December 2019 Reads (Part1)

Below are reviews of few books read during the month of Dec 2019

1. Tell Her Everything by Mirza Waheed : Book Review 

Can someone move from one salary slip to another, one work assignment to another, sailing along swelling bank balance, hitting a pause button on living for oneself and with dear ones, with the hope to resume it one day post retirement? Will the resumption ever be an easy/smooth one?

Tell Me Everything by Mirza Waheed details the journey of Dr. Kaiser Shah - from his humble origin in Saharanpur, India, his graduating in medicine and moving to London, then to an unnamed place, most likely in the Middle East where his potential and diligence are recognized and rewarded. At 61, in his posh flat in London, overlooking river Thames, he prepares meticulously to tell his story in complete detail and honesty to his daughter, Sara when she visits him.

He is keen on telling her about how he landed at Sir Farhad's hospital, how he moved from the Emergency dept to Corrections and became an eminent 'punishment surgeon' using most humane practices along with cutting edge technology.

From living in utter penury in India, to getting an income that exceeds expenditure, trying to 'fit in' London, serving merely as a conduit at Sir Farhad's hospital where more people were in need of amputation than paracetamol - the details are bristling through synapses in his head, characterized by steady repetition of facts, memories and a slight overdose of sentimentality that comes along with senility.

He wants to tell Sara how much he loves Atiya, his wife and how her sudden death still remains an open wound, how difficult it was to send Sara at a tender age of 7 away from him to a boarding school in the USA in best interests of her future. He wants to tell her what happened to his friend from India, Biju T Tharakan during their years together at Sir Farhad. He wants to tell it all !

Can a doctor who is meant to resuscitate life be at the helm of rendering it useless? Can one's ambition slowly eat away filial relations and leave him solitary? Can elaborate explanation of intentions behind actions help procure a ratification for all that is bygone? This book raises many important questions and lets the reader obtain the answers.

2. Origin of Others - Toni Morrison : Book Review 

Origin of Others by Toni Morrison is a book derived from a series of lectures she gave at Harvard in the spring of 2016. Through 6 essays, she explores why an act of 'Other'ing is so important for man, what is race and why does it matter so much? 

The book begins with a foreword from Ta Nehisi Coates who differentiates race from racism, the former term only a feature of the natural world and the latter, the predictable result of it. Profiling and segregation based on race comes from the need for power, superiority and necessity to control states Morrison, clearly elucidating it with crisp and befitting examples.

What she shares are brutal truths that are hard to stomach - Samuel Cartwright writes about a natural indolence that blacks have, coins a name for a condition they suffer from - dysaesthesia aethiopica and thus justifies the white authority over them who he asserts will make them civilized and moral.

An owner of slaves and sugar plantations in Jamaica, Thomas Thistlewood's diary entries in Latin provide a chilling account of his rapes on slaves which he records meticulously amongst other details like weather, prices, business losses, such blatant callousness.

Employing skin color to describe a character or drive a narrative, use of term nigger in literature are explained as inevitable fallout of romancing slavery. 

Excerpt from newspaper of a slave mother who killed her child (from 1856), of Issac Woodard's unfortunate fate, examples of lynching in 20th century make us shudder, all a grim reminder of how race has always been a constant arbiter of difference. The lynching examples reminded me of John Steinbeck's The Vigilante.

I haven't read any of Toni Morrison's works of fiction. Those who have can/will definitely appreciate this book more for she discusses her thought process while writing them. However, after reading this book, I have come to understand what Morrison singularly stands for and why she is much revered.

"Why should we want to know a stranger when it is easier to estrange another? Why should we want to close the distance when we can close the gate?" These questions speak a lot about the Origin of Others.