A Succinct Folktale

It didn't take me long to finish this short and sweet novella, roughly three to four hours grabbed from here and there over two days. 

Don't run , my love by Easterine Kire is a short book, about 120 pages long, with a distinct folktale like flavor. The book describes the events that unfold in lives of two women Atuonuo, a young girl of marriageable age and her mother Visenuo, after a young, handsome man Kevi arrives offering them unsolicited help during the harvest season. 

Does Kevi manage to marry Atuonuo, does he get that maternal love from Visenuo he craved for from birth? Or are there some dark secrets hidden somewhere that push the lives of these two women into a state of emergency that they never thought of? Concise prose, beautifully written and densely packed because even ten pages of space carries lots of details. Also, we get a peek into the lives of farmers in a Naga village, know a bit of their traditions and practices, food and festivals by reading this book. 

A special reference to the section of the book between pages 30 - 70 because this is where through conversations between mother and daughter we get an insight into their life, also the tale catches up pace and energy. The conversations between elders in Atuonuo's family and her mother Visenuo strike complete familiarity.

There are no cons I see in the book, there is definitely some suspense but nothing like 'out of the box' climax. I guess it is more to do with Indian writing where most of the times, much like in movies, the endings are always happy. And if it is not happy, it is really not the end.

I will not call it a riveting read. However, surely a good read for its writing is highly meaningful and detailing perfectly appropriate in such limited space. 

PS: The above review also appears in my Instagram account.

Riveting Read!

Daphne du Maurier's The Birds and other stories is the book in for review in this blog post. 

A set of six stories, the common feature they (all barring one) share is an element of thrill, some unknown information that keeps the reader hooked till the end. 

The book begins with Birds, my favorite in this collection. Set against the backdrop of World War II, the story describes how life changes for a simple family in a Cornish seaside town with the advent of winter when birds for very strange reasons turn highly aggressive, cause death and unleash large scale destruction. From an uneasy calm, to becoming increasingly eerie and unfolding into a full blown catastrophe at the end, the writer keeps you spellbound through the length of the story. The story is believed to be an allegory of the Blitz attack on London towards the end of World war II. 

Monte Verita - a good sized novelette, is another great story in this pack, lot of theology and philosophy packed into this one but the two subjects do not bring boredom to the reader. Beautifully written, reading this one is akin to rolling a long rectangular sheet of paper to let its shorter, opposite sides (quite like the start and end of the story) just touch each other. There are many wonderful lines that call for good introspection and below is one such example - 

"Religious teachers disagree when they try to show the difference between good and evil; what is a miracle to one becomes black magic to another. The good prophets have been stoned, but so have the witch doctors. Blasphemy in one age becomes holy utterance in the next, and this day's heresy is tomorrow's credo".

The Apple Tree is about a recently widowed man who cannot wait to settle into some peace and private space, after years of lull, spent with his over-laborious and ever complaining wife, Midge.They say that the usual fortune of a complaint is to excite more contempt than pity, so as the man talks distastefully about his dead wife through the length of the story; piles up hatred against an old, odd-looking, stooping apple tree in the yard, putting every effort to get rid of it, he only leaves a certain acerbity in us towards him. This is a story where the author does not hold the reader's attention tight. 

The Little Photographer carries the trend forward like its predecessor in the book of being unable to hold the readers' attention, a clearly predictable tale with a certain cinematic quality about it. A Marquise's life, laden with riches and comforts and yet her heart searches fervently for clandestine pleasures which gets her into real trouble in the end.Despite that banal plot, I loved the story for the way in which it is written, describing an illicit affair sans obscenity is quite next to impossible in contemporary writing. 

And quite like a turn of the tide, the last two stories pack a powerful punch in a brief space in this book. 

Kiss me again, Stranger is a thriller, highly intact right from start to end, a reader wanders in his/her head to many possible conclusions only to get bowled over by the author in the climax. 

The Old Man is a winner in the end, as brilliant as Birds. Now what does one say of a story where the central points are left in suspense to be revealed only in the last few lines, marvelous isn't it? 

There is an excellent foreword at the start of the book that highlights the differences between the world of writing books and making films based on them, between authors and movie directors, worth a read. 

Reading Daphne du Maurier occurred to me pretty late, but now that I started with this one, I am allured enough to read all her other works.

Book Review : A Man Called Ove

A good book comes like a gentle breeze and leaves behind a waft of fresh and sweet fragrance. 

This book -  A Man called Ove does just that.

I have never rated any book in my head out of 5 or 10 stars, blame it on my inability to translate an overall impression into numbers. But here is a book, that gets a neat 5 on 5 without an iota of doubt.

Why? 

1. Relatability  - this is what I adored the most while reading this book. I could relate to what was written in it, there's a little of Ove in my dad and little more of him in my husband. The RQ or the relatability quotient made me grin, smile sheepishly and secretly nod in approval, quite often. 

2. Perfectly paced - never, not once do you feel the author could have saved a few pages or elaborated little more to enable better understanding.

3. The Story Unfolds in Layers - chapters in this book move from the present to few weeks back in time, and to many years back in time but never is one lost in time and space. Also, each chapter is a short story in itself, catering well to my love for short story format.

4. Detailing of the Protagonist - our understanding of Ove grows through the book, gradually. The author doesn't play it defensive on why is Ove the way he is, never. He evokes different emotions in us towards Ove, never once justifying all he does or demanding pity. 

5. Beautifully translated - most of us fumble for the right words that connect our thoughts,  something does get lost in the process of translation, at times. But this book translated into English from Swedish, leaves one wondering if the author and translator are twins, conjoint in their head and heart.

6. Only a few characters - for a person who has still not gotten over post partum forgetfulness, having just a few characters in the book makes the job of reading and remembering easier.

Reading happens pretty erratically, after finishing all household chores, that are sometimes lined up in an unending queue. My reading time is from 12 to 1 am, where I sink into the sofa, heave a sigh of relief that the day has gone by well and get into the reading mode. 

I am happy that I came across this book, and happier that this book came to me at the most important juncture - when I have gotten serious about getting back to my good, old habit of reading. 

A Story a Day Keeps Stress Away

I have forgotten the way to my blog, I feel. Even as I sit down to write this post, I am taking more time than usual to gather my thoughts and put them down here; household chores - one, two, three are lined up in my head. Shunning that little distraction, I start off with the review of the book that I finished reading a week back - Raavi Paar and Other Stories by Gulzar. 

For anyone who has followed Hindi movies and songs for a considerably long time, Gulzar will be a favorite. So the author of the book needs no introduction. A compilation of twenty five short stories in this book, translated by either Alok Bhalla or Masooma Ali, each story replete with human emotions  and perceptions deals with ordinary characters striving for peace and calm even in the most difficult circumstances.  

The stories, really short in length, deliver quite an impact ; most have a cinematic quality about them. Ironic twists are a mainstay in most. Of the 25 stories in here, only 5 lack a definitive punch, so the book is a good read overall. And it is admissibly great if you are like me, trying hard to cling to the habit of reading, one who feels that some reading during the day will yield a good nights' sleep. 

Now getting down to the review, for a person born in Deena, Pakistan, who moved to India post independence and witnessed riots during partition times in his early teens, writing about it is almost inevitable. Therefore, this subject takes the center stage in three stories Raavi Paar, Batwara, Jamun Ka Per, the first of these has the most brilliant content. Khauf and Dhuan use Hindu-Muslim riots/conflicts as the backdrop. Sunset Boulevard, Dhuan, Dalia, Haath Peeley Kar Do, Hisab Khitab, Guddo and Seema give prominence to the female protagonists in them. Of these, Guddo is a shortened version of Gulzar's movie Guddi starring Jaya Bachchan. 

Stories Fasal, Kiski Kahani, Mard, Zindagi, Addha, Satranga, Kagaz Ki Topi offer great read, the powerful characters in here are males, they set the reader on a journey of human emotions in offbeat ways. 

Mard, Michelangelo, Bimal Da, Habu Ki Aag are stories I will love to read again, some impeccable story telling and excellent work by translators. Lekin and Das Paise aur Dadi leave an eerie unease and Najoom quite lightly tickles a funny bone. Junglenama reminded me of The Elephant and the Trangopan by Vikram Seth.

To weave tales in such compact space, with such proficiency, using ordinary characters and their routine activities is an art at which very few excel, those who have watched/heard this living legend's works will without an iota of doubt accept that Gulzar is a master at this job.

Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are says Mason Cooley ; with Gulzar's book in hand, you get a place to go, a life to peek into, every time, with every story.

The Book

This .. such a beautiful expression.

  

Simple and Stunning Account of Familial Turmoil

My trysts with my blog have become few and far in between but I never thought I would leave a gap of more than an year in writing down something here. Also the bibliophile in me has taken a different avatar; I have started collecting titles for my 5 year old and buried myself in his stories.

Ghachar Ghochar has brought me back to my blog and also redefined my scope of reading. This book popped out and grabbed my attention from an Instagram account, good reviews it garnered and the mention that it is about 120 pages long made it an apt pick. 

Smaller books meant sustainable attention and a better promise of on-time completion.

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbagh (translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur) is a skilfully written account of familial turmoil that arises in wake of newly acquired wealth. Never through the length of the book does the reader feel that there are too many subtleties discussed or too many details omitted. Rightly paced, correctly dense, the narrative cannot get more concise and intriguing. The translation by Perur is elegant without hiccups thereby throwing open this impressive work in Indian fiction to many like me.

The book is divided into seven chapters and starts with the narrator sitting at a Coffee House - an airy, spacious, high ceilinged bar and restaurant mulling over many things. This place serves as a retreat for the him when his head has a thousand wheels spinning in it from what transpires at his home daily. An oracular waiter working here, Vincent, is not just the narrator's confidante but his well wisher and soothsayer too.

In the chapters to follow, the author maintains immaculate precision in introducing members of the narrator's family in order of their importance linked to their financial status.

Chikkappa or Venkatachala, the narrator's father's younger brother steers the family from a life of modest means, cramped but dignified existence to abundant riches by founding and successfully running a business in spices called Sona Masala. Seemingly, he is a messiah who raised the family onto a higher socio-economic pedestal but inevitably is the harbinger of utter chaos into which the family is gradually pulled in. 

The narrator's father is scrupulous man, a salesman by profession, his income though minimal meets the family needs. The narrator states "we did not desire what we could not afford , when you have no choice, you have no discontent either." The episodes before they became affluent - a description of the house they lived in, their wars with endless columns of ants in there, their daily activities are described in right depth. 

It is when the narrator talks of his elder sister as a pile of gunpowder waiting to go off, we infer the damages improved finances bring along apart from many lavish benefits.You cannot agree more when he says - It is true what they say,its not we who control money, its money that controls us. When there's little, it behaves meekly; when it grows , it becomes brash and has its way with us.  

The narrator speaks about himself and his wife Anita only towards the end, their marriage and finding love is described sans obscenity in crisp prose. Post marriage, he has trouble dealing with the real right stuff and purportedly right stuff which is essential for peace and unity in family. Anita's brutally forthright nature stirs up dirty waters and raises a lot of muck. Does the narrator deal with these issues, if so how, and what binds this family together despite lack of moral principles? 

One might dismiss this book based on a subject featured round the clock on television as dull and unnecessary. But what is noteworthy is that even on such a banal topic, the author weaves intricacy, packs thrill, leaves things unsaid, gives reader ample scope to interpret and conclude; this makes him outstanding and his work an excellent piece of fiction. 

Don't turn your back on this book Ghachar Ghochar since it deals with familial problems, but read it to know how well balanced a work of fiction can actually be. Words after all are nothing by themselves , they burst into meaning only in the minds they have entered, the author says in one of the chapters, asserting the importance of perception and interpretation, and that rests with the us who read this work.