Elegy

Witty, warm, principled
A memory cherished of strength.
A Banyan branch,
Stumps the stump-

That lightning struck,
Ripped, rings still for resonance.
And so a rippled Banana leaf,
Replete, wastes-

Away, you went fighting
To the finish. Inelegant, not fair.
They miss you Daddy, but I-
Silence is my elegy, for I-

First flower, favored, flourished forward,
Now freeze in frenzy. Forgive me…


And Daddy, twenty-one years late, you’ll be happy to see
I know now, synecdoche from trochee.

A Lament - Inspired by 'The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock'

A Mother’s lament


Jodi tor đak shune keu na ashe tôbe êkla chôlo re,

Êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo re.
Jodi shôbai fire jae, ore ore o ôbhaga,

Jodi gôhon pôthe jabar kale keu fire na chae---
Tôbe pôther kãţa

O tui rôktomakha chôrontôle êkla dôlo re.
Jodi tor đak shune keu na ashe tôbe êkla chôlo re,

Êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo re.


I sit surrounded by poetry
Paper and ink primarily
All else, our Gods’ creation
Serves merely as distraction
A nod maybe to the Mariner of old
Oh yes maybe that tale should be told

I am a blinkered horse riding my own
You call me, I hear thee not,
I bike alone.

For I have called too in distress and despair
Held out a heart for you to repair

Shourie speaks on India today, exhorts us to join the Fray
As we nibble and push at sushi and quail
Among tinkling chimes and clinking tines
We are forty, running out o’time, what’s your story? this is mine.

I have mined mountains of paper
Divined the meanings of a few odd ventures
The Rime I can’t do, though I like it so
It makes me want to get up and go
And heed your call, but I hear thee not

I am a cold woman with a mind of her own
Wrapped up in a fury unknown
I type alone

For I too have called in distress and despair
By my own hand have mended the tears
And cried alone

Sam Mendes comes of Winslet fame,
Spacey’s Richard 3, You go to Kenny G?
She raises brows, I raise a Riedel, hide a smile
(But not the hiding from the brow-raiser:
She does this to me- I hate her.)

There will be time to give and love
Discharge my duty to my people
But now my half-life is done
And I’m not yet on a poster.
I sit frantic on the computer
And for later?
Am Building pagodas in the air to
Rescue me from this Orwellian nightmare

A Birkin worn, hint of red sole, Understated-muted, I know those words
My taken position to improve imitations, to the
Tinkle of China, I push away sushi and quail

I persevere yet declare
This sentence too severe to serve
But I cannot be a loser
I think to myself
And me and myself and I and one who is oneself

A mother’s heart dies
I bicycle on
Wheel back and scavenge
I ride my own

Novel craft

Today, I had lunch with three old friends. We have all graduated from premier business management institutions, held down rather high paying jobs and have all taken extended breaks for our families' sakes. The halo of which may very well have ruined us by the expectations it has created within us, for us, from us. So we discussed company set ups, philanthropic ventures, food blogging, novel writing. The conversation was charged and lively; I was hard put to contain the little spurts of energy and ambition I experienced in the course of the lunch, for fear of spilling it, frittering it away forever. Something about my self-induced catatonia put me in mind of the book I am reading now –Franzen’s Freedom, and I spoke of it as the perfect post modern novel for us to read. As I went on to make the points that I hope to include in the review which I will write after I get down to finishing the book, Sa remarked apropos its running theme, “I suppose one can never be free from people.” And then she said this interesting thing about how all of us have these epiphanies but it is incredible that the writers are able to make a book out of it. My view was that epiphanies made for short stories; the novel form would call for a grander scheme. At this point I was thinking and talking at the same time and so was everybody else, so I am not very confident of my reportage. But let me try and take these strands of thought and talk and reel in a thread long enough to be blog-worthy.

It was hypothesized that if one of us smart and glib, even if we say so ourselves, one of us hyper-organized, spread-sheeting, flow-charting, Venn-diagramming, jargon spouting, Powerpointing MBA types were to write a novel we may start with a single epiphany and flesh it out, by taking many other trips on the way. Yes, if I remember correctly, that was Sanchita’s drift, while I thought of how PG Wodehouse wrote, with pages stuck horizontally in his writing room while the revisions for these pages were arranged vertically and so his books would flow in a single line across his walls, around his room, until they hit a column of rewrites for a single page. I do not think I shared with my friends the gorgeous imagery of a Wodehouse in progress, because I was intent on urgently communicating my own little epiphany – that Hari Kunzru was a writer of this mold, an author who had crafted a novel by taking a central idea, charting a plan to demonstrate this idea, providing the context for the plan and then simply writing it up. However what he has not done is let his pen run away with him, like perhaps I have! Maybe it is time to shut up and write a straightforward review of -





The Transmission by Hari Kunzru

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of Everything could have been another name for Transmission. In the post Internet age a computer geek from Delhi is body-shopped to the United States. A new age marketing guy jets around the world with his laptop, selling his version of branding for tomorrow. A Hindi film actress straining against her mother’s ambition has a meltdown on the sets of her latest film. There are other, secondary characters - the manic Chris, the depressive Gaby, the panicked heart-throb Rajiv Rana, all of whose lives are affected by a strange sequence of events that has everything to do with the global village that we are a part of, and the technical wizardry that some of us are capable of. So there you have it- the premise and the context for the story. How does the author make this into a novel, what about those trips that we spoke of at the lunch? Sure, we have insights on how body-shopping works, the cocaine fueled world of quick money and glamour, the seamy underbelly of Bollywood and my favorite trip, the virtual reality of the video-gamers’ universe. All fascinating yet relevant, all taking the story forward. To flesh these ‘trips’ out we have great descriptions- of an interview office in Delhi, life in the US for a down and out computer programmer, a hotel in Scotland, a golf course in the Gulf- and pitch perfect social exchanges. All apposite and entirely interesting.

Strangely what sounds tired is the description of the geek-protagonist’s Indian family. It could be that I am easily bored reading about a familiar setting. But it is also possible that Kunzru himself was too bored to bestir himself in this direction. Maybe he deliberately went pedestrian for fear of mining a mother lode of rich material too soon; maybe he was saving up any deep insights on Indian family life for a different book. Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but I cannot shake off the feeling that ‘Transmission’ is too pre-meditated, that the brain has had the upper hand in the writing of this book. That unlike in my case, letting the pen and the heart run away with the writing may not be a bad thing at all for Mr. Kunzru.

Be that as it may (☺ yes, I am still reading Freedom), this mastery of the brain attests to phenomenal talent and discipline. The book is made moreover, by the fine thread of humanity that runs through it, a nuanced understanding of every character and their back-stories. And a good finish. You could read it.

Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer

I have bad knees and cannot trek anymore. The announcement at the physiotherapist’s clinic that my hiking days are over, that I had to look at life from a completely different vantage point still aches inside me. From eschewing mountains to avoiding stairs, I have a come a long way down, but reading Jeffrey Archer’s 2009 novel brought back memories of the mid-nineties when armed with enthusiasm and Aachi, I tackled the Sahyadris.

Tavli is marked by a triangle in the guidebook and it was a good thing that, not having read it, I did not realize I was attempting one of the tougher hikes in the Western Ghats. The weak link, I lagged behind Aachi and his friend from Schlum (berger), and after waving them ahead, stopped to admire the parched countryside. I stepped on a makeshift log bridge to cross a dry riverbed, and felt it give a little. The fall could not have been more than five feet and I could have scrambled up and back on the path, albeit through thorny bushes. I chose to find a different route. In thirty minutes, I had climbed up a different hill, found two dead ends, and slipped from a dry ledge which came apart under my feet, missing a fifteen feet fall this time, by holding on to some plants, one of which came off by the roots in my hand. I clambered to relative safety and after dusting myself down called out. I was far away from my trekking partners and I was lost. I had no cell-phone, I have a poor sense of direction but I was calm, maybe because it was noontime and there were no wild people or animals about. I spent about ten minutes twiddling my thumbs and then I heard Aachi calling out- he later said it must have been a wind tunnel that allowed our cries to travel perfectly- and I shouted back and he soon came to the rescue. I remember his words- ‘Respect the mountain. Between man and nature, nature will win,’ all the more because one did not associate Aachi with such grand statements. We reached the Tavli cave through an arduous climb and started back around 230 P.M. The way down was very dangerous - refer http://swapnil3.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/worst-trek-guiding-experience-ever-–-pilot-trek-to-tavli-fort-with-nature-walk-india/. I probably imperiled those boys as we crawled down a steep incline, scrambling for toeholds and palm holds on the rock face. Paths of Glory brought me face to face with the risks I had taken on that expedition and on our subsequent hikes to Rajmachi and Singhgad when we ran out of water and lost our way and walked through the moonlit countryside to a most delightful inn deep in rural Maharashtra- yes these places exist. Much could have been. Much was.


Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer - The mesmeric fascination of a tragedy.

As a child I thrived on simple definitions. Happy endings were comedies, sad endings, tragedies. As I grew up, I picked up on the nuances of the comic genre but tragedies were something else. I did not like them and I did not see the point of them. I suspected that most people were like me, which is why there were not so many tragedies to pick up and peruse, or watch and dissect. The novel form I decided could not create a perfect tragedy, reflecting as it did life- I was optimistic enough or stupid enough if you will, to believe that while life could be a joke, it could not be a tragedy. Well, opinions are made to be changed.

I discover now that tragic stories fascinate me. Devdas, Gatsby, Othello, Hamlet.

Mallory.

‘Paths of Glory’ is the story of George Leigh Mallory who perished while attempting to scale Mount Everest in 1925. It is believed by many people that he succeeded in his mission, but that he did not live to tell the tale. For my part I was hooked from the Prologue.

Personable and chivalrous, and a gentleman bred in the English sense of the word in the days of the Raj, it is not surprising that he caught the romantic imagination of the western world. A passionate climber from the beginning, he was the obvious choice to lead the English sponsored Everest expedition. Mallory was possibly the last man from Europe to conquer uncharted territory and his end and that of Captain Scott in the same decade underscores the risks taken by western man in exploring the world, a risk that has been amply rewarded through world dominance and cultural hegemony. But Mallory did not think like that- he climbed a mountain because “it is there.” And Archer too does not over-analyze the story of Mallory. He seems to tell it like it is, and leaves us free to fill in the blanks, to complete our summations- his strategy in ‘Paths of Glory’ is to hook us with a suspenseful premise, warn us of the impending tragedy and then take over. He gives us a straightforward story, taking care to keep us on the edge, a dropped clue here, a red herring there, the mesmeric fascination of impending doom doing the rest of the work. It is twenty years since I read my last Jeffrey Archer, so I cannot say if his narrative style has become more screenplay-friendly but the book- down to all the conversations- reads like a British movie. Think Chariots of Fire. Which is not a bad thing, necessarily.

The description of the bureaucracy in the selection process for the Everest Committee is outstanding, and resonated with my own experience as an analyst in India for British multinational companies that have not yet shed the vestiges of their imperial past.

If the novel has any drawbacks it is probably in the development of vulnerabilities in Mallory’s character, that could have contributed to his ultimate downfall. He is portrayed as a heroic and a good man, a Fabian whose views should help buttress Archer’s Indian constituency as well as the female readership, but only the first and last chapters bring alive the sheer madness and ignorance of danger that drove Mallory. After all a tragedy owes some of its pull to the inexorable inevitability of it- Hamlet’s indecision, Macbeth’s ambition, Othello’s suspicion, Gatsby’s aspiration. And Mallory’s passion, and his sense that he was running out of time. Remarkably, Archer mentions time and again the mountaineer’s absent-mindedness and habitual lack of punctuality but does not connect that up to the final dénouement, something many members of the mountaineering community have done before. But then again, he does not have to, the story tells itself and we are enthralled. Therein lies Archer’s triumph.

In Mumbai for a day

I first traveled out of India in’95. My trip was to Beijing and in all the excitement of new discoveries, I remember missing the Roman script most. My eyes would vainly scour the urban landscape, searching for something that would talk to me. Sixteen years later, things are different and I want to know if I can say the same about Mumbai.

I am in Mumbai for the day. It is years since I last touched down in this city.

Mumbai too has seen some change. Prodded by the right wing, the predominantly English signage has been recast in a bilingual avatar that could have been masterminded from Beijing, so close is the format. But English and Hindi are both written from left to right and this creates a problem. The Hindi sign starts from the left of the board after which there is a no-man’s blank space; thence begins the English signage. I find it disconcerting to move my eyes over this tab-width space to read the English sign. On my effort scale it ranks on par with deciphering Devnaagri, “the celestial script,” used for Sanskrit and Hindi. I do a bit of both.

Most international flights arrive into India in the dead of night, and mine is no exception. The airport is new. The floor is polished to a glossy finish but the cleaning rota has clearly not been assigned. The Bureau of Immigration provides separate queues for club class passengers. Someone mutters angrily, “Where did all the socialism go?” Quick as a flash an official counters, “International travelers do not need socialism miss.” I am struck by how voluble we are. Or maybe I hear better in my homeland.

Airport officials accost weary travelers every step of the way with unsolicited, at times useful information. There is a strong need to appear purposeful. This need for validation has not spurred anyone however, to rationalize the number of security checks. Immigration formalities completed, I have to line up one more time to show my passport (why, why?) to an official. Then there are the forlorn cops at the exit trying to bully mystified visitors: many travelers do not realize that the customs form, a part of the arrival card, is still inside their passport, and needs to be given to these cops. Woe betide those that have misplaced that little slip!

The madness of the pick-up point seamlessly segues into a snails-pace drive through blaring horns and revving engines. Thirty minutes later we have hit the Western Express Highway, which at midnight, is not a bad place to be. I notice for the first time that the residential buildings on either side are pitch-dark just like in interior Shanghai. No giant lamps in the sky here. The fastest growing economies of the world have not taken burgeoning power consumption retail. Not yet.

I race past late night revelers. Ganapati, I speculate. Mount Mary fair, he suggests. Ice broken, we talk of Anna Hazare and cricket. I ask him about digital IDs being issued to citizens. He has not heard of it.

The next morning is a whirl of meetings and now my work is over. I consider my leisure options. My driver asks me if I have seen the movie “Aarakshan”. There is a glint in his eye. I have not I say, maintaining an inscrutable expression. ‘Aarakshan’ is about affirmative action for Dalits, the untouchables of yore. It is called Reservation in India -of jobs, seats in educational institutions etc. I decide to shop.

We make good time. Church signs flash past, competing with messages from Mumbai Traffic Police. “The only waste that cannot be recycled- waste of time,” says the Novena Church board. “Dnt ct shrt ur lfe. Don’t drink and drive,” exhorts Mumbai Police.

The Phoenix Mills Compound resembles a fairground rather than a mall. “I am a safe toy” stickers are displayed prominently. People are beautifully dressed. Fusion-wear has moved west. Prints are bolder and more colorful. I stop and ask for directions, converse with total strangers, give unsolicited fashion advice to fellow customers (which is received and leads to more talk), answer questions directed at others. New York is the only other city where I can speak out of turn, and feel happy after. I have always felt this way in Mumbai. The difference this time is the China complex. Again and again I overhear unflattering comparisons with China. I catch at the same time, a nationalistic fervor.

On my way to lunch, I pass a family on the pavement, crouched under a plastic awning. They catch my eye because this is not a row of shanties or a settled slum. I have not been away so long that I have lost the knack for protecting myself from a ringside view of human misery. Then again maybe I have- the bright blue plastic should have been warning enough. They are darker skinned than the average Mumbaikar, sturdy in a country sort of way. The mother stares grimly into the horizon, her belongings around her in cartons and bundles. One girl - she could be fifteen – relaxes on a mattress placed crossways on the pavement. She lies back, arms folded across her stomach, looking out indifferently. A naked toddler squats next to her, his wondering eyes following the pedestrians as they come and go. The baby has a potbelly but he is fat all around and that confuses me. The father wears a stunned, exhausted expression; sunlight percolates through the awning, highlighting them in blue. The passers-by seem oblivious, yet they never tread on the bit of mattress that sticks out from under the shelter. It is the monsoon season but the mattress is dry.

I know their expression. I have seen it on stranded passengers in airports. Rural migrants from Andhra I muse, as the traffic lights change and we move on. I have a fancy meal with my friend and we ponder our mid-life crises. We shop. Carry bags are low thread-count cotton, with jute drawstrings. Everywhere is thrift, labor, and beauty melded in one. I buy.

It’s time to get back. I squelch my way to the improvised car park cursing my impulse to wear white. The wet and muggy heat does not help. The security guard at the parking lot wants baksheesh. I see beads of sweat on his forehead from the clean and dry, air-conditioned comfort of my car. He too can see my shopping bags. I borrow ten rupees from the driver and hand it to him. He wants fifty. My driver is unsympathetic. “Ma’am, ignore him- he should not be hounding you.” I can’t think. I fumble with my wallet, picking up and putting back a five hundred-rupee note. The guard has seen it though. “Madam give me the note, I can change it for you.”

“Can you?” “Ma’am, don’t trust these thieves.” “Do it in a trice madam.” “Ok…” I am handing over my note to the man, through a two-inch gap when the driver raises the windshield, crushing my finger. The note falls on my side- the guard looks fed up; the driver is completely abashed. It cannot be bad, I think, until I see a bit of flesh hanging out and lose heart immediately. I clutch my hand tight and keep my head down through the throbbing, while the driver apologises profusely. The tears start rolling down as the car pulls off. A few for the bright blue family- the girl surveying the world from her little hospital bed on the pavement, her father, little brother and mother. I see you, as the Na’vi would say. The rest of the tears are for a woman with her head down, flying back to the comfort zone.

The Assassin's Song by M.G. Vassanji

Started the book in 2009. Started again in September 2010 and read it in a week.

I opened the book, read the first chapter and put it away for a year. The last time I read a book to know more about an Indian community, it turned out to be more banal than most, so maybe I was rightfully wary. This Gujarati father-son saga seemed intensely familiar in an uninteresting way.

My father was in the Indian Armed Forces, so we roamed the country as a family, returning every summer to our ancestral village for Vedic discourses in Tamil, comparative Greek and Indian mythology crammers, and visits to a temple where we believed, a stone was growing into an idol of Ganesha. By the age of twelve I had been in twelve schools scattered in different parts of India. I high schooled in Delhi, studied Engineering from Madras, Management in Calcutta, and had worked in Bombay before they became Dilli and Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai. My husband’s family suffered in the 1947 partition of India, and that opened a window to another ethos. What more did I need to know, of my land and her contradictions, I must have felt, as I put ‘The Assassin’s Song’ back on my groaning shelf of unread tomes.

How wrong I was!

This book concerns Nur Karsan, first-born son of the Saheb of Pirbaag in Gujarat. Karsan has absorbed much of his father and Pirbaag’s philosophy, which is neither Hindu nor Moslem but a seamless blend of Sufi, Shia and Vedic tenets. He understands and accepts the cult of the Pir Bawa, the central figure of Pirbaag and a thirteenth century mystic refugee from the war-torn lands of the north. But Karsan has no desire to be the guardian of this medieval saint’s spiritual legacy, leave alone become his corporeal stand-in, an avatar like his father. The reluctant heir apparent flees west to America.

Karsan’s story is told in the aftermath of the horrific communal violence that shook Gujarat in 2002. Pirbaag has been destroyed and the Saheb murdered, when at last the prodigal son returns. Despite his earlier repudiation and revolt and his current misgivings, he attempts a rebuilding. He begins a research paper on Pir Bawa and in doing so, delves into his own experience. As the story unfolds, every historical context is examined - from Khilji’s sack of Patan to the callous conduct of the Modi administration, from Hindutva to orthodox Islam, to Sufi mysticism, to amalgams that indeed exist across North India defying attempts at classification, from Mahatma Gandhi to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, from Partition to War. We are thus provided an enormous backdrop not only for Karsan’s journey, but that of the entire people of Gujarat.

Vassanji does not flinch from looking at both sides of any question; at the same time he charges his treatment of personal tragedy with a tender humanity. Through presenting events as experience, he shows to us clearly, how the past shapes the present, and how this affects the individual. It is remarkable too, that the author has made the story of a small-town boy growing up in newly Independent India, his own. In an era where autobiography masquerades as serious fiction, this is great fiction.

The introduction of characters adhering to diverse faiths is rather contrived but it does not jar (curiously there is no Jain character; Jainism is a major religion of Gujarat whose fundamental doctrine of Anekantavada moreover, contains the notion that no single viewpoint is the complete truth). Quibble-wise, I wished elsewhere that the author had been more imaginative in building up to the present vacuum in Karsan’s Canadian way of life, instead of resorting to an obvious plot device that makes for an uneven narrative.

Written in calm prose, abounding in many descriptions of incense-filled musical mornings or balmy moonlit nights, the story nevertheless has a breathless “what next?” quality to it. And the answers are always satisfactory. Vassanji delivers a terrific end, although it’s done too quickly, almost like a dramatic denouement which sits ill with the otherwise wistful, contemplative tone of the novel. But the abiding impression is of a great work, a compassionate and thoughtful response to devastating events.

Akhenaten by Naguib Mahfouz

Read in March 2010.

Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt, husband of the fabled Nefertiti, questioned the polytheistic beliefs of his people, proposing instead, the worship of a single God.

Nobel laureate Mahfouz’s eponymous novel is set in Akhenaten's Egypt, a few years after his passing. Queen Nefertiti is still living out her remaining years in (presumably bitter) isolation, when a young man with a passion for truth attempts to puzzle out the enigma of the now discredited Akhenaten. Armed with introductions to the Egyptian elite, he conducts a series of interviews, which form the book.

Mahfouz, who hails from Egypt, is regarded as one of the first writers of contemporary Arabic literature. In this novel he has used a piece of ancient Egyptian history to illustrate the vilification of new thinkers by the orthodox establishment in any culture. Indeed Akhenaten’s spiritual journey, shown by his move to monotheism and an incipient rejection of idolatry seems to be towards the modern Arabic-Islamic ideal. The irony of his beliefs being termed not only heretical but also somehow awful will not be lost on a reader. On the surface, we could sympathize with the man who suffered for his faith. But by rendering the book through the very men who brought him down, the author introduces another element. Mahfouz, it seems, would set us on the path of religious tolerance by placing the all too recognizable language of dogma and power in the mouths and hands of a different and antagonistic orthodoxy.

Unfortunately, the brilliance is all in the construct. The book reads like a dry government report and offers no insights. In fact even the development of Nefertiti as yet another figure worthy of investigation is uninspired. I wondered if the fact that I belong to a pantheistic religion made me unsympathetic! And I was not comfortable with the literary license that has been taken with the history.

The sub-text of tolerance on the other hand is never lost on the reader, so many times are we bludgeoned by it. But as a device to make you want to know more about Ancient Egypt, it succeeds.