observe a bag is first deposited at the front steps of the house under surveillance and then collected by a person wearing an Arab dress –a suicide bomber? Immediately they act. Predictably as with any conflict situation there is collateral damage.

Three years later Toby Bell, Private Secretary to Minister Quinn begins to unravel the mystery behind this operation. It has been bothering him considerably since despite being part of the minister’s official team at the time he had absolutely no knowledge of some projects his master was involved with. He can only connect the dots after having tapped a secret conversation in the minister’s official chamber, he realizes the wide and intricate nexus defence contractors and mercenaries have cast globally, with Fergus Quinn being a cog in in too. (A man of whose appearances one should not be fooled. “He’s a thug, he beats the working class drum, but he’s also ex-catholic, ex-Communist and New Labour – or what’s left of it now that its champion has moved onto richer pastures…He hates ideology and thinks he has invented pragmatism. He hates the Tories, although half the time he is to the right of them.” He is preoccupied with G-WOT or the global war on terror. ) A name heard often is of Jay Crispin and his Ethical Outcomes group, a fly-by-night company of defence contractors, “a caucus of wealthy American conservative evangelicals convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency is overrun with red-toothed Islamic sympathizers and liberal faggots”, a view that Finn is disposed to share. They are a private corporation that specializes in precious commodity— “high-grade information” more commonly known as secret intelligence, collected and disseminated in the private sphere only. “Unadulterated. Untouched by government hands.” Crispin is considered to be Quinn’s Svengali. According to Jeb, some years later when analyzing Operation Wildlife, the Ethical Outcomes team had lead Quinn up the garden path. “It was a deal gone bad. Nobody wants to admit that they handed over a couple of million dollars in a suitcase for a load of old cobblers, well do they?” Yet it is deemed as a successful operation. Paul gets knighted in recognition and a diplomatic posting overseas. Save for the loss of a couple of innocent lives, life carries on. Crispin reappears in a new and far more insidious avatar, linked to Rosethorne Protection Services, worth about 3 billion US (growing rapidly) with full time employees being six hundred. Offices spread across the world, specializing in “everything from personal protection to home security to counter-insurgency to who’s spying on your firm to who’s screwing your wife.”

A Delicate Truth is set during the Bush-Blair years at a time when the number of conflicts around the world increased and post 9/11 these intensified. Flushing out “the jihadi” was of paramount importance. In conflict studies, it is well documented that post-conflict reconstruction of a fragile society is a very slow and expensive process, requiring the skills and resources from around the world. It is lucrative business. But post-Cold War espionage genre floundered a bit since it was no longer a polarised world, easy to write about. It had taken off immediately after the World Wars, with writers like Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Graham Greene, and John le Carre dominating it. (Even an experienced writer and an ex-spy John le Carre took a while to find his bearing in the new world order.) But contemporary warfare has shown a sharp escalation after the collapse since the early 1990s, giving a context and probably an appetite for this kind of fiction. Interestingly it has been the burst of espionage fiction in the children and young adult literature that has come to the fore. For instance, Anthony Read’s The Baker Street Boys (based upon his very popular 1980s TV series, but the novels began to appear in 2005 onwards); Andrew Lane Young Sherlock Holmes; Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider; Robert Muchamore’s Cherub novels; Charlie Higson’s hugely successful Young Bond; Chris Bradford’s Young Samurai series and for younger readers, Jill Marshall’s Jane Blonder and Andrew Cope’s Spy Dog. Having said that, it is also anti-war literature like debut author and ex-Iraqi war veteran Kevin Power’s The Yellow Birds and A Delicate Truth (given le Carre’s vocal condemnation of the Iraq war) that are creating a healthy public discourse about war and conflict albeit via literature, circumventing doctored press releases.

Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is an international publishing consultant and columnist.

1 June 2013

John le Carre A Delicate Truth Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2013. Pb. Pp. 312 Rs. 210

Namita Gokhale, Priya: In Incredible Indyaa

30 05 , 2013 No Comments

Originally published in the BusinessWorld Online. Here is the link: http://www.businessworld.in/en/storypage/-/bw/politics-of-society-life/394770.0/page/0

Priya Kaushal is “just an ordinary housewife. A woman who has climbed up the ladder, step by determined step, with her husband’s unexpected luck helping things along.” She is immersed in the political and social milieu of the capital, where “everybody in Delhi knows everybody-everybody who matters, that is. As a jumped-up, middle-class girl from Mumbai I still cannot figure out these equations. Seek out the current lot of ‘useful’ people, scorn the hangers-on and despise those who might need you. That’s the formula for Delhi social networking.” But she is somebody now. “My husband Suresh Kaushal is the Minister of State for Food Processing, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Canneries. Maybe it’s not an ATM ministry, like telecom or power, but agriculture is important to modern India, and Food Processing is crucial to agriculture. That’s what Suresh says.” They have twin sons Luv and Kush, who are diametrically opposite to each other in their personalities. Luv is laid back, who believes he is destined to be an artist and “challenging his creativity”. Kush is an ex-investment banker turned budding politician who “knows how to grovel. It’s an essential skill in party politics.” To complicate matters, Lenin or Avinendra from Chhatisgarh returns to Priya’s life. He is an activist fighting for the release of Binayak Sen from jail, by proceeding on endless fasts, whereas his successful politician-wife, Geeta Devi, is achieving prominence. They become closely intertwined with Priya’s family, when her son Luv falls in love with Lenin’s daughter Paromita.

All through the novel, Priya is confident that she “must act the part, and be supportive” of her husband, irrespective of whether their values meet on the same plane or not. For instance, her husband carries a residual loyalty to the idea of the Indian Woman, the Sacred Sati Savitri, and his advice to their son while looking for prospective brides was that “your mother is a True Indian Woman, the personification of a Bhartiya Nari. If I died, I very much doubt if she would want to continue living! Would you, Priya?” Priya is appalled. “My jaw dropped. What could I possibly say? Tell him it would be like reincarnation without dying? But no, I am an Indian woman. I stared at him speechlessly as he continued, a dreamy look playing upon his plump, superficially distinguished face.” To say this at a time, when honour killings and sati are rampant in “this new India, half dream, half nightmare, from which we might collectively awake”.

But it is also an India where women like Geeta Devi stand “tall in every sense. How times change, how life changes, how people change. I could never have imagined the Geeta of yore, the subjugated small-town bride of my friend and rakhi brother Lenin, would transmute into this power-savvy politico. Of course she had a determined chin even then, but the cast of a jaw is not enough to propel someone into the political stratosphere. Her father had been an ex-chief minister, I recalled.” This is the same country, where mammon is god, borne at any cost, even violence. Priya is out shopping with her social butterfly friend Poonam who “tried on the latest style in outsize diamond danglers, all astronomically priced, completely out of range as far as I am concerned. Her hair got into her eyes, and she had to take off her Bulgari shades to readjust it. There was an ugly swelling in her perfectly made-up face, the blue and black bruises blending in perfectly with her shimmering green shadow. I turned away, pretending not to have noticed.” Maybe as Priya expresses it so neatly, “A lie in the interest of one’s family is not an untruth, but one’s dharma. As an Indian mother, I am aware which side of the truth my duties fall.”

Violence exists at every level of society. The insidiousness of communalism makes its presence felt even in the life of Ghafoor the driver. Yet, Priya feels “safe with Ghafoor Bhai. Maybe it’s the Bombay influence-Bombay, before it was Mumbai. The city used to belong to everyone, and Allah’s chosen were visible everywhere, as the rest of us. In Delhi one tends to see them only in Purani Dilli and Nizammuddin, unless they are one of us, if you know what I mean.”

Priya: In Incredible Indyaa is about the life of Paro, a generation after Priya. It is Namita Gokhale at her best, with her tongue-in-cheek genuflection to all the activisim of the 1980s and early 1990s-feminsim, communism, Maoists, revival of Sati, honour killing etc. Post-liberalisation, it changed, but it did leave its indelible impact on society. The other sad fact that she stresses is that social mobility is still important. This is a novel that cannot be dismissed lightly. Some of the most interesting debates and documentation of capturing a moment in time are being done by women writers, but with confidence about the changing trends. A book like this demands of it a sequel, preferably an annual affair?

Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is a publishing consultant and literary consultant

“How It Happened” Shazaf Fatima Haider

19 05 , 2013 1 Comment

Written from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old Saleha Bandian, How It Happened is about the marriages of elder two siblings, Haroon and Zeba. It is not as simple as it sounds. This is about a conservative Shia Bandian family. The matriarch of the family, Dadi ( or paternal grandmother), is a key player in looking for suitable partners for her grandchildren. The novel has all the masala of any traditional matchmaking, the competitiveness within families to net a good match, especially for the “ripe” girls. It has the drama of the matriarch fainting at the slightest hitch, when events are not going according to her plan, she claims to be “mordren” like the younger generation but is intolerant of marriages across sects, or even a love marriage. She cannot stomach the fact that her beloved grandson wants to get married without taking any dowry.

Shazaf Fatima Haider has sharply and wittily etched the life within Pakistani families (holds true for the Indian sub-continent!), obsessed with looking for a suitable match. She has got the tension between the older and younger generation beautifully, she manages to create empathy with the characters, without really intruding into the space. I truly enjoyed the way she had got the women characters representing diverse viewpoints but how they are confidently and surely managing to strike a balance between the stifling conservative traditions that they are expected to conform to with a newer mindset. It has been a long time since I read a book that made me chuckle and giggle, at times even laugh out aloud. I loved it!

( PS A small editorial oversight. While Zeba waits in Karachi to meet prospective suitor, Gullan from Islamabad, at first it is mentioned as three weeks, but later as three months.)

Shazaf Fatima Haider How It Happened Penguin Books India, 2013. Hb. pg. 316. Rs. 399

Navtej Sarna on the novel and short story

15 04 , 2013 No Comments

Navtej Sarna @ JLF 2013 “Novel is more of a theme, with byways and lanes. Whereas a short story is just that snapshot of life. ” Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5-RFxx02S4

15 April 2013

“The Other Side of the Table”, Madhumita Mukherjee

14 04 , 2013 No Comments

The Other Side of the Table is about the correspondence between Abhimanyu, neurosurgeon and Uma, studying to be a surgeon. It is spread over nearly a decade, from the early 1990s-1999. Abhimanyu is a Consultant with a hospital in London and Uma is in Calcutta. They share their thoughts, observations about their experiences, friends, family and naturally exchange notes about medicine.

Given that the correspondence is in the first person, there is an immediate connection with the writers. Also that these are letters in long hand, posted by snail mail, in an era before email, there is a languid and an old world charm to the letters. No broken sentences, thoughts and observations worked out completely, without any hurry. As Abhimanyu remarks ” we have been storytellers, chroniclers, witnesses of each other’s lives.” Abhimanyu share his tales about travels across the Europe with Uma, his loneliness in London but sheer determination to excel as a neurosurgeon and become a Consultant and later his misery at struggling with cancer. Uma shares her life through college, from college crushes to a bad marriage, at the same time very sure of becoming a surgeon, becoming “someone”, through the sexist remarks she faces at work and yet, excels.

This is a story that will evoke memories of similar literature (notably, Tumhari Amrita and 84, Charing Cross Road ) but The Other Side of the Table is most definitely in its own space. Except for the epistolary form of telling the story, it would be wrong to compare it with other books of a similar genre. Madhumita Mukherjee, a cancer survivor and a doctor herself, has told a difficult story gently and with sensitivity. It is a book worth reading.

14 April 2013

Madhumita Mukherjee The Other Side of the Table Fingerprint Publishing, New Delhi. Pb. pp. 248. Rs. 195 (eBook available)

Irshad Abdul Kadir, “Clifton Bridge”

13 04 , 2013 No Comments

I have just finished reading Clifton Bridge by Irshad Abdul Kadir. I loved it! I suspect it is years of engagement as a lawyer, observing people, listening to stories, imbibing them that have been used in writing these stories. The words are just enough, not more, not less. Even the social climbing, ambitious Punjabi mother, Shabnam is only heard on a couple of occasions, but the Punjabi-English intonation is perfect. ( ‘Tariq, you’re talking about, he’s having tuition for final paper,’ Shabana explained….) And later when she is screeching hysterically, “yes, yes” on behalf of her daughter, Farah, at the nikah, her crudity, her desperation at improving her social status by marrying her daughter into the governor’s family (even though her husband is obscenely rich) are exposed so well.

Obviously listening to many stories over the years as a lawyer, also being a civil rights activist and a theatre critic have helped coalesce many skills into writing these eleven stories. There is a sharpness in the etching, there is a sensitivity in telling the tale from the point of view of the main characters and yet, always the shocking realisation that reality is cruel, life and its circumstances are ephemeral. It does not matter if it the family is the poorest of the poor like that of Jumma, Rano and Peeru in the title story, “Clifton Bridge” or that of the feudal lord, Malik Aslam and his Begum, the steps that the men take “all necessary steps to preserve order”. For Jumma it is selling off Bilal to a known paedophile, lusting after and nearly raping his “daughter” Noori ( “a dusky, dark-haired childwoman ripening early in the season”) and having no qualms about selling of the youngest child, Zeebu’s kidney for a decent pile of money. Similarly, Malik Aslam allows his Begum to keep Chumpa, an orphan in their home, as a companion-cum-housekeeper to assist her “in the tedious functions expected of jagirdanis”. Also the Begum genuinely believes her husband when he “promised my father, we would continue living like your liberal ancestors in the Raj…and…and…give a wide berth to the sick segregated lifestyle being foisted on us.” So she is horrified many years later when he summarily dismisses Chumpa from their service for no fault of her own, save that he did not want their household name sullied by rumours of an attempted rape by his prospective son-in-law. Malik Aslam’s explanation for the dismissal of Chumpa — “For being in the wrong place at the wrong time…for disturbing the order of our lives.”

This is a collection of stories that shows the rich and poor in unexpected hues–sure the feudal lords exist, just as the corrupt bureaucrats are a reality too. So is the fact that a mujahid has a child by a Christian lover and a globetrotting professor tries to cope with cultural and ideological barriers. I liked the powerful women characters. It could be the co-wives of Daud, a man with a roving eye; Chumpa the maid of the “big house”, Meher, widow, who opts to live alone with three daughters or even Sultana who becomes a world renowned singer, after her marriage. I enjoyed reading these stories. They present Pakistan as more than just the typical image of the country—seen as a hotbed of civil unrest, corruption and conservative mindsets. I hope Irshad Abdul Kadir does well.

13 April 2013

Irshad Abdul Kadir Clifton Bridge HarperCollins India Original, Pb. Rs. 299.

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