A Streetcar Named Desire; by Tennessee Williams.

Parable for southern (once Confederate) society in form of heroine as usual in the writer's work - she is trying all possible means and ways to keep her flag flying, her dignity gathered, but is cheated, exposed, defrauded, and ultimately raped - and sent off to asylum for saying so.

Life with Father and Life with Mother; by Clarence Day.

One of the most delightful books one can ever find.

A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.

On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.

And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....

Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.

The Color Purple; by Alice Walker.

Colour Purple arrived on the scene with a thunderclap and lightening - oscars went to Out Of Africa, because it was more convenient, though that was very deserving and excellent as well. The books are more than worth reading in both cases.

Rural poverty and injustices of every sort victimising the weakest in that society - young girls, especially those of the lowest rungs in social order that refuses to give way to more just and equitable arrangements.

How the woment that grow from those girls survive and grow to find life and identity and some semblance of happiness or at least peace, is worth reading.

I would recommend it to anyone over twleve, and for anyone over eighteen it is almost a must read.

This has a history of a suppressed people, and in as much as it is about people who were poor and had been slaves for a long time and had lost their roots and civilisation and left adrift after emancipation, it is of dual suppression - the story of women of African ancestry living in US at a time that I am not sure is specified, but some time between civl war and 70s.

It does have all sorts of things you might not like but is uplifting because they triumph over the longest possible odds.

The Age of Innocence; by Edith Wharton.

A portrayal of another age, of society as it then was, of love and marriage and family and lives.

A time when society was more rigid in norms that were beginning to be loosened, but a woman nevertheless stood to lose, and so her family and society joined together to see that she kept her marriage and her status - and if that was not acceptable to her it was rather difficult to keep on supporting her, and she had an exile to other lands as a route if she could afford it.

Men had more power, true, but were not as free as today when some societies have left security for women in marriage as a completely open door situation, whereby no one really benefits although the thoughtless and the loose profit in terms of money that their wives and children lose when they separate.

Love was then a deep, intense hunger of heart as it rarely can be experienced by much cheapened word and much indulgence that has veiled the truth of Love from most people and their lives.

The Picture of Dorian Gray; by Oscar Wilde.

Story of a man who is able to keep an innocent visage in spite of a horrible life and actions, and it is only his mirror - an allegory for his conscience, his inner self - that shows him as he is.

The President's Lady: A Novel about Rachel and Andrew Jackson; by Irving Stone.

In this Stone takes up the era of exploration of the land and large part of continent that is now USA, and the story of a good woman and a good man who were maligned due to the then conventions for no fault of their own - the fault in fact lay with the man who had lied and allowed them to believe that there had been a divorce, while he had simply not done it. Much life threatening dangers were braved by the explorers, which is difficult in this era of mobile (cell) phones and GPS and so on to imagine.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In many ways this work was pioneering, in exploring the concept of drug related personality change and writing about it, depicting the effect of drugs on psyche to the extent that a person under effect of a drug can chane completely in personality and behaviour; however that aspect of the work was pushed aside, buried, and got lost in the sensation of dual personalities of the title and the rest of it, the horror, the murder without mystery and so on.

In a way it might be about the writer himself - when you read his poetry you cannot imagine him creating a Hyde, and vice versa. (Don't tell me they are separate people, that would make sense!)

Boston; by Upton Sinclair

I was new to the country when I read it, in Boston, and it was quite something to read an intimate history of the society and the lapses from justice that happened not due to legal and justice systems overlooking a crucial part, but because the ones that got a poor deal were poor immigrants early last century.

Manassas; by Upton Sinclair.

A comparatively fresh look at the civil war in US. Fresh, from the perspective rather than time of course.

It is a bit comparable in freshness of outlook to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

War and peace; by Leo Tolstoy.

There was a once a one year old telling a parent "isn't that girl beautiful" and the father turned around, but there was no one there. After a bit of talking to the child the father realised the beautiful girl was in fact Audrey Hepburn, the heroine of the film they were watching. Impressed, he informed his wife of their child's beyond the young years capacity of observation and opinion. The two conversations took place during the interval, over half a century ago. (The film of course was War And Peace.)

It so happens Audrey Hepburn was someone who grew up herself in another era of trying circumstances of war, and went on to do much during peace years of her society for people of another war torn continent, on behalf of UN, for peace.

The book is about society in general and a young growing girl in particular during times of a war and later peace in feudal society in Russia, in a bygone era.

It is interesting to compare it with Gone With The Wind, which is on a similar subject, only that one goes on to document far more of a loss as indeed apparent in the title, whereas this one deals with a war that did not yet end the social structure as it then was in Russia.

That - the dissolution of the social structure - happened later and is documented in Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.

Chokher Bali; by Rabindranath Tagore.

This title is clearer and better spellt than another edition of the same book.

It is about as trivial as a grain of sand but when in the eyes, the pain that can ensue with so small an object that you would not notice otherwise; has nothing to do with either a necklace suggested by choker (as it is misspellt on some other editions) or an island named Bali. Chokher is of or in the eye, bali(e) is the grain of sand.

Life might be all perfect from every side - wealth, a young attractive couple happy in their marriage and with little or no trouble, a large household with many hands to take up any work needed to be done, to shoulder any burden - and yet, a small grain of sand in the sensitive place is all it takes to threaten and perhaps destroy it all.

I read this way back before it was a film in English - the version I read was a translation in a language close to original. The film is beautifully made and brings out the nuances well. With the director of this calibre, and artists so good, perhaps this is to be expected.

So if you are not an expat Baangaalie, perhaps seeing the film might help, since connecting to the life and conventions of that day would be not so easy, and much is assumed in writing that is made explicit in the film.

Dracula; by Bram Stoker.

One has to wonder if the writer meant to write it as a parable for happenings on another plane, and that those truths were not seen for the literal thrill of the horror genre, and perhaps it is seen at other levels by a few but not consciously by general public - or if it was simply that while the writer meant to write a simple horror story something far more got written instead through him.

Either way the story is far more of a horror as a parable than literal, which is horrible enough.

Elizabeth I; by David Starkey.

One wonders if there were other reasons for Starkey to go equivocal about the persona that saved England and set the strong base for what it rose to become later, out of the chaos she had received. Was it the apologetic stance of the various branches of church currently that would rather be seen as not divided at all but essentially together with the Roman orthodox one thay all fought to break away from, or is it merely the guiding hands behind the now monarchy that seeks to disassociate the approved set of things from the past rule, especially what was the quintessentially English rule?

The thought above would be valid from merely reading the book, even if one missed all the not so subtle televised efforts to make people think that the love and grief for Diana was either merely an aberration on part of those that were emotional (translate as lacking in self control and so unreliable when it comes to discourse of mind or power), or not quite in good taste, and forgotten at any rate; one does wonder if those who try so assiduously to throw the black veil on the quite alive memory of Diana and her legend that after all she is eventually the future queen mother, and it won't do to throw mud on her name or memory especially whe she was so very loved?

As for the church, I have heard some protestants apologetic about Luther - though why should they only their preachers can tell, and it probably has to do with policy decisions - while some others still have disdain for any who worship any woman, including the mother of their own god. And they express it quite vocally too.

Why all this while reviewing the book on a namesake of the current monarch, one might wonder. Well, actually, none of this is unrelated when it comes to Elizabeth I.

You might not think it from this book and that is probably the intention, but she was the very loved Queen Bess, of England's own. Loved not only for her red hair, and other beauty which she inherited from her mother, but for the calm and secure stability, and sense and selfhood she brought the nation, while beginning a new era of prosperity and adventure, all out of the chaos begun with her father disassociating the nation from Roman authority in all matters, and worse, the complete chaos then wrought by his first daughter, who has been always called by England with the apt name Bloody Mary they gave her for the years she ruled.

Elizabeth brought sense to the chaos, peace to the people tired and fed up with the years of various sides murdering people wholesale in name of faith (and actually for question of what authority they would follow), and ruled long in spite of all attempts on her life, more than a few authorised by Rome, with vituperation.

For the sake of her nation, she had to give up any sense of a personal life, since a monarch could only marry another royal and she stood to compromise England if she married. No children, either. Her England is what she became identified with, an emblem, a personified Britannica and more.

Starkey seeks to equivocate by sifting around and while not quite badmouthing Elizabeth I who was after all monarch (he is a royal subject and so even apart from questions of people throwing eggs at him if he were too obvious at this, it might be treason and an ordinary citizen might be aware of that too, much less the laywers and so forth) - what he does do is to equivocate by painting Mary (Bloody Mary, not the other one) as somehow right and good and not so bad and therefore managing to make Elizabeth look like she was in fact at fault for not obeying her sister.

One suspects therefore that it is a point of view from elsewhere, since it is so very much at odds with the English point of view when it comes to matters of those times.

Heidi; by Johanna Spyri.

It has always been seen as children's literture, but really it is a simple tale for all ages - clean air and surroundings contribute to health, as simple as that, while no doubt dense human settlements are interesting in ways of providing pursuits for mind.

The God of Small Things; by Arundhati Roy.

First and foremost it is a good read and a racy one, and a good piece of writing too. That much is obvious - it won the Booker prize, after all. It was a sensation when it arrived, not the least because it was already portrayed as a sensation on distant shores, slated to go win much - and it did win the booker, giving us an elation.

In India though there were opinions as diverse as could be, with the most innocent detractors pointing out that writers in India had written much greater stuff and while this one was good it was hardly the best of Indian writing or even representative of India either in social terms or in quality of our best.

At one small gathering of friends at our place it was suggested that we should do something, make efforts at social and national levels, to bring out best of our literature to the notice of those that were holding up this as our best. While I don't think there is anything to be said against such an effort I thought it was not a "should" - it could be done but was rather of questionable relevance.

It was only those who gave importance to bookers and oscars and other "foreign" fame and notice and acknowledgement forms that were disturbed by the phenomena that this book had become, I thought (and said) - if "they" like rock and we have great music of Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj and Amir Khan and Hirabai Badodekar, "them" not noticing our best does not change the fact of our classical being superior, unless we have a psychological need of approval from "them" to certify our rich heritage in its superiority.

Now remembering the distant memory - it was a storm in a teacup really, so ten years or so is a lot - one can see another side of it, too.

Pather Panchali was a much heralded film, with awards galore, and fame that went on and on. Part of it was due to its being more accessible to a sensibility that was linear and strictly of mind level, while more complex sensibilities are perhaps of our preference, with inputs from the worlds of heart and music and earth's or world's visual spectacular bounty, and dance. For a while there was a distinct divide - with those that preferred Ray considering themselves superior and those that preferred average Indian cinema apologetic or uncaring. Now, we have come to terms with our own. And meaniwhile there has been all along every kind of cinema in between, too.

So why was Ray the heralded one in west, while we ignored the phenomenal and much - very much - deserved popularity of Awara in Russian, east European and much of other parts of the world? The latter had to do with our colonial past still shadowing us in our need of approval, now a past. The former is another story and connects to the booker prize of Roy in a distant link.

Awara was a beautiful film with a story and appeal that were universal in nature, applicable to any society with injustice against women in suspecting them of fall from virtue and discarding them while innocent, and the consequent social ills. It touched hearts and won them - Russians could sing the theme en masse, and did when they gave a thundering ovation to the star director - and even today Russia knows us by his name more than anything, as casual visitors testify time and again, with their being given friendly smiles and help with the name of India to which they respond with "Raj Kapoor, Awara".

Pather Panchali on the other hand could be applied to poor anywhere, but is visually very much identifiable with India, and so is a story of India identified as a poor nation in the western psyche, a story of poverty. That there is such poverty in their own backyards is swept under the rug, and this stark film is comfortable in their view for applauding. It is only India, and does not remind them of anything nearby. And it is easier to deal with, being much more if not exclusively on levelof mind rather than of a more integral perception.

The parallels are hardly anywhere near exact. Roy's work is on more levels than merely mind, and both the virtue of this work as well as the truth of there being better works even then in Indian (and therefore inaccessible to west) languages - I have met westerners that did not know we had languages, much less literature, and some thought we all speak English! - fact is this one in its value of literary virtue as well as sensational stuff that could be a silent pointing finger at India was more comfortable for rewarding with a much valued prize.

There is no denying this is good work, only, readers from elsewhere are likely to take it as representative of not only a specific story of a place and people or even some of society but of all India. Which is not the writer's fault really.

Roy is brilliant and fearless and has gone on to do superior work, which has gone unnoticed comparatively. Dams are still being built.

I am afraid (the last phrase and the last word can be taken literally only by disassociting it from the subject of the verb, in that everyone should be afraid of such a possibility) that major disasters of far more than environmental and ecological nature are likely.

This is all the more so when sensitive parts of Earth such as Himaalaya and other tectonic dynamic are being played with - without thought of anything other than power and profits.

The Class; by Erich Segal.

Erich Segal might have been excused to take it easy after the success of Love Story, but he went on to attempt to do better, to make sense of a lot of things he lived, and did do well in the process, as a writer. This is part of that attempt and success.

It is about a "class" graduating a particular year from Harvard, and how they proceed with their lives subsequently. There is a reasonable spectrum of people likely to be in a class in Harvard though he refrains from intimate portrayals of any "special" people such as royalty or otherwise nobility or political upper class of various other nations.

The two that stick on in memory are naturally the couple that graduate in Greek, with the various colourful incidents of their lives making that easy. And while he makes it easy to admire the poor Greek lad to begin with and his family that gets an easy victory with their down to earth simplicity at the wedding - when informed by the bride's mother that they should appreciate what an old family they are marrying into the bridegroom's mother looks at her and informs her she does not look that old, taking the strange snobbery out with a sharp pin prick without realising what is going on, sort of a Greek Gracy Allen - and in a neat turn of story later it is the wronged wife who turns the tables, again with no intentions of a fight.

The husband loses even while he wins, not the least due to losing the wife for a meaningless cheating but more so due to his will to win in terms of snobbery and be an ivy league person professionally while he could not be a preppy personally. He sacrifices much for the latter purpose, dignity included, though not publicly.

One wonders at the really stupid snobbery of a people who began the nation with rebellion against precisely the feudal Europe by migrating and separating and forming a nation of supposed equals, when one faces all these various snobberies - mayflower, ivy league - and one wonders if it is not merely a hypocrisy of keeping a two tire society where you have the above mentioned (anyone heard a redneck or a juvenile bully challenge one of those? NO, they bully the supposed lessers, the comparative outsiders, of course!) and then the others who are bullied with a stick of conforming to the standards of redneck bully and his (it is his before it is hers) whims socially.

One wonders if they realise they are falsifying the foundation of the nation they are bullying in the name of with every ill formed sentence they spew out at sight of someone far superior that is clearly not of their neighbourhood nor of one of their bosses'.

Man, Woman, and Child; by Erich Segal.

When an unsuspecting partner in a happy marriage discovers the other has not only had an affair, it was during the happy marriage, and what is more there is incontrovertible evidence - a child.

Worse, the child now needs to visit, perhaps live with the newly discovering family, being too young to be on its own.

Oliver's Story; by Erich Segal.

Love story was wildfire popular, with the lovable girl dying and the boy inconsolable.

But he had to go on living, and this is the sequel, of how he tried in near future after losing his love.

He tried with work, and with love, and came to terms with himself, with some measure of peace.

Love Story; by Erich Segal.

Good read, racy read, and quitessential college love story set in Harvard, with rich preppy guy falling for smart poor girl.

This book - and film - was so much a cult, that not only usual contingent of admirers of all things western, but even the most extreme of the self proclaimed leftists amongst our colleagues were all goofy over it - so much so any girl who looked remotely like the girl in the film was surrounded by men going gaga for little reason they could truthfully ascribe.

When the film and the book eventually lost its cult status, those admirers not only faded away, they soemtimes turned into severe critics, baffling the poor unsuspecting girl, who thought she had them admiring her truly for her virtues, which was only a convenient front for them to justify themselves. She would not have believed it, however, so no one told her. Most guys would have been too ashamed to even admit it to themselves much less inform her.

And the other important difference of course was that the film set a standard that was very romantic - for one half of the world, with the other half struggling to match it forever since it was impossible to really match it.

Think about it - not only a girl had to be smart and independent minded and cute enough to attract a rich and stupid guy but then had to sacrifice all her wishes and dreams, or at any rate put them on hold, while he went to graduate school and she worked to make it happen - to put food on table, pay rent, and still be sexy and independent.

Not that most women did not do attempt to make that struggle - in US, at any rate, where it was possible at all - but then came the whammy of the last needed step the girl in the story prescribed to be the idol, the icon, the forever unattainable unmatched one. She went ill with an incurable disease and died.

This is where most normal ones failed to measure up. They kept on living, very inconveniently, so the guys had to go through other steps to find the domestic wives that the independent strong first love did not transform into. Or they had children and Love Story had not prescribed how the guy should transform. Trouble. And struggle for the uncomprehending women about what exactly they had not struggled to do if they had lacked it in the first place, which they had not.

The girl in the book had no such problems - and while the cult status of the book is no longer hot, it is now set in concrete, with a stone on top.

Frankenstein; by Mary Shelley.

The story is well known by now. a few close friends, talented and well known, well respected writers and poets, had some sort of a bet or competition about who could write the best horror story, and each wrote one - Lord Byron, poet Shelley, - and the one whose story became not only famous and well known across the globe, but made a place for itself in history for all times, was the unknown, Mary Shelley.

This was that story.

Most people mistake Frankenstein to be the name of the monster created by the scientist - not so; it is the name of the scientist, in fact, that is now mistaken for the monster's name in a fitting irony.

A tale that cautions humanity about meddling with nature, with possibilities of dire consequences and horrors unforeseen.

Not that humanity would take the caution seriously - we have polluted rivers and lakes and oceans and watertables until the people of richer nations have come tho think of recycled treated reused water in their pipes as "fresh water", rather than the real thing provided by nature, real fresh water. We have dams on major rivers drying up the streams till fish and birds and the whole ecology is affected, with canals where water does not flow naturally till the land is salinated and no good for any crops.

And so on - with nuclear meddling into particles, with genetic meddling so in future it will be DNA tests that will tell you if you can marry the attractive person or you are siblings, with chemicals seeping into our water and our very skins through every day products.

Frankenstein's monster was one huge one - what we have done is a whole lot of small and large ones.

Can we now do something about return to safety? Who knows?