The Doorways to Life

Book Review - Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

"That is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind." For the first sixty pages, one really doubts what's so special about this book that it features on Booker and DSC prizes shortlist. Anyone carrying a baggage of mixed reviews in head this book garnered, can easily put it aside. When you persist through the fourth chapter, there on the mastery and skill of the writer unfolds in distinct layers.

Fleeing war and persecution, leaving ones' homeland in hope of a better future in a distant, unfamiliar land where one's clearly unwelcome can be depicted with heart wrenching emotions or gut wrenching details of violence and gory bloodshed. But the picture of human displacement, its effects on interpersonal relationships and largely life itself, be dealt with as in this book is nothing ordinary. And that is where Exit West stands to earn all appreciation.

For a young couple - Nadia and Saeed, love begins to blossom in a city not yet openly at war, but situation worsens over time. Death of a loved one gets them closer, makes them take few very difficult decisions; death of another slowly grates their beings, changes them in ways that they fall apart. The change is slow, subtle and largely inevitable;  highly realistic too as the author chooses the right words to express it all, no empty theatrics or dramatic overtures in name of emotions.

It is through the couple's lenses that we see the world in violently changing times,  times of migrants versus natives, underprivileged vs affluent, man pitted against man, those guarding the doors to escape vs those passing through the same doors. The doors that appear quite routinely in the book are only metaphors for a journey embarked upon, a transient phase in life or gateways that one moves through during difficult times, swerving around blind and dangerous corners.

We believe we all are connected, across countries of the globe only to realize how fiercely we fight marking our territories, how this heart which loves to wander also yearns to stay rooted to where it beat first. Quirky, even weird at places, kindling imagination and introspection alike, Exit West is a good read and Mohsin Hamid is an author I look up to with admiration.

This Book Teaches a Good Deal

Book Review: The Deal of a Lifetime - Fredrik Backman

Only Fredrik Backman has this impeccable quality of writing books that affect you in many ways, that touch your heart, overwhelm you, make you smile and teary eyed within a span of few pages.

Backman calls the preface to this book - A few words before the rest of the words, and I must say these few words are truly golden.These words made me buy the book with a sense of urgency.

Few of my favorite excerpts from the book are here -

"May be all people have that feeling deep down , that your home town is something you can never really escape, but can never really go home to, either. Because it's not home anymore. We are not trying to make peace with it. Not with the streets and bricks of it. Just with the person we were back then, and may be forgive ourselves for everything we thought we would become and didn't ".

"Every parent will take five minutes in the car outside the house from time to time, just sitting there, breathing and gathering the strength to head back inside to all of their responsibilities. The suffocating expectation of being good, coping." 

The deal of a lifetime is a difficult book to review because this short novella, just 65 pages, stumps you with simple and straightforward questions that are extremely difficult to answer.

In the preface, when the author states - 'this is a short story about what you would be prepared to sacrifice in order to save a life', you only get a minuscule of what is in store. Also he says, may be you will find this to be a strange story. Little true, for what triggers the sacrifice of ones' past, all of future, all footprints left until a defining moment; what causes that single act of complete abnegation is not easy to comprehend, it requires a lot of attention while reading, and leads to serious contemplation after the book is over.

Characters are very few - a 45+ yr old man, his young son, his wife, a 5 yr old girl who is fighting cancer, her mother and a woman in grey sweater and the town of Helsingborg in Sweden. Yes, the protagonist's hometown is quite a character for he fails to make peace with his home town, believes it knows all of his secrets and never forgives him.

For our rich and famous protagonist, who deserted his family in search of success and milestones to achieve, happiness is a thing for children and animals, 'good enough' is a term to hate. It takes him really long to understand the difference between contentment and complacency, the contrast between these two terms is beautifully projected through the father - son relationship.

"You humans always think you are ready to give your lives, but only until you understand what that really involves. You are obsessed with your legacy, aren't you ? You can't bear to die and be forgotten." These lines hit you directly.  It is Christmas Eve in the book and no better time for an act of redemption, but what is that act of redemption? Read this little masterpiece to get the answer.

Do you remember the tuning fork experiments we did in middle school? Backman strikes a tuning fork and it just matches the natural frequency within us and the loudest sounds of reality we face come out plain and unrestricted. Quite a deal packed in this book.

The Pleasure of Reading and Gifting good reads

This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book - and the book was given to me by a man called .... And that is how this mini booklet full of beautiful lines, facts and emotions begins. The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane is a work that one cannot review, it is meant to be understood, enjoyed and treasured.

Love for books, love for reading, love for poetry, love for walking, love and gratitude for all that nature abounds with is aplenty in this book.

Books as gifts, both when given and received, transform life (some books, not all clarifies the author), this is the subject in discussion in this essay that lasts about 35 pages. I took my own sweet time to finish this as I am exceptionally slow with non fiction.

Robert Macfarlane talks about how a paper back copy of A Time of Gifts written by Patrick Leigh Fermor gifted to him by a dear friend transformed his life. He also discusses excerpts from Lewis Hyde's classic The Gift - detailing differences between a commodity and a gift, quoting that a gift, when it comes speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.

While we all have a 'to be read' pile, the author asserts the requirement of having a 'to gift' pile, a set of personal favorite books that you would like others to read and would gift them with.

This booklet is WOW from start to end and I should say that apart from Fredrik Backman, I have discovered another favorite author recently - Robert Macfarlane it is. His writing feels like a fluff of cotton, a quill afloat in air, everything one can associate with poise and simple beauty. 

A Breezy Bunch of Tales

Book Review

Laburnum for my head - Stories by Temsula Ao

A small beautiful book, just over hundred pages, this comprises of eight simple tales, each one with a rustic charm. Temsula Ao, a Padma Shree awardee juggles between many subjects in this book, through stories set mostly in Nagaland.

The titular story features an Indian laburnum bush in full, yellow bloom in the month of May at the southernmost corner of an old cemetery. The story trace its origin to a lady's single most cherished desire to see these yellow flowers blossom before she dies. These feminine and humble flowers that hang their heads earth wards dictate all her actions till her wish is fulfilled. 

How different is it when a hunter decides the prey, when and where to hit it, to meet the meat quotient of a meal from a scenario where an official body assigns him the animal in question, with the choicest weapons and a timeline for the task? What happens when a sense of guilt overrides pride of victory, skills and bravery,  all this is dealt with in the story - death of a hunter.

The boy who sold an airfield , the next story, has a drizzle of wit and humor detailing how a young lad manages to sell an almost non functional airfield at Jorhat, Assam to naive, nearby villagers.

The plight of villagers caught between government officials, army officers on  one hand  and underground extortionists on the other is depicted in a poignant tale with an ironic twist in the story - the letter.

Three women, is written in a different format; Martha, Medemla and Lipoktula, their secrets, their eternal bond despite wounds from past is narrated well in this simple tale.

A simple question - "What do you want from us?" that a lady asks a police officer speaks volumes of the collective plight of her clan caught in daily crisis, between tax demanding underground rebels and ever doubting police officials who put her village's men behind bars on false charges of shielding anti nationals.

Sonny - is a tale of love, a reluctant but inevitable breakup between two youngsters, their aspirations and ambitions so clearly divergent. Years pass by but an invisible pull of trust brings them together with a pall of gloom descending in the background.

The Flight describes metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly , albeit, in a different setting. 

None of the tales in this bunch are breathtakingly extraordinary, none so drab. This book is a good, breezy read that one can use as a filler or to get over a reading lull.