BPO Sutra - True Stories from India's BPO and Call Centres; compiled by Sudhindra Mokhasi.

Interesting, funny, informative, not always the good guy win but then again life isn't over either and they might yet, ...one awaits more of the stories. Customers from US who peremptorily demand that the connection from next door internet cafe that they have been using in their own home be restored promptly, perverts who are foiled, sexual predators that sometimes get their prey terminated with false allegations and are not yet shown for what they are, .... all sorts of little pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that shows the landscape of an old culture changing in many ways and the human nature that is eternal across all space and time.

This has immense potential, especially as television series much more than a mere film, but then again series of films with sequels following the first one are now not at all uncommon and this provides enough material for many, many sequels. All the more so since anyone can add one's own by going to the website provided and get it included in the next one - so one awaits the series of television and film portrayals of this for more fun.

Not My Cup Of Tea (originally published as Square Peg in a Round Hole); by Marcel Daniel.

The work is attractive primarily because there is a good deal of information about the tea plantations and tea industry in general, in more than one aspect - how the plantations function, the harvesting and the "manufacture" of tea, the hierarchy structure strictly adhered to, clubs and poverty of workers, and so on.

There are indications that this work is based on the author's life, but not clear if it is in fact precisely the autobiography with a mere change of names, so one might take it that much of it is based on his own life and experiences, feelings and thinking.

As such, the first thing that strikes one is how - and how much - the protagonist/author (Mark Edwards / Marcel Daniel) is conflicted between his various roots of identity due to the circumstances it was brought about due to, namely, the colonial rule of his ancestors' land by those from across halfway around the globe and conversion of his ancestors' from their own culture to that of rulers.

Culture, because it was not merely faith or religion that the rulers and their missionary accompaniment arriving with military protection sought. What rather was aimed at very deliberately was the destruction of morale of the ruled, by deliberate attacks coupled with lack of - and indeed inability to - comprehension of the ancient deep rich culture that was of India. In case of those that did convert, either partly by accepting the education for more than opening of a window to the faraway lands and new winds, or those that went the whole hog and gave up their own roots in all but blood (or even that, in case of those that happened to marry one of the rulers and convert far more), this demoralisation worked much more than in case of those that kept their own roots while allowing opening of windows and doors to more light and air.

Thus Edwards/Daniel is forever conflicted between his bringing up which is very English, and his own reflection in the mirror which he is unable to identify with - he feels that the person in the mirror is not, could not be, himself, because he is English, even though he knows he is completely Indian by blood and only English due to his three or more generations of ancestors having lived an English life in India.

As a consequence of this conflict ironically he blames India and indeed its culture and faiths not only along the lines prescribed by the rulers that had left before the story begins, but for anything that goes wrong in his personal life, as long as there is someone Indian or Hindu involved - which is unavoidable as long as he lives in India. Often it is something common to most cultures, most societies, most nations, as in case of the expected fraternal bonding and hierarchy in his military life, and the necessity of obedience to not only rules but to superiors, which is backbone structure of any military and in fact of most corporate institutions in US as well. Another example is when incidents of dishonesty or bullying occur, which do in any society, but which to Edwards / Daniel are convenient to deal with by blaming India and Hinduism. Indeed his, and his community's - his father, his bosses who happen to be of his faith, and so forth - first response to any such occurrence is "these bloody Indians"; one wonders what the response would have been had they dared to emigrate to the lands of those they identify with, and then find the same problems, which in fact are more than common. Dishonesty, bullying, and so forth do not get any better when one is perceived as an outsider due to racist culture of a land, nor do expectation of bosses who look upon subordinates as people to blame for their own shortcomings.

But Edwards and his father are all too aware of the various shortcomings of European colonisers in this respect, of the destruction wreaked on the lands they attacked and occupied in the name of "discovery", denying the very human rights of the occupants of those lands by calling them "aboriginal" or any other derogatory names, and naming those lands to suit rather than respecting the names that existed. This awareness stops short of including India, since it would cleave their own identity itself, even though it is not denied. Edwards is all too aware of how racist are the societies of various colonies that are now seen as European emigrants' lands rather than as colonies occupied, such as US and Canada and Australia, and indeed Britain.

Hence the deliberation about emigration to those lands, where one might feel at home due to one's feeling and living English rather than Indian, goes finally against the idea due to the certainty of being treated as a second class citizen at best due to one's physical appearance. It is much more convenient to stay put in India, live an English life, look down on Indians and then blame them for one's own alienation. Not that different from blaming one's mother for being a child of rape, this whole conflict and resolution, after the rapist has pillaged and left the mother and children destitute.
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Ironically it does not occur to the protagonist/author that the hierarchical structure he describes without comment is not qualitatively different from the structure of India that he deplores so very vociferously for being divided by castes, while the divisions of India along languages and identities of people along linguistic lines are no different from those in Europe. If anything the caste structure imposed by colonial rule and that prevalent in most societies of the world is along the lines of power and money ruling and ascribing all other virtues to itself, while that in India is comparatively far more enlightened - power and money are separated and held lower than intellectual knowledge, while spiritual life is everyone's prerogative, and duties along the lines of one's vocation are strictly taught and imposed.
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It is only when Edwards emigrates for work to Papua New Guinea due to his inability to work in India - partly due to his being unable to resolve the conflict between his own upright, independent being and the dishonesty and bullying he encounters, and partly due to his blaming it all on the country of his origin and countrymen he refuses consistently to identify with, preferring to see himself as better due to being English rather than seeing that he is honest and independent and upright because of his own choice - that he is brought to awareness of superiority of some virtues of India and Indians, although he is lagging behind as yet in realising that his conflicts that occurred in India could and indeed would occur everywhere else as well, with the difference that then they would be blamed on not only him but his race, his country of origin, and the racist assumption that anyone whose ancestors lived in lands with sun are lesser than those whose ancestors lived in darker latitudes closer to one of the poles rather than the equator.
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Friday, March 2, 2012


Much ironic once one has finished with this - not the bitterness which is understandable under the circumstances, nor the feeling of comfort the protagonist has mainly when in surroundings not of his ancestral roots but - as he frankly expresses again and again - that of anglophones, or even better, a land where he is as much an outsider as any "white" person, so that he can be as much aloof above the general madding crowd as he desires to be, which is only natural since that is the example held out to him as one to emulate - that of British rulers and others who occupied India and left post enough looting rather than that of the indigenous with their rich culture and multiple layers of deep virtues - no, none of this, but only this - that he finally does not blame or indict those that hurt him far more in physical and psychological sense than the first couple of incidences of attacks by bullies that were of his own country.

For the latter, he indicts the whole nation and its people and especially the majority community, in spite of the fact that it was his own and his ancestors' choice to separate and hold themselves above the milieu so they were the privileged people halfway up the rung of preferences closer to the rulers in every choice of posts and other benefits; in other lands, other cultures, such separation and aligning oneself with occupying looters is rewarded with persecution and death, rather than the merely factual acceptance of the separation chosen by those that align themselves thus as India and its majority community does. But he wants it both ways - to clearly state his own and his ancestors' preference about separating themselves, aligning themselves with the rulers, being comfortable only in the surroundings emulating the rulers long after they left, taking all the perks that were theirs due to this preference and conversion as natural, and then resenting when things are set right for the nation after the rulers have left (not taking their local imitations with them as the French did, offering citizenship of France to every citizen of any colony) - resenting the separation and blaming it on those they left to climb up the ladder.

This contrasts rather absurdly with the comparatively less blame, less resentment or even dispassionate indictment of those that actually harmed him far more, either due to the discriminating laws and contracts at work or due to direct attacks that were - unlike those in India - intending to kill, and far more successful at that.

Daniel / Edwards is able to describe the attacks on his property and life in Papua New Guinea - where he went to work after blaming India for all his problems - with precision and dispassionate correct descriptions but with no horror attached to it; indeed he fails to take precautions to safeguard his own life long past having been cautioned in the only way it might have been, since the company won't pay for the whole security need - he is satisfied to point out the discrimination to his colleague and go about his merry way knowing fully well that attacks on his person are as likely as those on anyone and anything that do indeed happen regularly - and merely goes about to describe the attack clinically with no horror, no blame, no disgust at those that did it; he rather indulges in guilty feeling blaming himself for death of the dog that attempted to protect him by fighting off the attackers alongside.

And then he blames the racist discrimination of a whole country or a whole industry even less even as he clinically describes the details of how they were responsible for his ending up losing use of half his body, since the Australian person in charge of immigration who could grant him a visa (as he regularly does to every "white" visitor merely for asking) due to the medical emergency and chooses to refuse showing his manual and insisting the routine of several weeks applying for a visa is observed, never mind the medical emergency. That the company could have sent him to UK for the operation on a more proper flight at their expense is not even thought of, since he is not one of the ruling clique, a "white" person, but surprisingly no one even thinks of sending him to Hong Kong or Singapore or India where it all might have been taken care of.

And finally, having chosen to uproot himself from India - he sold off his parents' home in a part of the country where they had no roots and no relatives post the death of parents, and had no interest in finding the rest of his clan that might have embraced him and given him a home and a family to belong to and put down roots in, since he much prefers the company of anglophones and indeed such English as would deign to speak to him as a human at all - he then must end his life in the strange land where he was dealt with the murderous attack by the locals.
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And yet his finale' is nothing short of an emulation of some of the finest of Indian understanding of existence, although he mucks it up by then justifying his never identifying himself with his image in his mirror! Such is the half baked attitude of those that would cut off their own roots and float forever in shark infested waters of reefs faraway - roots after all bring responsibilities and belonging!
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The Shadow Lines: by Amitav Ghosh.

Break a mirror and set splintered fragments thereof in walls with a rough finish, and then attempt to patch a reflection of surroundings of today and of yore - this is somewhat the image of this work, of events of the story and of history as seen in this.

The writer here attempts to deal with his own childhood trauma experienced in Dhaka where his parents were stationed as diplomatic corps from India during sixties, where he lived through riots and a murderous mob surrounding their own home in faraway diplomatic enclave, specifically attempting to massacre the family for crime of being Hindu. This event has left so deep, so strong an impression as to be a character molding factor and the writer has never since been able to deal with his own roots as Hindu, his own deep ancient cultural heritage, and has instead spent his life and writings attempting to defend other similar cultures from the vast neighbourhood while never quite being able to defend his own Hindu culture from ignorant attacks.
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He combines these happenings here to provide a background and a shocking ending to the work while dealing with the life of eastern part of India as it was, whole rather than the part that retains the name, with people moving from Dhaka to Calcutta to Burma to London back and forth before and after independence and partition, the movement between Dhaka and Calcutta as rare post independance as that between Burma and the rest - Burma was as much part of India prior to war as any other part of India - and in the process he deals also with the various psychological elements and processes that went into the British-Indian relationships, shown here on personal level between two extended families through three generations.
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He mentions, as himself and as protagonist - since his own story is not that exactly of the protagonist here but could easily be in part that of a cousin, especially the part that constitutes not only the shocking end but the very raison d'etre for the work, one cannot separate the two - the differences between physical proximity and nationhood, and attempts to say without quite saying it (if he had said it he could be pinned as extremist by those that have appropriated the label "secular" and targeted as a fanatic, and he takes care to stay on the safer side at any cost, including howling like the wolves most of the time and at any rate avoiding being identified as not a wolf) that arbitrary lines drawn on paper do not constitute nations, that nations do exist in sense far more than political states at any time and have an identity beyond the decisions made by any political state authority regarding borders.

This has been proved amply of course and as recently as two decades ago by the fall of Berlin wall uniting Germany on one hand while reconstitution of the erstwhile Soviet Union into its parts - Russia is still very large, and does constitute a nation, but Ukraine and Baltic nations and central Asian regions have separated as independent nations, remaining however as parts of the federation under the Russian umbrella. Britain meanwhile is slowly inching towards a similar cultural freedom and political one as well, what with resurgence of the once forbidden Welsh language as a very living one, a parliament of its own for Scotland, and so forth.

That India might be such a living nation with the arbitrary borders drawn post war - for convenience of the rulers that left in a hurry and gave in to demands forced with massacres - might be false really, and India is a living nation that includes the various parts no longer included in the name India post world war two, is what the author avoids saying explicitly - instead he resorts to maps, compasses, comparisons across the globe about how events faraway usually do not affect people, and a lot of obscure language.

Fair enough, considering the threats to life of Rushdie and several others - Taslima Nasreen, for example - who have been targeted with orders from religious authorities towards their murder and promises of paradise for those executing the orders, for writing truths that were comparatively smaller in scale or dreams that were interpreted by those ordering murders. If Ghosh wishes his self and his family to live in reasonable safety, he can hardly afford not to be obscure about false lines drawn to cut up a real living nation into new nations that are forever tied in tandem and affected by happenings thousands of miles away as long as they are in the parts of the nation that really is a living one.
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One unpleasant factor is the unnecessary part of artificially added spices or sauces, the now almost compulsory descriptions of certain kind in every work published these days, whether necessary for the particular tale or not, and in this one such an inclusion makes it a splintered and pale copy of Sophie's Choice, about which one comment went that it was a teenage boy in US getting to finally have sex on the background of antisemitism, world war two, holocaust, Europe trodden under fascist boot and what have you.

If the author here had managed to avoid that trap, or for that matter the fractured nature of the story telling that begins to come across as gimmicky and irritates even the most patient reader, and instead gone into the trauma of India in depth, he might just have managed to author a great work.
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One recurring theme in this author's work is the delusion planted quite deliberately in minds of several such displaced or otherwise gullible persons, that is, everything would have been automatically fine for them and for the whole nation - if only the partition had not divided the great big provinces of Bengal and Punjab at India's independence. This mentality also prevails in many who are all too willing to divide their own nation further at a whiff of any demand supported by armed terrorists. Tamilians were surprised why Indian government wouldn't simply agree to give away what remains of Punjab when there was a demand for Khalistan, for example.

Considering the way demand for partition was agreed to, namely, post Jinnah's call for "action day" in Calcutta executed with a massacre of thousands of Hindus in less than three days, with knives not machine guns, this easy solution mentality seems to be almost a necessity of being seen as a peace loving secular person if one is a Hindu.

Fact is however, facts speak otherwise since the partition and before, long centuries of history and decades since over half century ago. There is no way one can be reasonably certain that the same bloodbaths and exodus of Hindus from eastern and western parts given away in name of Jinnah's demand would not have happened if only those parts given away had included all rather than most of the two provinces, on the contrary. Better parts of the provinces did go to the separated new nation, and ever since then there has been an attempt to "cleanse" their nations - one until the independence war of '71 proved that a demanding and conversion-or-die faith cannot be a factor to hold a nation together, although it can divide one - of all other faiths, by law and taxation and other, more persuasive methods.

Fact is, refugees from those separated and otherwise named parts to India have been a continous stream, and what is more it includes huge populations of Muslims as well, with an agenda - not only explicit but published explicitly too - of settling parts of India and increasing numbers until those parts too can be demanded in name of Islam. That the same threat looms over Israel too is not a secret.

Ghosh though goes further than that, and questions why the war of '62 that threatened the integrity of the nation seriously matters more over localised riots in Calcutta connected to riots across the border in Khulna, Dhaka and so forth with several persons dead, especially since they were connected to the mysterious disappearance of a hair of the prophet in Kashmir and subsequent riots there.

He is very explicit in this book in his disdain, about a few soldiers dead in a war in faraway hills that did not affect the nation, according to him - although one might ask what can one expect of a person who calls Himaalaya "hills", and faraway ones at that in context of India. Perhaps he is thinking from the China-US point of view, both of whom are in fact far away in their centre of gravity from Himaalaya although deeply involved politically in the neighbourhood nevertheless.

This, in view of his calling himself Indian, is about as reasonable as any US citizen thinking the civil war of north and south was more important than the two world wars and the cold war with threats of nuclear holocaust looming over the nation to boot. This point of view might be of a southerner who left the country at the conclusion of the civil war to live in Mexico or further south, dreaming of return with a bigger force to win the war back for a Confederacy. For Ghosh, the parallel would be his persuading India to give away whatever "they" demand, whoever "they" be, in the interest of peace and being seen as reasonable by powers west. Or east.

A convenient point of view for someone who lives in US, after all, and enjoys the perks of being seen as Indian while living in a rich society. A parallel would be someone Jewish living in US advising giving away anything demanded by not only Palestinians but all surrounding nations as well, and calling the various wars unimportant while naming the local riots more worthy of publicity.

One wonders if he would have the same point of view about giving away, say, Alaska to Russia - the lease has expired, after all - or New York to the Dutch, Louisiana and a few other parts to France, California to Spain and Mexico, and so forth. He is probably more loyal to his adopted nation, if only for sake of his family and their wellbeing, unless he goes by reason and extends his positions about India to his chosen country too. It would only be fair, at that.
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In the story, the protagonist's "practically twin" Ila is obsessed with the "yellow haired" Nick Price, never mind how casual he is about her - he will use her for any purpose that suits his needs but won't commit anything except empty vows, not kept at all even immediately post honeymoon. He won't defend her from a bunch of bullies in childhood from being beaten up in street any more than he won't refrain from using the apartment bought by her father for the newly married couple to have sex with other women day long regularly, or think of schemes of business using her father's money to further his own living. He has returned from a well paid job in Kuwait due to shady business on his part, but is in no hurry to earn a living even post wedding.

This Nick Price that Ila is nevertheless obsessed with long before she manages to marry him - one wonder if she was the best Nick could catch under his circumstances, he couldn't have found a better one amongst his own, although whether he would treat such a one better is a moot question, and most likely not is the obvious answer - this Nick Price is the alter ego of the protagonist according to his explicit mentioning thereof as soon as the name is mentioned by Ila, and this tells perhaps a lot more about the author and his background at that.

For all that his avowal of nationhood across arbitrary borders being false goes, he - the protagonist or his fractured identity twins across his family for that matter, and so perhaps the author after all - identifies more with a colonial power that occupied, looted, and left when it suited them, never mind the millions that died in riots that were foreseen clearly as coming due to the arbitrary borders drawn by those that had never seen the country except to sit in an office to draw the borders.

Ghosh, no surprise, is more comfortable living clear across the globe and making pronouncements high handed with a nose turned up, not so different from the various Germans who begin to advise India about what to do about the crowds or health or what have you (forgetting their own lack of any suitable experience that might excuse such pronouncements) as soon as they meet someone from India. He - this writer - after all does identify with his obsession with those that left, if only because they have yellow hair flipping in their eyes - there has never been any other justification mentioned of Ila's obsession with Nick Price other than this in the whole book. She makes up a story to herself about his protecting her, and insists on the lie even after her marriage is immediately proven empty. Nick is no more than a cheater, whether in finance at workplace or in personal relationships.
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The Imam And The Indian; by Amitav Ghosh.

The spelling of the author's first name follows the convention of his roots, where "v" of Roman script is pronounced "bh", in accordance with "w" being pronounced "b" generally; his name ought to be spelt Amitabh for a proper understanding of how to pronounce it, and in fact in his home in Bengal it would be Amitabho since almost every "a" is made into an "o" as a rule in Bengali.
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A collection of the author's writings prior to or in between his prolific authoring of books, these essays or "prose pieces" as advertised on the cover (new worldese rather than English?) reflect his background and the handicaps of his upbringing as clearly as a not too deep pond would show its bottom just as it is reflecting the surroundings.

Ghosh suffers from the not uncommon malady of a brown sahib with his conflicts - on the one hand the deep seated need to win the approval of the colonial masters, the ones that designed, planned and executed the factories for manufacture of the brown sahibs, a nomenclature they gave to the products of the schools set up by colonial rulers to "educate" the ruled into their own image internally, so that the machine of colonial rule would run smooth with the least effort from the rulers thence free to loot; on the other hand an equally deep seated need to rebel against this, but without being accused of siding with one's own people, being not free of one's own background prior to the coats of years and years of brown sahib varnish that went into the making of the products never ever quite finished.

This conflict results then strangely enough into an attitude that goes - one may be born such and such and educated by so and so and living in a rich nation with reaping of the benefits thereof of the lifestyle of a rich democracy along with a possibly local wife and therefore natural half white children (so one doesn't have to worry about their heritage quite as much after all, or for their peers dealing with them with prejudice or worse) - but one is free to have an attitude against all of the above, so one can be called independant at least and fair at best; to achieve this, the Indian Hindu brown sahib repudiates in particular anything remotely of the Hindu Indian multitude thought (calling it baseless sentiment helps), sides with the pre-European colonial rulers (scrupulously refraining from identifying them as colonial rulers), and calls it secular. Since this is approved by the party that came to power with independence of the country that provided his background (which included the status of parent - not only "salaried government employee" but one rather well paid with perks, in diplomatic services to boot), a party that endorses a definition of secularism that goes with faith equated to most outrageous claims of minority religions (but only the sizeable minority, those sponsored in stupendous amounts from outside for the purpose of conversion and other routes to power meanwhile) and putting down of majority ones - votebank politics at its most shoddy form - one can literally see where Ghosh is coming from.

To add to all this there is his life spent in various nations since childhood and well into his formative years including working on his Oxford degree, nations and societies where he was not only made to feel ashamed of his roots but his very existence and life of his family was threatened due to their being of another faith. He therefore perversely goes to "understand" them and taking sides with the least informed, most prejudiced, and so forth, and for example is never able to explain why cremation is not only as good a way as burial to dispose of the bodies when soul has departed but is in fact better, since it allows no desecration by animals or invaders and does not clutter the earth with cemeteries, leaving earth free for life on earth.

Such convoluted mindset explains why he praises someone "born to rule" and without a place to rule, constantly on the run from his own kinship who are equally all born to rule and therefore out to finish off each other to rule the same little place, hating a vast subcontinent when he has managed to acquired it but not leaving it to go attempt to acquire the little town in central Asia he longs for - Ghosh praises the historic document as an unprecedented piece of literature rather than a factual write up of the wars and victories that it was, understood by now as in fact written in all probability by an official court historian rather than the conqueror himself, and manages to miss the bragging about destruction of temples and disposal of the worshiped objects by paving the doorsteps of mosques with them.

He goes on to tow the official line of obfuscation about uncertainty about there having been ever a temple and more. Such uncertainties can be very simply removed with publicly witnessed and documented - photographed, videoed - archaeological digs; that the "site" has instead been locked up with all archaeological work stayed forever ought to make anyone with a shred of brain suspect that the claims about a temple might after all be not only true but known to archaeological authorities and therefore to the government that seeks to claim otherwise; that walls have been recently built behind other similar monuments known to have been built on top of temples destroyed for the purpose, including mausoleums, ought to make anyone with a shred of gray matter suspect it is a shoddy conspiracy to rule the nation by browbeating and guilt imposed on majority.

But Ghosh is not concerned about any of this, he would rather be seen as someone who rebels against his Oxford-route successful education - successful in his acquiring not only an admission but a final degree at Oxford - and is fair to the West Asian downtrodden nations in spite of his life and family residence in the ultimate paradise on earth, US.

If Ghosh did grow up out of his mucho handicapped brown sahib upbringing, it is not clear in his "prose pieces", possibly due to their being not recent; if he is at all likely to grow up, he probably will hide it assiduously, since his present attitude and lack of comprehensive knowledge or thought helps him win accolades in his home country, and refrains from his being branded as a Hindu in the country he has chosen for his life.
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Mrs. Gandhi's Ghosts is a curious piece, worth a read for its first hand account of the day of her death but raising questions about the lack of generally known details of the horrors being far too coordinated to be merely "young hoodlums" roaming around and responsible. Ghosh does mention a direction being given generally and transport being provided free to those killers but refrains from mentioning who might have done it, and does not have a world of repugnance or denounciation, unlike his clear sentiment for destruction of a mosque unused for centuries as a place of worship - except by Hindus who all along believed it was birthplace of a God of theirs.

This silence about perpetrators of horrors of post Mrs. Gandhi's death - just as huge and conspiratorial as the silence about perpetrators of the massacre of several thousand Hindus on and for a couple of days after the "action day" commanded by Jinnah for demand for a country he could rule in name of a faith he disdained to practice at any time in his life, a massacre moreover with knives, indicating not only complicity by the then government of Bengal but participation by hundreds that went unpunished and even unaccused just as the '84 massacres did - this silence and careful refraining from any mention of anyone who might be held guilty even if due to being in a position of responsibility, is indicative of the loyalties and dirty politics of those that clamour for blood of guilty in riots (post burning of a train full of pilgrims alive to death) in the name of secular justice.

Sadly someone of Ghosh's capabilities - anyone having read his novels can suspect he is not quite one of those whose minds were destroyed completely by their education - goes along with this party line, much as the leftists and fellow travellers of leftists went on to justify every atrocity in East Europe and China (and by China in Tibet) but make up for it by clamouring to question India's holding Kashmir as a part. If wishes of the populace were the criterion, what price forcing Baluchistan and Frontier Province against their wishes into the country they did not choose? They had clearly expressed their wish to be part of India, so much so the Viceroy and his retinue had to escape their wrath by fleeing their crowds, afraid for their lives!

For Ghosh, it probably is convenient to not think about any of it, and take the path of least danger for himself so he can continue his privileged life - and that involves officially siding with every claim, however outrageous, made west of borders of the part of India that is currently named India.
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From Beirut To Jerusalem; by Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman's life, work and impressions of the two places when he was stationed there during the eighties, the work is informative in detail in more ways than one - horrors such as Hama and confusion of Lebanon are not this well known to those not of the nations involved, for example - and very worth reading.

Even as one reads these accounts one wonders at the cry against the comparatively smaller details of events elsewhere due to the democratic nature of the nations and culture in the said elsewhere places, while almost no sound is made about the Hama massacre of 38,000 Islamic fundamentalists and the neighbourhood they lived in by their own regime in an Islamic nation, just as very little noise is heard above the bare mention of the massacre of Armenian million and more by the Turkish government a century or so ago. But then, so very little noise or mention exists about the massacre of millions of Tibetans in Tibet by China, while billions were spent to arm the Afghans against - comparatively - an almost benign, benefic Soviet occupation (women will never be so free again as under the Soviet occupation according to the prophecy by the father of the protagonist in The Kite Runner, and it seems to be all too true even until now what with the neighbouring regime supporting Taliban to wage their war in a supposedly free Afghanistan, supposedly free from not only other other repressive regimes but from Taliban chiefly).

But then, it ought to be clear to anyone looking dispassionately, or with a passion for humanity, that the misplaced war on Soviet regime to the exclusion of ignoring massacres in Tibet, Hama, and elsewhere by Islamic fundamentalist regimes using weapons of terror across their own borders and within too (massacre prior to independance of Bangladesh by the military of west Pakistan of what they thought were their own people in the eastern part, including the horrendous use of women of Bangladesh, kept naked and chained so they could not run away, half a million women - or was it only fifty thousand? - so treated in inhumane way for sexual needs of the occupying west Pakistan military soldiers, a la nazi treatment of their own - read German, misnamed "Aryan", the real meaning of the world Aryan from Sanskrt having nothing to do with the usage made by nazi regime or their predecessor racists in any part of Europe - women kept for sexual use of their soldiers) being one example. The only difference was the German women were probably allowed to wear clothes when they were not being used.

And yet none of these various atrocities are mentioned a fraction as much as the happenings in a couple of places, easy targets for being not only democratic regimes of modern nations that believe in education and cultures of certain faiths that do not go about converting with aggressive fervour and hence targeted.
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One reads about the two nations and two cultures in this work - with people of diverse agenda and more than one nations in each of the two - and one is overwhelmed with the information unless one is extensively familiar with all this, which a general reader is not quite likely to be, not so much.

The diversity of Lebanon in the citizenry of not only including Christianity among the nation but remote and elsewhere not so well known branches of both Islam and Christianity is as much a new fact for most of generic readers as the description of almost claustrophobic nature of orthodox variation of faith in Israel that is so very a mirror image of Islam in its fundamental robe.
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Informative although not exhaustively so - for instance, details of the terrorism are missing with their effects, and the few mentions include a branding of a people but refrains from mentioning if such branding was justified by their sympathy and covert help for those that did commit acts of terror - this is an account of the author's life in the two places and his perception, understanding, and information about the people and nations of the two places - the number being a lot more than two.

Also, it explains a lot about acts of terror committed elsewhere that are linked to the topic of this work, by the tide of the movements, and successes perceived thereof by various others who sought to copy those successes including what counts as martyrdom, but more relevantly the expansion of a people connected by what is misnamed faith via methods tested and proved effective - high rates of reproduction, induction of small children in acts of terror and war (and subsequent howling against the same children being caught in crossfire or affected as result of the encouragement by the adults towards taking part in the war), occupation of lands and hypocrisy of howling protests against others either being part of the same lands or copying the occupation tactics, flat out declaration of not tolerating others among themselves and howling against similar reluctance by others to tolerate their own selves, using their own intolerance and democratic tolerance of others to their own benefits of expansion and take over towards a final aim of converting humanity with a clear agenda of clearing the world of any other faiths or systems, .... it is all eerily familiar across spaces and time.
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Interestingly another analogy is that about settling of US, Australia, and so forth, generally the continent(s) of the so called New World, by migrants from Europe; "settling" (they were none of them empty, to begin with!) those continents by every possible tactic including massacres and denigrations of real inhabitants of the places, including misnomers such as Indian (for a variety of people that had nothing to do with India - but then again, the very name India was given by people outside India to the land once so known) - or Aborigines, rather than retaining names they have for themselves.

Is settling of Palestine - by an original people driven out of it by Rome two millennia ago - against the unwillingness of the more recent inhabitants of the land (bought by the settlers from owners who were of the same ilk as the unwilling recent inhabitants, only they were rich landowners and couldn't care less for the tenants' opinions, feelings, or lives - unless they simply knew they were taking the money for a land they intended to drive away or massacre the new settler from anyway) - is this worse than the massacres, and worse, of original people of continents of Australia and America, by weapons and infected blankets and deliberate "whitewashing" of races by using European male settlers' usage of women of the land (it would be called rape if the males involved saw those women as human, but in all likelihood they saw them as objects of use, and this is worse than rape) and taking the resulting children away by force, causing disruption of families and trauma very like that of slavery of people kidnapped from Africa and sold in US - well, one doubts Israeli occupation of Palestine, including the post '67 territories, could even begin to compare, all the more so since it was a much persecuted people flocking to their homeland they had been driven away from by Rome then occupying Judea, and never allowed to live in peace anywhere else in the world with the exception of two places, two nations (one since expanded, one severely divided and a victim of terrorism of expansion by a colonising and conversionist people or two).

Those two places through history of the two millennia when Jews were driven out of their homeland and dispersed, seeking to live elsewhere and never allowed to feel at home or have rights, were India and China.
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In the land and culture that India was before the forced partitions (due to some that required supremacy of their faith as a national character), Jews lived in peace, were free to follow their own faith and culture or assimilate as much as they chose, prosper, and survive - as other refugees since and before, including Parsis, those from Persia fleeing terrors of a persecuting new religion over a millennium ago, and more recently Tibetans. This is by no means a complete or exhaustive list, either - it includes all those from east or west that came with intentions of life rather than that of death of others.

China on the other hand assimilated the Jewish diaspora gently - according to Pearl S. Buck, for example - until trace of such assimilation is found in a name here, a nose there, and very little more.

In India - what is now retained by that name - however, one can find old Jewish settlements in various places, and people who have lived there for all this time. The young might have emigrated elsewhere, but that was due to better economic prospects post formation of Israel as much as a returning to an ancient homeland or finding others of one's faith from across the globe - all the positive reasons, and none of the usual ones of persecution or lack of any rights of citizenry on par with everyone else.
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Events have gone far beyond the book's beginning of Hamas, of course. Now the world is smaller, terror spread beyond boundaries of the nations that have been the usual target, rogue nations have been reluctantly admitted by various powers of west after attempting to coopt them into "fight against terror" by labeling them as a partner of US in this fight and bribing them with billions of dollars unaccounted for - only to find the money vanishing, more demands for sophisticated weaponry, and backdoor coordination by those "partners" with the very agencies of terrorism they have been pretending to cooperate fighting. This is today, post not only the horror of towers unfolded over a decade ago but nearly a year post having the man who masterminded or at least was leader and spirit being hunted down in his lair in the very heart of military establishment of the "partner" of US in fighting terror.

Few dare to ask, was US really so stupid as to be duped by this nation, one born less than a century ago out of terrorism used for demanding it to begin with (but teaching its children, falsely, that it had existed for over a millennium, never mind how unlikely it was to exist even today without the massacre of thousands in Calcutta to force the demand), all along, or was it something else?

Now however not only this is post 2001, it is post the 26/11 targetting of western and Israeli people in a landmark luxury hotel in Mumbai used as focal point of a terrorist attack masterminded on cellphones from across the western border to instruct the terrorists continuously, and there can no longer be a pretension of doubt about the rogue nature of the agencies that mastermind and train the terrorists while denying it with open lies as long as the paymasters are willing to buy the lies. Hamas has been joined by various other agencies of terror as a front for the authorities of the rogue nation - agencies that merely change names and claim to be institutions of charity, on the whole creating a picture of a killer on the loose pretending to be a beggar and denying both begging and killing, or blackmail that joins the two.
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Letter From An Unknown Woman; By Stephan Zweig.

Opinions differ on this - chiefly on Letter From An Unknown Woman - regarding how to see this, as a maudlin or heartrending.

To begin with the story is about a handsome rich playboy who is depicted in the tale with no moral sentence on him whatsoever, neither about his wasting his life nor about his neglect of the women he has been around with. This is not to say one ought to pass such a judgement or that the author lacks moral sense, it is merely how the portrayal here of the man goes. The chief part is about a young girl who is poor and it so happen she lives across from his flat, looks at him and is fascinated by him and his lifestyle. There is no way she can aspire to be one of his lovers in her circumstance.

Her circumstances change for the worse, and she subsequently is a woman of the world in the barest sense, but with better financial position, and happens to be on the fringe of the man's circle one evening and he notices her. He is intrigued, takes her home, and she has the love she had ever dreamt of - for the short while she does.

She knows he is not to be bound, to be expected to be steadfast in his attraction or notice he took of her, it is casual, and while he could be with her again just as casually another time, he might not, too. She knows this, unquestioningly accepts it, and leaves in the morning.

It so happens she is with child from him and hence loses any possibility of keeping herself financially well off - and then loses the child too, to an illness she is too poor to pay for a treatment of.

The letter is written post that heartrending loss, still with no expectation, just to let him know. He reads it, wondering, trying to remember which of the hundreds of women he has been with was this one, and has merely wisps of recall but nothing clear.

Written in a simple style and heartrending in its truth at every step, it makes an impact - unless this is what one takes as normal and is impatient with the author or the woman for making a fuss, which one supposes a good many would; some of course would denounce the male, and most the female. The author merely portrays the lifestyle of one, and the life of another blossoming and withering, without any such denouncing or comment.

Some opine this is a great work, and some that this is maudlin sentimentality.

Incidentally, the word stems from Magdalena and represents the snide attitude towards women from the church authorities of early, perhaps even now, times; not so far from the word grotto being the origin of the word grotesque, and the latter one being denigrated into meaning something horrible, while really it amounts to merely relate to grotto the way statuesque relates to statue. Grottos and caves, or artificial grottos thereafter even until now, were and are used for worship of the Mother Goddess figures through Europe; on one hand the figures were integrated by using the name of Mary the mother (one wonders if the earlier and real figure included Mary Magdalene, the bearer of Jesus's child, rather than his mother); the practice of the grottos used for worship continued on one hand and was denigrated on the other by the denigration of the word grotesque.

River of Smoke : by Amitav Ghosh.

What with the meticulous research that went into this one, it has taken a while for this second part of the trilogy of opium to come out. Meanwhile one has the details of the first one a bit blurry if one did read it. No matter, though, what is necessary to remember is referred to more than enough with more details and one begins to recall the first part vividly when those references do occur.

Opium was forced on Asia by powers of Europe and the so called New World, in a two pronged strategy, after this and other similar substances were banned with heavy, harsh penalties in the home lands of those powers that benefited from this forcing of the substance on Asia. Back in UK for example anyone trading or possession or indulging in opium stood to lose three times the market value of the substance in possession, while being in danger of prison or worse. Abroad, however, the same people who abhorred the substance in their own countries and obeyed the laws thereof, traded with impunity. This might sound innocent until one realises that fact is such trade was not only forced and manipulated by these people but was in fact introduced in the first place by them, those that would not tolerate it in their own homelands.

Part one described how East India Company forced poor farmers of India to convert their lands to produce opium, instead of the variety of foods the produced which had kept them in good health and wealth until the lands thus converted amounted to shortage of food and other necessary produce and byproducts - animal fodder, thatched roof material, and more. The opium thus produced with pain by the poor farmers was then compulsorily sold to the same British at the prices they set, thus driving the poverty of the farmers to further dire levels.

And all this was "justified" by British in a sentiment quoted in a private speech amounting to necessity of sacrifice for sake of the benefits of opium in new research for medicine - never mind that the most benefits went to the profits in pockets of the British while the sacrifices were the poor Indian farmers' lot.

In this one the well known (but less publicised and hence twisted to the opposite of facts in general public knowledge) facts about how opium was forced on China by British, other Europeans, and in fact by US in the first place, traders, is the gist of the story.

The first ship to introduce opium to China was in fact from Boston, Massachussetts - and while reading this I recalled how my housemates in Boston discussed substance abuse and their firm belief (they thought, of course, that it was fact and general information, rather than belief) that it was Asia that introduced such substance abuse to innocent youth of their ilk, their brothers who had gone out to various nations of Asia as part of the wars they were sent out to fight to defend democracy in the world.

The arguments of the foreigners of west - west of Asia, that is - justifying not only trading of opium in China but forcing this trade on China and people of Asia in general are given at length in this, and are astounding to read in their out and out openly fraudulent leaps of logic. They amount to the following.

Back "home" in "civilised nations" of (Europe and US) there are laws preventing everyone from trading and abusing and possession of the substances, therefore those laws are sacrosanct, since the substance abuse is evil in the first place. But any attempt of a nation such as China to enforce the same laws already in place are merely evil intentions of a mad despot on throne to enforce his will on the people of China against their "right" and their "free will", hence not worthy of respect.

Moreover, such an attempt to enforce the laws is against free trade, which is to say liberty, which is breath of God. (Why this breath of God is then allowed to be curtailed in nations "back home", by laws respected by the same "free trade" mouthing traders, is only because those laws are enforced - by the same powers that would fight exactly the same laws of China!)

In all this, there are a few men - foreign women are not allowed in interiors of China, even as visitors, even if there were any in the trade of that era in the world - who happen to be from the nations subjugated by west (again, meaning Europe and US and co) who happen to be trading in the small fraction of the trade that they can deal in, and they happen to be from various nations around the Arabic Sea. Their lot is the most fragile, since the Chinese success in confiscating the illegal materials is too heavy for their small investors to bear, and unlike the European traders and investors these poor ones can neither wait nor profit from the subsequent "Opium Wars" between China and the powers that sought to force opium trade on China at gun point, much less benefit from insurance. They stand to lose the heaviest, symbolised in the drowning of a figurehead.

The descriptions of Fanqui Hong - the little annexe outside walls of Canton where foreigners were limited to live and do business, not being allowed to enter Canton or China any further - are very evocative, and one only wishes there were maps if not pictures. The place was razed to ground by Chinese post the hostilities of opium and the behaviour of the western traders, and exists no more, according to Ghosh - which there is no reason to disbelieve, of course.

The bits of descriptions of various details are very telling.

The biggest one, of course, the key to the whole tale - how the foreigners contained in their buildings and deprived of their until then plentiful Chinese servants and providers of necessities, were provided by the legal Chinese authorities that were merely demanding the surrender of the opium before they could be allowed to leave - are telling in the difference of level of civilisation. On one hand, the chicanery of the western traders in forcing opium on others while obeying their own home laws; on the other, the Chinese allowing them to stay in the buildings in Canton and providing them with all possible necessities of life (rather than throwing them in jail and executing them summarily, as they would be in their own nations) and only demanding the surrender of the abusive substance.

But the other bits of descriptions are no less in making it all come alive - the unacknowledged son who basks in his father's attention while being still unwilling to smile, years of neglect and lack of status being not made up for sufficiently by the new attention; the love of the employees of Modi for his generous good heart and their loyalty to him; the history of art of Chinese souvenirs; flora one is so used to one is unaware came from China; various people who travelled and migrated back and forth in lands in East, from Egypt to China; various intercommunal and international marriages or otherwise families and consorts with much love; and more than anything, the descriptions of how shipbuilding in India was superior to that of west and had to be swatted down by British law making it illegal for them to continue ordering ships from India, as they later killed other trades and crafts of India (beginning with fabrics manufacture, killing thousands of weavers by starvation and driving poverty to new levels).

And one has to mention the enchanting descriptions of homes and gardens of the wealthy traders in China, of course, as something beyond what one has seen in west or imagined.

But the book does suffer from never quite becoming a tale, a story on its own, what with connecting part one of trilogy to the next one to come and stuffing this one out with historic documents and details. It is almost there, and one keeps on reading it more and more in hope of the story continuing and getting somewhere, but it flounders in the far too long letters of the artist to the botanist duplicating the already described events of Fanqui Hong. This book remains a connecting link, however important and good, between the part that was (Sea of Poppies) that the part to come. One hopes the author changes his mind and makes it more than a trilogy, with a couple of more parts to come or three. Bimal Mitra did the history of Calcutta in five parts after all, very detailed and long ones too. This one is about the sweep of history of the era, the lands from China to Africa in focus, with traders of all over the globe on sea routes. It could stand more.

History and general descriptions of the colonial era focus on the takeover of the Asian lands, "discovery" of the "new world", assuming ownership of Africa and not mentioning it much at that; the thoughts and awareness that gets a mention is generally of men (and rarely of women) of west. This book changes a lot of one's perception of the era shaped by those as it mentions men and women of the occupied lands and their sweep of awareness of the world of west as much as that of the lands around them. An Armenian of Egypt, and a Parsi (literally, Persian) of India, being aware of Napoleon and his wars and his predicaments, and the effect thereof on their own lives and trade, is just one such detail.


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Cousin Phillis; by Elizabeth Gaskell.

A more beautiful, lyrical, calm and yet realistic description of a young woman and the travails she goes through - due to a thoughtless male who flits about - is hard to come across. The writing is more natural than Austen and so is the construction, with no forced happy ends or tragedies either.

The Mistress of Spices: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

The initial uncertainty between confusion, bafflement, protest or irritation at this tale that lives somewhere on border of knowledge, fantasy and satire (- satire against the western ethos holding not only all the unknown as exotic but as witchcraft to be feared and punished, especially when it comes to women's - or any woman's - knowledge of even the areas she needs to be expert in, such as her kitchen and condiments, spices and foods, their properties of nutrition and medicinal values, their overall effect on a person) in a magical land superimposed on a real city with a very real huge earthquake, a country with its history of migration, its real problem of hostility and animosity against each new wave of immigration, its horrendous silent atrocities against migrants.

Spices as any other foods - fruits, vegetables, grains, whatever - have very real values in terms of nutrition and effects on body that span from appetising to medicinal. Turmeric does have antiseptic properties, it does stem blood flow and helps it to clot (so it is kept pure without touch of another spice in homes of those that know) and can be used for preliminary help with small wounds or scratches; fennel does cool and sweeten breath; cinnamon does help warm up a body; cloves do help with toothache and with cough and cold; and so forth. All this and much much more, all such other knowledge about food and spices, has been known for millennia in ancient medicine of India, Ayurveda, the knowledge of life literally, and is known to not only doctors but women through teachings of generations propagated at home. It is an integral part of Ayurveda, of a woman's education at home, of a homemaker's and a mother's necessary part of her qualification as a householder.

Chitra Banerjee's tale lives with all this and yet in a magical land where the spices have personalities with other, far more unknown qualities. Are they real, are they known to her grandmother, only she can say. One can only say with any certainty that as far as one knows they are unheard of.

But the magical quality of the tale takes over, and one stops bothering about how real it is. In this she is very successful, except at the very end when the couple resolve about what next. That seems forced, somehow.

There is only one respect in which the very well made film was different - obviously. Aishwarya Rai fits the role of the unimaginable beauty that Tilottama (Tilottamaa is literally "every particle excellent", an apt description of the most beautiful woman in court of Gods in heaven) becomes for a night, but certainly not the seemingly old woman with wrinkles or the other one at the end. Even with her normal dressing of an Indian woman through the film there is no hiding her beauty, it depends not on clothes or cosmetics. For reasons unknown, Raven is changed too to a biker rather than a long low car owner. To add the element that making him blue eyed (rather than what he is in the story) took away from his persona, perhaps.

The tales of migants being beaten up severely (and the court saying it was self defence on part of those that initiated the beatings rather than a feeble attempt at self defence on part of the migrants assaulted and maimed severely) are not unknown in the country where they came from, or amongst the migrants in US, or other such lands.

In US those stories however true are held as not newsworthy, just as they are in Germany, since a bunch of "white" young males injuring or killing people of other races of whatever age is considered fit to be ignored in both lands. But the known - evermore since a decade ago - stories of such racist assaults has done all it can to wipe out the self created image of US as the nation of fair law.

Why do migrants still go to US? It is for the same reason the ancestors of the so called "white" ones did not so long ago, for a living, for a life. Now, the migrants often return, finding it better at home in much poorer nations. It is a matter of being poor in civilised lands versus being a bit better off in a jungle with wild beasts lurking around.

Interpreter of Maladies: by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Unlike the other works of her I read before this, this collection of short stories is smooth like a properly aged mild liqueur, and comforting, without the raw edges in her other works that I read before that gave a pain sometimes, often dull, sometimes sharp - which did not detract from the literary qualities of those works, but rather enhanced the experience for a reader familiar with her world.

Lahiri either always was or is developing into a rather fine author and deserves a place in classics. That she describes or writes about the world of Baangaalie immigrants in US is not a limitation but rather her down to earth wisdom of writing about what she knows best of. And she does it very well, in this collection of short stories too, as usual.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011.
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Theodore Boone - The Abduction; by John Grisham.

It is not clear if Grisham is trying out a new genre for the pleasure of it, as he did with a couple of other works, or if this is his new career to attract a younger generation or age group, possibly some of his children or grandchildren - either way, he is as good, as perfect as ever.

Especially for the younger age group and their parents, this is practically a textbook of what might happen, with merely a caution in the scare but an entirely satisfactory resolution of problems on all sides.

Having read this, looking forward to reading the next one!

Londonstani: by Gautam Malkani.

One suffers stoically through the pain of the language and the pages which merely - repeatedly - establish that the protagonist is trying to be cool by giving up his A level grades, joining the local gang of second generation immigrants from India (and other parts of India that was before it was divided due to religious fundamentalists requiring to rule a "pure" nation that was washed out of any sign of those that did not confirm), speaking their language rather than a good English, watching them beat up - but seriously, injuries and all - various youths for little or no reason, and hiding his desire to get a girlfriend his gang friends don't approve of. All this could be done effectively in a page or two, three at most - this writer makes a third of this verbose book hiding clued behind the chaff of the verbosity of little content.

One is shocked a little at the needless death and wonders if they have all gone bonkers - marriages across various divisions of society have always happened in the world and especially in India, and this is a story set in UK, with a young couple that does not exactly depend on parents for providing a home, since they both earn well.

But the last page or two take the whole point of reading the book and throw it in a trash bin - the whole point of going through the book so painfully for a literate reader having been to get to understand the immigrants, and tolerating excuciatingly bad writing for the purpose. One feels the author is enjoying this cheating, this in-your-face reversal revealation. It may happen, for all that, in real life. But in real life the protagonist is not suddenly revealed to be someone or something else. One knows who he or she is.

This tale of majority vs minority switching and reverse colonial existence belongs really elsewhere, but putting it where it belongs would get the author a tag of "right wing, non secular" and mucho brickbats. So he plays it safe by placing it where those labels have not been used quite to fit his tale. Clever trick, not much. Low blow, definitely.

How else does one expect a Bartholomew - Cliveden going through so much subjugation and taking beatings and deciding not to report to his own homeland authorities? Not in London, not in England!
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This reverse scenario of a minority turning into majority locally and a majority local youth being or feeling colonised or behaving to conform with his surroundings rather than with his own majority people may, and does, happen - only, it is usually in another part of the world, where it is taken as righteous behaviour according to the pseudo secular code unwritten but dominant in public discourse while logic, facts, history, truth all go for a toss, since the factor that is important is that the minority or two happen to be vestiges of an ex colonial ruling power or two or more.

In UK on the other hand the minority of immigrants may at most be called economically successful by now, but they by no means are so dominant anywhere as to rule out a police complaint and investigation by authorities into a beating up of an English boy by sons of immigrants.

The only sign of any behaviour remotely similar in spirit to this is fairly innoccous, however pervasive - the immigrant culture from India has taken over in terms of dominant cuisine more than anything else except perhaps Yoga and a bit of spread of vegetarian culture, at least to the extent of eateries and supermarkets distinctly labeling food as vegetarian or otherwise and most restaurants sporting a vegetarian section of menu. Some people are fascinated by the immigrant culture enough to wish to watch films from India or learn Indian classical music or dance, and some would like to attend or watch a wedding conducted Indian style. And yes, a celebrity beauty might wed an Indian immigrant in Indian style in full show (but not in spirit - his family and relatives were invited and although very much present but not allowed on the stage where the wedding took place, and this alone goes majorly and horribly against any possibility of calling it a true Indian wedding in any way) - but thereabouts ends the reverse and entirely unintended colonisation.

Most immigrants keep their own culture to the extent they can or wish for sake of their own integrity of spirit rather than any thought of spreading it, although they do not grudge anyone around learning about it or making it their own, unless it is a mockery (such as the German young woman who wore a saree over her trousers and took it off in public during an Indian classical concert in Stuttgart). And if there happen to be physical fights amongst high school youth, it is hard to believe that authorities are not informed about an English boy being beaten up by sons of immigrants of the "wrong" colour.

Anti Social: by Sumer Chand.

For all the authors from India in English language out there, that is to say those that have been writing and publishing during last five or six decades post independence of India (and not counting the truly great that existed during the fight for independence of India and participated in one way or more), this one is the most authentic in two different ways - one, language and storytelling style, and two, story background and details.

Most authors of India when writing in English have either been brought up in a very westernised surrounding - church school, westernised social setting where people go through western dances decorously (but only with spouses post marriage or even engagement) and do whatever else the set thinks is the latest fashion, which includes looking down on some Indian things while adhering to some understood as necessary part of life and solidity (such as dancing only with one's own spouse, performing all the necessary traditions and excusing oneself with a "what to do, one must, parents" excuse if necessary).

Part of this when one of this set (- as opposed to the expat milieu settled elsewhere that writes in English naturally but has lost touch with India necessarily, not that that is bad, unless they do attempt writing about India seeking a booker or so - that is when they may get one but are seriously out of touch with reality of what they are writing about in the first place, and the prize is a mockery of colonial attitudes of author and prizegiving jury alike -) writes about India is that they attempt to write for non Indians, with whom they are really not in touch either, not much, since mostly they have lived in India; and so there is touches of Indian words or phrases here and there as one might patch one's thousand pounds a plate dinners for social causes with a patch of some starving Africans in a photo on one's wall in the drawing room. This language of patches is more natural to them than either pure English or pure Indian language (any one of the well over twenty odd offical languages with rich history of literature in most, some quite ancient, others with roots in ancient languages). But patchwork it is, albeit natural to the half breeds as it may be, since it is after all created by them.

Sumer Chand on the other hand writes as an Indian not natural in English speaks, translating his words and idioms and phases and the way thought is shaped, translated from Indian (any Indian language - amazing, since they are so different, how very united they are when translated - it is like a body in another garment, merely) often word for word. Reading this does require a thourough comprehension of Indian language (again, any Indian language will do for the purpose), of the idioms and phrases and how thoughts take the shape of words and forms of speech. Even the mistakes in the book are a reflection of this.

Far more valuable is the reality portrayed herein. Unlike various others who attmept to write with a disturbing consciousness about who they are writing for, this one is merely recounting a tale, and the reality of the background of social and political truths of India merely are portrayed as they are, neither with an attempt to cover up nor with the opposite of that with a deliberate slum wallowing torture for the reader.

If there were any honesty in the various prizes - this one deserves more than one of International kind for its honesty in toto. But the prize giving is not as honest as this book or this author - so this might very well be the only eulogy for the very deserving book and author.

Lady Windermere's Fan, and Importance of Being Ernest; by Oscar Wilde.

Lady Windermere's Fan:-

With a name like that you would expect a delightful comedy, and you would be wrong - this one begins to break heart right from the word go. There is the very young Lady Windermere with her new husband she is very much in love with and the friend of the couple who is in love with her, and the whole society buzzing with the woman of disrepute new in town who the said husband has recently taken up with, including paying her very expensive bills; she even almost blackmails him to give her more money, and he is unable to refuse. The woman is audacious enough to make acquaintance of Lady Windermere herself, which might compromise the latter in view of the reputation of the former, and has boldness enough to demand that the husband gets her invited to the party the wife is throwing. The husband is desperate enough to ask, the wife refuses in all rectitude, and the husband sends out the invitation anyway in the wife's name, normally a privilege and a right that belongs solely to her. The wife upon seeing the woman she has not invited informs him she shall strike the woman with her fan, a public insult he implores her not to offer - and she lacks the courage to do so. Then she sees the huge amount he has paid out to the woman, and decides it is time to leave him, and takes support of the very persuasive friend who has been attempting to convince her he will be a far more faithful lover than the husband - of course he is not about to remind her of the life of ignominy she shall live thereafter as either an adulteress or as a divorcée, or worse if the said lover abandoned her.

And then comes the full knowledge offered by the author to the reader (but it is to be kept from the innocent young bride for her own security) and the twists that save her, and too the "other" woman. The end is truly delightful, after all the heartbreaks through the whole play.
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Importance of Being Ernest:-


Delightful and seemingly silly comedy with Ernest being a name, one that more than one suitor of a couple of young women claim, and seem finally to have - what with a nanny who lost a baby by confusing it with a handbag she was going to check in at a safe storage facility, fortunate finding of the said lost baby transformed into a young male, and so forth.

The title however is a clue to the wit of the author, the subtle or perhaps under the circumstances not so subtle commentary on the prevalent norms that penalised him for his lack of reverence for social norms of the day, the tongue in cheek nature of the title being hollow since Ernest is only a name after all.
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The Salamander, and The Shoes of The Fisherman; by Morris West.

The Salamander:-

A phoenix rises out of the ashes alive. But a salamander stays alive through the hottest fire.

Politics and society and church in Italy, and a young official caught in the midst of the whole thing coming out alive by sheer presence of mind and power of thinking, of seeing things and people for what they are, perhaps losing a little of the credulity of the youth but not the essentials needed for trust.
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The Shoes of The Fisherman:-

Informative about inner workings of Vatican especially about the change of Bishop of Rome, that is, election of a new pope after death of a current one, and educational about the role politics - of world and church - plays in the workings.
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Survivor Personality: by Al Siebert.

No great insight here, but generally good cataloguing of traits commonly possessed by those that survive all sorts of things, tragedies and more.

Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility


This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part. How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
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Pride and Prejudice


"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So the writer states right in the beginning.

That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.

Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.

Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason.

It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense. This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well.

Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money". She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist. Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money.

If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour.

But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.

The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.

In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassuarance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned (the two and the aunt) realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.

So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really.
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Mansfield Park:-


The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained. Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation.
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Emma:-


Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme.

It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note.

More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives.

Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them (hence the gifts of course), and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider.

Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain. Jackals manage to devour the marriage and the love and even the children on all but physical level.

Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late. Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death.

None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults. She was lucky indeed.
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Northanger Abbey:-



The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money.

The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings.

The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money.
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Persuasion:-


The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave.

Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.
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The Watsons


One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.
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Sanditon



This barely begins before it ends. One wishes Austen had lived long enough to finish these few and write some more books as well of course. .......................................


Lady Susan


If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means.

Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably.

Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure.

A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.
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Every French Man Has One: by Olivia De Havilland.

Olivia de Havilland had a life full enough before she married a French man - she not only was Errol Flynn's costar in his westerns about Custer and the Melanie Wilkes in the biggest film of that era, Gone With The Wind, but also dated Howard Hughes. Gone With The Wind the film is radically different from the book, not in a small part due to the performers being nothing like the characters they portrayed, and Olivia more than anyone was most unlike Melanie Wilkes - Melanie was timid, brown, quiet, afraid of males, and Olivia is not only beautiful but definitely exudes sexuality and confidence, however tamed.

Then Olivia de Havilland married a French man and went to live in France.

I forget the very innocent explanation of the title (which is why it is funny) but remember the one funny part (it has been an eventful life and a quarter of century post reading this, of which only later few were peaceful if any at all) - it is about her French dressmaker pushing her bosom firmly in with tight controls to tame it down, while she kept pushing it up in the standard Hollywood style to make it look bigger.

Oriental Mythology: by Joseph Campbell.

Informative and often horrifying, but one cannot help reflecting that it takes fringe practices rather than mainstream philosophy of a great culture - perhaps more than one - and such portrayals can make anything at all look ugly.

Silk: by Alessandro Baricco.

A whole new world opening up, and the charm of the perfect spouse can hardly compete with the thrill of the new world and new work and discoveries galore, especially when travel across the world to an entirely different land with very different culture is involved. Add a beautiful, enigmatic person (of the right gender) to this - and voila, you have a complex mystery of life, love, and more.

Here, it is about silk, introduction of silk from Orient to west, of attempting to grow sericulture in west by bringing cocoons all the way from Japan, while travel is by ship and all that such a travel entails.

Lois the Witch: by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Story of an innocent English orphan young girl sent to New England to seek out her only living relative by her dying mother getting caught up in the Salem mayhem due to the prejudiced and ignorant immigrants to the new lands and accused of being a witch due to a young spiteful child's plea for calling attention to herself through accusing someone of witchcraft. Sordid example of religious persecution that would not tolerate, much less understand, differences within branches of the same religion.

The Return of Lanny Budd II (World's End): by Upton Sinclair.

This part, 11th in the series beginning with World's End, covers the beginning of cold war and the disenchantment of Lanny Budd with socialist and communist ideologies, chiefly due to practices of the regimes professing these ideologies rather than any reducing of his belief in rights of individuals, equality of people, freedom, and so forth.

He has opposed the fascist and worse regimes with all he could do, lost a great deal in the process (- one beautiful and loved wife left him due to her conviction that right wing regimes were not wrong in keeping the poor out and the poor were only out to fleece everyone with a soft heart, and another was a German caught by occupation Gestapo in Paris and tortured to death; then there were other friends and relatives galore) - and finally saw their downfall with the end of wwII, testifying against those that were fooled in thinking he was with them.

But the role of leftists has now ('46 - '49, the time period covered in this part) undergone a change from rights of humanity and equality of people to adherence to repressive regimes at all costs including of conviction, thought, mind and soul, not to mention lives of anyone who opposes.

So Lanny and his wife (he married a writer from Baltimore post loss of his second wife to torture chambers in Paris and mourning her in total secrecy of necessity, due to his role as secret agent of Roosevelt) run an independent radio station to air thoughts of those that would not so adhere to any such regimes and champion freedom, equality, thinking.

Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris and Mrs. 'Arris goes to New York: by Paul Gallico

A simple kindhearted elderly charwoman who serves upper class bachelors in London by keeping their premises clean and is generous to her possible extent to her niece, and is content with her life on the whole. All she wants, if and when she permits herself to think of it, is a nice dress - a really nice dress, not an off the rack or anything in between but a really first rate dress from Paris. And then her adventures begin - first to Paris, then New York ....

The Gold of Troy: by Robert Payne.

Son of a lower class family from Germany who emigrated to US as many did in that era, Heinrich Schliemann lacked schooling beyond rudimentary but read a great deal due to his hunger for knowledge not satisfied with the day to day need to work hard and earn to survive. He grew a conviction contradicting that of the era about Homer's work being not fiction but historical, and when he had amassed enough riches to begin his dream project he went with a determination to look for Troy and Agamemnon's gold. For this he had to first marry a Greek girl since he would otherwise not have permission to dig in Greece, which he did with an honest explanation to her after searching for a suitable wife - he was in his fifties, she at the end of her teens - who married him for sake of her nation apart from finding his mission attractive. It so happened they finally succeeded in finding the gold and Troy, but it was in then Turkey, and had to steal it out illegally. He however changed his mind about restoring it to Greece and after much swerving back and forth gave it to Germany, rather than US or Greece, which did not find approval with the wife who had been with him in all his travails.

The gold, then on in a museum in Berlin, vanished post wwII and surfaced only recently with opening up of the iron curtain. It was safe in Russia all these years post wwII.

The Cradle Will Fall: by Mary Higgins Clark

About a doctor who transplants embryos, and a woman who cannot come to terms with loss of her perfectly healthy fetus for no known reason and with no pain or accident discovering to her horror that in fact her baby had been transplanted in another woman without knowledge, much less consent, of either of the two.

Then it was futuristic, perhaps. Today there is a lot done that is perhaps a little less crude but could have more devastating impacts on society tomorrow.

Medical practices meanwhile have improved little in treating patients, especially women, with any respect more than a useful object for study of science and a source of income that demands little and can be browbeaten into any treatment or whatever. Most changes in this attitude that need to be evolved have mostly changed attitudes of what needs to be said or thought as window dressing, and a deep hypocrisy, much like racism or gender discrimination in general ("you should not say that" or "don't think that way" is usually a pat response).
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World's End: by Upton Sinclair.

This is the beginning of a series of books, about the world with Europe centre stage with time spanning from end of world war I to cold war.

A young boy who is coming of age as the first war, then called the great war, is ending, and he happens to be in place where he can be useful as an interpreter - his father is from a US family with a gun manufacture business, and the mother - Beauty Budd, Budd being the name of the family that no one can be sure she legally does have a right to, but most find it more convenient not to challenge her on the point - living in southern coastal France is from US too, a beauty and an ex-model who worked with artists including her own brother in Paris before having a son.

Lanny Budd is growing up with Riviera for home and Europe for a playground, and the education he receives from various sources - his New England austere and wealthy Budd family, his mother with her genial and loving, kind and compassionate character and her coterie of friends who are wealthy and of upper class; his friends from England and Germany, whom he has mutual visits with, and his extended family with various half brothers and sisters, is all giving him a base from which he grows to be a man of education and learning and a good conscience and a good heart. He is the protagonist and in some sense the soul of the world he inhabits where much is to happen - and the future of humanity is at stake.

This is the first volume of the series that has ten volumes or eleven in all - I always forget the number but do wish one day to have them to read again. It was fortunate to stumble across them in the first place, in a library that was a refuge and a retreat all those years, and incidentally is now a landmark and a preserved heritage structure.